Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

Defining Goal Themes vs Goals

written by David Steffen

This post is in part based on ideas picked from the brain of my good friend Rachael K. Jones–credit where credit’s due!

I’ve talked in previous posts about the difference between goals and milestones. But on the subject of goals, I thought it’s worth breaking that down further into what I’m going to call goal themes vs goals.

Goal Themes

By goal themes I generally mean things which describe ideals you want to support in the whole of your long-term career in writing. Rachael’s list of goal themes are something like this, and I think most of these can apply to most people with maybe some alterations:

1. Improve my craft

2. Try things outside my comfort zone

3. Move toward positive change

4. Honor the people who’ve helped me

5. Look for chances to pay it forward

Note again that these are all related to goals, not milestones, because they are things within your control. You can do all of these things without it depending on the actions of other people. There’s a focus on improving craft, but not on sales or writing income, because those latter things require an editor to actually choose to buy your story. But the idea is that by improving your craft you’ll be setting yourself up to make more sales, and so on.

And the paying it forward and making positive change are great because they don’t just focus on personal success but in applying yourself to make the world a better place in some way (which you might be able to be more effective at if you have more personal success, mind you).

Your list of goal themes is something I’d expect not to change too much from year to year, because these are large scale pursuits that aim at general ideals.

Goals

Goals are specific aims that you are working on right now, and are best if they relate to one of your goal themes (because that’s how you pursue those ideals). Note that although some of the goals here are from Rachael, I also added in some others as examples of how you might pursue the goal theme.

1. Improve my craft
–exchanging story critiques
–workshops with your favorite authors
–writing more words

2. Try things outside my comfort zone
–public speaking
–slushreading
–guest hosting of podcasts

3. Agitate for positive change within my profession
–working with Women Destroy SF
–Supporting diversity with donations to diversity-supporting publications, volunteering

4. Honor the people who’ve helped me
–writing stories in honor people
–dedications
–jam or other personal goods for your friends

5. Look for chances to pay it forward
–sharing info with new writers
–introducing people
–critiquing
–read, share, and celebrate stories you think are awesome by friends and new writers

We Are Multiple Man

written by David Steffen

What superpower would you choose? Most classical superpowers are awesome for combat, but not all that practical in day-to-day activities. Super strength? Guess who’s going to get asked to help everyone move. Fireballs–handy in limited context, maybe, but modern life doesn’t require a lot of fire-lighting on a day to day basis. Metal claws–wouldn’t need to hold pocket knives but you could never get through airport security.

For my everyday life, I would definitely pick the power of Jamie Madsen, aka Multiple Man. Jamie has the ability to create perfect duplicates of himself, each of which is intelligent and has free will. There’s some limit to the amount of how much he can split, but the limit is quite high–something like 50 when he was in X-Factor and more as he masters his power.

Just think of how much you could get get done! If you have kids, you wouldn’t need daycare. Not only that, but if you have four kids, you could have one of you to watch EACH of your kids to give them personalized attention so watching four kids wouldn’t even be stressful. While you do that, you could also work to bring in money. Or more than one job simultaneously. Another one of you could head out to get groceries. Another one could be off taking vocational training. Or learning to paint. Or going on vacation. That’s only ten–you’d still have another 40 to go if you wanted to. Then at the end of the day, bring all of yourselves back to dinner, merge them all together again, and have a nice dinner with your family, reintegrating all the memories together as you spent all day one-on-one with ALL of your kids and got all the chores done (and went on vacation to unwind). That would be the coolest thing ever.

Unfortunately, I think I’m a little too old to expect sudden onset superpowers.

But that got me to thinking–just an ordinary human being has something kind of like that. Of course you don’t have multiple bodies, but more of a multiplicity of mind. Have you ever gotten together for a social gathering where you have people from work and neighbors and family members, and you find it awkward as you don’t know how to behave among them all together? In a very real way, that’s because you are a different person at work than you are with your family than you are with your neighbors, and the awkwardness comes because those different people don’t know how to integrate.

Everyone does this. They’re a different person when they’re being a father, or a son, or a brother, or at work, or as a customer at a store, or whatever. It’s not a result of dishonesty, but of compartmentalization–the traits that fit into that social group or environment dominate in that group.

So we’re all superpowered, really. The human mind is an amazing thing. Maybe as amazing, in its own way, as being able to spawn up to 50 bodies. Though, if someone knows how to make that happen, I’m in.

