I keep falling into the trap of thinking I have to write on the first part of the game, even though it makes me feel stuck and unmotivated.
My experience if you feel a scene of part of a project is dragging you or is a chore. That is your mind telling you shoul rethink the scene. If not you can always start writing other scenes and let your writing skills get recharged before return the scene you struggle with
When I get stuck like that I change gears to work backwards. Think about where you want the story to go and decide what steps you need to get there.
Should the whole game take place during the ball/party?
No, there has to be a party but it could be just the final two chapters However, the party has to be something important for the plot.
For example, Your character group pretends to kill a rival party using the masked party as a way to get away with it. Half game is not in the party but the party is important element as the Pc is preparing for it
How strict is the āno public infoā rule?
Can we ask for ideas, feedback on small specifics, make a poll about which of certain ideas people like best?
No poll no public feedback. My advice and what I do and most people do is having a Alpha tester or two. Ask to afriend in pm and have it as a resonance chamber.
There is a reason for this. In many publishers and contest there are strictly no publicly talking about the project until certain develovepment phase.
As writers it is a learning curve learn to work without constant feedback and polls. We have to learn to stick our gut and our vision.
However, If a poll is key to your plot to the point of you cant going on without it You can give me your specifics and I will make a poll. But really It is not desirable
I do have other people I can ask, if I need to.
I think I mainly just miss the community and camaraderie there was present the first year.
The secrecy seems to have removed that, so everyone is just writing their game in isolation, without having fun together.
I had complaints last time that people felt discouraged of seeing others advance more than them and seeing other games.
I would take your feedback and others to think about change this to follow up jams.
Maybe even have a poll at the end of this jam if people want a discord server for writers that joined the jam.
This is a learning curve for me as Hostess so I am super interested in hear everyone feedback to make each jam better than the previous.
Okay, after talking with some people and hearing your overall feedback from community and participants I have decided to ease the policy of no talking about your games.
You can talk about your game and give details of it But you canāt put your game public until deadline
Except that limitation you are free to talk about it and enjoy sharing your experience If people want I can even create a Discord server exclusive to people who participate in the jam
I think a Discord server is a great idea!
I will do it. I will gave more information soon. Basically only will have access people who will sign up for the jam to me and will have different sections from art to feedback when people can help with snippets of games and as well a coding channel.
and of course off topic. This is for fun after all.
Edit actually writing a scene with one of my favourite songs for writing street brawl fighting scenes. Enjoy!
Open joining the jam time
You can joining here or if you donāt want make it public You can pm.
Joining only mean that you are working on a entry nobody will pressure you for it. We are together to learn and have good time.
The joining of the jam would gain access to the jam discord server I will create this weekend a server deboted to writing learn code gain feedback for the jam and having fun in the process.
Tomorrow I will launch the second interview to The Friday Interview. So, stay tunned!
Thatās fun. Iām up for it!
Iām joining
You are welcome when the server is running I will send you the invite
I am interested in joining the Discord as well. I donāt have a workable version to share yet, but I got most the plotting down.
Today I bring to the jam one of the most famous Interactive writers during almost two decades Endmaster many times he is polemic. Still, there is no doubt about his work quality and his knowledge about engaging villains and thrilling plots.
- Do you first create your characters and then design the lore and storyline, or is it the other way around?
Thereās usually no set way. Most of the time I create at least some of the characters along with the storyline and lore first, and then more characters, storyline paths and lore as needed later. I usually have at least some of the major paths and endings already in mind, along with various major events, but with branching stories, thereās always things that pop up that I need to make up as I go along.
If I absolutely had to pick which one I tend to focus on in the beginning, it would be the storyline since thatās the whole major point of what the protagonist has to go through. The characters the protagonist meets or has to deal with are developed as needed for the various paths and branches.
Been plenty of times when I just created a character for a minor thing and then they turned out to play a much larger role in the story. The reverse is also true too, like major character I had in mind turns out to not be very important after all. Developing the lore sort of depends on the story in mind. Fantasy and scifi type settings might go into a little more background lore if needed, but I usually try to make stuff like that as an optional choice so it doesnāt bog down the rest of the story.
- What do you advise us, beginners, to do to better plan our characters and stories? Any program to help us?
Start small and do some basic outlining of the story before everything else. You can get overwhelmed if you donāt organize and attempt something too large if you havenāt done it before.
While Iām sure there are programs to help with organizing, Iāve never used any. I tend to just keep extensive notes on everything on Word documents. Keep track of major characters, places, events, etc. Along with major paths I need to work on and choice branches I still need to finish.
Basically I have my own system of doing things and donāt feel like changing it up since itās been working fine for two decades now.
- There is a fine line between well-created evil characters with a deep and credible personality of flat and edgy evil characters who have no real reason for how they act. What do you recommend to create good villains?
As with any character (good or evil) you just have to design motives and personality for them. Always found that memorable dialog helps with villains, though I like to write a lot of dialog in general.
It still sort of depends on the story youāre going for. There are times you really donāt need a complex villain because it isnāt necessary and just want one that gets on with the baby killing, not brooding about how she didnāt get enough hugs as a child. Of course if you do have a shallower villain, the main thing you still have to focus on is to at least make her entertaining. Have her juggling the babies or something before she throws them against the wall. Amusing stuff like that.
But going back to the deeper villains, I tend to write a lot of villain protagonists so of course those are going to have more personality to them since theyāre what the reader is playing as.
The question then becomes how to go about writing a good antagonist rather than traditional villain. The same method applies, which is to design them according to their own motives and flesh out their personalities as you would with any major character and stay consistent. You just have a lot more range with it since these can be the noble type looking to stomp out your brand of villainy or they might be worse than you are.
