All right. At the end of this month, no matter where I’m at or not at, I’ll be posting an update. 
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Now I’m picturing you’ll be posting updates from an alternate universe or the fae realms or something.
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English frustrates me so much even though I love grammar and language deciphering games. I’ll spend so long drafting a response on the forums because I end up googling idioms, phrases, and example words used in sentences. It always embarrasses me when I inevitably fumble a phrase, preposition, or idiom and didn’t realize it!
I hope everyone is staying safe during the heatwave. It really does make it too hot to be productive.
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This is very exciting to hear because I spend a lot of time on responses too and sometimes remember idioms but I’m never sure if they are appropriate for the situation. I’ve tried to love grammar too but I don’t think it loves me back. Many years ago I attempted to learn through studying educational books and remembering rules, but it was all in vain. Majority of what I know now I learned from watching videos with subtitles and later by reading books, but I never gave much thought to grammar while I was reading.
I do not think it’s embarrassing to make mistakes because I see communication as a result and not a process. By that I mean that if in the end people understood you then you did good and achieved what you wanted.
It is intriguing to think how two people could live in different parts of the world and if they meet they would struggle to understand each other, but if they know a shared language they would suddenly arrive at the whole other level of comprehension.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think that in the end it is mostly a matter of time and practice, where you correct yourself often enough that then one day you write the whole message without second guessing yourself, knowing that all is well… Only to press the Reply button and realize that you forgot about the dot at the end of the sentence
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This made me so happy to read! I’m genuinely going to save this for when I’m feeling upset.
Some funny mistakes I’ve made in English as follows:
- Saying “At least the grass the green” when the idiom is “the grass is greener on the other side”.
- Saying “It’s like taking a dog on a walk for candy” because I mixed up “taking candy from a baby” and “taking a dog for a walk”.
- I’ve also said, “Taking a baby for a walk”.
- “It’s as easy as cake” because I mixed two idioms I forgot.
- Dangling modifiers and prepositions. Always.
I can understand the general feeling and sentiment of ideas, but my brain doesn’t “trap” or commit to memory exact phrases. It’s as if I think in synonyms. If this makes sense?
Oh, I wonder if it’ll help make less mistakes in writing when we have a warm up writing session? It always takes me an hour or so to write where it’s not horrible to read.
One day, I won’t second guess myself before posting. One day.
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holy shit these have me laughing so hard. and if it helps, i think “it’s as easy as cake” is a combination of “it’s a piece of cake” and “easy as pie!” god knows why english has so many almost-the-same-but-not-quite turns of phrase.
also, leaving the dot/period out here is so clever. i laughed at this too!
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I had an hours-long writing session tonight, adding about 1300 words and taking me past what I think will be the halfway point for the chapter, which is more than I’ve written in a long time. A few more days like that and I should be able to complete it.
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I hate prepositions. Prepositions are horrible. Idioms I like to mess up on purpose, just because I can. 
What’s the point in being multilingual if you can’t mess up your idioms?
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When you do a wordcount, what do you count? I only noticed recently that the VSCode ChoiceScript plugin only counts words the player will actually see. I’ve been using that, because it’s the one at the bottom of my document, but I’m wondering if this is the most representative number, or if most people use the code-inclusive wordcount.
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Well, the official wordcounts include code. I’d use both. Plus the per-playthrough number. Still struggling with choice blocks!
…I may be obsessed with numbers though, so take that as you will.
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My personal preferred approach is ‘headline’ word count (all words + code) plus ‘playthrough’ wordcount (average words per playthrough, visible words only).
I think the former ensures fair comparability with the official wordcounts, as LiliArch says, whilst the latter is the best proxy to let a reader know how long the experience of a single read is without being distorted by codes or branches they might never see.
And I think the two combine really nicely as together they let the reader see / appreciate how much more there is or isn’t to do after that single playthrough!
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This is extremely relatable, I was looking at “It’s as easy as cake” for some time, trying to understand what is wrong with it.
I think it makes perfect sense to remember idioms by what they are trying to convey, not exact wording. A lot of idioms can be summarized easily but often use some comparisons that are not immediately obvious. At least “taking candy” makes sense unlike “spilling the bins” for example.
Do you write the first draft in English? I find it very difficult because it makes me stop often to think how to convey things in the way I want them to sound. For me it is usually first draft in native language, then translation, then editing. There are sure some mistakes, but at least I’m not worrying about them as I write.
Thank you!
I’ve seen authors using both, adding (with code) and (without code) after the number.
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Oooh OK, I might change the number on my WIP thread then - that’s the ‘without code’ figure.
I love this idea! But where do I find that information? Presumably it’s in randomtest somewhere?
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I believe it’s beans, which at lest to me makes more sense.
For me, I need to write in the target language, otherwise it’ll sound like machine translated even though I translate it in my brain!
I think people do some math with randomtest results. I just keep track of my wordcounts on page level.
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Correct! Basically you have randomtest ‘show full text’. Then at the end of the random text report it will list total words shown across every playthrough. Divide that by the number of playthroughs you tested, and you have a proxy for word count in a single playthrough.
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Randomtest spits out a number of words it ran through if you check the box that says “show full text during game” when you run it. So if you run it, say, 50 times, you’d divide the number it gives you by 50 and you’d get a decently accurate average word count.
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Haha! Looks like we’re on the same wavelength
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It’s a funny one, I think it is just another example that could be added to the list that myeraland made.
My respects, it is a hard task. I think there is a different ways of translating, one is where you translate word for word and try to be as close to original as possible and the other is where you just use it as an outline, so while it is technically a translation it’s often works more like a rewrite.
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I have a decade of experience using English almost daily (and a pretty good basis from formal education), so it’s way less hard than it used to be.
Also yeah I’m aware there are different ways of translating, but I’m not a professional translator and my brain just hangs up there.
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That’s what I’ve been using too, but seeing the other comments I’m wondering if I should do both now. Not actually sure how to see the full word count including code in VSCode though, I assume there’s an easy way?
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