Based somewhat on Codex post:

I find it interesting (and sometimes disconcerting) how the human mind can compartmentalize or facetize and approach each differing circumstance or situation in such a different way so that in a way you’re a completely different person.

Engineer David is not Dad David. Writer David is not Engineer David. Grinder-Admin David is not Gamer David. Dad David is not Husband David (though those two are of course more closely related genealogically than some of the others). We all wear many hats. Some of us, like my good friend Bartholemew Cubbins, wear entirely too many hats and sometimes find it difficult to remove them or to pick the one appropriate for the occasion.

When I’m wearing any of those hats, I can of course remember wearing the other hats, and I can remember what I was thinking when I was wearing those other hats and what was important to me and what was frustrating me and what drove me. But at the same time, those other Davids can seem completely foreign (until I become them again). It can all work out if they tag team when they’re supposed to, if the more unsocial Davids can be kept away from people.

I can see how that kind of mental adaptability can be a survival trait that comes out of natural selection. I can also see how mental health problems including anxiety disorders can arise when something in this three ring circus of mental and social arrangements gets out of whack.

–This aside brought to you by Woolgathering-Philosopher David when Engineer David is supposed to be in charge, because that’s how he rolls
(To be clear: not saying I have an anxiety disorder, not crying for help, my mind is wandering and I decided I wanted to put the words somewhere)

Use the metaphor of Multiple Man and my musings that it would be awesome to be able to split into different bodies to be able to get everything done, but how it’s amazing how we can already kind of do that in a mental fashion.

Game Review: Depression Quest

written by David Steffen

(editor’s note: I am not here to comment on “Gamer Gate”. If you are here to comment on that, don’t. Any comment getting into that topic will be deleted. I only heard about the game due to the debacle, and I decided that I would like to play the game for myself and judge it on its own merits. So here we are. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you want to see a big ol’ heap of Internet ugliness, Google “GamerGate”–I think it occupies about half the Internet by now.)

Depression Quest is a multiple choice text game released by Zoe Quinn in 2013.

On the game page is this statement:
The goal of this game is twofold: firstly, we want to illustrate as clearly as possible what depression is like, so that it may be better understood by people without depression. Hopefully this can be something to spread awareness and fight against the social stigma and misunderstandings that depression sufferers face. Secondly, our hope is that in presenting as real a simulation of depression as possible, other sufferers will come to know that they aren’t alone, and hopefully derive some measure of comfort from that.

DepressionQuest This is a cause that I am sympathetic to. I know many people who have suffered through depression. Some who are still fighting through it, some who seem to have met some kind of livable equilibrium, and others who have died at their own hand. So, I heartily support the goals of this game. Most of the time I play games just for fun and for mental/dexterity and for no other reason, but I am not opposed to other goals.

In the game, you play a person who is struggling with depression, trying to get through everyday life. You have a significant other and a job, but even small things can be a struggle–trying to get your work done or trying to socialize with your partner’s friends.

As the game goes on, you have to make choices, most of them allowing you to either try to actively improve your life by telling people about your depression, by seeking counseling or medication, or to avoid trying to improve your life by telling people there’s nothing wrong, and avoiding your problems.

From the beginning, some options aren’t available to you–usually the suggestion for a solution that someone who doesn’t understand depression would make: “don’t worry about it”, “just go and have fun”, so on. I thought that was a clever way to emphasize how depression can make you feel powerless. If you make choices that avoid your problems, more of the options will be blocked from you as the game goes on. I don’t know from personal experience whether the account of depression in the game is accurate or not, but it seems reasonable from where I’m standing.

I think that the game succeeds at both of the stated goals. It’s free to play, so you can try it out before you decide if you want to donate or not. If you don’t like it, no loss. If you do, consider chipping in. And, it also succeeds at being interactive, so it’s actually a game.

I recommend it.

Visuals
Despite being a text game, it does have some visuals–a set of polaroids at the top of the screen showing relevant images, like bottles of pills or something.

Audio
The game suggests using audio, that it’s an important part of the game. But I didn’t, because it was easier to find time to play it with the sound muted, so I wouldn’t bother other people. So I can’t comment on this.

Challenge
Not challenging, per se. It seemed like the “best” choice was always relatively clear.

Story
Good enough story, though a bit on the PSA side.

Session Time
No save feature, but you can leave it running in your browser easily enough and the game won’t be going anywhere.

