Yesterday I tweeted a "dirty little secret" that writing was a collaborative process between authors, editors, and sometimes agents. This is true. But what is even more true is the collaborative process that goes on with a multiple-author work, like an RPG Sourcebook.
It's been an interesting ride, writing for Catalyst Game Labs. There are several freelancers (we are not company employees) and with every project, we each get a chance to pitch ideas. Often we are given the prospective title of a work with a general idea of what the line developer, and the higher-ups, would like to see in the work. Then we're given a list of source material books to reference. Not that these references are the only things we should be using for research. They're just a jumping off point for the actual pitch.
The pitch process changes from book to book, but the line dev likes details. The more, the better. Quite often for a 10,000 section, he's looking for write-ups of between 2,000-5,000 words that share exactly what the authors want to write about. We include scene breakdowns, what goes into each scene, what fluff and rules changes we want to make, why the pitch author thinks this is a good idea, and whether or not this is coming out of a building plot line or just some throw-away line an earlier author wrote.
The line dev goes over the offered pitches and puts together the ones that work best together, along with the ones that best fit the over-arcing developing metaplot. The writers whose pitches are accepted get our contracts, our assignments, and our deadlines. Not every pitch is accepted, and the line dev tries to make sure a freelancer doesn't get overwhelmed with work. This means that usually a piece is written by as many as ten freelancers and sometimes as few as three or four. Adventures and Missions are the exceptions, being a one-author work unless two freelancers co-pitch (which has actually happened).
The nature of the work is that every freelancer needs to be aware of what the others are doing. It's hard to keep up with things when you're busy writing and it's easy to miss side conversations when you're not checking your email regularly. Often we get into conversations about what happened to character X and why would character Y do That Silly Thing. More often we feel each other out about outlandish ideas and go off for days, weeks even, on tangents of what we (as writers) would like to see happen in the Shadowrun universe. (We don't always get what we want, but that's expected).
The more pitches a freelancer makes, the more likely (s)he's going to be one of the prolific writers in SR. This is why you'll see the same names over and over again in some of the books. These are the freelancers who have learned the Art of the Pitch, though only after writing lots of pitches getting some of them rejected. My first pitch got rejected because I didn't make the stakes high enough. I learned and started throwing in every outlandish idea I could think of into the pitch. Not all of my ideas get accepted, but now I'm getting assignments because I've learned what works and what doesn't.
In Conspiracy Theories, I got an assignment to write the opening fiction piece. It was to be set in London, which meant working with the writer of the London "facts" section. He gave me a few notes and I did my research from the old London Sourcebook of a previous edition. Once I finished writing, I sent him a copy of my work so we wouldn't contradict each other. He actually liked my piece so much that he adapted a few ideas from it for his section.
This is how collaboration works. We each work on our sections, then everyone gets to read them (if they have time) and make notes. Sometimes this affects each other's work on the same book. More often, though, this affects future works, some that are in progress, some that have yet to be conceived. The point being is that we try our best to keep everything flowing along the same general narrative.
In most books, there are only two drafts. The first draft that is turned in and the second draft re-written after the line dev has passed on comments and recommended changes. Draft 2 gets reviewed by proofreaders and other freelancers. These people have a good deal of input of what goes into a piece, though usually the changes aren't major. With so many people having fingers in the pie, things can get missed or over-edited. But we put in a lot of effort to make sure the version that makes it to market is the best that it can be. Unfortunately, as is the case with anything that gets published, there is no such thing as a completely error-free publication.
If you want to write for an RPG product, or for any media tie-in work, the first thing you have to learn is to not be a diva. The instant you turn in your work, it no longer belongs to you and will change and grow outside of what you may have originally intended. You also have to expect to write a lot more words than what you actually get published. I wrote nearly 35,000 words for Spy Games and only 20,000 of them got published. That's what I contracted for and that's what I turned in. Some of the extra was in my pitch. Other of extra was work that got cut out of draft 1 because it just wouldn't fit. This count doesn't include all the research I did, or all the notes I wrote.
It's a lot of work writing for RPGs. You have to do your research to avoid contradicting canon (unless the contradiction is on purpose). You have to revise and revamp, and be willing to let other authors mess with your work. You have to be willing to take risks in your proposals and get rejected. If you do it right, the acceptances will outnumber the proposals. If you do it right, people will take things you've written about (even throw-away comments) and Make Something out of them.
And if you do it right, you will be making lasting contributions to the canon that will resound with the fans for a very long time. That's one of the reasons I love writing media tie-in work. It's like fanfiction, only I get paid for it!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to researching the Dragon Colonies of Venus and the Gnats of Doom for my next project… I wish… (I guess Conspiracy Theories has left me wanting to mess with people's heads. @=).
