mmhm, the key examples I have right now are one that does a lot to explain MC’s current circumstances (easier to edit, and already have) and a passage that just… cleanly and fairly concisely contextualises superpowered people in a way that feels very authentic.
That one… that one is a pain to move, and I am yet to work out how ><
I’ve given up trying to get average word count per playthrough (at least for now). Random test likes shopping, adventuring, and save scumming just too much. I have to block it from three files when I want to test the rest of the story at a reasonable rate.
Funnily enough, though, the limitations caused by random test’s spending sprees did affect how I wrote a scene where there’s a shopping section as part of a main story festival. Because I was sick of random test constantly jumping from stall to stall during that scene, I made it so that once you left a stall it would become too crowded for you to go back. And since you could only go once, I decided to give the players a festival discount. Both the crowds and discounts added to the festival atmosphere, and I wouldn’t have thought of it without random test go back and forth a hundred times and then going into debt!
I write things I’d like to read, so as someone who loves replayability, this isn’t a problem! I treat worldbuilding like a puzzle. Some paths will have many pieces, some only one, some will have nothing and you are left with the silhouette – but no matter what, the mystery of the puzzle is there for my next playthrough.
I’ve reached the point where I have completed numerous simple line-item feedback items and now have more complicated feedback issues in front of me.
So, I have decided to begin work on one of the more critical issues; reworking my “deathsight” mechanic and, as a consequence, parts of the individual deathsight scenes.
This is my January goal; I’m just starting to work on it a couple of weeks earlier than planned.
Yes they can’t be everywhere at once. If you spend time with someone, you have to forego spending time with someone else, that’s just opportunity cost. Maybe in the next run they can choose other options so they can spend time with someone else instead.
I don’t know if Terry Pratchett is consistently good, I did find that Tiffany Aching somewhat lacked a personality. Maybe that was because she was young, but there was nothing memorable about her at all.
What do you remember about her? who is she, what is she like? what things did she do, or say, that struck you as “very Tiffany Aching” ? it seems that at that point the “light” went out of the writing.
Usually he writes like he’s having a lot of fun. Vimes was a hoot, the Patrician, Nanny Ogg, Polly Perks, how much fun were they as characters? even Otto and Reg, Sacharissa Cripslock, the potato, remember the potato? he could make a potato so interesting to read about.
But something happened and then there’s Hogfather and Tiffany Aching and stuff that was really boring (for me at least.)
I’m sorry, but if you don’t like Hogfather I don’t know what to tell you, because Hogfather is an absolutely FLAWLESS book.
For me, his weak book is Soul Music.
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the kind words and encouragement! It means a lot. I plan to do some writing tomorrow. I tried last night when I had a bout of insomnia but it was a bit difficult to focus with my cats running around like the crazy kitties they’re. They always decide it’s time to play right around 11 pm my time heh. They have the zoomies and will be running in and out of my husband and i’s bedroom. And I’ll have to yell at them to get out because my husband has to be up at 5.30. But they don’t listen… Well my younger cat Artemis does especially when I use his middle name (yes he has a middle lmao. It’s Artemis Maximus.) He knows he’s in trouble when I say his middle name. Our other cat Shotgun (he’s 6) he has a middle name too (it’s Pantera or panther in Spanish. He’s a big black kitty but is a sweet baby. He loves belly rubs. Artemis is our white kitty he’s almost 2. He’s a little cotton ball.) But Shotgun will literally just keel over and start rolling around like “look how cute I am. You can’t be upset with me being cute.” But I digress sorry this got a little off track. 
Terry Pratchett 
I was a huge fan as a teenager but after Night Watch I just stopped - I didn’t read fantasy for a while - and then I felt sad about him dying and wanted to save them for later. Then I really loved and cried over A Life with Footnotes this year… all of which to say, I read Going Postal for the first time very recently and loved it, and kept having to remind myself when it was written because so much of it felt so current. I’m getting Thud! next.
I am generally having a tough writing week as the SAD and other health-denting factors have hit in force and it’s always hard planning a new chapter and getting into the zone. I had hoped to make some headway on Chapter 8 by the end of the month, but that probably isn’t going to happen; still, I’ve made really good progress anyway which is what’s important to remember.
Moving Pictures.
She’s basically young Granny Weatherwax. Extremely rational and capable, with a bit of a cold streak. When she sees a monster in the river, she doesn’t panic, she doesn’t run. She goes home, looks it up in a book, and when she reads that it has “eyes the size of saucers” she goes and measures a saucer to see exactly how big the eyes should be. Then she heads back to the river with her little brother(for monster bait) and an iron frying pan(to wallop the monster with). This kind of behavior and personality is established in the first chapter of the first book.
Also, “What can I do about it?”
I’ve been meaning to read Terry Prachett. I’ve heard nothing but good things about their writing!
Doooooo eeeeeeeeeetttttt!!!
It’s gotten to a part in the story where the entire main cast is together, and there aren’t a whole lot of choices for the PC at the moment. However, it’s far enough into the story where there are a lot of stat checks happening that could potentially cause people to see different variations of the scene, so there’s still variations happening, just ones that are happening because of choices already made rather than active ones that are happening because of immediate choices. I just hope people don’t mind the lack of immediate choices so that they can have a section where their previous choices and how they decided to play their character actually comes into play for a section, as I know some people say there’s ideally a choice every 2-3 pages.
I just feel like there are not a lot of choices I can put in here that would matter currently, and that’s one thing I don’t want to do; put choices in that don’t matter just for the sake of filling a quota.
As a reader, provided it’s not subtextual (as in, I can tell it’s about my character choices), I would absolutely eat up a segment that I realised was heavily based around my previous choices/personality!
Granny Weatherwax would never have done that, she would have lectured the monster then and there, told him there’s no excuse for it t’be scarin’ the poor folk. At the end of it the monster would be so ashamed of itself, it’d never try to attack anyone again. And then she would say
“Well, that’s settled. Make the tea, @KZV.”
And you’d do it, too.
No one would use anyone as bait, or actually visit violence on anyone else.
That’s exactly what I said in the beginning, IF is not so much writing a book as writing a movie in book form, with the MC as director.
I know a person who writes (non-interactive) comics imagining the characters as actors (without it being a comic about actors, that is) so I still don’t understand why that would affect how you write IF. (Besides, apart from some edge cases, protagonists are not directors.) Plenty of people write prose like it was a movie, and you are not responsible about how players approach the game experience. I mean, apart from how you make the mechanics.
(I know I just write like I would write any single-POV novel. That is in second person.)
Or in my case, I see IF as a visual novel without visuals.
It’s good for atmosphere. If you are Russian all your Russian characters can speak Russian, and all others could speak English.
