Been thinking about this for a while, especially since most finished projects (from what I’ve gathered) have 300k+ words if not more.
BUT
I’m curious to know what most people do after posting WIPs! Do you just post your very first draft? Second draft?
With writing I’ve heard that at least with novels and stuff, it’s best to step away and re-write your story at least 3 times, but since IF here are like 20x the length of a novel the idea DOES sound daunting.
I do plan on rewriting my work from the ground up at least twice to make sure I’ve got things ironed out before releasing a WIP, but I’m also wondering if I’m being too meticulous?
I’m in love with writing so far (new shiny hobby for me!) and I’m very excited and nervous to share my work. Is it better to just post a draft, then make little edits depending on feedback? Or is it best to polish it on my own then post, at the expense that updates/release would take much longer?
I would say that depends on how rough your draft is, how much your story changes while you’re writing it, and how polished the whole thing comes out at the first try.
I write a chapter until it is “complete”, as in it has a clear beginning, middle, and end, then unleash it upon the world; then, when the readers attack back with their torches and pitchforks (aka Feedback), I do edits, I’ll occasionally make edits later down the line when the story evolves in ways that require me to fire up the time-machine so I can go back and thread in little bits of the world that I only discover in the later chapters.
I tend to make short edits. Every few paragraphs, whenever I take a short break to drink water, stretch or whatever else, I read all that I’ve written on that particular day and rewrite some sections for better flow, or better wording, or clarity.
For my WIP, I’ve been posting the draft per chapter to get feedback and further edit, but due to the way I write things to begin with, there’s already some polish into it. It’s not really fully raw.
It’s personal preference but I think it makes the task of editting a little less daunting since it’s a continuous process instead of taking very large chunks of text to review it all for hours.
My current move is writing my first draft without worrying about minor details. Sort of like just drawing action frames in animation, but the lit version. Then I plan to rewrite everything in perspective of the MC based on how I craft them as I go on
Basically the IF I have planned allows for the player to choose what kind of ‘narrator’ they have since I want to try first person. I figure it’d be nice to have a variety to both play with several different dynamics between ROs and the MC’s potential actions.
Ik it’s ambitious but I’m almost done with my first draft of ch1! Mostly rewriting at least once to make sure each narrator feels both different in terms of perspective, while still keeping the overarching plot the same. So I know I should be patient to iron it out further buuuuuut
Original plan was to do around 2-3 chapters so ppl could interact w the RO’s since the first chapter is just getting the ball rolling so to speak. IG what I’m trying to say is:
I don’t like the idea of keeping people waiting, but I don’t want to put out something I’m not happy with either. The community seems pretty patient but I guess I’m just trying to figure out the better move for both interesting others + being able to discuss stuff with people. So with that context, would it be worth it to just bite my tongue and rewrite/post per chapter or do larger updates of a handful of chapters?
Don’t get hung up on word count. It’s true that longer games tend to be more successful, but shorter games are published all the time, and many do just fine. If you aim too high, most likely you’ll overwhelm yourself and never finish. Focus on telling the best story you can, the way you feel it needs to be told, rather than forcing yourself to meet a particular word count.
It happens occasionally that someone on this forum will post a completed game and ask for feedback, but most people don’t, and for good reason. A lot of people create a WIP thread when they have only a few chapters. Ot just a prologue. Or maybe even just a few pages. They don’t worry about trying to make it perfect first. That’s because in IF, feedback is crucial even more so than it is for traditional writing. Other people will see things you can’t see by looking at the code, or even by doing your own playtesting. They’ll point out when something doesn’t make sense because a vital piece of information was left out of a particular route. They’ll make combinations of choices you didn’t anticipate. They’ll have ideas of how things should go, anything from rewording an awkward sentence to elevating a minor character to be a potential love interest or adding a whole new chapter to improve pacing and worldbuilding. Some of these ideas will be awful, some won’t fit your artistic vision while still giving you something to think about, and some will be absolutely brilliant. So putting yourself in a position to get more feedback is almost always better.
In the early to mid stages of writing, I find it useful to play through and revise individual chapters or maybe two, rather than trying to edit the whole thing in one go. Once I’ve got an entire draft I test and revise the whole thing.
What I do after posting a partial draft is focus on bugs first, then small/easy fixes like typos. Feedback like “this felt too easy” or “I don’t understand this” comes next, but I often wait until other comments come in to see how it landed with other people.
Larger-scale and more subjective feedback like “this feels too slow” or “I’m not interested in the stakes” or “I want more time with the characters” are the kinds of comments that I make notes of to keep in mind when I’m testing for myself, because if I make edits based on that - which I usually do - it’ll be multi-chapter and more involved.
It can be easy to get bogged down in revising, so depending on your preferences I’d recommend not worrying too much about getting it perfectly polished before sharing - as Aletheia says above, feedback is really valuable.
Well, I did my first book completely, and then I published it and had to pretty much rewrite it entirely and correct a lot of stuff. I would say that for a beginner that way is a mistake because you hinder all the things you could be learning in the process and then you have something you have to redo almost 100%.
As you said, reworking a hundred thousand + words project isn’t funny, I would guess that a normal book wouldn’t be either, but IF is another thing, and a change in an early chapter might have repercussions later on and because of that the work of what it could have been a minor detail will multiply by a lot.
I can say that from experience. Keep in mind English isn’t my main language, so that also gets in the way.
If you’re a writer already and you know what you’re doing, you have a plan, plot, mind map, mechanics, and everything laid out, you can totally do it that way and be fine. That doesn’t mean doing all that will render in a complete game that doesn’t need edits, but doing it progressively might save a lot of time and future headaches.
What I plan on doing (whenever this happens ) is to write the chapter, wait awhile, edit it, and then put it into a demo. Then rewriting or editing based on feedback. Then onto the next chapter
I don’t think there are hard rules you should get caught up in, especially before finishing a draft. Yes, you’ll probably want to rewrite things because of new insights and, you know, perfectionism. This is likely to still be haunting you after your 100th run-through though.
If you are worried it’s going to be too much, getting feedback early would be a good way to minimize the amount of change required later on.
) is to write the chapter, wait awhile, edit it, and then put it into a demo. Then rewriting or editing based on feedback. Then onto the next chapter