Choose Your Frustration: A WIP Writer's Tale -- What is the most frustrating thing about writing a WIP?

General
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I may have a suggestion that has worked for me in brainstorming ideas. I’ve had great success with using AI to help brainstorm. I’ve found it’s not going to give you the next creative masterpiece idea, but it’s perfect for throwing up a ton of thoughts; sometimes, one or two of those thoughts resonate with you, and then you can take that simple idea and expand it. Using AI is like having a writing partner hog-tied next to you at your desk. It has to listen to your crazy ideas and give you feedback or expand on what you have; it’s got no choice!

I’m sure many people think this same thing, but I’m not 100% convinced that they finished the stories they started plowing into at the start of their project. And, just like you describe when you say you get distracted easily “by everything and its mother.” Their stories often meander about, like a child hunting easter eggs in the yard. Plotting, or having a plan, is often the only way folks like us (the easily distracted) can ever finish a long-term project. My background is in construction (yes, I’m a walking contradiction), and we would never try to build something as intricate as a building without some blueprint. If we tried, it would look like an M.C. Escher drawing or a child’s spaceship/car/boat/motorcycle/gun Lego creation. Cool, but hardly recognizable. A plan or at least certain interspersed plot points you need to hit can make your pantsing more effective. You don’t need to plot out every single scene. Set up the beginning, middle, and end and pants your way to connecting those dots.

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42

Here’s a thing that keeps grating me but which I don’t remember anyone mentioning; Keeping track of what information the player was or wasn’t given in every specific path.

Like, when you start writing an interactive novel, you only really think about how the player can influence the events of the story, reach different endings, romance different characters and so on. But eventually, once you’ve implemented enough choices and optional content, you realize that different paths result in the MC having different levels of knowledge regarding everything other than the main plot beats. It usually doesn’t take much work to fix some potential issue by adding a line of dialogue or two, but it makes me feel constantly anxious about whether the information the MC is working with has been properly conveyed in every path that led to this point. If not for that, my WIP would be quite a bit shorter, and the list of variables at the start would be much shorter.

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43

Absolutely! That’s a good one. While I’m not very far in my narrative, I’m already finding it can be frustrating to account for the different situations the reader can possibly encounter up to a particular point. If anyone else has a good method for keeping track of all the possibilities I’d love to hear them.

What I’m doing to help keep track of this is I use several software programs (I love software), one being Plottr, which allows you to keep track of characters, locations, write world building notes, etc. But, it has a nice timeline feature that allows you to create multiple color-coded timelines that I use to track my different character’s story arcs, as well as the MC branching paths. Then when a path branches you can write summary details for what the character knows along this particular path. The other is I’ve been using Twine. I’m a very visual person so being able to visually see my branching paths is incredibly important. Then I copy my branched scene into Twine and add all the variables that changed in that scene. I add things like stat changes, wounds, relationship, and personality changes and how they changed by taking that path.

I’ll admit, it adds a lot of work to the actual writing. It would be much simpler to just plow through a scene and move on, but I’ve found the extra steps invaluable in keeping track of the myriad things we have to keep track of when writing IF.

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44

I use spreadsheets. And sometimes flowcharts.

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45

The single most nerve-wracking problem for me is writing itself. When I write, I just let it out because I get the feeling that no one’s watching me or can criticize me for it (except myself :stuck_out_tongue: ) but when I know that a lot of people are gonna read it and are gonna judge it and maybe even criticize it…that scares me. It takes a lot of time for me to get comfy with something, be it people or forums like these. At the start, I’m like, one single grammatical error in my comment will mean my death sentence but then I start to get used to people and…conclude that they’re not gonna eat me alive and hence I get more…informal with my words, loosen up a bit and become more frequent with messages and comments.
So…yeah, the very idea that a lot of peeps are gonna read my stuff was something that didn’t sit well with me, and also the fact that I had to reply to each one of em made me queasy. In the end, I had to push myself out of my comfort zone and yk just do what I had to do.
Now I feel awkward for writing such a big comment :sob: :sob: :sob:

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46

Hey everyone! Look how many words they used in this comment! They put together several coherent sentences, it’s like they’re a writer or something. J/K :smile: You’ve seen my comments in this thread right? I completely understand the apprehension about putting your work out into the world, I can assure you every single one of us feels that, you’re being vulnerable because every story you write honestly (and that’s the only type of writing I feel that’s worth putting out into the world) contains something that we keep normally hidden.

