Tips for Writers / Ubiblog Columns by Richard Dansky | Central Clancy Writer | on September 19, 2013 |

http://blog.ubi.com/the-write-stuff-september-2013-advice-for-writers/

Columns by Richard Dansky | Central Clancy Writer | on September 19, 2013 | 5 comments | in Blog Updates

The best resource you have as a writer is other writers.

For those of us of a certain age (which is to say, those of us old enough to remember typewriters, buy music on vinyl in a non-ironic way, and have fond memories of non-CGI Transformers), the image of the lone writer holds a romantic appeal – one that’s definitely echoed in the wider audience. The idea of a solitary wordsmith – locked in a room with only a typewriter and a blank page – plays to a certain fantasy of the artist, and for some forms of writing there’s some merit to it.

But even the most supposedly solitary forms of literary expression, be they novels or short stories or naughty limericks that include the word “Nantucket,” aren’t entirely solo efforts. There are editors involved. First readers. Copy editors. You get the idea. And that’s for forms that involve no other asset besides the words.
And believe me, it’s a good thing to get those other folks involved.

Most writers, in their more candid moments, will simultaneously admit to being their own worst critics and getting so wrapped up in what the writing should be that they can’t edit it properly. Having other eyes on your work is a tremendous help. Good readers and editors will mercilessly uncover the weak spots and the cheats in your narrative, will relentlessly expose places where you got stylistically lazy, and call out the places where you shortchanged the reader.

Also, if you’re lucky, they’ll catch the typos.

The trick is, of course, finding readers and editors who can do that for you, who can read what you’ve written and provide feedback that is not only not yours, but also actively useful.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to games.

 

Don’t Go It Alone

For a long time, most game writers were solitary creatures, whether they wanted to be or not. The role of narrative in game design wasn’t necessarily highly regarded, and a dedicated writer was viewed as a luxury. The idea of two – or more – on a single project was mind-blowing in its extravagance.

Good readers and editors will mercilessly uncover the weak spots and the cheats in your narrative [Digression: At the first Game Writers Conference, now the Game Narrative Summit, I walked into the conference room before Marc Laidlaw’s opening talk and my first thought as I scanned the room was My God, I’m not alone. Every other person I’ve talked to who was there that day has told me roughly the same story, often using the same words.]

Which meant that when a writer wanted feedback on something they were doing, they weren’t getting it from writers.

Now wait a minute, I can hear you saying. Most of the people who are going to play the game aren’t writers, so feedback from writers is kind of key there, Spartacus. And yes, that’s true – knowing that things are or aren’t working for an audience is vitally important. If a reader hates the protagonist, it doesn’t matter if they’ve memorized Strunk and White or not; that feedback is useful.

But.

What that feedback is not, is directed, which means it’s not necessarily phrased in a way that makes it actionable. I don’t like the main character is feedback; there’s a serious disconnect between the way you position your protagonist’s backstory and her diction in the dialog you’ve written is actionable.
Let’s rewind a bit. Imagine you’re an artist and you’re showing someone your work. Their response, quite reasonably, is that they don’t like it and something’s wrong with the way the sky looks. Now, this is useful feedback insofar as it A)suggests that the project needs more work and B)calls out a rough area that could use some improvement. However, what that feedback is lacking is technical criticism, using the language of the visual arts. There’s nothing there about composition, about color, about tools – in short, it’s not couched in the professional context that would allow the artist to use it as a clearer roadmap to iteration and improvement.

And just like art, or engineering, or any other discipline within game development, writing has its own professional and technical language. Here is where the romantic notion of creation-exclusively-through-inspiration breaks down; writing is first and foremost a craft, requiring sweat and iteration and technical skill.

Like any other craft, it has techniques and best practices and standards, and the people best equipped to give feedback that addresses the needs of the craft are – wait for it – other writers. They do the job, they speak the language. And just as artists get valuable feedback from other artists, and engineers get better feedback on their code from other engineers, some of the most directed, useful feedback a writer can get will come from another writer.

[This assumes, of course, that the writer in question is good at critique and isn’t a jerk. But for the sake of continued employment of all concerned, we’ll assume both.]

