Cara Ellison & Jack de Quidt

Script Lock

Our last episode of the year is here and it's super writing-focused! Cara Ellison (Writer, game critic, narrative designer, creator of Sacrilege, and writer on Dishonored 2) and Jack de Quidt (Writer/composer of Castles in the Sky, and writer of Veracity & Purpose and Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist) join us to talk about their writing processes, working on a narrative when it's fractured across an entire team, why fetch quests occur even though everyone HATES them, the narrative design in The Witcher and Kentucky Route Zero, why a lot of studios are afraid of trusting the player, narrative problem-solving, the verbs that happen in games, navigating breaking the fourth wall, the portrayal of relationships in games, the importance of humor, how to handle pacing, required reading for people working in the industry that isn't about making games, and much, much more.

Our Guests on the Internet

Cara's Twitter, Website, Dishonored 2, Sacrilege, and you can buy Embed with Games here.

Jack's Twitter, Crows Crows Crows, and Friends at the Table.

Stuff We Talked About

On Pointlessness by Steve Gaynor

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (it's free!)

TO THE WRITERS OF THE UNIT by David Mamet

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Clint Hocking's Blog

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin

Kentucky Route Zero and the Poetics of Space by Cara Ellison

Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School

Jessica Jones on Netflix

Fargo on Hulu

Fiasco

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.