My two cents on critics. Everyone can be a critic, and far more easily on the internet. Being a critic takes zero courage or talent. A creator takes both. Not to say that constructive criticisms isn’t valuable but more often than not you get people just bashing your work without the constructive part. Again, it takes zero talent to break things. Ignore those people, they know jack sh*t about creativity or creation and their comments hold no value. Keep doing what you’re doing, moving forward, taking the actual constructive criticisms and making your creation better.

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Thanks a lot, Rob, really do appreciate it and love you so much :face_holding_back_tears: :face_holding_back_tears: :heart: :heart:
Also, all the best for your work, I hope you don’t get addicted to twirl :relieved: :relieved:

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How could you not? It’s such a freeing, fun thing. I think if the world had a bit more twirl in it, it’d be a better place.

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49

The greatest frustration: getting worn out.

You are working on your own project, but plenty of other WIPs keep coming out, and you cannot resist the urge to take a look at them, thus robbing your fan base of quality updates and attention. And robbing you of time and energy to plan the next part/chapter etc. And the worst part to this: it has no end! It just keeps on coming, on and on, until you are so overwhelmed, you cannot focus on your work. Thus the wearing out begins, and I’m afraid I’m about to fall into this very trap…

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Maybe I’ve simply gone insane, but I’m struggling to stop brainstorming ideas even in my off-time. I’m constantly imagining new outcomes, daydreaming about new scenarios, etc. Just this morning I burnt my breakfast cuz I got lost in fantasy land! My toast was black… (still ate it tho)

Despite this, as soon as I decide to sit down at my desk I end up adding only a tiny fraction of what I’ve come up with—sometimes scrapping everything entirely and adding new ideas on the spot. My WIP haunts me during every waking hour and even in my dreams. I’ve also been fighting the urge to update my game in little increments every day. It’d be more wise to wait until I have something more concrete, right?

Gonna try to pace myself and write around 300 words a day or so. Unfortunately now that I’ve said that it’s probably not going to happen—

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That’s just how ideas work. On their own, they’re absolutely worthless, certainly compared to effort and consistency. Like they say, the worst story ever written is still better than the best story in your head, since people can actually read the worst story ever written.

You’re right about the wisdom of doing large updates though. It’s hard to get excited for updates when they’re all just 300 words long and come out every day. My updates are closer to 30k words each, since I rarely see a reason to do an update any smaller than a whole new chapter. Wait until you have something concrete, then give it a cool title and annouce it as loudly as possible.

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52

By the tag line I thought this was a cool new WIP about writing a Choice Script Game, which I would totally play, I.e. something like:

*You stare with blurry bleeding eyes into the harsh screen of your laptop. Evil light and words gleam back, words you try to continue typing, for you are writing a Choice Script Game about …

*choice
_# Zombie Penguins taking over the zoo.
*set game_concept “zombie penguins”
*goto No_interuptions_1
_# Superhero poets saving the world one limerick at a time.
*set game_concept “hero poets”
*goto No_interuptions_1
_# Someone lamenting about writing a Choice Script Game.
*set game_concept “certain doom”
*goto infinite_loop

*label No_interruptions_1

You concentrate on writing about
*if game_concept = “zombie penguins”
Pale penguins slipping from red water, steadily advancing towards the wolf enclosure with grave menace in the wobbling of their feat
*if game_concept = “hero poets”
poets dueling atop sky scrapers, their rhymes nearly lost to the winds
*if game_concept = “certain doom”
How you aren’t really sure how you even got here - not really if you’re even half way honest with yourself
when inevitably you are violently pulled away from your writing and coding by …

*choice
_# your boss wondering why you aren’t at work.
*set interuption “boss”
*goto no_hope_1
_# an elderly family member needing help.
*set interuption “family”
*goto no_hope_1
_# the slow apocalypse speeding itself up abruptly.
*set interuption “apocalypse”
*goto no_hope_1

Etc. etc.