I’ll confess, the first time I was put in the harness long-term with another writer (while working on Splinter Cell: Double Agent), it was a weird feeling. I’d gotten used to working alone, to the point where I wasn’t sure how to interact. I’m fairly certain Taras Stasiuk, the other writer in question, felt something similar. This was something new and different and challenging. (Which is writerese for What if they don’t like my stuff?)

 Then something weird happened. I passed Taras some of my stuff. He passed me some of his. He sent back comments on mine, which were very useful, and I sent him a few on his. I didn’t agree with all of his notes, but we discussed the places where we disagreed, which made me lay out why I’d made those choices and what they implied, and that led to some new discussions about where the characters were coming from, and before you knew it A)we had a great working dynamic and – this is the important part – B)the work was better. And I’ve relished having other writers to work with ever since.

Writing is first and foremost a craft, requiring sweat and iteration and technical skillThis is, of course, old hat to folks who’ve worked in TV writers’ rooms or found that mythical beast, the useful writers’ group. But for too many writers out there, there isn’t or hasn’t been a professional peer they could turn to. That means learning to rely only on themselves, to set up perimeters around their work, and – after too many rounds of being told I would have done it this way, and you should totally add a few dinosaurs – learning to view feedback as not necessarily in the work’s best interest. Those are hard habits to break.

They’re worth breaking, though, and that ultimately circles us around to the original premise, namely, that the best resource you have as a writer in games is other writers. Specifically, other writers who know and understand the sort of work you’re doing and who can give you the targeted feedback that will allow you to improve specific aspects of that work. So if you’re lucky enough to be on a team, or in a studio with multiple writers, then the best thing you can do is use them. Share your work, and let them share theirs with you.

Because they’re the ones in the best position to give you specific feedback you can use to make your own writing better.

columnsrichard danskythe write stuff

the author

Perhaps best known for his brief stint as the world’s leading authority on Denebian Slime Devils, Richard Dansky has been with Red Storm/Ubisoft since 1999. His first game was Shadow Watch and his most recent one is Splinter Cell Blacklist. In between he’s served on the advisory board for GDC’s Game Narrative Summit, helped found and develop the IGDA Game Writing SIG, and appeared on Gamasutra’s list of the top 20 game writers in 2009. He has also published six novels, one short fiction collection and a ton of tabletop RPG sourcebooks, which is why you should never tell him about your character. For a tantalizing taste of Dansky's inimitable insights, read his recurring column on the UbiBlog ("The Write Stuff") and follow him on Twitter: @RDansky

On Becoming a Game Writer / Gamasutra Columns by Richard Dansky | Central Clancy Writer | on October 10, 2013

http://blog.ubi.com/the-write-stuff-on-becoming-a-game-writer/

Columns by Richard Dansky | Central Clancy Writer | on October 10, 2013 | 36 comments | in Blog Updates

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is How do I get into game writing? Now, this isn’t the same as How did you get into game writing? Ask ten game writers that question and you’ll get twelve different answers. No, what people are looking for is the clear and well-manicured path into the profession – a certain set of steps to follow that, once completed, will yield a position as a game writer.

This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and in a just and fair and logical world, it would have a simple and concise answer. Unfortunately, we are not living in that world. There’s a reason every game writer’s journey is different, and that’s because different companies are looking for different things in a writer. Some embrace the role and smooth the path, some have very specific needs and wants, and some aren’t quite sure what exactly they’re going to do with a writer, but they’re pretty sure someone needs to be generating some text assets for their game right about now. There is no one true way, and anyone who tells you there is, is most likely trying to sell you something they’ve written about how to become a game writer.
That being said – and bearing in mind that I am not, in fact, trying to sell you anything – there are a few things you can do to advance toward game writing. They’re not hard and fast, there’s no achievement unlocked after accomplishing them, and they may seem a little counter-intuitive in places. But in 14 years of doing this, I haven’t found anything better. So, if you want to be a game writer, here’s what you’ve got to do:

Check Your Ego

If you believe that you are going to walk in the door as a writer, elucidate your grandiose vision for the story you want to tell and have the development team magically transmogrify into Oompa-Loompas who are there to actualize that vision, you may find yourself sadly disappointed. A writer is part of a team, there to mesh harmoniously with folks from other disciplines in order to create the player experience. Fail to understand that you are part of a team – that you are creating assets and providing deliverables, not cavorting through the fields of the Swiss Alps in a smock whilst declaiming Romantic poetry that the rest of us are privileged to hear – and you will probably also fail to understand why nobody wants to work with you.

