The Ultimate RPG Villain Backstory Guide - An Interview with James D'Amato and Dillin Apelyan

One, one of the things about the artistic process that's really interesting is when you work with a huge corporation like Simon & Schuster, sometimes they go, "Hey, this is the book we want you to write." And I go, "Okay, I guess I have to write that one." So this was from our interim editor.

My normal managing editor was actually out on maternity leave, and there is an interim editor who came in who was, like, fresh to that position, was like, "I have a bunch of ideas for pitches that we think we can get across." And like, when you're working with an editor like this, it is you and your editor on the same team against a shadowy editorial board.

[laughs]

And it doesn't matter how many good ideas either of you have, you have to convince the shadowy board that it's a good idea.

Mm.

So she comes to us, and then we g- you know, have this amazing outlining session, and part of the pitch, they want you to outline the entire book that you intend to write in the pitching process.

And-

Mm-hmm

... we do that, we write some samples, and then send them off, and that's how it all happens.

Yeah.

As somebody who's probably undiagnosed ADHD, the idea of setting out an entire plan for something, do you then have to stick to that quite meticulously, or did you deviate from the source material? How did it look from start to finish?

I get you.

Yeah, I get you on that big time.

This was my first kinda real experience with planning something this big, this much.

We stuck to it pretty good.

I think that there were, like, spots towards the end where we actually realized we were missing things, and that was what-

Mm

... got added, like, like sections were missing pieces, and so that was kind of the biggest change.

We didn't deviate from, like, the overall plan.

Yeah.

I would say everything that we put in our outline made it into the book ultimately.

Sort of-

Mm

... as somebody who is formally diagnosed ADHD and dyslexia-

[laughs]