Playability
As easy as multiple choice.

Replayability
Definitely some, to try to see how your choices affect the outcome.

Originality
This happens to be the second game I’ve played about depression (I reviewed Actual Sunlight right here last week), but this one did it better. So definite points for originality, and for succeeding at making it interactive.

Playtime
I don’t remember exactly, I think it took me maybe a half hour to play through once?

Overall
The game is free to play or you can donate what you like. The website says that a portion of the proceeds goes to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. I am wary of donations where “a portion” goes to a charity without saying WHAT portion, it could be 1% for all I know. I recommend trying the game. If you feel it has value, consider chipping in some money to support both the developer of the game and the hotline in some undefined proportion.

Game Review: Gone Home

written by David Steffen

Gone Home is a first person story exploration game released by The Fullbright Company (which has now been rebranded to be simply called “Fullbright” in August 2013.

2014-10-08_00004 June 7th, 1995. 1:15am You’ve been traveling Europe for a year. While you were gone your family inherited a house from your weird Uncle Oscar and your parents and younger sister Sam have moved in. You arrive at the new house, expecting a warm welcome from you family, but no one’s there. Why? You explore the house as you try to find out what has happened and where everyone is. You are completely unfamiliar with the house, so you don’t know anything about the layout, how rooms are arranged or anything. The game keeps a handy auto-map to help you keep track of where you’ve been. From time to time you discover a clue that points you to look in a particular part of the house, and the auto-map very handily marks the spot for you.

One thing that set this game apart from me is a storyline with a homosexual character who seems like a real person, not something I see too often.

Visuals
A lot of work obviously went into the visuals to make it look really nice and to give the environment ample details. I don’t know if other people experienced this, but my computer was actually a little laggy on the display–seemed like it took a little more resources than a game of this kind really needs.

Audio
Superb voice acting–I felt like I was listening to the journal entries of a real person.

Challenge
Not challenging. If you like exploration and gradual reveal of story, you should like this game, but apart from exploring as thoroughly as possible–some notes might trigger the marking of secret spots on the map or other extra clues so if you missed the note you might have trouble. I found the important notes without any undue effort, they weren’t hidden or anything.

Story
I really enjoyed the story on this one, and tying it into the exploration of the big house was the main appeal.

Session Time
You can save at any time, so easy to set down.

Playability
Easy to play.

Replayability
Not really.

Originality
Not high on originality, but not every game has to be. I appreciated the gay storyline, that did set it apart.

Playtime
It took me about 2 hours to finish the game.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $20. I enjoyed the game, but given the short playtime and low challenge I thought this was somewhat too much. I’d recommend catching it on sale if you can.

Movie Review: Her

written by David Steffen

Back in April I reviewed the Ray Bradbury Award nominees for the years as their deadline for nomination approached–I reviewed all the ones I could get my hands on, but there was one movie that wasn’t yet released on DVD–titled “Her” written and directed by Spike Jonze.

The movie takes place in 2025 in a world that’s very recognizable, but with some differences–holograms being commonplace and artificial intelligence has advanced to stages we haven’t reached yet. The protagonist is Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who writes heartfelt letters on behalf of complete strangers for hire. He has just upgraded his personal operating system–which is more than just an OS in the way that we use the phrase and more of a personal assistant. He chooses for the OS to have a female voice (voiced by Scarlett Johanssen) and she names herself Samantha. He hits it off with Samantha and soon their relationship becomes more than just user-computer. Theodore is lonely, having little personal contact with anyone and clinging to the threads of an estranged marriage which he has been stalling on signing the divorce papers to end. He does have one friend Amy (Amy Adams) who is also struggling with her relationship.

As Samantha gains experience with the world she grows from a basic and functional assistant into a real person with real desires. The physical angle is a complication, of course, since she has no body, but they try things to work that out. Pretty soon, she starts changing as she develops faster and faster.

I quite enjoyed this movie, in large part because I found the relationship very plausible, and the movie even managed to make it seem not creepy (even though it is rather creepy). What I really liked about the movie is that I thought it was one of the better AI treatments I’ve seen in a movie–it was quite sympathetic to her and her situation–what it would be like to process the world at a much faster rate than the humans you’re dealing with, to try to be a facsimile of a person when you’re really not, and so on. I highly recommend it.

