BioWare Blog: Writing a Novel
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So I had accepted the task of writing the Dragon Age novel. Or the first Dragon Age novel, if one chooses to be optimistic. Which I usually don't. I'm not a very optimistic person, generally speaking. which rather puts this whole undertaking into question, doesn't it? But we'll ignore that for now. I was given a deadline. I'm good with deadlines. I respond well to them. It's my Austrian blood, I think. Guilt and panic are the only motivations that will get me going, most days. Well, that and schnitzel.
There are obstacles that needed to be overcome prior to beginning work on this novel. One such was the fact that I wouldn't be working for BioWare when I wrote it. I would be working for the publisher. The publisher had expressed interest and went so far as to ask BioWare if they had any writers hanging about who might be interested in the work cut to me jumping up and down going (Me! Me! Me!) in the background but it was made very clear by my bosses: work on the book was separate from work on the game. (Go home and write. Here you. well, you write. But you write for the game.)
There was, after all, this whole game thing I had going on the side. You may have heard of it. We were starting into some periods of mild crunch as well (mild at the time) that would make writing a novel in my downtime an interesting proposition. Interesting in the way that said downtime would not exist to any large degree.
There was also another issue. The novel needed to serve two mistresses, as it were. Obviously it needed to be awesome in and of its own right and awesome is a fine mistress to serve, let me tell you. She's got these leather boots that go all the way up there and a riding crop and everything. But there was also the fact that this story needed to introduce the Dragon Age setting. It needed to touch on all the important points, as most readers would be completely unfamiliar with any of them. And while the mistress of setting introduction and the mistress of awesome are not completely incompatible, they do tend to stare uncomfortably at each other from across the room. Like maybe they're all legs and they're worried they're just going to get in each other's way. You reassure them, you pat them on their leather gloves and coo softly but still they're dubious. (See? Good word.)
