It’s almost the end of August, and I can gladly say that my decision to expand chapter 4 is something that I am quite proud of, for in addition to being something fun that sort of doubles has stress relief from HSC trails, my story just seems to flow better now with the extra words. I haven’t really gotten my other goals done this month, but, hey - one thing at a time!
Speaking of words: 12852 is my word count now!
I am very long-winded too.
That’s it! I think that’s what I’m missing. My player character is too much of a blank slate. He has a reason to be here, and it’s a harder life than what he bargained for, but having no goal other than “survive” he ends up just being pushed along by the plot. It’s not like any character can influence the plot in any big way as they are being used as pawns, but the NPCs do react to plot developments (other than the player character, it seems!). Time to get planning again.
Yes, this is what I plan to do later (it doesn’t make sense yet in this early scenario) - you might end up doing different things in the same scenario depending on your reputation and skill stats. How I’ll actually pull it off, not sure yet. I pants things, not actually plan them…
As far as character customisations go, there isn’t one - you pick an alias, but your real name is set based on what country the player character is from, for the same reason that a few NPCs’ names must stay consistent in 6 different languages. Though it could be interesting to have a teetotaller or non-smoking player character. It won’t make an impact on story itself, but in this setting, everybody smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish.
This is another thing where I’m weak at - imagining dialogues and how different people act in a social context. How much establishing of a character is needed? There’s one where you hear the character being trash-talked before he comes up and introduces himself to you. There’s another one where a character comes in and punches another character he doesn’t like, then turns to leave. You can stop him if you want to talk to him, or not. Is that enough establishing before dialogue starts?
8,000 words in three days, realized I hadn’t checked quicktest at all. Ran it – passed with flying colours. Hell yeah.
I actually don’t have a due date planned for the next update to Invite Only, yet. There are two relatively big chapters, one of which is looking like it’ll be about 10,000 words total, and the other I anticipate will be at least 5,000. Then I’ve got Chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 to complete, which are all going to be reasonably short chapters (just a few thousand words each) but with a tonne of branching options, to the point where there’s kind of three distinct paths for each of them. So maybe those will each be 5,000, too, on average.
So, total wordcount of this project could be 140,000, which is slightly more than I planned. But, doesn’t that always happen? That’s why you keep the scope small to begin with. It tends to balloon out while you write.
So give them a secondary goal. I mean, you should do that anyway. Every character in every scene ought to have at least two goals in mind. They don’t have to be complicated goals. They can be pretty dumb ones. Just have them doing something even if it’s just “try to ignore everyone so I can read my newspaper in peace”. If they’re only there to service another character, remove them from the scene. Make someone else have to pick up the slack. That itself can make a scene more interesting!
Given your story is about a foreign legion, which is defined by the diversity of the people within it, have your character be looking for someone within the ranks. Everyone you talk to might be a lead for where to find this missing person. Every battle is a risk that this person will end up dead before you can find them. Now you’ve got an ambient secondary goal that colours every interaction the main character has and adds tension to every scene as time ticks forward and the chances of finding this person grow ever more slim.
Oh yes, there will be a plot point like this. You’ll hear about your older brother’s disappearance from home rather late into the story (information about the outside world is very limited here, so it’s a fluke that you even know at all), and later you find that he has joined up too, following you. That’s a good idea you have there - could he maybe die before you ever meet again?
How’s these for secondary goals? For this scenario, everyone wants you to get your work done, but they have different motivations. One wants alcohol in exchange, one (though only if you can impress him) wants to get this over with quickly so he can leave, and one wants information.
Now to work on the player character’s goals.
Fairly stock standard – biggest issue is that they don’t tell me much about the personality of the characters.
If the MC’s job is to fix a tank, work in a specific, unique, personal reason that the work is important to each character, whether that’s more reason to help the MC or more reason to obstruct them. Maybe the tank is of sentimental value to a general as it’s the last surviving tank of his greatest failure. Maybe another engineer has designed a competing tank and wants this one to break down so he has an excuse to push his new designs and really show up his nemesis, Guillaume, that magnificent bastard. Maybe there are three or four soldiers who have turned the broken tank into a distillery where they’re brewing moonshine for half the battalion and really, really don’t want you snitching.
I had to move just under 900 words to my editing room to re-wright the end of chapter 4, has it was getting out of hand. BUT I re-wrote a new scene and finished the chapter! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Swallowing both the nerves and the throbbing pain, he spoke. “Hey.”
Rachet was the first of the stunned Autobots to recover their voices by quietly saying “How… Smokescreen… we…” his voice trailed off, but the old medic walked over to Smokescreen and gently hugged him. The rest of the Autobots quickly joined in on the hug. Smokescreen hugged them back.
The stranger, who made himself visible in a surge of mauve flame and lightning like energy, was leaning aganst the wall of the base. He was watching them, not saying a word but he was smiling softly. He gave Smokescreen a quick thumbs up. Like with Bulkhead, the other Autobots did not notice him. Before he vanished from sight once again.
“Well… at least one good thing has come from this week…” Ultra Magnus quietly muttered.
“Sir…” Then he saw what he meant.
