GURPS books / authors

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So I think you can have your own voice even within the constraints of house style.

Indeed. Even within sub-lines, I don't think my DF material reads like, say, Kromm's or Peter's.

[Kromm]

Authors can definitely have their own voices! In my analogy of the day:

In an orchestra, a bass clarinet isn't a contrabass clarinet, never mind an oboe of any kind, much less a piano . . . or a glockenspiel! Yet all of those instruments and dozens more are present. The key thing is that they're all playing from the same music, following the conductor, and working together in a symphonic fashion. The audience can rely on today's performance of a given piece being much like tomorrow's and next week's. Sure, some performances might be better than others, but reliability approaches that of a recording. Consistency within the orchestra and between its performances are the highest values.

In an improvisational jazz combo, a bass isn't a sax. But more important, all the players are jamming. The energy of one feeds the others, and there's lots of riffing. There may be a band leader, but they're mostly just taking the lead, herding the cats. The same piece is never played the same way twice, and the audience is going to find some nights way, way better than others – and they won't all agree on which nights those are! Spirit and inspiration and energy are the highest values.

Neither genre of music is objectively better. Neither type of performance is objectively better. Neither group of musicians is necessarily more talented than the other.

The difference for the players is that in the case of the orchestra, what determines a musician's individual voice are the choice of instrument to master, and the effort put into practice that might elevate one to a virtuoso who plays lots of solos and pieces that emphasize one's instrument. In the case of the jazz combo, it's more one's individual panache and interpretation. But in both cases, the musicians have individual voices!

It works the same way for GURPS writers. They have to work within the same set of rules, formats, and document styles; they cannot just depart from those things and go off on a riff. They have to write in accord with one another. And they have to follow my direction. Consistency from book to book across the line is imperative.

BUT . . . they can choose different genres, subsystems, and kinds of material to master. They can become so good in their chosen areas that we give them more spotlight time, or pick them to break ground on new genres, systems, and types of projects. And of course you'll notice their individual gifts and skills if you read closely.

They just can't decide not to give characters Dexterity, or to ignore all of GURPS High-Tech, or not to format character sheets the way SJ Games likes, or to submit their work in Lotus Word Pro from 1988. Nor can they just ignore my comments, trash my emails, and assert their creative freedom. They aren't playing for tips and drinks; they're working for hire. So they have to toe a certain line.

[Anders]

How do you feel about writing tools such as Grammarly?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anders

How do you feel about writing tools such as Grammarly?

That's mostly none of my business.

Some writers use grammar checkers, some send their work to friends, and I'm sure many use all kinds of Word plug-ins, scripts, and macros. All that matters to me is that the writer doesn't value such things above SJ Games' house styles and formatting. Grammarly saying "Do X, not Y" is no different from a friend saying "Do X, not Y" or the writer preferring X over Y for some other reason: When SJ Games prefers Y despite current trends, what Grammarly's creators think, or how a writer or their friends were taught, SJ Games doesn't want to see X and be told ". . . but that's how Grammarly/my favorite writer/another publisher/my pal/my English teacher said it should be!"

So my only opinion on Grammarly is this: If you're incapable of ignoring a software expert system when it tells you not to do things SJ Games' way, you probably shouldn't use it. When you write for us, our way is the right way. If we say, "From now on, please replace all conjugations of all tenses of 'to say' with 'say,'" we expect writers to do that; we don't care what AP, Strunk, White, Fowler, Oxford, or Professor Heise say.

[Kromm]

For the record, I don't use automated grammar checking when writing or editing. I find such things slow down my progress too much in return for distracting me with advice that I have to waste time vetting, most of which seems to be aimed at corporate communications, not technical writing (which is what RPGs are). Also, I trust my editors . . . when I commit a grammar gaffe, Nikki or Steven points it out, and I fix it without pushing back.

If a potential writer out there is trying to decide what's more important – (1) cleverly written prose with flawless grammar, or (2) internally consistent game mechanics with flawless stats and rules references – then I'd say (2). Any editor – even one who has never seen GURPS, even one who has never seen an RPG! – can make prose sparkle and fix grammar. Only the GURPS Line Editor can disentangle messed-up GURPS technical content.

If you want to become a published GURPS writer, don't make the key person problem worse! We've never ditched a draft for bad grammar, though we've grumbled about it. But we've canned far too many projects for being technically intractable, typically meaning "too much bad formatting," "too many internal inconsistencies," or "too many math or rules errors."

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Kromm

We've never ditched a draft for bad grammar, though we've grumbled about it. But we've canned far too many projects for being technically intractable, typically meaning "too much bad formatting," "too many internal inconsistencies," or "too many math or rules errors."

Oh, and we've canned quite a few for what I call "incomplete thinking": (1) Manuscripts full of sentences that, and (3) [that thing from the other day]

And yes, I actually have seen sentences trail off into vapor, ordered lists that were missing numbered items, and vague "notes to self" left in submitted drafts. Neither a grammar expert nor a technical expert can fix those things, because telepathy isn't a standard job qualification for editors. If it existed, it probably would be.

