I recently revived my IF advice blog, IF Seal, and had been thinking about making a thread for it here so people could submit questions if they’re not on Tumblr. @Gower has been sharing writing and design craft posts on his blog which are great, I very much recommend having a look there! And @Cataphrak has a huge archive of posts about writing, design, worldbuilding and more - again well worth a read.
The main current paid game writing courses I know of are Greg Buchanan’s and Susan O’ Connor’s. I can’t really speak to them as I haven’t studied on them, but they do cost a lot of money. Understandably so, as they’re labour-intensive for the teacher, but not necessarily something most IF writers would be going for, especially as the majority writing here already understand at least the basics of interactive narrative. Both teachers are highly experienced, though, and I’ve heard from people who have taken both classes that the community/networking aspect is particularly valuable.
A course seems a different beast from paying for editorial feedback which you also mentioned. Are you thinking about doing this yourself?
I did consider doing this as a limited Patreon tier a while back as I’ve completed a lot of projects and have professional editing experience, but realised it would be pretty intensive and make inroads into writing time that I wasn’t sure I could afford. Plus rates are also an issue: my freelance rate for studios is higher than I’d feel comfortable charging an individual IF author whose project might not end up bringing them money in the end, but it would still be a lot of editing work.
And… I enjoy giving feedback for free when I can, and feedback exchange is such a valuable thing in this ecosystem - I’m not sure how I’d feel about introducing a paid aspect to it. I feel it could result in some tricky expectations. If the author’s work didn’t sell very well or they didn’t end up finishing their project at all which very often happens, would they blame my editing work, or would they feel aggrieved that they didn’t make the money back that they’d spent on me? It becomes complicated.
I think if someone’s thinking about paying an editor it’s really important to understand their own expectations, have a really good sense of the editor’s experience and qualifications (there are a lot of self-styled writing experts in the book world who have not actually released very much work), and know what they want from it. And if someone’s thinking about becoming a paid editor it’s important to again set expectations, and be really clear about the scope of the work they’re doing, how long they are going to spend on it, the exact type of feedback they’re giving, etc.