Play Games

If you want to write games, play games. To write for any medium, you need to understand that medium’s unique form and demands. The best way to acquire that knowledge is to consume that medium, and by consuming that medium – or as we call it, “sitting your butt on the damn couch and playing some games” – gain both experiential and instinctive knowledge of what works.

It’s not the only thing, of course. You don’t sit through twelve hours of Dynasty Warriors 8 and emerge with the knowledge of how to write meaningful systemic dialog chewing its way out of your head like a particularly hungry Athena. You do, however, walk away with a pretty decent sample size of things that worked and things that didn’t work, and you can start putting that knowledge to use in your own work.

Observe Games

Of course, when I say “play games” I don’t just mean “play games.” Racking up body count in adversarial is cool, but if you’re focused exclusively on optimizing your play, you’re missing the chance to observe game writing in its natural habitat.

So play as a player, but also play as a writer. Listen to the dialog. Observe the visual storytelling. Look at the text that gets used, and ask yourself why those choices might have been made. See if you can reverse engineer – and thus understand – the narrative design.

Do this, and you’ll get a better grasp of how game writing works when the rubber hits the road. It’s not just the words, it’s when the words get used, and how many, and to what end, and where there are no words at all. Watch the game as you play it, and learn.

Make Games

The best way to learn what works as writing in a game is to get your writing in a game. Luckily, we’re in a place in the evolution of the industry when it’s possible to get your writing in a game even if you’re not working for a game company.

Go find yourself a Game Jam, or haunt a local college’s CS department bulletin boards to find groups that are making games on their own. Offer your services as a writer, even if all they need is menu text. Grab a tool kit and make something with your words in it. Get your stuff in a game and see how it plays.

And I’ll be honest here – odds are your first few cracks at it aren’t going to be great. That’s OK. This is the space where you can learn, and you can get better without your employment being on the line. Because the more games you write for, the better you’ll get at recognizing what does and doesn’t work, and the quicker you’ll build the habits of good work you’re going to need.

Besides, it doesn’t hurt to have actual, honest-to-Murgatroyd games in your portfolio.

Tweet

And by tweet, I don’t mean HAW HAW CAT VIDEO LOL. One of the things Twitter does is force you to phrase complete thoughts in a constrained space. This is entirely akin to writing for games, where you must on occasion phrase a complete thought in a space that is entirely constrained by the number of characters the German localization is going to require. Or, more likely, constrained by the fact that you don’t want your dialog to ramble, potentially interrupting gameplay in the process.

So tweet, and tweet smart. Learn how to write short, pithy sentences that communicate a point. And lay off the cat videos.

Talk With Game Writers

The best way to learn about the job is to talk to people who have done the job. This is not a surprise, nor is it unique to game writing. So, if you’re interested in the role, find ways to interact with people who are doing it. Go to conferences where game writers are speaking. Follow them on social media and engage – respectfully. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions goes a lot further than Why did you make that incredibly stupid decision in your last game? Look to the IGDA Game Writing Special Interest Group and get on their mailing list. Make a reputation for yourself as someone who can engage cogently and professionally, and who has interesting things to say about the subject matter.

Also, don’t be a jerk.

If you do these things there’s a better shot that when someone has an opening and your name gets floated as a possibility, you’ll get a positive response. As opposed to, say, slagging a writer on your blog and then turning around and asking them for work. Because that always goes so well.

Taking the Next Steps

Will doing all these things get you a job as a game writer? No. Knocking on doors, sending out resumes, applying for gigs and presenting good work in your portfolio will actually get you the job. But if you do these things, you’re in a better position to be ready to knock on doors – and to be prepared to seize the opportunity when somebody answers.

