Writing
"Story is metaphor for life." - Robert McKee
Screenwriting
Although there hasn't been a great opportunity for me to put into practice my screenwriting skills in a professional capacity, I've enjoyed writing in this medium in my personal work. I've included a couple of short samples of my screenplay writing - one is from a personal project I've had in my head since I was in art school, the other is a "fan fiction" type moment that I wrote based on a couple of characters that I wanted to have get together in Guild Wars 2.
Wolfe_Screenplay_Sample.pdfLogan's End.pdfWolfe
This sample features a character that I've been writing in some form since arriving in Seattle in 1991. This project began life as a comic book called "Tracker", and evolved into a novel pitch, then a TV series with an urban fantasy spin, then back into a comic, and again to a TV series this time as a more serious, police procedural.
Jean Wolfe, now a detective in a special cases unit of the Seattle PD, began her fictional life in my comic series as a bounty hunter. Although the particulars of the story have evolved over the years based on the shift in medium and setting, what has remained constant is that I have always wanted to tell Jean's story, which is about a character with a strong identity, and direct ties to the wonderful histories and cultural traditions of the Puget Sound region. Jean is a descendant of the Coast Salish people, and although she is very much a 21st century woman, her family and the many members of both her tribe and other descendants of the coast nations she encounters in her work, help to ground her and balance her geeky, detached world view.
The sample here is meant to be a teaser for the pilot episode - to establish Jean as a person, to get a sense for how much she cares, and what her mission is. The end of this scene, I imagine, would lead into the title and opening credits.
Logan's End
This sample is a short excerpt from a story idea I had wanted to pitch to the narrative team while I was working at Arenanet on Guild Wars 2.
This story would take place immediately after the first expansion "Heart of Thorns", and features a PTSD and grief-laden Logan Thackeray giving up his captaincy in the Seraph as one of Queen Jennah's most loyal defenders, and about how deeply his pain ran after nearly being killed/cloned by Mordremoth.
This was also my attempt to selfishly "ship" him and Ellen Kiel, one of my favorite characters from the Guild Wars universe, because I had always believed the two of them would have made a MUCH stronger couple, since she and Logan had endured many of the same trials in their lives, and would find much they shared in common.
I plan to continue working this into a full length feature script, and my outline pitch has Logan and Kiel being waylaid en route to Divinity's Reach by some Aetherblades who take control of the asura gate network in Lion's Arch.
Alas, it was a bit obvious that finding an excuse to get these two romatically entangled was my main goal in this piece, so it will have to remain my fan fiction version of events.
Narrative Design
The following document is a narrative design sample that I originally submitted as part of my application process to the now extant Telltale Games. This was my attempt to craft more of an interactive fiction, in the same style as many of their more popular games, wherein they presented players with challenging character growth and difficult moral quandaries. Although it wasn't enough to get me the job at the time, I still think about the setup and the story that I crafted for Rosalyn here, and I wonder about perhaps doing her story in some other fashion down the road, because something about her really moved me, and I'd hate to think that her story might never be told.
Writing Sample - MMedina - Narrative Design - Rosalyn.docxFiction
From a very young age, I have always been driven to understand the world through story. Whether it was creative play with my sister, family, neighbors and friends, or the many hours I spent drawing and writing the characters and worlds of my most vivid fantasies, I've always been driven to explore the boundless realms of imagination. In my teens, I filled notebooks with stories of cyberpunk heroes, gritty bounty hunters and far flung space adventurers. Writing had always been simply a hobby however, until seven years ago when I began writing my first novel in 2010. The experience of writing a book was a very personal journey for me, born from a desire to put something out there that was 100% mine, and the result was "Bloodfire: Book One of The Sojourns of Rebirth", the first volume of a dystopian fantasy trilogy.
In addition to simultaneously writing volumes two and three in the series, I've also been writing some short stories, and have been building the story bible for another large-scale sci-fi series I'm planning on adapting in the next few years. In my most recent role at Arenanet, I did first-draft writing of all of my story content, from non-VO text conversations and quest text, to starting the voiced dialogs that then goes to our writing and editing staff for revisions.
Writing Sample - MMedina - Dialogue - Bloodfire (Excerpt).docxZafir_The Gala Job.pdf
This short story, entitled "The Gala Job" was written in support of a good friend's Kickstarter efforts to launch a new tabletop roleplaying game, Zafir. I was tasked with helping to give voice to some of the iconic characters that would be featured in the core campaign for the game, and features an introduction to a diverse crew of renegades, on an undercover caper aboard a palatial floating airship.