July 2023's Writer's Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for July 2023.

:spiral_calendar:

:birthday: Happy Birthday to July babies.

:firecracker: July is the month that the USA celebrates its independence and founding. Cheers to those that celebrate it! :fireworks:

This is the third anniversary of the writer support threads!

This month I am going to highlight the IF game maker: Tony Howard-Arias, Co-founder at Black Tabby Games. He and his wife have recently made the game: Scarlet Hollow.

Tony has kept a running developer diary going throughout this game’s development and deployment.

Here are three of the more interesting entries:

1: Thinking about game balance as part of narrative design (and why you should care)

2: Creating a dynamic relationship system in Scarlet Hollow

3: 5 rewrites that made Scarlet Hollow a better game

All three of these articles deal with topics that every IF story/game writer should give thought to when working on their projects.

It is wonderful to share everyone’s journey during the month; both highs and lows help each one of us realize that we are not alone in our journey.

Thank you, everyone who continues to participate in these threads – it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.

If anyone else has something special going on in June, kindly let us know.

:revolving_hearts: .

My July goals are:

  1. Start to firm up some of the stats and stat display page features for Patchworks

  2. Compile, sort and start analyzing the feedback I received from the live alpha testing

  3. Complete a “code tightening” pass of the “common route” of Patchworks

  4. Map out and code chapter 3 of the “docks route” of Patchworks.

Goals 3 and 4 are this month’s hard-set goals, meaning I will be working on them both each day of the month that I write.

Goals 1 and 2 will be things I will work on as I have time during the month.

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Thanks again for making these posts @Eiwynn it is always nice to see how people are doing.

My goal for July is to write a 50,000 word short project focusing on a more compact but replayable experience

Also I’d like to attempt to introduce a bit of randomness to the games death scenes. Where the MCs death scene will consist of four sections which will be randomly chosen. (Hoping it will make death scenes more interesting and fun(?) to have)

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July’s Goals

  • About 30k-40k
  • End the two routes of Chapter 1
  • Anounce the Halloween Jam and the teaser trailer before the theme announce 1th Agust

It is a lot so I hope being able to do it.

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Happy July to you all! I hope you have a brilliant month up ahead.

It’s my birthday month, can’t believe it’s July already! In terms of writing goals, well, it’s to get chapter 10 of my wip out which I’m 99.9% sure will happen.

I suppose the rest of the month will be drafting and writing out chapter 11. I don’t expect it to happen right after the update because of academic and creative burnout, but I’ll be excited to get into writing and hopefully not leaving soo long until the next update.

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My goal this month is simple: don’t stop writing :sweat_smile:

ADHD means that I run off somewhat seasonal motivation, so I need to continuously hype myself up somehow. Forcing myself on a deadline or forcing to write everyday is just going to burn me out, so that’s what I’m trying to avoid.

Basically this month, try to ride the high and keeping the high, high lmao

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Ack, how is the year more than half over already?

Anyway, here’s hoping I’ll manage a productive month. My goals are a little wobbly this time around:

  • For Asphodel, I want to get Chapter Nine finished, edited, and released by the end of the month. Ideally, I’ll also be able to have a full outline for Chapter Ten, which is going to be a big one.
  • For Diaspora, I’d like to finish up all the summary and narration parts of the epilogue, before it moves into the final vignette with the PC and another character.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish those things, but I’m definitely going to aim for them! Good luck to everyone; may you get what you need for the kind of month that would satisfy you. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the new thread and for those great Scarlet Hollow links - I love reading about developer processes.

Going into the school holidays at the end of July will make for a slower final week, and August will be slower still. But I feel reasonably confident that I’ll draft Chapter 4 of Honor Bound and that’s my big goal. If I can do a bit of outlining for Chapter 5 that would be a bonus.

I have a few small fixes to do on Crème de la Crème too, and I hope to move towards setting up an intro quiz for Noblesse Oblige and save imports for Creme → Noblesse Oblige → Royal Affairs (not for Royal Affairs → Honor Bound yet, that’ll come later). And I hope to make inroads on a couple of other potential things that are too nebulous to say much about at this point.

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My kids are out of school all month, so I’ll save a serious push/stretch for August when I’ll have daytimes back more consistently. This week I’m also volunteering for a friend’s organization in beautiful Pokhara facilitating a workshop on governance, so that’ll also slow me down a little. Overall my goal for July is 40k words added to XoR.

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Thank you for always providing these links Eiwynn. I always look at them, but the ones this month hit close to home for me. In particular, the one about balance. This is one link which I feel is key for me. Since I keep getting people telling me that they feel that my WiP too hard/easy, even after I have implemented difficulty levels. Sorry for the sort of rant, but I just wanted you to know that the links are always appteciated

As for me, my July goals are to:

  • Relax, now that Uni has broken up for summer

  • Complete and hopefully release Act 2 of OnryĹŤ, up to the beginning of the rewind section.

  • Bonus quest: Finish drawing the cover image.