For more of Dansky’s advice for writers, check out this post:

Tips for Writers

 columnsrichard danskythe write stuff

the author

Perhaps best known for his brief stint as the world’s leading authority on Denebian Slime Devils, Richard Dansky has been with Red Storm/Ubisoft since 1999. His first game was Shadow Watch and his most recent one is Splinter Cell Blacklist. In between he’s served on the advisory board for GDC’s Game Narrative Summit, helped found and develop the IGDA Game Writing SIG, and appeared on Gamasutra’s list of the top 20 game writers in 2009. He has also published six novels, one short fiction collection and a ton of tabletop RPG sourcebooks, which is why you should never tell him about your character. For a tantalizing taste of Dansky's inimitable insights, read his recurring column on the UbiBlog ("The Write Stuff") and follow him on Twitter: @RDansky

Lower job churn hurts young workers Job-hopping can boost résumés, lifetime pay By Josh Zumbrun at The Wall Street Journal

Here's a premise for comedy, drama, or dramedy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lower-job-churn-hurts-young-000000652.html

View gallery

Work

Thinkstock

Quitting a job often can be a good thing. But not enough workers have been doing it.

During and after the recession, the U.S. economy has been too weak for many workers to undertake the sort of job-hopping that economists say is critical to building careers and advancing the nation's long-run growth prospects. The consequence: Even many Americans who have remained employed have stunted their earnings growth by staying pinned down to their current jobs.

The weak job churn is among Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen's leading concerns about an economy that is improving steadily, but with substantial scars just beneath the surface.

Ms. Yellen, who is set to deliver the Fed's semiannual report to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, regularly highlights her concerns about the lack of dynamism in the labor market. "People are reluctant to risk leaving their jobs because they worry that it will be hard to find another," she said earlier this year.

One such person is David Clark, a 31-year-old in Atlanta who said he never planned to spend most of his 20s in the same ad-agency job.

"For a while I closed my eyes and stuck my fingers in my ears and hoped I could ride it out at this one place," Mr. Clark said.

The recession hit two years after Mr. Clark graduated from college, leaving him stuck in a position that offered no opportunities for advancement in an economy that offered little hope of jumping elsewhere. "I became a little emotionally frozen because every time I'd look for jobs there would be nothing," he said.

By hopping from employer to employer, especially early on, workers find jobs better-suited to their skills, build their résumés, bid up their salaries and boost lifetime earnings prospects. They eventually settle down and change jobs less frequently.

"One of the characteristics that is uniquely American is that changing jobs is the way you get promoted," said Anthony Carnevale, an economist who directs Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

While the nation's jobless rate dropped to 6.1% in June, the lowest in nearly six years, the improvement masks the fact that many workers who held jobs throughout the downturn and recovery struggled to advance.

 

View gallery

WSJ

 Their plight is best captured by the collapse in the monthly hiring rate, from 5.5 million in 2006 to as low as 3.6 million in 2009, according to the Labor Department. It was 4.7 million in May, the latest figure available.

People leave jobs by two main ways: voluntarily quitting for a better job, which is beneficial, or getting laid off, which is detrimental. In the recession, the rate of career-damaging layoffs spiked. It has since returned to its prerecession levels.

The number of people voluntarily leaving positions fell by nearly half to 1.6 million in 2009 from 3.1 million in 2006. It stood at 2.5 million in May.

As churn slowed, workers began clinging to their jobs. From 2008 to 2012, the most recent year available, the median tenure of workers ages 25-34 in their current job rose by 19% to more than three years. Workers ages 35-44 saw their tenure climb 8% in the same period, to about five years, and those ages 45-54 saw their tenures climb by 3% to eight years.

Job tenures are longer in other industrialized economies, economists say. Direct comparisons aren't available, but in most developed countries average job tenure is more than a decade, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 34 mostly advanced nations.

Without more frequent switching, fewer U.S. workers are finding the jobs and wages that suit their skills. As much as 66% of lifetime wage growth occurs in the first decade of a person's career, according to one widely cited estimate first by economists Robert Topel and Michael Ward in the late 1980s. Other researchers since then have found similar effects.

Many graduates beginning careers in a recessionary economy end up "two steps back from where they might have been in a full-employment economy," Mr. Carnevale said. "The evidence says it can damage you for a career."

To be sure, some workers are starting to break free as the economy heals—offering hope that more careers will get back on track.

Charles Albert was grateful to land a job at Northern Illinois University's admissions office after he graduated from the school in 2009. He expected it to be a brief stop. Still there two years later, he was "starting to feel the pains of the economy."

A radical approach to hiring Play Video

"I was making $25,000 a year in Chicago," said Mr. Albert, now 26. "That does not go very far."

