About attracting attention: I think it’s actually harder to do that on the forum, where all you have at your disposal is the topic title, than it is anywhere where you can tempt people with pretty pictures.
Of course you can put your cover image in your post, but for potential readers to see that they need to open the post first, so they’re giving a bit of attention already. It’s the difference between passing a book in a bookstore completely and picking it up to check the cover.
I want to point something out here. Threads such as Infamous often have large circular arguments that take up hundreds if not thousands of the total post history.
Some authors thrive on the concept that any attention is good attention, but in respect to a WiP thread and those working on meeting the milestone, these types of “discussions” end up doing more harm than good.
This is what I was going to point out from what I learned from you, so thank you for umm… doing this for me, lol.
Everyone, I am going to be off the forum as soon as this morning until Monday of next week, so please be kind and remember… i appreciate every one of you who participate in this thread.
@ViIsBae – my well wishes for a speedy recovery from COVID.
Does anyone have any advice on how to communicate to the reader that an RO who seems hostile at the first glance does in fact not hate the MC, they just appear that way because they’re so done with having to constantly deal with obnoxious people and they don’t know the MC well enough yet to know how to categorize them so they’re being wary?
It’s fine for there to be a hostile first impression. You can always give the PC the opportunity to ask “what’s up with you?” at some point, or it’s fine for the NPC to warm up to them later in some way once they’ve got to know each other.
Prima from Trianna academy is a masterclass in how to do this successfully.
I’m just worried readers will write them off as someone who they’ll need to bend over backwards to appease (which isn’t true… unless you count “don’t be a jerk” as bending over backwards, which it probably is for some MCs, but they wouldn’t like those kind of MCs anyway), based on first impressions, and in fact not want to know them better at all.
Dunno about that, they just make me want to steer clear as much as I can.
Absolutely huge win today!
Whilst in the midst of expansions, I intensively hammered away at the Dynamic Events Sequencer yesterday, with two sample events planned as ‘Milestone’ Events.
Your first word, and your first steps as an infant/toddler.
I mapped them to real-life estimates for when toddlers have their first words and steps and then created a binding set of algorithms.
Once in a Lifetime will detect and keep track of both how old you are in years, and now how old you are in months.
Since newborns for example have their first word between 10 and 14 months, the game now produces a sliding random scale that increases based on the expected month.
So sometime between months 10 and 14 of how old you are, the game will successfully generate your first Milestone event. It’s all dynamic, you could run the playthrough several times and you’ll get these events at different months.
This is only the tip of the iceberg on what I need to work on for it, but the bottom line is that two event placeholders successfully generated dynamically.
Little code snippet!
I’m super excited to see it functioning for the first time. I had to upgrade some underlying algorithms and systems to make it work (as an example, the game was tracking how old you were in years, but not in months), and create some additional subroutine sequencing.
Nonetheless, huge win! 
Have a fantastic weekend, ya’ll!
Maybe you could hint at the deeper reason for the RO’s reaction through their body language? If their shoulders are sagging and their pinching their nose even before the MC speaks to them it could help indicate to the player that the character is just having a bad day.
My advice is putting an option to have spoilers or not in the ro behavior. Because I don’t wanna know. Only know that details destroy totally the ro for me.
I actually really want to set up one of those forms, precisely because I saw you were using it in the Honor Bound thread and think it’s an excellent idea!
For me, that’s simply a matter of scale. There’s a difference between RO being snappish and giving off a bad impression and, idk, dropkicking MC’s pet dog.
Let them get off on the wrong foot! People do that sometimes! Characters being prickly pears is fun and adds depth!
All you have to do is like… not have subsequent interactions require MC to supplicate themselves at RO’s feet in order to start getting along.
(readers seem to be pretty okay with a bumpy start? This is anecdotal but nobody in my game’s thread was going “I hate Wil/Teddie, they’re/he’s such an asshole!” after the very first interaction with either/both can be an argument).
I’m getting a late start to my writing today because I had to get some blood work done then stop at the pharmacy, and I’ve just been feeling really drained after that for some reason. I doubt I’ll get a lot done today, but I would still like to write something if I can.
Also, I’m really curious. My best friend just told me about this writing app that deletes your progress if you stop typing. I was wondering if anyone has used it, and/or found it useful? I was just looking at it and saw that you could set a session for as short as 5 minutes which I thought might be a good warm up before working on my project for the day.
Something to remember is that in situations like these, actions always speak louder than words. If you introduce a character in a way which leads to them helping the MC, then the player will be more likely to view them sympathetically, no matter how angry or closed off they seem. It implies that they’ll help, even if they hate you, which lays the foundation for all kinds of interesting relationship dynamics.
Totally agree! That was actually my original thought for why a separate discussion thread might benefit some authors/stories, so those arguments and other such don’t drown out the actionable feedback. It’s good to know the mod team discussed this, though, and I can definitely see the valid issues that come from an enforced rule like that.
I’m wondering then if it can be up to the individual author? I mainly look at the fact that Wayhaven had it’s WiP threads and then also has the General Discussion thread. So I’m wondering if it would be permissible for an author, if they so chose, to self-enforce the choice of having a separate discussion thread to their normal WiP thread for general discussion/discourse. Is that something that could potentially be a thing?
I think it’d depend on the specific situation and whatever other factors were going on 
Thanks all!
To be fair, I was planning that first meeting to take place in a situation where the coworkers are visibly annoying them (and also making jokes about how the MC is there to take their job), so maybe I’m being too paranoid here…
“Dislikes: obnoxious people” in character profile? I was thinking about that.
Oh, they’re definitely not going that far (or even going out of their way to pick a fight), that’s for sure. It’s more on the “stop badgering me” scale.
I can’t really fit that in the first impressions, but I could certainly think of making a (mandatory, instead if optional) second impression where the MC needs to work together with them (they are coworkers after all, so it wouldn’t be too hard) and as long as the MC isn’t going out of their way to rile them up (or messing everything up, job-wise), it would go perfectly fine.
Sincerely If I read a message, I would feel pissed beyond that with Emma Breden and whole Lords in the cortes…
You are calling me Obnoxious with you meaning your menu and the character well of course I don’t want know that character and less romance them I want massacre them kill them and poisoning them.
I didn’t read your story and I already fulled my hate against that character.
Now seriously, That is a great character I firmly believe a character that makes you feel intense emotions good or bad is a well designed character. But of course after calling me Obnoxious I can’t think anything outside you are going to die soon. (You the character in the game I mean)
I love @LiliArch
If this happens on screen, I don’t think you need to worry. Some people will still take issue with the character’s behavior, but most people would probably see it as a reasonable reaction.
Reasonable is not. It is an action that is very well written for an asshole with hot head and judgement aptitude.
I totally agree is a good presentation only one in me causes immediate hatred and perpetual desire of destroy that character
Like a Scar or a Mephistopheles. Or a Emma.
I really thing Anglo-Saxon culture is too obsessed with present all characters neutrally or like angels to avoiding hatred.
I am hispanic we present them as they are and in a passionate way. If yoy like them fine If you hatred them better.
That’s fine, not everyone needs to like everyone; I’d rather just avoid people who would like them writing them off early.
I’m a Finn, we hate everyone by default. 
That is the good way. People here call you the Northern latinos
