I've written some roleplaying sourcebooks -- not tie in novels, actual RPG books. I don't do it any more because it's so incredibly badly paid -- it's just as much work as writing a novel, and it pays about $2000. But anyway, I learned a lot doing it and I'm definitely not sorry I did it. While I was doing quite a lot of this, there was a short-lived game called "Everway" from Wizards of the Coast. I loved it. (In fact, the creator and I were the only people who loved it, but I digress.) During its short life, I was in negotiation with WotC to write a novel for it. This would have been the first serious adult novel I'd written, this was during the period I wasn't writing fiction pretty much at all. I had the RPG credentials, and they wanted me to do it. I wasn't entirely sure I could write a novel, but the money would have been nice. Also, because of the way Everway was, I'd have made up my own world within only a very loose framework -- magic gates connecting worlds -- it wouldn't have been like writing Warhammer. I was hesitating over all this when suddenly they cancelled the game and the entire thing became irrelevant.
Now I feel really glad I didn't do that, because I was in fact ready to write a novel and taking my novel-writing career in that direction would have been a Bad Thing in ways I couldn't imagine then. I didn't have a novel writing career, I had an RPG career and a part-time job editing an events guide and a full-time job being Zorinth's mother. But however good a first novel Everway tie-in I'd have written, I'd never have been nominated for the Campbell.
The other thing about writing tie-ins is that they do take time and energy from writing original things, and I think you can end up, if you do a lot of them, by coarsening the way you write, the things you think it's possible to do. I don't think it's just pride you can lose, I think it's horizons. If Elizabeth Hand were to write fifteen more tie-ins before being able to afford to get to her next original novel, I think it might well not be as good as it would have been. I've seen a couple of writers I used to think were very good come back to original fiction after writing a pile of WFH tie ins where I felt their work had really suffered from it.
The real message here is that, as I liked their original work, I should have bought it in hardcover to ensure that they had enough money to live on while writing their next good thing. I should have bought copies for all my friends...
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 05:06 am (UTC)Now I feel really glad I didn't do that, because I was in fact ready to write a novel and taking my novel-writing career in that direction would have been a Bad Thing in ways I couldn't imagine then. I didn't have a novel writing career, I had an RPG career and a part-time job editing an events guide and a full-time job being Zorinth's mother. But however good a first novel Everway tie-in I'd have written, I'd never have been nominated for the Campbell.
The other thing about writing tie-ins is that they do take time and energy from writing original things, and I think you can end up, if you do a lot of them, by coarsening the way you write, the things you think it's possible to do. I don't think it's just pride you can lose, I think it's horizons. If Elizabeth Hand were to write fifteen more tie-ins before being able to afford to get to her next original novel, I think it might well not be as good as it would have been. I've seen a couple of writers I used to think were very good come back to original fiction after writing a pile of WFH tie ins where I felt their work had really suffered from it.
The real message here is that, as I liked their original work, I should have bought it in hardcover to ensure that they had enough money to live on while writing their next good thing. I should have bought copies for all my friends...