After six months of applying for jobs, he made the jump from recruiting students for a school to recruiting for health-care and insurance companies. Over the past two years he made two more jumps, becoming a recruiter for higher-level jobs and bumping up his salary until he became the director of research at Jobplex Inc., a Chicago recruiting firm.

The churning process eventually worked for him, but many of his peers weren't so lucky. 

"I have friends who graduated the same year I did who still are working the same job they did right out of undergrad," Mr. Albert said.

Young workers always have earned less than those with more experience, but the gap has widened. In 2004, the median wage for workers 25-34 years old was 5% lower than the overall median wage. Today, it is 8% lower.

Graduating into a recession can have enduring hit on earnings. Men who graduated in the early 1980s downturn suffered an initial wage loss of 6% to 7% for each percentage-point increase in the national jobless rate, according to research by Yale economist Lisa Kahn.

Even 15 years after graduation, their wages were 2.5% lower than those who didn't enter the labor market during that downturn, showing how recession scars linger.

So far, the damage to young workers from the most recent recession appears much more severe than in the 1980s, Ms. Kahn's recent research found.

"I would say everyone is optimistic now, but that doesn't mean they are not thinking about the recession anymore," said Tunc Kip, 31, the president of Atlanta's junior chamber of commerce. "There is still a lot of thought about how things were a couple years ago. It makes people a little more conservative with decisions toward shifting careers."

Mr. Clark, the young ad man in Atlanta, watched his agency struggle throughout the recession as one of its largest clients, Eastman Kodak Co., entered bankruptcy. He occasionally found himself envious of older relatives and friends who started their working lives well in advance of the recession and "didn't have the brakes slammed on their careers the same way we did."

In March 2013, nearly four years after the recession ended, he finally landed a job with a different ad firm in Atlanta, Ogilvy & Mather, and began the long process of catching up.

"I'm happier," Mr. Clark said. He is earning more money and has some savings, but not enough for a house. For him and his wife, "having a family is not really on the horizon, because we're not building up the base."

And "in the back of my mind," he frequently reminds himself, "it could all fall apart again."

Write to Josh Zumbrun at josh.zumbrun@wsj.com


Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of the chart accompanying this article incorrectly referred to a measure of job tenure as an average. It is a median. (July 14, 2014)

Motivational Quote of the Day

"The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone.

The driving force of a career must come from the individual.

Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!"

— Earl Nightingale: was an American motivational speaker and author

Low pay and "work for hire" they want ALL RIGHTS crap. In my world, we share...

Remember that if you do a job project that is low rate and or "for hire," make certain the contract says it is for "as is" just like a car, they've bought "for hire" this story and characters as is and can use the story how they like; but--and it sounds cheeky or sneeky but they're not giving you much for hard work they can't do or write--you retain equal use of remodeled, extended story.

Rewrites keep article writers in the money.

I rewrite or extend the stories and publish them myself as ebooks and print books. That's more than the Ten US$ and a copy; which is standard old print magazine stuff, and they don't want to do payroll a bunch of times forever, but higher rates make happier writers.

_Neale Sourna

NEW!! Short Story: Neale Sourna's The Freelancer [warning: romantic erotic]

NEW!
Neale Sourna's The Freelancer [A romantic erotic short story]

Delia’s new temp, Mischa, with the fascinating ass, is great at his job, on his first day, at her architectural construction site, but he’s driving her to distraction. She can’t get anything done.

When Delia works late and alone, to catch up on work, gorgeous Ryan returns in order to show her what he’s really freelancing in--her! 1000 words—Read: The Freelancer

====================

Game Writer Exchange at LinkedIn.com

GAME STORY WRITERS

WANTED: Established game writers, rank beginners and working in-betweeners. Share your latest job and career notice finds, give information and advice, or submit education hookups concerning game story writing and/or requests for short to long fiction for games or comics.

Writers are often THE LAST TO BE CALLED into the game planning and development process, but are expected to pull a gigantic elephant out of the tiny hat.

Just like art graphics and programming code good writing and especially GREAT WRITING needs time to build its understructure and then layer on muscle and flesh.

The more WE WRITERS share and give one another a hand up to get each and every one of us into projects earlier, the better our writing will be and THE BETTER THE GAMES WE WRITE WILL BE, and the sooner we’ll be asked to the party.

