Quotes from Dave Morris

Standing out as a writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well.

A new medium always has a period when it is struggling inside the confining box of an earlier medium. Creators have to unlearn what they knew before they can see the fresh, uncharted vistas stretching before them.

When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'

If your agent or publisher is jumping up and down at the thought of your novel, it's because they're picturing the movie poster on the side of the bus.

Storytelling isn't an Escher staircase.

'Frankenstein' is a work rich in possible meanings, so the horror-show interpretation is as valid as any.

Have confidence in your strengths, dear writer, or give it all up now and create apps instead.

It is easy to force a reader or viewer to interact. The trick is in making them want to interact, and in letting the story unfold hand-in-hand with that.

Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show.