‘ That… cannot be a good thing.’ The voice of the stranger echoed inside Smokescreen’s head has he bolted to the medical bay.
For lying there was Optimus Prime: In stasis lock, with an enormous wound exposing his inner workings. The prime’s jetpack that he got when the Forge was used to save his life was all but gone, as if blasted apart by some powerful force.
If Optimus was a human, Smokescreen was sure that his spine would be at the very best, fractured in around a hundred different places. At worst…
The sight of this made Smokescreen’s neck burn almost as if it were screaming with a voice of its own .
“W…what happened here?! Who did THIS?!!!” Smokescreen was screaming, not with pain, but with rage.
Bulkhead spoke up, looking uncharacteristically nervous, “It happened yesterday…”
Well, it is day one - so nothing hard. Your experience hasn’t started proper, really (that would start in the the next chapter where you get marched into the desert). I’m mostly using this chapter to establish the dynamics between people and groups. For now, you only have the very simple task of straightening up your kit. Do it properly, or you’ll make someone else look bad too. You don’t have to pick sides like that. Yet.
I’m letting characters’ personalities show through their dialogue. Nothing’s for free here, so the how of them getting their price - some will be more upfront than others - and willingness to engage the obviously out-of-his-depth MC in dialogue, that sort of stuff. Hopefully that’s enough, considering they’re being a bit guarded because they don’t particularly trust you yet?
pfffff, for me August has been a shit show writing-wise. Ranging from falling ill to two big non-writing projects screaming for attention. Not a single word, not a single word was I able to write. Not in regards to writing for one of my stories anyway… ): Ah well.
September is the month my study starts again. Despite this, I have hope to write on a daily basis once more, though without a minimum word count.
I hope everyone is able to finish up August nice and clean!
On to the next one 
Well, I came up with a fraction of a fraction of a chapter, but a fraction is something, and I have most certainly not lost interest in this project, so… kind of promising! I failed dramatically (there were sirens and a ten-hour orchestral accompaniment) at the last point on my list, but that’s okay, because I still only have one project in the works at a time, which is… also promising? At least I’ve gotten over what I was forcing myself to write and found something I like writing instead. I’ve been increasingly nervous that it’s not the kind of story that will be popular with the forum, but oh well. This is fun.
See you all next month…! 
In order: actually managed 30k, donezo, and not quite but close! So overall I’m feeling pretty good about this month’s results. Congrats to everyone on their progress, whatever it be. 
(that first one ended up being delivered on the 22nd, two weeks late! I added 20,000 words to it so I think it’s acceptable)
Alright, end of the month and the following progress has been made towards goals:
Onwards to September we go!
I didn’t manage to write 500 words every single day, but I’m still happy enough with the end results. Still, I will try to do better next month, I will always work to improve. I also rewrote a lot of what I already had, making it hard to calculate how much I really wrote.
And for my second goal…well…I already finished that at the start of the month.
I hope you all had a great month. See you all again in September 
I did manage to close off the month with a solid writing day. I worked on both TC and Fairmont and got out a total of 900 words and change. I feel pretty good about that, o I’m ready to wake up tomorrow morning and give some thought to my September goals. It’s a holiday month, so it’ll be hectic, but we’ll manage.
I’ve written about forty thousand words in August, or a bit closer to 50k, if counting rewrites and the like. Even so, I’m still not done, and may be anywhere from 10k to even more words away from my finish line.
Still, I put myself to a September 2nd deadline, and I’m determined to keep myself to it, no matter how much of the midnight oil I have to burn.
Fwiw, I did catch up to my “100k words on AToH” goal I put myself all the way back in… June, I think, but wasn’t able to work towards with everything going on then.
After I’m done writing, I’ll get back to many of the commitments I’ve made over the past two months. I know there’s several people who I promised to get back to and haven’t, but it’s absolutely not something I’ve forgotten about. Just need a teeny bit more time.
Here’s hoping everyone else made progress on their goals, no matter how much or how little. Even a couple woobly steps are still steps!
I got a good ways along on my beta test. In this stage, keeping up with bugs/errors is a goal itself.
Good writing, everyone. See you in September.
So, it’s September down here in 
, and I did good on my goals: I wrote a little bit of chapter 5, and I finished chapter 4 - that I wound up expanding to the point where I am very happy with it, and I think I’ve made peace with the end of chapter 3… it’s that or I really don’t want to re-wright it. On an unrelated note: I also conquered my HSC trials! Wooooo!!!
See you all soon on the second day of September! (and a pinch and a punch for the first day of the month in advance, for some of you for others I’m right on time.)
At month’s end, I am happy with my progress.
Project One goal: 100% completed.
This turned out to be a more in-depth task than I thought it would be at first glance, but I worked hard the entire month and was able to complete the task by the 31st.
Project Two goal: Pushed to September.
Project two actually had other developments that caused me to push the initial task into September, so that I could complete an editing need. I did complete this task as well – editing 36 pages of material in addition to everything I did on Project One.
So, I’m going to count Project Two as a successful month, even though circumstances had me switching tasks within the month.
I’ll be opening September’s thread shortly, so those like @Dragongodess who live in the future can begin early.