But seriously, totally - I think we’ve all been there. While I flatter myself that I don’t really get writers block, I definetly get writer’s loss of energy…that sense that while I could write at that particular time, what will be created is guaranteed to not really be worth it. I feel like writing these games are a bit harder to recover from if you write yourself into a difficult spot vs linear writing, so sometimes I think a break is well justified.

And then, as with my example, the problem is constant interruptions even when the writing and coding is going amazing. Yup, the job wants one to work - how dare they! And family needs this and that … it is what it is. And then there’s everything else. Property needs constant work to keep it going well …
Mind you, I could easily settle back and just keep writing and coding sometimes, but things can only be put off for so long before the dish pile will collapse, the laundry will spontaneously combust, the weeds and untrimmed trees become sentient and try to take over the world … if I’d only have trimmed them earlier.

It all gets kind of exhausting and energy bleeds away … but up to a point i do tend to think it’s all worth it. There’s something magical about seeing an interactive world forming via the conjuring of your own words.

(Note: the giant bold sections were supposed to be hash tags as in choice statements …let’s all just pretend they’re not giant bold words okay? Note on Note: Half fixed that . . .)

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Re-reading what I wrote the day before thinking “wtf am I even reading”
I’m currently so overwhelmed by the amount I’ve been writing that I had a dream where I was writing code for my wip, I’m gonna need a month break (I literally wrote a new sentence less than 10 minutes ago)

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The days where you really want to write something, but your brain/body aren’t cooperative.

Insomnia sucks, and it always seems to steal a day and a half of producitivity.

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Yeah, that happens to me to, but the funny thing is I can read the same passage multiple times and love it sometimes and other times be like I don’t know about this bit . . . Think general rule of thumb is to give it a little time before carving into it to do any rewrites one way or another. Of course, for these games, the bugs and misfired conditionals where things don’t display as I wanted cause so much trouble. A few missed conditionals can make what should be an amazing passage be amazing in a completly different less good way.

Yeah, as an acolyte of insomnia (against my will!), I feel that - so much productivity is lost due to missing sleep. And if I do try to press forward on a low sleep day it will generate so many more typos, bugs, and worse so unfortunutly if the sleep is under 4 hours the day is usually just a miss as far as my writing/coding goes.

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Acolyte of insomnia is great, I’m stealing that.

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Wait this sounds cool as hell actually. Add elements that break the fourth wall (a route where mc realises they’re also a character in a choice game?) and I would definitely read it.

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As I complained in my WIP, the thing that bugs me is the personality stats. I just… don’t know how to encompass the whole range of human psyche. I keep adding vars in the startup page (which I really hate as a programmer- because it violates the rule of backward compatibility.)

I know it is probably my OCD speaking, but damn, I really want to do a ‘clean’ project where everything is according to plan. There is no surprise global variables nor unexpected side scenes. But alas, I know the creative process doesn’t work like that and so I must adapt.

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There’s actually a quick and easy way to do this. Don’t.

No one is trying to model the human psyche with a handful of stats for a CYOA story, or at least nobody’s succeeding at it. If you wanna do personality stats, pick four or five pairs that are actually relevant to the story (such as Bravery/Cowardice being relevant in military fiction, or Lies/Truth being relevant in a court drama) and don’t concern yourself with anything else.

Hell, even having just three personality meters is far more complexity than most video games have. The entire DnD brand has been running on an alignment system with two dimensions for fifty years now, and that’s one dimension more than your traditional good/evil morality meter offers. Take it easy, take it slow and cut the bloat out.

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Does backwards compatibility really matter that much when you’re practically prototyping? You’re not dealing with a release version there after all.

…now I kinda want to see an IF where the whole point is to be a psychological learning material.

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