No more last minute literary rescues and trying to piece together plots that makes all the already chosen graphics work. Which can be great—if it works—and disastrous and a blame on the writer when it doesn’t.

Let’s all move ahead, together.

--Neale Sourna at GAME WRITER EXCHANGE

*******************************

An open letter:

GAME WRITER EXCHANGE just needs to be simple. It seems there are few writing gigs, or we don't hear about them until late. Or, we're busy and want to pass on something we've found to another, who's qualified.

Some of us are getting fairly regular hits, but if we writers can pool or resources and therefore--like attractive gazelles at a watering hole a women in a women's college attract the interests of power hitters; once they see us here.

Although the women's college thing is better but way too similar to lions hunting gazelles!

If we can gather a decent, solid range of starting, medium, and advanced writers in an easier to find virtual location, I think it will improve our access, our writing, and our marketing and cash flow.

Hopefully, this open approach will encourage the planners, developers, and recruiters to see us. We're here! We need to be added to the planning and the payroll way before all the artists and whomever find they have logic holes.

We game writers just need to be gathered together much as the artists and coding programmers here at LinkedIn; together like them, but highlighted and spotlighted in our own element, away from them.

And if anyone has questions, we can share answers.

I've seen game writer and game comic, etc questions spread out around my other author, scriptwriting, and game groups; but not specialized to it. I see comics, and even script planning art boards, in a similar area as game story narrative.

Also there are narrative articles and blogs at Gamasutra.com and other places, and it wouldn't hurt to gather those. I've been pulling a few into my own character writing blog [http://writing-naked101.blogspot.com/ ] but ... I'm a little lonely, I think.

I'm alone when I write, edit, layout, and publish my works or write or rewrite other peoples scripts, novels, and games.

The programmers I work with are sometimes helpful but busy cranking out their games and my questions are normally only in what they do or do not want, which leaves me with more questions on how to improve, what others skills and game design programs [like Neverwinter Nights] from a writer's approach is best--and EASY and SENSIBLE--for the next step, in writers helping the game from concept to player.

I felt it was a burning idea and I didn't see it repeated anywhere else here, or I would've joined.

So, I've no desire to play dictator or mess up anybody's stuff but writers of every kind need to gather our power and use it to get us more: power, respect, reputation, opportunities, and the cash.

And, as always, I'm open to positive, useful suggestions for our project here in gathering game writing info, news, jobs, etcetera.

Neale

www.Writing-Naked.com
www.Neale-Sourna.com
www.PIE-Percept.com

Neale Sourna Game stories:

"Heartwild Solitaire" 1 & 2 pc games
"Margrave Manor" & "Margrave Manor2: The Lost Ship" pc games
"Berlin'61: The Wall" RPG

Elance.com and Guru.com Question

hey,

maybe i'm too stressed or tired or whatever, but how the heck does that site [ELANCE.COM] work? i signed up for "courtesy" listings, but when i try to bid on something, it's telling me i'm not a member of that part and i need to sign up. is there anyway to do anything on there without paying? please explain to the dummy.

thanks

PS there are a lot of things on there that i think i could do. where's a good phone sex operator job when you need one????
=========
Yeah, you can receive notifications and look around but to actually place a proposal bid you have to pay into at least a month's membership of that division. So if you want to be as a voice person in the voice section, you'll have to pay that section's fee, and another's if you're bidding in another section like writing, too.

Elance is kinda tricky but it's been not to bad to me, and it's where I started, but it does have its own sense of rules. I've just seriously started at Guru and I don't really remember but I think you get like ten free bids with them so you might make some money before taking a membership, but also you have fewer opportunities than a member.

I went ahead a few months back and just got a quarterly membership at Guru and Elance, expensive but LOTS more opportunities, and it's an older site with more opps and fewer rules in some things. Like erotic writing is almost always pulled at Elance but not at Guru.

But even a month's membership can be paid for, do at it or your site fees of doing business into your proposal, don't be too afraid to bid high or higher than the bid range, if you feel it's truly not high enough for all the work you'll be doing, and explain that nicely but directly in the proposal. People are cheap sometimes or just don't know or need to be reminded that good service of quality needs more cash. Be personable, profession, and make certain you read what they ask for and address those concerns in the proposal or ask for more specific info in each project's message boards--some public, some private.