Freelancing Life -- Writing Speeds and Pay Rates (Paying Patron Exclusive) (Patreon)

I want to talk about how fast various freelancers can create game content, and what that may mean, both for them, and for you.

And I'm going to start with a story.

When I was interviewed by Wizards of the Coast in 2000 for a possible design job, I’d already been freelancing for a few years. I had a few articles in various magazines, and was working on two big freelance game manuscripts (which were never published by the companies that paid me for them). The Wizards interviewers asked me dozens of questions. How did I go about outlining a project? What were my experiences as a DM? What did I most like to write? What did I think of The Phantom Menace? How would I handle getting art back for a project that didn’t match what I had written? This process took a few hours.

At no point, for some reason, did anyone ask me how fast I could write.

I had, of course, finished the Design Test, which was roughly 1500 words of an encounter, with map, in 3 days. That was the required time -- the minimum to even be considered for the job. I had slaved and struggled and pulled all-nighters to do it. It was the most I had ever written in 3 days at that time, by a huge margin.

But I was hired, and Wizards moved me out to Seattle, and I started to get introduced around on my first day. In the hallway my manager Thomas Reid ran into Stan!, a veteran senior designer in the department (though his job title shifted to Creative Director around that time... I'm not sure if it was before of after I was hired), and asked how Stan!'s most recent project was going. Stan! commented that he was going to have a long weekend, because he had to write 60,000 words in 2 days.

I honestly believe that is as close to having a heart attack as I have ever been in my life. Because my NORMAL game writing rate at the time was about 1,000 words… per week.

I managed to maintain consciousness, and asked Thomas if we could go talk in his office. We did, and I explained that no one had ever gone over the rate at which I was expected to write, and I was afraid I would be too slow. Thomas revealed the average would be 22,000 words in 4 weeks… or a little more than 5x my normal pace. I explained my concern about my 1k/week writing speed, and he got a bit pale.

Now, it's worth noting that Stan! was neither serious about doing 60,000 words in 2 days, nor was he intentionally messing with me. He had a project that was well-known around the office to be WAY behind schedule, and was joking about how many words it would take to actually be done by the original deadline. Stan! and Thomas both knew that wasn't going to happen, but it's also true that Stan! spend the entire weekend getting as much work done on that project as he could, rather than playing games, hanging out with friends, or otherwise relaxing.

that's... pretty normal in the tabletop industry.

As it happens, as a new junior developer at Wizards, I was not expected to be able to do 22,000 words in my FIRST month. Thomas made a plan to help me ramp up and handle little things that needed doing but weren't destined for big print books. And, it worked. Within the three months period Wizards gave me to become fully competent in my role, I could hit 22,000 words a month just fine.

Now, whatever rate your employer expects is a great thing to know if you have a full-time game writing job with benefits and no need to take on other work. But there are more freelance game designers than those with full-time-with-benefits positions. And before I got sidelined with cancer, my monthly rate was WAY above 22,000 words a month.

At my peak, I was working full time as a developer for Paizo, part-time as a developer for Green Ronin, part time as a producer for Rite Publishing, running Rogue Genius Games, and writing 1-2m additional freelance projects each month. I was clocking myself at an average of 15,000-20,000 words of work a week... thought those were 70 hours weeks, with peaks of 80-90 hours weeks. I even actually did 60k in 2 days once, though I am simple not up to the kind of caffeine-infused 48-hour nonstop craziness that requires anymore.

But not everyone CAN do 22,000 words a month, and that's especially true for people holding down a day job. For most of my 28-year full-time game industry career, I've been a full-time freelancer, with no regular day job to fall back on. That's terrifying, but it also means I have more time to dedicate to writing and developing and planning than someone with a 40-hour a week job, nevermind other potential time sinks such as children.

(Dice and money. My nightmares often look a lot like this. Art by Talaj)

I've met people who can only manage 2-3,000 words a month either because of their situation or because that's just as much game work as their brain can generate in 30 days. And a lot of them a GREAT at what they do. But as a developer and publisher, I need to keep in mind what they can and can't do.

I also know people (curse them for their talent) who are a LOT faster than me. Many of them are better at this than i am. And if I can schedule some of their time, I get GREAT product. But they do have a different issue. It can be super-hard to FIND enough work to fill the schedule of someone cranking our 40,000 or 60,000 words a month. Often, they have to either self-publish some work (and just hope it turns a profit, rather than getting pay-upon-completion), or take at least some projects at a lesser per-word rate than they can command, but there's just not enough work out their at their top rate.

