THE WORD GAME

Want to play the writing game? Take your chances against other players? Write to win? Sharpen your tactics as you make your way through the rules laid down by Scott Kershaw, author of high concept thriller The Game.

The Game, my debut novel, takes the well-worn trope of the ‘death game’ and twists it into a murky exploration of exploitation and audience expectations. In it, total strangers are forced to compete with one another in increasingly violent circumstances to save the lives of their abducted loved ones. There can only be one winner, and to lose The

Game is to lose the person you cherish most.

To celebrate the launch of The Game in paperback, Writing Magazine has invited me to come up with something that you can play along with yourselves… Kind of. This is The Word Game, and it mirrors my own writing process from start to completion. You may follow these instructions to pen a story of your own, but player beware: the path to finishing a piece of writing is long, arduous and filled with fatal distractions that can be the difference between completed manuscript and permanent desk drawer clutter. I should know, as I have several novels buried away that were started but will never see the light of day. The process, though creative, is not all fun and games.

Think you have what it takes to make it to the finish line? I wish you the best of luck.

Ready. Set. Go.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this game is to write a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. To do this, you must first CHOOSE YOUR PLAYER. This protagonist should be a fully rounded, complex individual with realistic motivations and goals. Simple enough, right? Their conflicts should be both internal (between, for example, what they think they want and what they really need in life) and external (against a specific antagonist or changes in the world around them). They should have strengths as well as flaws, and a particular problem (or several) that will be fixed, one way or another, by the end of your story. Crucially, your player must be ACTIVE; the events of your narrative should happen because of their own actions and choices, not because of the things that keep happening to them. For a better understanding of this, read up on active and passive characters.

Having a compelling protagonist, however, is not enough to get started. The cost of playing this game, the token that you must drop into the arcade machine, is perhaps the most valuable thing that there is. You must bring with you an idea. ‘High concept ideas’, ones that can be described in a simple short sentence – the dinosaur zoo, the bomb-toting bus that can’t slow down, the serial killer who attacks in your dreams – are the wish of most aspiring writers of commercial fiction. Bring one of these to the party, and the book should basically write itself… shouldn’t it?

Well, not quite, but it’d certainly be attractive to an agent or publisher. Where you find your ideas though, and how you make the most of your own creative process, is something only you can discover for yourself over time. All I can do is tell you what to do next with that concept…

SETUP

1. FIND A QUIET PLACE. This doesn’t have to be silent in a literal, audible sense. I personally find it easier to write with music screaming into my face, as this is, paradoxically, my preferred way of finding quiet; it shuts out the noise of the outside world and provides me with a rhythm to work along to. What is most important here is removing DISTRACTIONS, which is something we will come back to in the final section of these instructions. Actual desks are, of course, useful but not essential. I wrote most of The Game while lying on my front, propped up on elbows, increasing in mass like a beached seal in pyjamas.

2. CHOOSE YOUR TIME. Some people find their minds most energetic first thing in the morning. Others are night owls. Since everybody is different, there is no right or wrong answer here, and you must choose the hour best suited to your own productivity. For what it’s worth, I despise mornings and work most effectively after sundown.

3. KNOW YOUR THREE-ACT STRUCTURE. Whether you consider yourself a traditional plotter or not, having a basic understanding of classic story structure is undeniably useful when coming into this game, especially if this is your first time around. Myriad guides have been written on the subject, each one a slightly expanded riff on its predecessor, but if you have no idea where to begin then contemporary, easy-to-digest examples that you might find useful are the published works of Blake Snyder and Christopher Vogler. Once you have a basic grasp of these narratological conventions, you can compare the direction of your own story against them. If you prefer things neat, then purchase yourself a deck of record cards from your nearest stationary aisle. If you are not too fussed, then you can use any assortment of sticky notes, torn receipts or whatever paper you have cluttering your pockets. Use one card (or chosen scrap) for every scene in your story, writing a brief description on each in bright, bold marker pen. Lay them out in order, step back and study the flow of the action. If you have no scenes at all yet, or there are huge holes in your narrative, then you sneered at plotting a little too soon and the aforementioned published guides should help you to fill in the blanks.

4. AMASS YOUR INVENTORY. Extra Lives. 1Ups. Health Packs. These are the things you turn to when the going gets toughest. Tea and coffee are classic choices. Biscuits are a personal bad habit, most often of the oat variety, though they can be quick to vanish. Alcohol played a part in my past. Stockpile and then ration whatever supplies you work best with so that you don’t need to go wandering from your chosen space too often. With these in place, it is finally time to begin.

HOW TO PLAY THE GAME

Here’s the bad news, player: there are no shortcuts. No cheat codes. No ladders. The best way to write… is to write. It’s as simple as that. You must park yourself in one spot and get it done. The only advice that I can really give regarding the actual process is this: try to get the entire story down, from start to finish, before looking back over it. Avoid painstakingly poring over each individual sentence, a nasty trap that I still regularly fall into; this is what rewriting should be for, and if you accidentally end up doing it the first time around, you’ll have a cleaner job of editing, but will most likely find yourself writing a single paragraph in an entire day. Trust me, I’ve done it time and time again.

Get the story down first, even if you muddle up character names or have to sacrifice more complex descriptions for parentheses to your future self. An example of what I mean by this, to give you a clearer understanding, can be seen in this actual sentence from one of my own early first drafts: she walked up to the Old Bailey and looked up at [WHATEVER THE OLD BAILEY LOOKS LIKE, PROBS IMPRESSIVE, A GOLD DOG OR SOMETHING ON

THE ROOF?].

SNAKES, BAD GUYS AND THE FINAL BOSS Throughout this game, enemies will try their hardest to stall you, to send you back the way you came and ensure that you never make it over the finish line. These villains are distractions, procrastination, and your brain will do everything it can to swerve you towards them and away from your final goal. All of a sudden, painting over that smudge where the dog rubbed the paint off the wall after a bath last autumn will seem hugely important, vital in fact, and you won’t even feel guilty about putting down the pen to do it because it really did need doing eventually. Oiling the squeaky hinge on the kitchen door, which has been noisy for two years now, will become a top priority. You will find yourself constantly peckish, despite your amassed snacks, and prone to foraging. The cigarettes you quit several years ago will beg you to come back to them. You’ll salivate for social media, and Twitter threads on subjects you’ve never once considered interesting will seem like must-read material of the most fascinating calibre. You’ll walk the dog six times a day.

These impulses are not real. These are the bad guys trying to thwart you. The Netflix documentary that is set in roughly the same dimension as your story – they both have trees in them, after all – is not actually research for your book, and you don’t need to watch the full eight hours to realise that. You know this.

The ultimate obstacle, the most challenging boss to beat, is your own wandering mind. Second to this is your phone. Both can be beaten, but it takes dedication to the craft. If you wish to complete this game, then you must resist the urge to aimlessly scroll. Take your phone and put it in another room during the hours you have set aside for writing. Cheaters may be disqualified.

HOW TO WIN

It may take hours, weeks or even years to complete your story, but believe me when I say that there are few greater feelings in life than when you finally get to write the following two words. The End.