Sorry in advance if this is against forum rules or etiquette, but I tried posting this in the collaboration forum and it seems like many threads there have no replies, and I don’t even know if anyone say my post. Not to mention there have been no new posts at all since mine. Anyway…
I consider myself a freelance writer and like to help out developers who have ideas and want to bring the stories to life. I have tried and continue to work on my own game content, both in Unity and in the form of mods for other games, such as Skyrim via the BSW Creation Kit (the latter for which I have written the text for many in-game assets such as books, journals, quest/mission dialog, etc.). I enjoy spending time as a fiction writer both in the form of short stories and novellas, as well as writing game content. I have been writing my whole life (almost :p) and have written every form of fiction, including high fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. I have written scripts for audio plays and film, and have worked collaboratively on storyboards, plot/story outlines, and dialog state diagramming and flowcharts.
So the reason for my post is I want to offer help to anyone who’d like to spend more time designing the game and less time writing content, or would like to write collaboratively. Scanning through collaboration and help-wanted forums here and on other game development sites, I’ve noticed a marked lack of developers looking for help with writing. I suppose to a degree that makes sense because I get the feeling that developers in general feel that appealing to the masses means that writing quality (in terms of dialogue, back story, and other game content) can be sacrificed in favor of visuals and game mechanics. I think it also likely that developers largely want to handle creative writing themselves. As someone who likes to develop their own ideas into finished works, I can completely understand that mindset; but I also understand what a massive undertaking fully fleshed game projects can be. I think if more developers looked at utilizing creative writers on their projects, not only would time-to-completion be reduced, but the potential for increased quality of story and other creative writing content would be greatly increased, since there would be that dedicated resource, allowing the developer(s) to concentrate on what they do best: the technical development of the game itself.
I currently use a couple of platforms, Celtx my primary tool for scriptwriting, but have a strong aptitude for learning different programs so I can adapt to anything anyone is used to using, and can certainly handle the various standard diagramming/presentation applications.
This is actually my first (technically second with the x-post :p) post here so I’m not sure how the private message system works, assuming there is one, but feel free to contact me and let me know if you are interested. I enjoy writing for games as a creative outlet, and am happy to work collaboratively on anything from baselining story ideas to full story, dialog, and in-game writing development.
By “freelance” I meant that I’m not under any contract or obligation to anyone to do paid work solely for them, and am free to write for whomever I choose on any project(s) of my choosing.