So don't do that. It's better to submit a truly complete draft a month late than it is to submit a draft full of holes on time and force an editor to spend a month on the clock fixing it. I hate to say it, but from an internal perspective, staff time is without exception worth more than freelancer time, because we pay for the former but not the latter.

Really, a lot of standard "advice to writers" becomes of secondary importance when writing for games. Yes, I suppose we care about grammar and deadlines, but not half as much as we care about well-organized, well-structured, logical, complete, and consistent rules. We can put up with fixing grammar in a late draft if we don't have to fix the rules; perfect grammar in a draft that arrives on time counts for nothing if we're forced to rewrite the rules. Most "advice to writers" is aimed at creative writers . . . but games are technical writing, not creative writing.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anders

How do you feel about writing tools such as Grammarly?

To back up what Kromm said, part of his answer is actually in the writing guidelines. I use MS Word but leave suggestions on and autoformat off. I'm dyslexic and not only reverse letters but the order of words so that blue or red line helps me quickly spot possible errors. I found it wont help much when I reverse sentences and paragraphs though :) Thankfully that's a rarity and I can easily spot it on an edit pass.
However sometimes its just plain wrong for the GURPS style. Certain words such as Savoir-Faire and certain phrasing it will change to an incorrect submission if you rely on it too much.
On the other hand Find and Replace can be very handy in updating those requested changes Kromm mentioned.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Refplace

However sometimes its just plain wrong for the GURPS style. Certain words such as Savoir-Faire and certain phrasing it will change to an incorrect submission if you rely on it too much.

I do spellcheck my manuscripts, but I never accept changes automatically; I look at them one by one, ignore manu, and occasionally substitute a different change that Word doesn't know about. I remember one of my books where it wanted to change "superhero" to "superego."

[Christopher R. Rice]

One thing I feel is very important to this conversation is the comments on outlines. I am, by nature, a "pantser" - I want to write without having any direction to get whatever I'm working on out. I had to *learn* to write outlines and then force myself to work from them. That was stupidly hard to do, but once done I found that my work was structurally more organized and I didn't forget bits and pieces of the work as I went. Learn to outline and use the outline.

In addition to an outline, make NOTES. The same rules for making notes for your game that I talk about here work just as well for writing a book. I keep a txt file open at all times when working and write notes in "Used" and "Unused" sections and move stuff as I go because sometimes you come up with a great idea in the middle of writing and losing it is really easy no matter how good your memory may be. Learn to take organized notes and then use them.

Also, do not reuse your campaign material without forethought. It's great and fun to see things you've done for a campaign become published but getting it there is often harder then just writing something new. This is a lesson I learned by fire. Similarly, do not write something and then send it along with a query as a fait accompli - as noted it might get you rejected.

As for the general process, as others have noted it varies from book to book, situation to situation, and author to author. For me I generally write the outline of what I want to do first because a) it's great practice for me and b) I can send an outline immediately if asked for after I send a query. I then send a query with as much information as I can: approximate word count to make the project work, guesstimated word reuse from other texts, any ideas for art I might have, and a probable deadline for the first draft. Then wait. If you've never written for GURPS before study the formatting guide. Read all examples they have and all the notes. Then do it again. Yes, it's that important.

The first draft is always either smooth (I wrote my DF denizens book in 9 days) or hell (13 months for Realm Management - though I had a LOT of personal crisis hit me over and over again) for me.

One thing you must do is keep in contact with Sean and/or Steven. If something happens that is going to delay you for the love of all that's holy TELL them. Communicate with them. Explain to them. If you're going to be late it's probably going to be ok as long as they know. It's when they don't know that they are likely to be grumpy. Communication is so important I'm going to repeat it again.

The next stage after first draft submission is waiting for comments back from Sean - which he does as fast as possible and according to who is in the queue. Now is the time to learn patience. Once you get those comments go line by line and do everything they say and mark them off via highlighted text or strikethrough. This will likely take a few days as you want to be thorough and may wish to reread each item a few times. GO SLOW. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Once you go over the comments go back and do a self-edit from top to bottom, bottom to type, and maybe from middle to end to beginning. The point here is to break up the text you've memorized so you don't get editing blindness (something I suffer from pretty bad at times). Once you think you are done do it again. If you have people who you trust and know GURPS ask them to look it over. Find someone who will give your brutally honest editing comments then act on those comments. Read it out loud or have the computer read it out loud. There are some things you will only catch if you hear it not read it. Once your done submit it and then wait some more.

Sean or Nikki will then likely do an editing pass again and Nikki will layout it out, maybe have some questions for you, and then send you a production PDF of the document. Again, read it multiple times, from multiple positions, and in multiple ways. This is when you should catch all the oopsies and legacy garbage from previous iterations you may have missed. Next is quotes, pull quotes, etc. and after that is art which you may not have any input on. From there you're basically done. Everything else is up to the GURPS team.

