Thanks for sharing this excellent advice! For myself, I do something similar: I pen out in *comments how I want a scene, and then spend time trying to string it all coherently together.
2 Likes
Itās 11:30 at night and I need sleep. My brain said No and here I am.
Wrote some 200 words tonight, mainly code for the skill selection. I took a pause for a couple of days after I first wrote the initial skill selection sinceā¦ well I found out that two of my necromancy skills were frankly useless or outright would have broken the game.
True Sight basically allowed the Detective to look into the past for a few moments or a minute. I had thought it would be cool to construct a crime scene based on this ability but it thatās all it was. A cool idea but in practice of the story mechanics (in that this is a detective story) it wouldāve rendered actual detectiv-ing useless since you could use this skill and probably figure everything out. Sure I could probably get away with subverting the readersā expectation once but it wouldnāt work again and the readers would learn not to invest into this skill.
To apply some realism to this world wellā¦ Iām pretty sure True Sight would be similar to hearsay in a court case and couldnāt be used as valid evidence in a trial by the prosecution. So out it went.
The second skill was Enthrall. Itās basically what it sounds like. You could enslave ghosts to do your bidding. This one was harder to decide if I wanted to keep it in. Did I want readers to have this option but with consequences (say if you enthrall too many ghosts they come back to haunt you) or no? I couldnāt see myself using this skill if I played through the story and the Summon skill works the exact same way in that you get an entity to assist you.
I thought of maybe including it in and having a maybe cool scene where if you invested in both Enthrall and Summon your entity would help you fight off the ghosts if you treated the entity with kindness. Ultimately though I couldnāt find a good reason to keep it in other than it sounded cool on paper. It just didnāt fit with the whole detective either. Why would the MC who became a detective want to enslave ghosts?
Sure there are exceptions, and not good ones, but I didnāt feel like committing to those paths. They werenāt the story I wanted to tell and if I had attempted to write them I wouldnāt know what to do or where to go.
I didnāt want the necromancy skills to be limited at three so I debated and eventually added in Necrosis which is what it says on the tin.
Itās been a bit weird to take the MC who is a necromancer, something that generally has a lot of negative connotations around them, and make them a āgood guyā. Or find spells that arenāt outright screaming āevilā. Iāve definitely had to shuck a lot of the usual associations surrounding necromancers and put my own spin on it while trying to keep true to what they are generally known for.
4 Likes
Really feeling the burnout hard on my current WIP ā i think it has the potential to be really good but iām kind of sick of it. Just a combination of screwing up the code in a way i havenāt yet been able to untangle and feeling like thereās no audience for it. Iāll push through it, but figured this is a thread for yknow, sharing and honesty or w/e
6 Likes
Here we are starting on the last week of the month, and my initial goals remain as elusive as they were at the beginning.
For those of you that watch a show called: Forged in Fire on the History Channel, one of the lessons you learn over time is that reforging blades are often as hard or even harder than creating new blades.
Rewriting is much the same as reforgingā¦ taking something you created and then trying to recreate it even betterā¦ can be a difficult task to set yourself.
I started rewriting material on the second week of this month ā¦ it took me two weeks to finish 10,000 words. That pace is unacceptable when I have 150,000 additional words to rewrite and about 50,000 more original words to create.
So, I really tried setting my focus tight this weekend. I upped the total words rewritten to 23,500ā¦ so Iāve set a much better pace, but I am tiredā¦ keeping up this increased pace this week will be hard.
15 Likes
Wow, itās a long time since I type here. Iāve got a computer, that means I can start to write some stuff finally! Iāve tried on a tablet but well it has its own issuesā¦
4 Likes
I struggled excessively with connecting my plot from Point A to Point B - but I think Iāve finally found an idea I am (tentatively) satisfied with. This may change in the end - who knows?
But in any case, Iām just glad to finally move beyond this rock thatās been hindering the way forward.
7 Likes
ā¦ I canāt believe itās almost the end of February. I didnāt manage to write two sentences per day, but I wrote a lot more than last month I think.
I published a blurb on the Interest Check thread for the first time. So yay~ Iām going to wait until I have at least the Prologue and at least Chapter One done and polished before I even think about publishing a demo and making a thread. And definitely have it be at least 20k words tooā¦
Dealt with some ups and downs. Canāt wait till spring comes so I can get back to gardening again. I miss it. I miss the mindless yet meditative rhythm of pulling weeds up from the dirt, I miss seeing the little toads hop about and underneath the strawberry plants as I water the garden, and I miss seeing the flowers bloom and the bees (and waspsā¦) going from flower to flower.
In other news, I had an epiphany and figured that I want to go to law school to become a civil lawyer (not criminal!). I like studying law and it was always something I was deeply passionate about during college.