Game Review: Actual Sunshine

written by David Steffen

A ctual Sunshine is an RPG-styled story of depression released by Will O’Neill in April 2014. It follows the life of young single overweight

professional who is struggling with depression. He lives alone, is unsatisfied at his corporate job. Every day is a struggle, trying to get through the day of work, trying to connect with women, trying to do something with his life instead of just sinking into video games to avoid trying to do something with his life. As the game goes on, Evan experiences good days, bad days, changes at work, failed interactions with women, and more. Evan expresses his stories about depression by making up fake scenarios in his head conveyed in text, imagining he was a celebrity being interviewed on a TV show about his depression, talking to an imaginary therapist, etc.

An in-game note suggests that the game is at least somewhat autobiographical, which makes it a little awkward to criticize it. It’s not that I doubt the authenticity of the story, or the difficulty of living with depression. I don’t suffer from depression, but I have close family and friends who do, and some who have given up hope and committed suicide. It is a horrible thing to go through, which is misunderstood by so many. I heartily approve of something which helps spread the conversation about depression so that those who haven’t been through it can understand some small part of what the depressed are going through.

But, and this is a big but for me, this is not a game. Yes, you have control, but as far as I could tell there was no branching of the storyline, nothing that I would do that would make any difference in the outcome. Maybe that’s meant to be a meta-statement about how you don’t have control of your life when you’re depressed? I don’t know, but if you put something up on Steam and charge $5 for it, I want to have some effect on it. To me it was kind of like buying a book online that’s advertised as a novel and only finding out after buying it that it’s a cookbook. It’s not that cookbooks are inherently bad, and the shape of a cookbook is similar to a novel, but I’d be pretty annoyed to find it full of nothing but recipes.

RPGLook If you’re interested in the idea of a game that simulates the experience of depression, I recommend instead playing Depression Quest (which I’ll review next week). Depression Quest is interactive, and lets you see the choices of your actions trying to cope with depression–you do have an effect and there are choices you can make that will end better or worse than others. It is also free to play with donations accepted, so if you’re not sure what you’ll think about such a game–I suggest you give that one a try and give a donation if you thought the experience was valuable.

Visuals
Typical for the era of RPG the RPGMaker.

Audio
Not a lot of audio that I noticed, but one redeeming factor was a sequence where the protagonist imagines he’s a celebrity being interviewed on TV about his depression and his answers are all humorous-like off-the-cuff comments like you’d expect to hear from an actor talking about their life, but instead are actually dark comments about his depression but made quite creepy by the laugh line audio overlaid on it.

Challenge
No challenge. It’s just going through the motions to pass through the game.

Story
Things happen, and things change in the protagonist’s life, but I think it would be charitable to call those things a story. It’s more of a slice of life than a story to me. The imaginary asides in text about the imaginary tales of Evan’s life I did not find as enthralling as the game seemed to think they should be.

Session Time
Can save at any time you’re not in the middle of a cut sequence, so usually pretty easy to pick up and put down at will.

Playability
Nothing to it.

Replayability
None.

Originality
I admit, it’s the first time I’ve seen a game based around the experience of depression. There’s probably a reason for that–it’s not an easy thing to base a game around. (I’ve since played Depression Quest, so the other is technically the 2nd game on the subject I’ve played)

Playtime
It took me an hour to play through the game–and that was with me exploring everything I could find to explore.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $5. I would not recommend it. If you find the idea of a game experience describing depression appealing, I suggest trying Depression Quest instead.

GAME REVIEW: Papers, Please

written by David Steffen

Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the The Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.

Papers, Please was released by Lucas Pope in August 2013, a first person multiple ending pattern-matching ethical conundrum game. This is just another one of those games about immigration documentation processing. Exciting, right? Actually, hear me out. I was skeptical, too, but the game came highly recommended. The game is billed as a “dystopian document thriller”.

2014-10-03_00002 You work for the government of Aristotska (a country reminiscient of Cold-War era soviet administration), screening people entering the country. Day one is straightforward, because you’ve been told to turn away anyone without an Aristotskan passport. But the government responds to public pressure by starting to allow others through. People start slipping through who don’t belong and the government responds by adding new kinds of documents that you have to check–often checking one document against another for consistent information, checking the sex of the person against the ID (with body scan as a secondary check), scanning for contraband, arresting wanted criminals, etc. You have to pay for food and heat for your family, medicine if your son gets sick, other expenses that you can’t always predict. You get paid for each person you process, but your pay gets docked for making mistakes. The rules change every day, and to support your family you have to be both fast and accurate.

