What you have already done determines what you can do
Or why a creative’s career is about what they are credited for
‘What have you written?’
Say you are a writer and this is the first question out of the mouth of the person you are talking to. The answer is usually going to start with what you have been credited for. If you are lucky enough to have a career as a writer, the answer is a basically a compact version of your writing CV: I have done x, and y, and worked in q and did some stuff on b. And like what you put in a CV, it matters. It is one of those things that shouldn’t make a difference – the quality of a piece of work should be judged purely on its own merits, and should find an audience based on those merits. But the reality is that your credits do matter. Specifically, they are the main thing which will allow you to do more in that industry and get paid. Past work makes future work easier to acquire, makes it easier to find an audience, a publisher, an agent, take your pick.
What is a credit?
A credit is any piece of work which your name is publicly attached to. For a writer, this is most obviously your name on the cover of a novel you have written, or at the top of a short story. In a work which is the product of a bigger or more varied team, like a computer game or film, it is your name listed as: writer, screenplay by, additional writing by, narrative by, from a story by, and any number of variations depending on what you contributed and what the agreement on your credit is (more on that later).
There are differences for actors, visual artists and others, but the essence is the same: a credit is your name on or in the thing that you helped make, saying what you contributed to making it. Importantly, it is credited on the work. People might not read all the credits at the ends of a film, but they are there. Similarly, if you open a TTRPG book you will find everyone from writers to play testers listed. In some cases, crediting might not be possible on the actual object (songs typically don’t have a five minute audio appendix listing all those involved) but the credits should be listed in other places such as liner notes, databases and so on.
Who assigns credit?
If you create something in its entirety, you identify yourself as its creator and assign yourself that credit. If you create something for someone else, or for an organisation, or group, that group or company credits your contribution. If you do not identify yourself, or are not credited by a company or group, then that work is uncredited.
A brief segue into uncredited creation…
Not all creative work is credited, and not all creators want to be credited. In most cases this usually involves work done for a third party and is part of the agreement for the work – the creator knows and agrees that they will not be credited. This can be for all kinds of reasons, the most well known being ghostwriting, where the real writer of a book is unknown and the book is attributed to someone else. Ghostwriting is common for celebrity autobiographies, but it does happen in other cases and other creative industries. The use of pseudonyms can also be similar to not taking a credit. Not all work needs to be credited either; if its part of the deal then that’s up to a writer to agree to or not. Someone might also not want to take a credit for their contribution, or not want to be associated with the finished work.
Why credits matter
You can make an argument that creative credit doesn’t matter. Yes, there are some authors, directors and actors who have huge draw, and people read their books, watch their films, or buy their paintings because of their name; when credit matters to the audience it matters a lot. Most creators do not have that kind of profile. You buy a book because of the premise, because a friend recommended it, or because it was face out on the stand in the airport. Similarly, we likely don’t pick a film to watch based on the cinematographer, or a computer game based on the lead sound engineer. So why does it matter?
It matters to the industry. A book buyer deciding if they are going to stock a book is going to look at what that book’s author has done before. An agent will give weight to someone with a track record of publications. A manager hiring for a team to make a film or a game will look for people that have the experience, and experience is measured in credits. Some creative industries and media are effectively shut to those who do not have a credited work in that industry – comic book writing, and film and TV scripting, to name two. To break into those industries, you have to figure out how to get a credit, or to get the proven experience in adjacent areas, and… of course that means getting credits in those areas.
How to get credits
You get credited by doing creative work in your chosen area and by protecting your right to be credited. The first of these sounds simple but can feel like the riddle of a sphinx: You need credits to prove you have experience to get work that will give you credit… It’s a variation of the ‘entry level jobs that require experience in that field’ problem. If you want to write a comic, a publisher will rarely consider you if you haven’t written published comics. In other media it is not a strict prerequisite, but does make a huge difference to getting new work.
So how do you get credits if you need them to get more of them? As with most things, it is easier to start at the more accessible, open edges of an industry. If you are a writer, submit to small magazines (yes, they still exist), find local papers or blogs. Do the work really well, and then do it again. Those small credits add up in all kinds of ways, not least of which is that you are continually practising your craft. You are also demonstrating that you are serious, committed and that you are actually engaged with your profession.
I can almost hear someone shouting about AI and how none of this means anything anymore. There is a much longer answer to give to that, but here is the short one: all of this matters more in an age of AI. When pseudo-competence is everywhere, true competence will become both rarer and more valuable. Being able to show what you have done and can do is all the more vital.
Credits are the currency of credibility in creative industry, they are your track record, and proof of experience and craft. You need to get them, and you need to protect them.
Last thing…
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Edited by Greg Smith