I wish everyone luck with their own goals in July too. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Happy July, everyone :cowboy_hat_face: !

The article about implementing dynamic relationship systems in an IF game was an interesting and helpful read for me, thanks!

This month, my goals are:

  • Finish Chapter 1 (outline already done, 70% of the writing done as well)

  • Create a title header for my story, and maybe also a design for chapter headers

  • Write up an intro post/masterpost for my WIP

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Hello! Longtime lurker, first time making an account and posting as I wanted to join this topic (to help keep myself accountable for my goals while working on my own IF). I thought about joining the June thread but hadn’t yet decided on any writing goals until very late in June, so the July thread it is.

My writing goals for this month are to:

  • Participate in NaNoWrimo’s Camp NaNoWrimo for July, and write consistently for it. Set myself a goal of NaNo’s normal 50k words in a month but will settle just for getting a consistent routine down pat.
  • Finish character creation coding and the outline for my IF’s plot (and not really a writing goal but learn how arrays and such work in CS).
  • Start on writing the actual plot for my IF after the outline is complete.
  • Try not to fall prey to the writer’s block that has haunted my efforts (and joined by procrastination) for the past few years. Which the switch between coding and writing while making a CS IF has been very helpful in getting me past blockages.
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Hello everyone :wave: :wave:
I want to write an IF but the truth is I have never written anything significant. Although I do believe I have a story telling capacity.
So I wanted to ask how should I beigin my writing journey?
I have a story in mind but when I start to write anything, I feel something is missing and it just stops me for couple of days.
I try again, write few lines and I just stop feeling something is amiss once more.
How should I proceed?

Thank you :blush:

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Stefano (my old friend editor) asked me a few more tales for a sci-fi series.
Brainstorming:

  • A trip to a very weird hotel;
  • A motorcycle race with magnetic tandem;
  • A scammer hunting in the black market;
  • A pirate attack;
  • A delivery in a war zone;

He also suggested me to build a social reputation and maybe publish something on wattpad.
Do it or don’t? That’s the question.

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Hi, I am Mara and I host al every year th Halloween jam. It is a event dedicated to people new to the creation of games. I give a theme and all people who signed we have a private discord server and we help together to create. each one our games. The two months of the event are very interesting with interviews to writers and other stuff.

I mean I am the hostess so I cant talk about Participants view, but I think people is overall happy with event.

If you want joining I will be glad to help you to fulfill your goal and Have a game done.

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June got pretty stressful for me with my international travel at the beginning of the month, moving as soon as I got back, and having to restart chapter 2 of Guardian of Time. That being said, I think I’m in a good place right now, and I’m excited to write again which I haven’t been for a while, and I should have relatively more time to write this month.

My goal for July is to finish the writing of chapter 2 with the stretch goal of being able to update my demo by the end of the month. I doubt I’ll be able to finish the writing and editing by the end of the month, but that’s why the editing is just a stretch goal. Word count wise, I’m going for 25k-30k.

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Welcome. We’re glad to have you.

I think the answer to that depends on what type of writer you are/want to be. For instance, I tend to focus a lot more on characters, that to me is the most interesting part of writing. So when I get stuck, especially at the beginning of a project, I take all my characters and write an unrelated scene with them to get to know them better. I can’t conceptualize what should happen next if I don’t know exactly what’s going on in my characters’ heads, so when I get stuck its usually because something isn’t working with the character. So when I’m having trouble with a character, I usually try writing a scene from their perspective or I have a conversation with them. That typically helps me, but I think it would only work if you write in that same character focused vein.

I know others have said it before, but thanks to @Eiwynn for continuing to create these threads, and everyone else for participating on a regular basis. Even when I’ve been too stressed or busy to post, following this thread helps me stay motivated.

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I would love to join in.
Although I am not very confident in my writing.
Participating in would certainly increase it tenfold.

Thanks a lot, will try it for sure.
:smiley: :blush: :grinning: :smile:

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I’m currently writing 15 out of 20 chapters of Falrika the Alchemist. Like I’ve said last month, I’ll most likely finish the entire thing this month or next month, depending on how long it takes to write the four RO character endings that will be part of the final chapter.

And yes, I won’t spoil what happens, but rest assured that nothing bad will happen to any of our major characters and even the minor ones, because backstory and intended tone, remember?
And I wonder if I’ll ever reach 200K words, which will be enough for a Steam release.

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I am happy to be able to keep the support thread concept thriving and evolving!

Knowing that the monthly feature focuses help everyone is a big boost to my motivation to continue to keep the support threads going. :revolving_hearts:

I am also delighted that the excerpt sharing on the 15th is becoming an established part of this experience!

If anyone has further ideas that they feel can add to this concept, please let me know. I know there are a lot more possibilities out there… so if you feel something can help evolve this concept further, please post or send a dm! :slight_smile:

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  1. Scarlet Hollow looks incredible.
  2. The rewrites are the most fun parts of the process. I think everything people read should be at least a second draft.
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Scarlet Hollow is absolutely bonkers good.

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