- Try to think about what your reader is thinking. It's not enough just to technically have stated something. Make sure you say it in a way that's easy to digest.
- Video games need playtesting. In the same vein, books need reader testing, especially when you're first starting out. Get other people to read your work.
- Work with what you have, but work hard at it. Writing is a skill. I'm a pretty good musician, a pretty good writer, and a pretty good programmer. I happen to have talent for all of those things. But I also did a LOT of playing music, a LOT of writing, and a LOT of coding -- starting when I was very young (well before my teenage years) -- to turn those talents into skills. Every good writer has done the same.
- If you want to be published, get a feel for how the actual publishing industry works; editors are people, they have jobs, make their jobs easier.
- Write, write, write. Then write some more.
And I think Jeremy Gibson Bond had some very useful advice about writing video games for either fortune or fame in his excellent book, "Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development":
> Designer-Centric Goals
>
> As a game designer and developer, there are some goals for your life that you hope the games you make might help you achieve.
>
> Fortune
> My friend John “Chow” Chowanec has been in the game industry for years. The first time I met him, he gave me some advice about making money in the game industry. He said “You can literally make hundreds of...dollars in the game industry.”
...
> Fame
> I’ll be honest: Very, very few people become famous for game design. Becoming a game designer because you want to be famous is a little like becoming a special effects artist in film because you want to be famous. Usually with games, even if millions of people see your work, very few will know who you are.
(Gibson Bond, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C# (p. 107). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.)
If you want to get rich and/or famous, don't go into writing. Make sure you know your own personal goals. If you want to shoot for the stars, that's great -- just make sure you know what you want.
