[Profit Sharing] Writer needed! Thread

Hello everyone,

I'm the leader of a game dev group called Ninja Vault. We're currently working on a Point & Click adventure game called Parachronism: Order of Chaos. You may have known what is a point and click adventure game. That's right! We all have one thing in common: Storyline!

Now, I'm not asking you to write a new story since this game is pretty much done. I'm asking you to REWRITE the storyline to make it more interesting. The dialogues, plot twists, and such things.

You may think: "If the story still needs to be rewritten, then how far is the game progress?"
The answer: "Don't worry. We're working on unity and if there's a change in the story dialogue or such, we can just copy paste the change." That's right. Copy paste! It will take no time to make the change in the storyline.

Game feature:
- Action RPG
- Shops
- Inventories
- Sleeping
- Day/Night
- Eating
- Relationships

Storyline
So the story is about a girl called Ernestine who's living her life as a normal girl. One day she came back home, exhausted. With spinning head, she kept looking at a painting on the wall. Suddenly, everything was black.
Ernestine slowly opened her eyes, thinking that she had to go to work. But when she sat up, She was in terror. She wasn't in her room, instead, she was in a traditional-looking room that she had no idea about its whereabouts. She was trembling. But trembling wouldn't help her at all. So she decided to stand up and check everything out. Later, she found out that she had been traveled into the past. Not just being traveled, Ernestine was also stuck with chronical problems and she couldn't even run away from it. Would she be able to save herself AND the world? Or will she lose to the chaotic situation? That's up to you.

HOW WE WORK
We contact each other via Facebook and HipChat. We share our latest works there to get everyone updated about the new works. And then we work together on the project while talking to each other so that there won't be any misunderstanding or such.

WHAT DO WE OFFER
We know that you may hesitate since this is not a paid project. But don't worry. We've got an agreement document in hand and we definitely won't run away or stop the project midway and such things. Also, if you join the team, later you'll be able to choose your payment method (Profit Sharing or Salary).

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED
We would be so glad if you are interested in joining. Simply send me an email consisting these things:
1. Your name
2. Your age
3. Where you are from
4. Why are you interested in joining
5. Your motivation

Please send it to javierastephanie@yahoo.com

NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED!!

Thank you,
Javiera Stephanie - Leader of Ninja Vault

Someone wrote: "Copy paste! It will take no time to make the change in the storyline."

You may be surprised. Changing the story - or even filling out space between major plot points - might mean changing locations, items, characters. That in turn may require new art assets, new puzzles, maybe even alterations to game mechanics. Story isn't like coder-art - where you can just swap out a placeholder at the last minute. Or at least, effective story isn't*. This is particularly true of a point-and-click where story and gameplay have to go hand in hand.

If you want the story to be re-written, you need to give the writer sufficient scope to be creative. It's very difficult for a writer to be given a script and set of assets and told to just "make this better, we'll copy/paste the text". That's a very, very restrictive brief and you won't get the most of your writer's skills. At best you get coder plot with writer dialogue. I think a lot of people don't realise that writing is about more than just choosing the right words - it's about story, story-telling, plot and how they all interact with the game mechanics.

If the game is in late stages with assets already produced, you don't want the hassle of a story re-write. It's a lose/lose for your team and your writer.

It sounds like what you're really after is an editor: someone to proofread and sharpen up your existing copy. The story stays more or less the same, you just tweak it by improving the text. Dialogue becomes more interesting, minor plot details get straightened out, that sort of thing. It's a much more limited job but it needs to be presented as such. It's not a story re-write but a script edit, clean-up or polish.

* I'm sure a lot of artists would say that game art isn't just pretty pictures: artwork should create a cohesive whole and represent a world, so be developed in tandem with the tone of the story, that art is the first point of contact for world-building and tone-setting. And that would be absolutely right: effective art design is more than just a handful of pretty pictures.

Edited by: jjc_uk