How To Turn Your Favorite Video Game into a Book (By Danica Davidson)

Hello all and welcome to today's blog tour stop and book birthday celebration for Danica Davidson's newest Minecraft adventure story, Adventure Against the Endermen. Ms. Davidson was nice enough to provide some valuable insight into her writing process with a guest post today. Check it out!

About the Book

Adventure Against the Endermen
(Unofficial Overworld Heroes Adventure #1)
Written by Danica Davidson

Sky Pony Press (November 7, 2017)
978-1510727021

"The Overworld is in danger once again, this time from vicious Endermen! Mayor Alexandra summons Stevie, Alex, Maison, Yancy, and Destiny to try and stop the attacks. When the friends investigate, they quickly realize that the Endermen are looking for something. Could it be Stevie’s Ender crystal?

"Soon the group of friends—now an Overworld task force—are caught up in a battle larger than any they could have imagined. Can they protect the world of Minecraft from Endermen—and the larger threat of the crystal?"

How To Turn Your Favorite Video Game into a Book

By Danica Davidson

How do you turn your favorite video game into a book? The most important thing is to find the story.

Find the Story

Three years ago I started writing adventure novels aimed for ages 7-12 that take place as if the video game Minecraft is a real world. There were already books out there dealing with Minecraft as a topic, but I knew I wanted to do something a little different. I didn't want to write a how-to-play guide; I wanted to tell a story. So I created 11-year-old Stevie (get it?) a boy who lives in the Minecraft world. He would have lots of monsters to face, because there are plenty of monsters in Minecraft. But there would need to be more than that to make it stand up and stand out.

One of the first things I decided to do was have Stevie find a portal to Earth.

For anyone unfamiliar with the game, Minecraft allows you to take portals to different, make-believe realms like the Nether or the End. A portal to Earth, obviously, is not an option. But by going to Earth and making friends with an 11-year-old girl there named Maison, Stevie brings a new level of interaction and adventure to the stories. It also allows him to learn more about stuff that kids deal with like going to a new school or trying to handle the internet. At the same time, Stevie understands general kid difficulties, like trying to make friends. All of this makes Stevie more of a real person, even if he is a digital video game character.

Add Lots of Adventure

I purposefully choose to mix up the worlds, so that there's lots of heart-pounding adventure and real stuff for kids. Most chapters end with cliffhangers. When Stevie finds a portal to Earth, it isn't long before monsters from Minecraft find the portal, too, and Stevie and Maison will have to stop them from their attack on Earth. It cements their friendship and they continue to journey together to different places and fight different monsters.

Keep Referencing Back to the Game

What else is important in turning your favorite video game into a book? Making sure there are lots of references to that game. These are adventure stories first and foremost, so I want them to be enjoyable to anyone, whether or not they play Minecraft. But I also stick in lots of Minecraft references and Easter eggs. Stevie's name, for example, comes from the fact the main character in Minecraft was jokingly given the name "Steve" by the game's creator. Herobrine, a scary myth from Minecraft, gets upfront treatment as he becomes a real monster in the third book. Stevie regularly experiences culture shock between Minecraft and Earth, thinking that cars remind him of minecarts and fingers (remember, they don’t have fingers in Minecraft) remind him of squid tentacles (because they do have squid).

Since writing the first book, it's become two series. The first series consists of Escape from the Overworld, Attack on the Overworld, The Rise of Herobrine, Down into the Nether, The Armies of Herobrine and Battle with the Wither, and those are all being released in a box set today, November 7. A spinoff series also starts to come out today, with Adventure Against the Endermen as the first book. It will have the same main characters, but different adventures and villains, and it continues right after where the first series left off. When turning your favorite video game into a book series, it's all about the adventure and the heart, and making sure you get in your share of fun quirks.

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Danica Davidson has written for MTV, The Onion, the Los Angeles Times, and about fifty other publications. She is also the author of the Unofficial Overworld Adventure series, as well as Manga Art for Beginners from Skyhorse Publishing.