If you hang around people who like reading novels, sooner or later the question will be asked, “Have you ever thought about writing a novel yourself?” Apparently, a lot of people have thought about it. A quick search online shows that anywhere between 81% to 97% of people feel the desire to write a novel someday.
So. A game about novel writing seems like something people would be interested in playing, wouldn’t it? I love writing and I love board games and I haven’t seen anything quite like our first project: Novel the Board Game before. It’s definitely a game that I would like to play, which is why I made it. And while I realize there is absolutely no guaranteed correlation between people who want to write a novel and people who want to play a tabletop strategy game about writing a novel, there has been a lot of encouraging reactions thus far. I’m optimistic.
And optimism is something you need in abundance if you’re writing a novel (or designing a board game). My first novels were quite terrible. I wrote three of them by way of practice before even attempting the manuscript that become my first published novel: Got Luck. After three years of writing and 14 rounds of editing, I finally had my debut. It felt incredible.
Three more published novels later, along with a short story collection, and I started thinking about designing a board game. (I haven’t been able to find a reliable estimate on the percentage of people who want to design a board game.) In searching, I found a handful of board games about the music industry and the film industry with a few games that are more like writer’s prompts and plotting aids. Nothing really presented itself as a board game about the art and craft of novel writing.
Huh.
So here I am, another three years or so later, and it’s all coming together. I’ve put all the things I can think of relating to the process of novel writing into the game, from authors and genres to “how we get inspiration” and writer’s blocks. Writing pages, chapters, and storylines are in there. Characterization, conflict, imagination, and research are in there too. And there are a bunch of other things that I hope make the game fun to play. Can someone learn how to write a novel by playing the game? Probably not. There’s a big difference between knowing bits and pieces of the process and actually putting them into functional practice. And there’s a lot of work to create a novel or a board game while the game itself should be anything but work. In real life, optimism gives way to gut-wrenching reality and playing the game is a 50-yard dash compared to the Ironman challenge of writing 100,000 words and having the results be worth reading. That’s probably why very few people who say they want to write a novel ever get published. It’s less than 1%.
On the other hand, a game is a game and Novel the Board Game is getting good responses so far. Ultimately, these are very different experiences, but the game just might inspire someone to give novel writing a try. And trying is the only way to find out what is possible.
It remains to be seen how many people will actually make the purchase. We will have a better idea once the Kickstarter campaign launches later this year. In the meantime, the process of designing the game and testing it is just as much fun as writing a novel and editing it has been. I’d imagine the percentage of people who get a board game published is also pretty low. But I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.
I’ve beaten the odds before.