Iāve found that when writing a villain protagonist, itās best to just go all the way with it.
Most of the time when an āevil choiceā is given in a game, itās an after thought. Itās sort of just there as an option as if to tick off a box. (Like romances) Sometimes it doesnāt even make that much of a difference, other times there is no real path so much as its just killing everyone in sight. Which while that can be fun, thatās not necessarily the brand of evil you were trying to go for. If you just avoid any type of noble or heroic pretenses whatsoever thereās less dilution and you can focus more on whatās important. (Evil stuff)
Of course this isnāt to say your villain protagonist canāt still do nice things within the story. No reason to kick a puppy if that isnāt the way the story is going.
- I and many novice writers suffer from stress and uncertainty when we have to show something publicly. Have you ever been through that? If so, how are you able to cope it?
Not really. Iāve never cared enough mainly because Iām never writing with an audience primarily in mind, Iām writing mainly for myself.
Anything I write is something that I would want to read and play through, so if itās pleasing to me, then thatās all that matters. Iām not really worrying about what others think of it, if I did that, then Iād never write anything. If someone else likes it, fine. If they donāt thatās fine too.
Besides, really angry negative reviews are funny. Honestly Iām probably doing something severely wrong if Iām not offending someone out there.
- You have been decades writing games of great quality many of them you need years to finish. Without the pressure of commercial publishing. How do you maintain your focus and will to finish your games?
Any story Iām writing itās something that I find interesting and I would want to read. So that helps keep the focus most of the time. Thereās also the fact that I really hate leaving things unfinished. Like I usually really canāt move on with another project unless I get the one I was working on first out of the way. I have done it before with a single detour for another story, but it isnāt something I like to make a habit of and it would drive me nuts to have several unfinished stories.
That being said, thereās a lot of ideas that I have like a bare minimum outline for, maybe even a first page written, but in those cases, theyāre really still more in the idea phase rather than an actual work in progress. I just make the initial notes so I can return to them hopefully when I have time to focus on them.
- What is your opinion on stats and romance?
Well letās get stats out of the way first.
Stats are fine, never had anything against them in IFs. The old gamebooks I used to play back in the 80s were mostly stat based (Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, etc) to some degree. I actually gravitated towards those more than I did the pure choice text based ones. (The old original CYOA books)
Which of course is funny, because I only write pure choice text based stories. I toyed with making a more āgameyā story once and soon learned how much of an unfun slog it is to write. From there on in, I decided I was going to stick with writing pure text choice.
Now I think where problems come in with stats is when the writer is just shoving them in when they donāt actually do anything or very little. It starts becoming like an old RPG from the 80s where you had 50 skills to pick from, but only 10 of those actually were useful in the game.
Basically, if youāre going to have stats, make sure theyāre at least useful in the game somehow rather than pointless window dressing where it doesnāt actually affect gameplay and you probably never need as many as you think you do.
Moving on to romance which everyone seems to think is the end all be all in IFs nowadays for some strange reason. Not talking about stuff that is specifically written with a romance focus. If thatās the focus then itās what itās supposed to be.
But for other genres, Iām unsurprisingly not really a big fan of it and tend to just roll my eyes at how many people seem to worry about what text waifus are available rather than more essential stuff like yāknow the plot.
I will say this dislike probably extends from todayās RPGs where you got more people screaming about making this and that character romancible while the rest of the gameplay goes flying out the window because the developers were stupid enough to listen to the unwashed masses. (AKA Bioware Syndrome)
And this seems to happen to writers of IFs all the time along with shoving in romance because they feel they have to for whatever reason. Ultimately you end up with rushed or badly written character in general which is pretty terrible for an IF since writing quality is all you have.
If youāre going to write romances it would at least be better to just focus on a few deeper ones. Donāt have a whole bunch unless youāre really going to put the work in for all of them (and most donāt). And if some reader screams at you because you didnāt include whatever as an option, tell them to go find another IF or write it themselves.
- What is your take on publication and monetization?
Well I guess the only thing I can say about that is make sure you read the contract and make sure youāre getting a good deal if youāre trying to get published with someone.
If youāre a reader, I can see the appeal of getting a free demo of some of the game and then unlocking the rest of it, if you liked it enough to pay for the rest. Not really a fan of the concept of paying for special locked content though, I guess that one works out more for the author (or company) as far as making money goes.
Personally I wouldnāt lock anything though if I was selling something. Just a flat one time payment and you get the whole story.
- How come you havenāt tried to become professionally published?
I see no major reason to. I mean Iāve gotten offers in the past about such things, but they always seemed shady or disorganized at best. Even the more established companies are pretty scummy with their business practices. Definitely wouldnāt go that route.
I imagine even if I wanted to do the whole itchio/twine thing Iād probably have to use more social media to get the word out, patreon to beg for money (While wondering if theyāre going to ban me for content or something dumb), learn coding, actually have to listen to whining readers and all that all other crap that I have absolutely no desire to do.
Though I will say, Iāve already been āprofessionally publishedā when those guys created AI Dungeon using all my stories (And other CYS stories) to help build their AI and released it for the public. The hilarious results of what happened with that were way better than any monetary compensation.
If someone actually came up with a deal that actually was a good one, I wouldnāt completely dismiss the idea, but until then Iām perfectly fine being the IF equivalent of crime cartel videos: Known via underground infamy, completely free entertainment if someone so desires to seek them out and most importantly doing it for my own enjoyment.
- Any word advice you want to give to the jam audience?
Just follow your vision and focus until your finish writing something youāre pleased with.
I love Endmasterās work! Great interview Mara. Itās very interesting to see his thoughts.
Oh and Iām also interested in the Discord server!
The Jam server is running! If someone want to join the jam can pm me or posting here.