Welcome all to the support thread for August 2022.
Happy Birthday to August babies.
Thank you, everyone that continues to participate in these threads – it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.
If anyone has specific questions or concerns I may help with, please let me know.
Since there are many anime fans in this community, I figured the following article might be of interest:
There are lessons to learn in this article, especially since the community is worldwide and loves to share stories and world building from many countries.
Also, the following Wiki is essential for all Choice Script writers and developers:
My August goal is pretty much the same thing as last month.
It’s also the release month for Noblesse Oblige and a game that’s very close to my heart (pun not intended), Heart of Battle for Heart’s Choice by my wife @FayI. So it’s a very exciting and nerve-wracking time for our household!
While all that’s going on, my goal is to finish Chapter 9 of Royal Affairs and get as much done of the following chapter. Between medical issues, the European heatwave, and being tired from completing Noblesse Oblige, July wasn’t as productive as I wanted, but I’m hoping to resolve a bunch of romantic plots in Chapter 9 while leading up to various climactic plot threads which will explode in Chapter 10. This stage is always a bit tricky because it’s juggling a lot of different plot elements and it feels a bit like it’s haphazardly ductaped together!
I’ve got a bunch of player feedback and some other considerations that came up when I was playtesting myself the first two-thirds of Royal Affairs that I want to think more about too (mostly about use of stats and balance and a couple of tenacious bugs). But I think getting the plot done first is the best approach. Then I can have a better idea of the big picture before making sweeping changes. I find it can be tempting to fiddle around with what’s there for too long rather than moving forward into the unknown which is scarier.
Happy Birthday and amazing Month for you and @FayI Hope the games sell well and you both can go celebrate somewhere nice With the money of the game I will buy hope you both can have a tea, wine glass or equivalent.
Update:
Lost Secrets reached 4422 words and 11 pages total, and I’m not out of the first part yet. Sidenote: a character lampshades a trope/cliche, the, quote, “air conduct Hollywoody large”. (Wich is also hidden behind a mirror, just don’t ask).
Started another story in progress. This one is meant to be bigger, beetween a very long tale and a short novel. The working title is Lian, by the protagonist’s name. It’s 354 words long so far.
I realised I’ve a soft spot for the “Descend into darkness/Journey into villany”. Both theese stories are about that: the former is more a “Start of doubts”, the latter is full descend into nihilism.
Thinking about making a poll on which not original fantasy races of mine the forum reader would like to play or know more. Warning everyone of them will have at least one or two traits you won’t like
Question for writers on Patreon: How much do you usually make pay for a story?
Thanks @Eiwynn for the threads and for the wiki link
My goals for August are: 45,000 words, and finishing Ch 1 through to its final sequence, which I’ll aim to wrap up in September. Let’s see how it goes!
This is my third month of posting in the writer’s support thread which is still crazy to me. My first post on this forum was on May 2nd when my story had a completely different name and was mostly just an idea I had in my head. As of tomorrow, it’ll mark three months of work into The People’s House, and I’m really excited to keep working on it.
I finally broke the 100k words benchmark for the story and hope to push through about half of the very code-heavy Chapter 3 by the end of this month. It’s all about foreign affairs, so as a domestic policy person, there’s been a lot of googling involved. Nonetheless, I’m excited to keep working through it.
I also figured I’d respond to this comment since I’ve now been running a Patreon for just over a month or so:
On my Patreon, I kept the default values of $5, $9, and $20 per month. I believe all of my Patrons are at the $9 a month ‘Senator’ tier, which is the level of support that unlocks the 100k word demo for my WIP. From looking at other authors some charge more or less so it’s really up to you what you go with.
I’m free of my 10,000 words a month goal, at least for the nonce, since I finished the first draft of The Day After Ever After on July 10th. Also got all 50 achievements done as of yesterday, which was good. From here on it’s just edits large and small, finishing up the publication blurbs, credits and mocked-up stat page, waiting for the art to be finished, and then getting ready to send it off, hopefully before the end of the month. No idea what to expect for the reception, beyond a general certainty that it will end up somewhere in the vast gulf between NPT and TPS in both earnings and review scores.
On a downer note, was looking forward to Parenting slowly ticking toward the 50 reviews mark on Steam, since then it could go from Positive to Very Positive on the page there so long as it kept at or above 90% positive reviews, which it always had been. But three of the last four reviews were negative (which doubled the amount of Not Recommended reviews I’ve had on there since it released a couple years ago on the platform), so it’s down to 86% positive. Bummer. Not sure why Steam players are so much less likely to review stuff; I’ve sold several thousands copies on there but only gotten 46 reviews so far. Maybe because Steam is less pushy about it than mobile marketplaces.
I also was motivated by the release of the Advanced Edition of Into the Breach to do something I’ve never done before: write fanfiction. Hammered out a 1,800 word short story called Those Left Behind in an hour or so. No plans for it, or even knowledge of what one does with a bit of fanfiction.