If you plan on writing for them, I wish you luck. I occasionally take on proteges and will usually answer questions folks have on writing or formatting if you don't want to ask Sean or them (which I recommend you do as they are very open and transparent). Good luck in the word mines.

[mook]

Ooh, great thread! As mentioned, the details vary a LOT, but here's the rough timeline of "How to Be a GURPS GM" seeing the light of day. You can safely assume any mistakes or inconsistencies are my fault. Also keep in mind, I have no more 'behind the scenes' knowledge of SJGames than most gamers -- this is all from my point of view.

10/28/2009
The email that started it all! The night before, I had slogged through yet-another of the endless Internet conversations perpetuating misperceptions that GURPS is "too hard to play" or "requires too much math." First thing in the morning, I started a query email to Steven Marsh explaining what I envisioned the book being and who I was, and sent it off that afternoon.

10/29/2009 - 11/17/2009
Over the next couple of weeks, Steven and I had some back and forth discussing things like how this would be different than other products, how it might later be expanded, page count, that sort of thing, culminating in an email on the 17th asking if I would be interested in combining my proposal with a project to go through *all* of Kromm's forum posts to find ones pertinent to the topic for inclusion throughout. Knowing full well that would be a massively daunting task, I jumped at the chance anyway. What GM wouldn't want to wade through years of Kromm-posts for hidden gems!?

11/18/2009
Kromm was then looped in and the three of us hammered out a few more details. It was agreed I would supply an outline (for a 64-page PDF, eventually extended a bit) *before* the writing sample, as "a large challenge of this project would be organizational." I like to think the quality of my emails and prior GURPS fan creations showed I could at least string a clear sentence together, but I've no idea if that's true or not.

11/21/2009 - 12/6/2009
Over these couple of weeks, I submitted an outline first draft that only drilled down to "C" headings, and also was not labeled with the correct heading codes, merely indented in plain text. Kromm helpfully provided his outline from "Martial Arts" and a metric ton of notes, as did Steven, and my second version was massively improved as well as approved. We agreed the next step would be a 5,000-word writing sample of whichever chapter I wanted to use.

12/7/2009 - 2/8/2010
I submitted my writing sample, the first ~5,000 words of "Chapter Six - Combat," and incorporated a few small notes.

2/10/2010 - 3/1/2010
In these exchanges, we progressed to agreeing on a royalty rate and a deadline of June 1st 2010. In earlier exchanges, I had pointed out that the forum Search function was limited to 200 returns, so they removed my cap (to aid in collating all of Kromm's posts) but it was still extremely tedious. I suggested a Sql command they might use to export a CSV table of nothing but Kromm posts, and on March 1st, 2010 it arrived as an email attachment, all 8,513 of 'em from 8/16/2004 to 2/27/2010! I remember clearly reading through them one-by-one, winnowing down to 500 "maybes," then 200 favorites, then 100, and finally 50 or so that made it into the book. Time-consuming of course, but I had a blast.

4/8/2010 - 5/1/2010
I received an electronic copy of the contract, asked for a few newbie clarifications, signed off on the electronic copy which was finalized and mailed to me hard copy for signature and return. At this point it had only been ~6 months from initial query, so we were chugging along quite nicely. Dates from here out get a bit less precise.

5/31/2010
Submitted the first draft, along with requested suggestions for artwork, quotations (besides the Kromm posts), and marketing input. (The deadline had been far extended by this point, some of the pressure to rush was off.)

7/19/2010
Made a bajillion edits requested by Kromm and submitted a second draft. Nothing major, but very specific, things like "I’d move the second quote to the very end of the box so as not to cut off the final bullet point" or "Perhaps Arm ST 2 would make more sense than Striking ST 2 (no “+”, by the way)? Fast-Draw is missing hyphen." I was actually concerned at the number of changes requested, but was assured this was actually a decent first draft and not to worry (though they may have been lying to spare my feelings, doesn't seem their style lol).

1/1/2011
Not exactly sure the date on this one, but the second draft went through a full playtest and I received another metric ton of excellent suggestions for polishing.

6/6/2011
A bit shy of two years after that initial query email, I finally submitted my final draft! And this began The Eternal Wait lol. I don't believe this to necessarily be common or universal, and SJGames of course remained professional at every step, but this particular book ended up stuck in the "Ogre Designer's Edition" clogged pipe for what felt like *ever* -- again, just my experience.

9/6/2011 - 8/7/2014
*This* was the killer. With the awesome Ogre Kickstarter drawing nearly every available resource at SJGames, I contented myself with emailing every 90 days or so just to check in until that glorious day when "How to Be a GURPS GM" was released, 8/7/2014. Bucket list, checkmark!


Anyway, that was more or less my path. From start to finish, every single SJG employee I dealt with was helpful and informative, very much appreciated by me as a first-time author!