I tend to have a tough time keeping track of my plot lines, in terms of organization and keeping everything legible. Usually when I have ideas, I just write down whatever comes to mind, but lately I’ve decided to take a different approach and using a flowchart to keep track of everything. Currently, I’m using a flowchart creator called draw.io.
I was wondering what methods other CS developers/authors use, and if they tend to keep things tidy and work along specific guidelines, or if they just go with the flow and develop their plot as they write.
Wauw. I need more .io stuff like this one. So handy
I personally go on with the “go with the flow” method and while putting all stuffs that I thought were interesting into an “assets” folder. This way, I can have the flexibility that the method provides (and eliminate the need to organize stuff ) and get some inspirations from the “assets” folder.
That’s a lot like how I used to do it, my biggest problem was, once I get to a certain point in my writing (usually after it branches a good few times) I would lose track of the specifics of each branch and have to go back through and reread them half a dozen times just to remember what I planned to have next, lol.
I’ve got a rather large “assets” folder on my phone where all my ideas are, then an even bigger one on my computer filled with pictures I thought were pretty inspiring somehow or another.
Have you tried flow-charting for each choice-body you make? I’ve found that this is an easier way to keep track of the branching. Another way of saying this is to flow-chart the mechanics of the game and not the story itself.
For me, I use bullet point kind of lists to help me keep my story coordinated/organized.
I start by making a list of all the possible endings I want to be available. Then I make a list of key events I want to hit in the story for each chapter. Each of these lists are fairly vague and each bullet point is usually just a short phrase or title. This is so that once I get to writing the different versions of those parts I can take into account what the player may or may not have done.
They give me nice goal posts and end points so that I won’t keep my story from spiraling into a never ending one. When I tried to just “go with the flow” I would easily fall into a writers block because of too many different ideas.
I usually brainstorm any story, game, or screenplay I want to write in a mindmapping tool like Mindomo. One branch in the map becomes the list of scenes in the screenplay or story, or chapters in the book or game. Mindomo is cool in that you can add linking arrows from entry to entry, so my map ends up dense with arrows showing how a theme or subplot that starts in chapter two gets picked up again in chapter eight and resolved in chapter eleven.
Some years ago I blogged about this tool and Goalscape, a different way of viewing what you’re working on, in relation to writing scripts: Writing with your hair on fire
) and get some inspirations from the “assets” folder.