And ALL of that can impact how much a freelancer can make in this industry.

For example let's look at that 22,000 a month number. Assuming you manage that on average, in finished ready-to-submit words, rather than first drafts, it can help you figure out how much you might earn in a month of ttRPG freelance. For example, if you manage to get 22,000 words of work at 6 cents a word, that's $1,320 a month, or $15,840 a year.

Armed with that information you can, for example, try to figure out your self-employment taxes in advance, if you are a US writer. Assuming a 15.3% self-employment tax rate, that a tax's burden of $2,423.52 per year. If you don't want that to be a huge panful lump come the next April, it's worth making $606 payments each quarter. And if you find your actual income is skewing higher or lower than that, you can adjust your quarterly payments each quarter to match.

But let's say you can't hit 22,000 words a month, because of your day job. You're only clearing 11,000 words a month. But you WANT to write game material full time. If you are currently holding a full-time job at $15 an hour, or about $2600/month, and bringing in another $660 a month from freelancing 11,000 words on average at 6 cents/word, then to go full-time freelance you need (ignoring insurance and a lot of other thing, which YOU shouldn't ignore, but I'm just writing examples here) $3, 860 a month. (The $2,600 hourly and $660 per-word you've been getting, plus another $600/month to make sure you can cover the higher self-employment tax on the 2600 that went from hourly to freelance each month.) If you can fill your entire month with per-word freelance at 6 cents a word, that means writing about 64,335 words each month.

CAN you writ six times as much if you quite your day job?

Of course there are lots of different pay rates, and rarely can a freelancer fill all month every month with freelance from one company. Let's stay you're still needing $3,860 per month (and yes, you can live on less... depending on your location and circumstances), but you're confident (through contacts and experience) that you can can get 3,000 words a month at 25 cents per word; 5,000 at 15 cents/word; 10,000 at 6 cents a word, and an unlimited amount at 4 cents/word (maybe from self-publishing).

Now each month, you get $750 from your 25 cent work, $750 from your 15 cent work, and 600 from you 6 cent work. That comes to $2,100 a month. That means you need to do another $1,760 at 4 cents a word, or another 44,000 words. That comes to 62,000 words a month... the high end and low end pay rates cancel out enough to make the output needed pretty close to the workload of getting it all at 6 cents word.

An important lesson here is that while 4 cents a word and 6 cents a word may sound really close... it's JUST 2 cents, right?... in fact 6 cents a word is a 50% raise over 4 cents a word.

Meanwhile, if you kept the $15/hour job for $2,600/month, and can manage 8,000 words (3k at 25 cents/word, and 5k at 15 cents a word), you're doing 1/5th the freelance writing (and yeah, a full-time day job), and clearing $3,870 (with $230 a month going to self-employment quarterly payments). Not only is that likely MUCH easier than 60,000+ words a month of writing, but if you can built your contacts with companies that pay on those upper ends, the work output needed to hit your monthly income requirement is MUCH lower. If you COULD get 22,000 words at 25 cents a word consistently, every month, that'd clear around $4,675 (after self-employment taxes are put aside as monthly payments). Your best income level of any of these calculations, for a reasonable-sounding amount of work.

Knowing hour many hours it takes to hit those word counts is useful in many ways as well. For example, if you discover you can do 22,000 words a month writing on evening and weekends, putting in just 18 hours a week, that's 1,222 words/hour. At 15 cents a word, that's a gross of $183.30 an hour. That means if you have a choice of doing extra lawnmowing side gigs at $50/hour, it's only worth it if you have free time after doing all available 15 cent/word work.

On the other hand if you are at my original writing rate of 1,000 per 40 hour week, that's just 25 words an hour. Even at 25 cents a word (which is NOT the rate any of my work offered for the first few decades of my career), I'd only be clearing $6.25 an hour. And at that point, minimum wage is suddenly looking pretty good.

Your writing speed will be different, and may well change over time, vary by type of project, and even be impacted by what days you get to write, or what season it is. How many words of work you can consistently get on a regular basis takes quite a while to figure out, unless you can get people committed to contracts for specific regular wordcounts. And all my notes are extremely simplified.

But knowing YOUR writing speed, YOUR free hours to write, and YOUR ability to get regular assignments at given pay rates--or at least rough approximations-- is a really useful tool when you try to figure out what you can do, and what you want to work on.

This Freelancing Life article is exclusive to paying Patrons only. That's true for half these articles, and the next one will be open to free Patrons as well.