Giving New Media to the Word ‘Writer’

For 10 years, Michael Kaplan labored as a comedy writer in Hollywood. His scripts were purchased but rarely produced--a frustrating existence that prompted him to try a new outlet for his work: multimedia.

That was five years ago, when the field was just beginning to grow. Today Kaplan is in a spot many writers might envy. Writing interactive fare for CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web, though paying less on a per-page basis, has provided him steadier work and more challenges, he says, including the creation of a 900-page script for a CD-ROM game called Psychic Detective.

“With interactive storytelling, I draw upon a lot of the traditional aspects of the craft, but there’s an added level you can never take for granted for a moment--the layer of player involvement,” said Kaplan, who now lives in Cambria, Calif.

As consumers’ appetite for CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web grows, so does the need for skilled writers who can produce content for interactive media, from story lines for games to text for corporate home pages.

Courses for writers interested in new media are springing up in Southern California. The Writers Guild of America’s Los Angeles office sponsors seminars on the topic every two months. UCLA Extension’s Writing for New Media sequence has expanded to five classes. And just this semester, the USC School of Cinema-Television and Paramount Digital Entertainment launched an Interactive Storytelling Fellowship.

“Interactive is absolutely here to stay,” said Elizabeth Daley, dean of the School of Cinema-Television. “We feel very strongly that students leaving us today need to be prepared to work in this area.”

The UCLA Extension courses stress the differences between traditional linear writing and the nonlinear approach required for interactive media, said academic coordinator Chad Tew. Writers must be able to manage a variety of scenes that are interchangeable, and they must ensure that the story will make sense no matter what sequence the user chooses.

Although the Writing for New Media classes claim fewer than 100 students altogether, Tew said it is the fastest-growing segment of UCLA Extension’s Writers Program. Lori Leiberman, who supervises the Writers Guild’s interactive organizing activities, estimates that hundreds of guild members have worked on new-media projects.

“I’m getting a tremendous amount of calls from people asking for Hollywood writers,” Leiberman said. Among the requests are those for writers of games, educational CD-ROMs, entertainment-oriented Web sites and interactive training programs.

Still, even as some things change, others stay the same, said Debbie Weil, a veteran reporter for Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who now writes a column called Online WordBiz for Editor & Publisher Interactive (https://www.mediainfo.com).

“It still takes solid reporting, good writing and interesting quotes,” Weil said. “That’s not going to go away.”

Times correspondent Karen Kaplan covers technology and careers. She can be reached via e-mail at karen.kaplan@latimes.com