That’s what you might call the main focus of the gameplay, but there are quite a few other elements. A revolutionary group is just starting to get their foundations, and because you hold a position of relative importance they want to pay you to make selective mistakes that favor their group. But the Aristotskan government inspector is watching your every move, so you’d better consider very carefully what kinds of requests you want to take. Meanwhile, there are violent attacks on the border which close the office early for the day and which you can help stop. People coming through the gate may make requests of you–helping a recruiter find workers, offering to buy or sell items. The most poignant are ethical choices where a man’s documentation is all valid, but before he leaves the booth he asks you to let his wife through–you soon find her passport has expired. Will you let her through to meet her husband or will you follow orders and turn her away?

2014-10-03_00003 There are some moments of levity in the game–mostly around one guy who is gleefully criminal. After a body scan turns up something suspicious, you ask him what it is, and his response is “Is drugs!” But much of the game is quite dark, thinking about what it must be like for all these people trying to cross from one country to another, and weighing the ethical decisions when you’re torn between doing what’s right and what’s legal according to the laws.

There are twenty different endings, depending on the choices you make. The easiest to reach happens when you run out of money–you are thrown in jail for the crime of debt. You can reach other endings depending on whether you support or reject the revolutionaries (and whether you get caught supporting the revolutionaries), and other choices.

There is so much going on in this game, plenty to keep you entertained. Just the core challenge of checking documents is hard enough with all the changing rules and time limit and penalty for mistakes, and then all the ethical choices and storyline branching makes it all the better.

Visuals
Simple 80’s era visuals, but adequate.

Audio
Music/audio that fits the visuals. I like the inarticulate garble the loudspeaker makes when you call the next person in line.

Challenge
This game is moderately challenging with a reasonable learning curve. The first day is easy–just need to check the country name. As the game goes on there are more things to check and more documents which can reveal discrepancy. I got significantly better with practice, but in the later levels it was still a challenge.

Story
Good story. The main objective of the game is to make sure that you and your family survive by processing enough immigrants and making few enough errors that you don’t get penalized. But there are other branches along the way that can lead to different endings. You can choose to support or resist revolutionaries at several points in the story, you can choose to let people through who engage your sympathies or if you will always stick to the policies.

Session Time
Pretty fast. The game auto-saves after each day. The clock is ticking on each day so if you’re not paused the time is slipping away every moment. Some of the days are cut especially short if there’s an attack on the border. You can get a day in with just a few minutes.

Playability
Easy to learn, hard to keep track of all the little details that change from day to day. If you make a little excess cash you can make your life easier by purchasing some booth upgrades that will give you shortcut keys to cut down on mouse interactions.

Replayability
Quite a bit of replay potential here. There are many different endings which you can reach by making particular choices. Each country in the region also has a special token that can be obtained by helping a person from that country, but the path to those are not always obvious either. Your save file lets you reload from any previous day and it keeps track of multiple different branches, so you can go back to day five and make different choices in that day and try to process more people and after you finish that day you can load from either branch.

Originality
Very, very original. I never would have thought that a game about processing immigration paperwork could be anything but extremely dull, but the game both provides challenge in the manner of attention to detail, but also various ethical conundrums.

Playtime
I’ve spent about 8 hours playing this game, I think I finished a full run through in 5-6 hours, then went back to replay some different paths.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $10. Very reasonable price. Great game. Easy buy.

Game Theory in Writing Part 3: Why Money Should Always Flow to the Writer

written by David Steffen

This is the second article in a series considering the applications of game theory on writing. Game Theory is the study of strategic decision making. I won’t get into the mathematics of it, just high level concepts. The first article in the series discussed differentiating between goals and milestones. The second article in the series discussed ways for writers to keep score on their submissions that will encourage them to reach their goals.

An oft-quoted phrase in writing circles is known as “Yog’s Law”: Money always flows to the writer. I don’t really care for the name, since it’s not a law in either the legal sense or the scientific sense, but it’s an important guideline to keep in mind to help new writers avoid vanity publishers and publications that charge fees for submission.

What does it mean?

When I hear “Money always flows to the writer” out of context in the company of people who are not writers, I always wonder what those writers think. Do they picture the writer as Scrooge McDuck swimming in a vault full of money they never spend? Do they picture the writer’s landlord demanding rent to which the writer will reply “Money always flows to the writer” and slam the door in the landlord’s face?

