Okay, so I spent a good chunk of yesterday just pantsing up some random short-story.
No plan, no pressure, just some casual writing for fun.
And yeah, I had already resigned myself to it becoming a lot longer than I had started out wanting it to be, just from the pacing that had naturally happened.
Then I wake up this morning, and…
It’s an IF.
It just is.
I have subconsciously set it up so the MC has 5 (so far) potential ROs, each being a different supernatural type and personality and a kinda representative of the different local factions. And they get presented one by one, in each their own scene, that also tells the reader more about the setting and the MC. And both the MC and the ROs could be easily made gender-selectable.
So far, the plot is slowly creeping up on the MC, but there’s a mysterious change happening, and I’ve set up the MC to have motivation to investigate it. I’ve also set up clear opportunities for both current and future branching and opportunities for different paths.
It was just meant to be a cozy little short-story!
Clearly, my mind has gotten too used to writing IF, and I don’t naturally think in linear fiction terms anymore 
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I wish everything goes well!
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Thank you.
I had another stray thought that could solve my issue with the runes in daemonglass.
Now instead of a weaver picturing it as an element it will be a lot more literal with them visualisng the Luminal Essence as a Solid, Liquid or Gas it allows for the non-elemental nature while being easier to describe.
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Blight
64
Been huge fan of CoG and HG games for almost 4 years now but only just found this forum and started making my own game, which has been a long dream of mine. Very happy to have found this community. Very interesting and helpful to see the working behind other more experienced writers with the creation and writing stages. 
Started writing just before Christmas for what was supposed to be a short linear prologue to introduce the setting which is now rapidly branching into a much more choice-heavy and text demanding section, which is definitely overall positive for the game and gives a lot more individuality and choice to the player but is more time consuming than planned. Just focusing on constantly reminding myself there is no time limit and I can relax and take my time to get it down. Will maybe update here when progressing with story.
Best of luck to everyone else writing, really great to see how others are doing! Thank you also very much @Eiwynn for linking Cataphrak’s articles in January thread, was really fascinating read!
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…this project of mine is turning into such a soap opera I’m now wondering whether or not I should include a branch where the MC plays matchmaker between two ROs.
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Oh, yes. Please do!
I’ve thought about writing a game where the MC is basically running a matchmaking service, but my people (and character writing) skills aren’t good enough to pull it off. I’d love to see it happen in a game, even if it’s ‘limited’ to one couple.
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Today was my first work day back after two weeks and I feel so very creaky, and it was tricky wrangling myself into a pretzel to sort out this chapter structure (I spent some time complaining to Fay and she pointed out that the most obvious solution was the best one), but I got stuff planned and a little bit of the first scene coded, and that’s good.
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That’s a relatable goal. My brain is also fussy and tells me that I should be reading novels, but I know that’s just a hanger-on from when I shared with my folks that I loved to read fan-fiction and they weren’t supportive back in high school. They dismissed fanfics as lesser because they weren’t published into an actual book by a publisher.
Phew! Yeah, that sounds nerve wracking! I’m glad it turned out for the best! 
Also I like the goal of writing for yourself to preserve the fun because that’s a great point!
Best of luck during the operation! Best wishes for ya!
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Wondering now what kind of workplace ergonomics require one to wrap themself into a pretzel (picturing a cat on a computer) 
Not convinced of mine either, but I can't get over the soap opera -ness of it all
The MC’s supervillain spouse has kidnapped their superhero archenemy’s kids because said archenemy is being an irresponsible parent and left the kids alone at home while they’re themself gallivanting in outer space, and all the while the fact they are archenemies in the first place is how they were interservice rivals who were too embarrassed to admit they were mutually crushing on each other.
Or something.
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Hey, how did you guess that my idea was for a supervillain matchmaking service? 
I’ll be happy to proofread it when you get to that stage in the process 
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Ahaha, that’s such a perfect idea. I’d read that. (Even if I would prefer playing a customer.)
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Just imagine the sales blurb:
Help Villains find true love! Or at least someone who won’t run away screaming at their shark tank, vats of acid, and 25 identical cats called Mittens.
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I’m 100% here for this! 
Reminds me of Natalie Zina Walschots’ novel Hench, which was a lot of fun!
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Minutes ago, I came across this article about “the unread writer”. The author wants to get the element of shame out of it. Hope this will help fellow writers.
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Fable
75
Hey everyone, and a happy new year!
I would list my goals for this year but I am sadly in a bit of a panic due to an issue with my IF that I thought maybe anyone here has experienced before?
A bit of me complaining, my actual question is below if you want to save time.
I did a bit of work coding a few hours ago, saved and closed my laptop; came back to do some work tonight, and my startup, choicescript_stats, and the act 1 of my prologue files were gone from their folder. I use the IDE and got this message, when I clicked on act 1, it deleted itself.
I checked my file folders and the files for startup, choicescript_stats and prologue-1 are just gone. I have a backup of my game from the last update I did in a separate folder, so Act 1 is fine and I can recover it no problem because I don’t think I have made any recent changes to it.
What breaks my heart is that I have added huge code changes to stats and start up because I actually implemented a trait system that I was super proud of because it took me forever to do.
I am trying to find a way to fix this but does anybody have experience losing huge chunks of work? How did you cope and did you redo things differently when you started over? Because I am preparing myself for the worse and mentally coming to grip that I most likely will have to redo all of that code from scratch. 
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Eiwynn
76
Hey Fable,
I’m sorry to hear you lost the stats and startup files. I’ve lost a lot of work due to various things. Hard Drive failures, me saving over wrong files, even unknown reasons.
I have a three back-up system now (including on a cloud service) but there is no way to recover truly lost material other than using memory to replicate what was lost.
It sucks, but you are not alone in the suck, so at least there is that.
Don’t beat yourself up too much, forgive yourself and move forward. Future you will appreciate you doing this.
If you uploaded the trait system to DD or Moody’s, you can still get those files from the hosting service.
Yes, I did some things differently, both because i improved in my skills and my memory is not perfect recall, so I had to recreate what I could not replicate.
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Oh no! That sucks.
Like Eiwynn, I also use a cloud service (Dropbox) to store my files.
I also don’t write directly into the IDE. Instead, My workflow is to write in Notepad++ and then open up the scenes in CSIDE for testing.
Notepad++ has a number of benefits over normal Notepad and the IDE, including more robust find-and-replace options, a “go to line” command, spellcheck plugins, and (relevant here) it will prompt you before closing files that it can’t find outside of the program. It’s a free program which you can download here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
I’ve definitely lost large chunks of written work before, and while I’ve never been able to get them back to exactly how they were the first time, I’ve sometimes felt more satisfied the second time around in any case. I suspect this is just because I’ve already gone through it once, so the second time I’m building on that experience kind of like I would be if I was revising a rough draft.
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About ten thousand words later and we are sitting pretty. Great start to the year so far.
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It won’t be 1:1, but you might find yourself remembering more than you think! And like everyone has said, your skills will have improved and it’ll be enough like a second draft that any changes will probably be a good thing.
I think the worst part about retyping code for structuring stats and other behind-the-scenes variables is that it can get really boring. At least with rewriting narration you get to (re)read the story along the way. 
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rfzhao
80
Ironically, I can’t remember the exact nature of the advice or who gave it, but I read a piece of scriptwriting advice ages ago that said that when writing your second draft, you should work almost entirely off of memory. Not only will you remember more than you think, but you’ll also remember the good stuff: the funniest lines, the most engaging character details, and so on, while the forgettable stuff was, well, forgotten.
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