RPG Maker Forums

Have you ever hired a writer? How does it work?

This could go on the Commercial Games subforum but I feel this is its best home as free games can hire writers too and this really speaks more of the game development aspect than anything sales related.

I'm not particularily great in conveying my ideas into words and although I love worldbuilding and writing stories, I often find I could use some cleanup work and someone to work on them with me. And so a few friends have pointed out that Freelance Writing is a feasible possibility, but I'd like to know how it works! Writing, as well as coding, seem to me much more subjective things than art or music, which can be much easier to objectively assess. Besides, then it comes the duality of losing control over your game or curbing your writer's creativity.

I myself would like to work with a writer by presenting them with a story draft, characters and happenings, concepts etc. and then having them sculpt that into a more refined plot and scenario together with me. Yet somehow I feel this might be too controlling of me? Do writers normally work like that? Am I being a control freak for wanting something like that? lol

What are some other "director"(?)-writer dynamics that there can be?

Also, how does writing traditionally pull off on big companies like Square? What sparked me the interest of hiring a writer was first my own inability as a writer, but secondly it was also my fascination with Chrono Trigger -- I was reading it and saw how the scenario/story draft was made by Yuji Horii, and then handed on to Masato Kato so he would sculpt and polish the game and world. There are quite a few other notable writers from that era (that get a lot less glam than their concept artist or composer counterparts) and I'd love to have some light shed on how they worked!

I'm going to eventually make a thread on hiring coders as well, as its another thing that I don't seem to know much about yet.

Thanks for reading this!