Obviously writers spend money on goods and services as anyone else does. Yog’s Law refers only to interactions in pursuit of publication. That is, a writer shouldn’t pay submission fees. A writer shouldn’t pay publication fees. The writer is providing value in the form of their writing, and the writer should be paid for that writing.

Note that there are cases that seem to fit this description that aren’t really a problem–especially in self-publishing where the writer may pay for an artist to make cover art or a copyeditor to help them proofread. That’s because in the case of self-publishing the writer herself is also wearing the publisher hat and so the traditional roles are shifted.

Why?

So, why, from a Game Theory perspective, does the money need to flow to the writer? One of the important things I’ve learned from Game Theory is that a system or “game” is that the rules of a game should be designed so that the desired behavior results from everyone acting in their own selfish best interest. If the system is set up in any other way, then you have a conflict of interest that’s going to set the writer in conflict with the publisher rather than putting them together on the same team.

In a traditional sale to a magazine, the publisher will pay the author a one-time fee for publication rights and then the publisher will distribute the magazine either charging for readers to read the issue or taking donations and providing the content for free to recover the costs of paying for the story and other expenses, (and ideally will turn a profit on the deal to sustain the magazine). In this case, both the editor and writer have the same goals from the transaction–to get the story ready for publication as quickly as possible, to get it packaged up in an issue, and getting in front of as many readers as possible.

In traditional book publishing, similar idea, but on a larger scale and with royalties.

But let’s consider a vanity publisher which charges editing fees of the author. It’s in the publisher’s best financial interest to drag that editing process out as long as possible–if you’re determined, you can always find something to fiddle with, but that’s not a publisher you want to work with, sucking away your money in an endless stream of nitpicks that the editor never has an incentive to end. The editor doesn’t have an incentive to get the book in a publishable format in a timely fashion because edits are where the money is at.

Consider next a vanity publisher that charges publication fees. It’s in the publisher’s best financial interest to rush everything to publication, regardless of quality, and to not bother supporting it in any kind of marketing or any other fashion in the future. The revenue stream maximizes by maximizing the number of titles that are published in such a low quality format that probably no one but the author’s family is going to buy. Although this publisher will naturally tend to get stories to publication, they are making money regardless of the quality of the publication and so do not have an incentive to help the writer make the product as good as possible.

Consider a magazine that charges submission fees. The author, in that case, is paying a fee (often on the order of $3 but sometimes higher on the range of $20) to, in all likelihood, get a form rejection. Guess how much effort it takes to send a form rejection? If the system is set up efficiently, probably one or two clicks. The magazine maximizes their revenue stream from that by not bothering to read the slushpile at all, publishing stories they solicit directly and just rejecting the rest.

Note that in these cases, I’m not saying that all publishers who adopt these practices are scammers, or that they have the result I suggest. But with those flawed plans in place, there will be constant pressure toward practices that are directly detrimental to the writer, and a writer would do best to avoid them entirely.

Game Theory in Writing Part 2: Gamifying Your Submission Process

written by David Steffen

Much of focus of Game Theory centers around “gamifying” everyday decisions, giving them a goal and a way to keep score to determine how well you’re meeting that goal. One thing that writers can struggle with is keeping stories in circulation–you can’t sell stories if you don’t submit them–so for this article I’ll be considering ways to keep score that encourage the behavior you want.

The Wrong Behavior

Some rules that seem entirely sensible can actually encourage the wrong behavior (“wrong” as in contradictory to the behaviors you want to pursue). For instance, I know some people who use acceptance percentage. Sounds good, right? A newbie starts with 0%. You might imagine that a big name might have, I don’t know, above 50% (I’m not saying that’s actually a reasonable number, but one might imagine it is).

But consider the consequences. When you’re a saleless newbie, no problem. If the fraction is 0/1 or 0/2 or 0/100, it all comes out to 0% acceptance. But someday you get a sale, let’s say it’s your 100th resolved submission. Calloo! Callay! You have raised your acceptance ratio to 1%. Wonderful news!

But what happens next? You want to keep submitting other stories, right? So you can sell more, get your stories to more people, crack all your favorite magazines, right? But… you think to yourself, what if that submission gets rejected? Then my acceptance ratio would be 1/101. What if the next 99 are rejections too? That would bring your acceptance ratio to 0.5% and you’re now half as successful as you had been. So, maybe you’ll just wait until you see a submission opportunity that you’re certain you can nail with no risk.

