In terms of humor? let’s make him totally paralyzed, deaf, blind and mute. And the most intelligent person in the world. He would usher the world into a new golden age… except he’s bedridden and totally can’t be communicated with.
So he’s sitting there, brain the size of a planet, and there’s nothing anyone can do to get anything out of him. And the worse thing is, he knows he could solve all of the world’s problems if he could only have a means of communication.
But he can’t. So he’s lying there, being fed and cleaned. And eventually he’ll pass away. And the world would never know how close they got to making it a paradise for all.
My key to pacing and cohesion in IF is consistency.
In my writing, paragraphs are units of thought with one adequately developed idea. This applies double to dialogue.
Put only one main idea per paragraph/dialogue.
Aim to develop that idea in the dialogue/paragraph, even if it is only one sentence.
Include in each dialogue/paragraph your particular style conventions that you use.
Make your dialogue/paragraphs proportional to your game’s copy.
One of the best compliments I get in feedback is when readers tell me that all the above is “Goldilocks right” because this is one of the “behind the scenes” emphasizes that I work very hard to achieve.
This should be something you explicitly ask your readers about because this type of editing will be one of those things you can do to improve your game the most.
Okay, I know this is sarcasm, but you have no idea how happy I felt thinking that someone thought of me as a programmer.
In American schools, the english teachers teach that a paragraph should be at least 5 sentences. 1 sentence to introduce the idea, 3 to explain it, and 1 to conclude it.
THIS. Yes this.
Despite years of research on how to be a good writer and what good writing is, I somehow never came across this rule. This is useful as hell. Thank you
Huh. That’s a pretty nifty little list right there. Mind if I steal it? Also, Happy cake day!
It wasn’t, actually. There is this certain school of programming that uses comments so much that your code might end up 75% comments and only 25% of code. In programming, comments are important (although not everyone agrees, but, simplifying, they tend to write code no one else can understand). I was referring to that.
And they don’t tell that prose and academic writing follow different rules? (5-sentence-paragraphs as a rule sound fine to essays, but novels aren’t essays.) Don’t they teach any books, or do they say everyone who uses literary devices does it wrong? I’m really, really confused here.
I might have had a small epiphany, about how a short story premise I never developed very far, might actually be the perfect setup to combine a lot of the things I have been wanting to put in a game.
Lets see how long this idea last.
Across the board? I can kinda see that making sense for a school paper on some topic, but for fiction as well? (Oh, I see @LiliArch already asked this, and better phrased)
Either way, I’m glad I was never taught such a thing here.
Though, maybe that would help my tendency to make rather short paragraphs. Which I now suspect is because of being non-neurotypical.
When I (an American) was in school, they did teach the differences between prose and academic writing. Like @Anna_B said, they taught the 5 sentence method for academic, and we did learn literary devices through books.
This is a great list, although I will admit I enjoy purposely doing the opposite to suggest characters talking over one another and just existing in the background even when the plot/main idea isn’t focused on them.
"Let's just go find the answer," says $!{nameh} as the thief exclaims behind you, "They're friendly if you get to know them!"
Not everyone is as shameless as that thief, though, so I don’t use this method often.
Okay, so this may be a case of my Autism shining through before I was ever even CONSIDERED for a diagnosis. I took it literally that that was supposed to be the rule for everything. Which is why when I was writing prose it always felt like I was breaking rules, which made me feel guilty.
I didn’t understand that there was a seperation between Prose and Academic writings. I thought the rules were the same across the board, and when they were broken it was a case of how famous/good you were that determined whether you got away with it.
Thanks for helping me discover this bit of baby-me-autism that I didn’t even realize was a thing!
Now that I see that there WAS a difference, THIS is accurate. But no one ever said to me outright, that there is a difference, and so I never realized there was.
You have though. You’ve collected experience over the year/month/whatever time you think you’ve done nothing that will help you to characterize your settings and characters BETTER. You’ve absorbed media that will help you change the way you write certain tropes or themes. You’ve done things that will inform certain choices your characters will make.
Creatives are never truly idle, even if it looks as though they are. For being still, experiencing, is part of the process.
Between it being … blech … winter and the holidays being immensely busy, I haven’t really had brain to even think about writing. I won’t have the chance to do anything of note before next week - I’m a bit nervous about getting back into it because there’s some hefty thinking I need to do in order to whip my plan for my next chapter into shape. But I am at least starting to be able to think about what I’m doing next (a small hike to the nearby marsh will do that).
I was seeing my girlfriend’s family for the past week so not a lot of writing happened due to constant presence of PEOPLE and a nasty level of allergy flare ups.
I was really, really worried I’d come back to my project and be bleh on it, because the lapse is the longest I’ve had so far (only taken the occasional day or two off since I began). but fortunately, today has been decently productive. I set myself a mangeably low bar- the stuff earlier about ‘your daily word count should be the lowest you think you’d manage on a bad day, then half it’ came in massively clutch there - and I’ve exceeded it.
Today’s a recovery day anyway, yesterday was waking up at 4am to eventually get home at 6:30pm, and both gf and I are sick with some kind of flu (maybe even covid ahh).
End of chapter approaches… hopefully can still get there for month end!
In 2023 I went through a big writing slump due to life reasons. I quit my security job in December of 2022 to try to support myself off of pet sitting in order to get more writing done. Pet sitting didn’t go as well as planned until September, and in the meantime, I actually wrote half as much as usual despite having twice the amount of time. Being an author is fun!
Here’s what I managed to get done:
I’ve developed a new writing style that takes about twice the time to write, but is of much higher quality. It’s much more simple and sweet, but with far more planning and care
Completed extensive outlines for The Mage’s Adventures, A Specter Over Kilerth, and The Cruel Guardians
Worked on the outline for The Nascent Necromancer
Wrote 10k words for The Nascent Necromancer, 10k for A Specter Over Kilerth, and 85k for The Mage’s Adventures
Updated The Magician’s Burden to make it a standalone
Got The Nascent Necromancer onto Steam
I’d say given the circumstances, I did alright, but I’d like to try to write a lot more, at least 150k, in 2024.
The good thing is I’m armed with lots of outlines, a new and improved writing style, and some motivation after a very difficult and slow year. My goals for 2024:
Release an update to The Mage’s Adventures to change it to a standalone. There will likely be 90k words of new content
Submit updates for Trial of the Demon Hunter, Captive of Fortune, and Foundation of Nightmares to complete the trilogy. Each story will get three new endings, bug fixes, updated stats, and the option to be non-binary as well. Probably 50k words of updates between the trilogy.
Submit The Nascent Necromancer Part 2. This update will be about 100k words and will complete the story.
