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.
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.
A very great deal is written about the future of book publishing - much more than on its present or past - and the only takeaway from all these oracles seems to be that a great empire will be destroyed.
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.
When a medium like games or comic books whips up such a rapture of enthusiasm, naturally we look for lessons we should be learning.
'War and Peace' goes down a lot smoother than a Dan Brown novel, let me tell you.