Look what your scoring system has gotten you. Now you’re reluctant to take risks. You can’t sell without submitting–never up, never in. You can’t get those big sales without submitting to markets that have very low odds. Avoiding risks will ensure stagnation of your progress.

The Right Behavior

So what should you pick for gauging your progress then? Total # of acceptances (rather than acceptance ratio). Total number of professional-paying sales. You can pick something that fits your values, but just consider what behavior it will encourage before you really stick to it.

To encourage me to submit I have found Dean Wesley Smith’s submission scoring system to be extremely valuable in motivating me to keep stories in submission. It’s pretty simple. For every short story you have submitted right now, you get 1 point. For every novel you have an excerpt out for, you get 3 points. For every complete novel manuscript submitted right now, you get 8 points. Submitting the same story to multiple venues simultaneously does not get you more points. When you get an acceptance or rejection, you lose the points associated with that submission.

The great thing about the system is that it encourages you to not mope when you get a rejection–if you find a new market to submit that story to, then you can keep the score up. And it encourages you to write more stories–your maximum score is the number of stories you’ve written. I intend to incorporate automatic scorekeeping using this system into The Submission Grinder at some point, because I believe in it.

So, writers out there, do you have any score or statistic that you follow to help motivate you in your submitting? Your writing?

Game Theory in Writing Part 1: Goals vs. Milestones

written by David Steffen

This is the first of a short series of articles about applying Game Theory to writing. Game Theory is the study of strategic decision making, a field of study made most famous by mathematician John Nash (which the movie A Beautiful Mind was based on). I won’t be getting into the math of Game Theory, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss some applications of strategic decision making in the writing/submitting/publishing process because I’m both a writing geek and a programming geek. A discussion mixing the two topics lights up all kinds of synapses in the geek centers of my brain.

So, for this installment I’m going to talk about the importance of differentiating between goals and milestones. What does this have to do with game theory? Well, much of the focus of game theory is based around “gamifying” ordinary activities by defining scoring rules and ways to determine your level of success in the game, and thus defining ways to look at a scenario that will encourage the outcome you want. By choosing carefully how you determine your own level of success you can exert some control over what behaviors you encourage. Choosing well can generate energy and momentum to drive you to bigger and better things. Choosing poorly can leave you disheartened and weary.

But what are goals and what are milestones?

Goals
Goals are things you can accomplish which you have complete control over (or at least as complete control over as you have over anything). In writing, some goals might be:

to write every day
to finish writing a novel in 2015
to write 5000 words a week
to never trunk a story
to write every other story in a character unlike yourself in some major way
to submit to pro-paying markets only

Milestones
Milestones are things which would laudable and worthy of celebration, but which are not under your direct control.

to sell a story for the first time
to become eligible to be a member of SFWA
to sell a story to Asimov’s
to be nominated for a Hugo
to get a positive review from Lois Tilton

In some ways goals and milestones are very similar. You can fail or you can succeed to reach goals or milestones, and they are both kinds of ways to measure success. Both are things worthy of celebration if met. So what’s the point in differentiating between them. The primary difference is in how you can best react to NOT meeting them.

Because goals are entirely under your control, you can react however you want to not meeting them. Maybe the goals were too ambitious for your lifestyle or skills–that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t have pursued them, and there certainly can be things outside of your control that may have blocked you (personal illness, death in the family, change in career, eviction, etc). If you don’t meet them, maybe they still helped you reach higher than you otherwise would have, or maybe you need to aim lower to avoid discouragement. However the goals motivate you, run with it. I find that setting goals of daily butt-in-chair time combined with goals that maintain a quick turnaround of a story to another market after rejection have served me well to keep rejection from getting me down and to make sure I sit down and actually produce. (I’ll talk more about setting good motivating submission goals in a later article)

Because milestones are not under your control, you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. You can write an amazing story and Asimov’s might reject it for any number of reasons. You can’t control how people react to your stories, and if you beat yourself up for it, that’s a quick route to discouragement and disheartening funk. If you’ve chosen your goals wisely, they will be setting you on a path to try to reach your milestones and that will let you exert your control as best you can, but at the end of the day those milestones still depend on other people and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for what other people do. Milestones are things to be celebrated, and you can even set up structured ways to celebrate them, such as the Bingo Card that Christie Yant uses, but it’s important to remember that they’re still out of your control.