A bit nervous to be writing here but hey, maybe putting my goals into words will make them feel more real in my head so it will be worth it.
I’ve always had a lot of stories in my head that were never put into paper until this July, when I started working on two stories, one’s prologue is at about 21k words and the other’s at 5k, including code. Before this I had never written anything and I am very aware that the way I write is simply not good, as one would expect. But I’ve been powering through because writing has made me genuinely happy and well, I’m not going to improve if I don’t keep going even though sometimes it’s hard to do so when you can see something’s wrong but you can’t nor know how to fix it.
Either way, I’m thinking when I finish the prologues and the first chapters, of making the demos public, mostly because I want to improve and maybe someone will be kind enough to give me feedback. Plus making it “officially” something I’m working on will give me some extra motivation to finish them.
So my goals for August are in general to just keep powering through and to not give up quite just yet, and hopefully finish at least one of the prologues and start on chapter one of one of these stories.
I am so happy for you, and this voyage you have just started. It is very worth it, even for someone as depressive and negative like me. Because, we all enjoy creating and writing.
However, I want to warn you that if you end showing your game so soon your heart can be broken and have a very bad experience, like the one I have years ago.
My advice, first a small alpha team of readers that can give you a preliminar advice on your game; and if it is ready to going public or not. An alpha private demo is key to people that is not used to post games demos online.
I’m sorry to hear about that happened to you, I hope it hasn’t prevented you from continuing your writing.
And thanks so much for your advice! It makes a lot of sense and I’ll try to do as you say and first find some people to look over at it first before creating a WIP thread here. Maybe when things get more advanced, I’ll create a post on the Interest Check Thread to see if someone would be interested in helping me out. I think perhaps that could work.
This is likely not the best place to ask, but could anyone suggest whether it’s appropriate to create a second forum account purely for WiP thread management, and to separate your off-topic posts from your writing? This wouldn’t be a secretive arrangement - I’d be quite open about being behind both accounts.
No, it’s not ok to make a second forum account for that–we ask that you use a single account. Thanks for checking, and I know it can be a bit tricky to keep things separate.
Happy August! I’m rolling on a project that I’m enjoying (and getting some consistent and good feedback on) so I’m going to aim for 60k words this month. Let’s see how close I actually get, but I’m optimistic!
I finally sort of finished proofreading Unnatural season 2 at the end of last month (covered all the cases, but there’s some additional content being added in, so I’ll probably give it a few more reads later), so hopefully I’ll be able to get up to speed with actual writing again. I’m so excited.
Hello everyone – I’m usually a lurker of these threads, visiting old and new ones frequently since I find them so valuable. I love following your ups and downs, cheering you on from afar and finding comfort in not being alone in the struggle of writing. Thank you eiwynn for putting them up each month and to everyone contributing, I hope august will be great for all of you! (And you lurkers too!)
My writing? melts into a sad puddle
The good: I have been slowly dipping my toes back into writing after taking a month long break. 400 word-sprint here, 300 there: I’ve figured that to write 50k words I have to do 125 400 word-sprints, which feels more manageable than just saying 50k outright. I made a pretty page in my notebook to tick the wordsprints off one by one, and I’m making another one to tick off every 100 words just to get that hell yeah-emotion flowing again. This also works in a pinch:
Write list
Cross things off list
:>
The bad: I’m also kicking myself for not waiting with posting my wip-demo-thread, as some of you talk about above. I wish I had waited until I had a second update already half-written, or some semblance of a social media plan for the work, since it all became entirely too overwhelming to keep up with while having to prioritize irl-stuff. Feeling like I am disappointing people who take the time to get invested in my story is a thought I find myself constantly touching, like a grisly bruise, along with other sweet thoughts such as there’s no way you can do this and the all-time classic this word-soup is the worst. I’m hoping that in August, I can bring back the kindness I usually treat myself with, instead of the constant pressure of guilt and low self-worth that rears its ugly head in times of stress.
I want to stop expecting so much from myself, especially when writing as hobby, and get back to the place where writing is purely fun and not so emotionally draining. The story I’m writing is emotionally draining in itself, with it’s honesty. Oh! Another point for The Good: I churned out a paragraph about TW suicidal ideations that was so raw, it made me nervous. Feeling absolutely horrified at the prospect of other people reading it.
pretty much.
Other than overcoming mental health hurdles, my goals for August are:
as many wordsprints as I can manage
start answering questions on tumblr again (If I can)
I’ve finally worked up the courage to post about my story in the interest-check thread. I’ve been avoiding this because I’m so nervous! However, I’m 13k words in, and without any kind of feedback, it’s starting to feel like I’m writing into the abyss. If you have a chance to take a look, I would appreciate it so much! Hearing from writers like you would be so wonderful.
Hope your summer is going well. I personally loathe the hot weather, so it’s been a lot of hiding from the sun and going fully nocturnal.
Happy Birthday to August babies.
Thank you, everyone that continues to participate in these threads – it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.
Let’s see how it goes!
