> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.killscreen.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Can gaming make you a better writer?
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/can-gaming-make-you-a-better-writer/
- Published: 2011-10-04T19:42:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T15:51:23.000Z
- Description: The New York Times has a piece on the dozen or so serious writers who honed their chops not through writing short fiction or practicing journalism, but by playing Ambermush, an online, text-based RPG from the 90’s that lasted until 2009. Consider the case of Jim Butcher, the author of the Dresden Fi
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/albums/l290/gusthemoose/wallpapers/comicdresden5.png)

The *New York Times* has a piece on the dozen or so serious writers who honed their chops not through writing short fiction or practicing journalism, but by playing *Ambermush*, an online, text-based RPG from the 90’s that lasted until 2009.

Consider the case of Jim Butcher, the author of the *Dresden Files* novels*.* Three of his novels have hit the top of the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list, including his most recent effort, *Ghost Story*.

> (Butcher) recalled the old writers’ adage that “you’ve got to write your million words” of bad prose “before you’re writing good stuff, and I once estimated that I was writing 5,000 words a day, mushing,” he said. “We were all practicing storytelling every day.  
>  
> “He credits the game with honing his skills at using dialogue to reveal elements of the story and in developing characters who interact with others bizarrely – who even seem, to other players, psychotic – but are following an internal logic and personal code. He often struggled, he said, to make a character funny “without his just being a clown.”

For those of you looking for a well-timed Malcolm Gladwell “thousand-hour theory” reference, here it is.

Read [the full story at the *New York Times*](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/books/jim-butcher-one-of-the-authors-from-ambermush.html?%5Fr=2&src=recg&ref=killscreen.com). This one’s definitely burning one of your free fifteen articles per month on.

*\-Drew Millard*

\[[via](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/books/jim-butcher-one-of-the-authors-from-ambermush.html?pagewanted=1&%5Fr=3&src=recg&ref=killscreen.com)\] \[[image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/albums/l290/gusthemoose/wallpapers/comicdresden5.png?ref=killscreen.com)\]