9 Likes
Iāve started to write character profiles/backstories for my story. (All though Iāve memorised the primary antagonistās and the secondary antagonistās motivations) For the heroes/protagonists(or cannon antagonists), Iāll need to do some research - has in watch the source material or look them up on TV tropes. But when I get that done, Iāll send it to the English/mentor group teacher who is helping me out with my story
7 Likes
I now this thread is mostly for emotional support, but since yesterday Iāve been thinking asking some opinions about my wip (traditional novel). I canāt ask to my reader group because I need someone who knows something about tropes.
Is this the right place to ask?
2 Likes
-
If you want a small amount of general advice, then talking about it here is ok.
-
If you want to delve into a deeper dive into tropes, Iād bring up a thread specifically on tropes (there are several you should be able to post in)
-
If you want specific readers from here with trope knowledgeā¦ you can make an ask here, or perhaps here:
Hopefully there will be a reader that can help that will respond further, by PM or post.
3 Likes
Thank you. Iāll try Maraās Workshop. Meanwhile if someone want to help me with āDestinyā and āChosen Oneā tropes can send a PM to me, Iāll be very thankfull
4 Likes
Alright. Whew.
I have decided to write at least 1k words every day to avoid getting overwhelmed and rage quitting like last time. Small progress is still progress! 
4 Likes
I hope you donāt rage quit @Sophia but I know the feeling. I think a big part of being successful with writing is managing the frustrations.
I amended by February goals. I took the first week of February off to redo chapter 1. Chapter 2 rewrite is nearly done and I think it will be within a week. Chapter 3 doesnāt need much of a rewrite so I can be working on chapter 4 (which needs a lot of romance arc material) towards the end of March.
This past week hasnāt been uber productive I think Iāve written about 3-4 thousand words so far but Iām happy with it. Most of what is yet to be written is well prewritten (outlines, notes, beats, sample lines, etc) so Iām in a good place.
I wish everyone well. If you havenāt made the progress you wanted in February donāt beat yourself up about it. Keep moving forward even if you only move in inches.
6 Likes
Definitely not terrible at all! Maybe itās not what you wanted, but not getting what you want doesnāt mean something is automatically terrible.
Happy birthday by the way!
10 Likes
I did okay with my word count this month, but the quality of those words is . . . subject(ive). As a way of not editing, I generate new content, which just makes my inevitable editing more daunting. Since this is my first project in ChoiceScript, editing presents additional challenges Iāve never dealt with before: stat tracking and balancing, coding efficiency, formatting, text displayāthings you all know about.
I had the opportunity to watch someone playtest my 4 posted chapters last night. (I highly recommend this, especially if the person is transparent about facial expressions.) It felt good when she laughed out loud, but actually made my stomach hurt to watch her enthusiasm wane and/or drop during a bout of exposition I inserted into ch4. I spent the night dreading how Iād have to cut thousands of words to keep things moving. To leave mystery. I could also see her flinch when I used small jokes too frequentlyātoo many can dilute. Thereās a rhythm to be found, and the juice has to be worth the squeezeāthe longer a written joke is, the funnier it has to be by the end to justify its existence. Iām wondering whether I should post chapters more slowly, after Iāve spent more time on them. Thoughts?
So, lots of typos. More characterizing decisions, even if they donāt effect plot, e.g. reactions. I need to calibrate stat increases. I need to recode how relationships progress/digress to be more rewarding. I need to put in more exclusive options based on past decisions to justify them. I think I need to change the way I track wounds to a scale from % for stat diversity. I think I need to treat fashion like a power set. Anywayālots of things to go back through which keep me from going forward. TL:DR for those of you who didnāt hit your word goalāmo words, mo problems. Just a different sort. So, donāt feel too badly. Cheers, all! Keep at it.
7 Likes
This month has been terrible and it has been impossible for me even write a single word since Those people attacked me without any reason except the fact they donāt like me.
Now I even feel uncomfortable of posting in the forum anymore because I feel people donāt want me here anymore.
So I even thinking if is viable or not for me make a Hosted game for me or not.
So for me a really really terrible month.
6 Likes
Your presence here is valued, a lot of people appreciate you.
2 Likes
I hate character introductions so much. The most tedious part at this point abd I canāt go past it to work on a different section cause my mind wonāt let me. I have to go chronologically and I wanna kill something because of it
1 Like
That sounds crappyāsorry it happened. Take your time getting on back onto your feet, but donāt let them silence you. A writerās power is in their words.
Sorry to be the a-hole with things to say. I sympathize is all. TL;DR (mature content): A critic is like a eunuch in a whore houseāthey know how itās done but canāt do it themselves. Hope you feel better soon!
3 Likes