Which you absolutely shouldn’t, because when you’re constantly in mortal peril it just gets flat and tiring instead of exciting. You need moments to catch your breath.
(I’m a huge fan of thrillers, so much so that I count them as my main genre.)
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I missed out on releasing an update last month, after some personal matters cut into my writing time - couldn’t be helped. My first update didn’t get a heap of responses, but what I did get back was still helpful. I plan to release a bigger piece of content for this month’s update, so that’s my goal - get this next part done and add it to the demo so I can hopefully get some more feedback. That will cover most of the second “day” of my story. Quite a few to go yet.
I’ve had a little niggle in the back of my mind that my story isn’t gripping enough, but I want to keep pressing forward with new content before I revisit what I’ve already done. I can always go back and spice it up more later.
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This is what I have to keep telling myself too. If I constantly work on the chapters that are already out, I’ll never finish, but if I can write until the end, I can fix whatever I need to, and have a much better idea of what to fix.
Good luck with your update.
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I do an online writing retreat every June (it hasn’t actually increased the number of completed projects, but I like it) and I thought today’s piece of advice might be helpful:
Write recklessly. You have nothing to lose!
Don’t wait until you “know what you’re doing.” Just show up. Be curious. Be brave. Let the words be imperfect and keep going anyway.
That’s how the magic happens.
Write something bold today. Reckless even. I dare you.
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Well, May was actually a fairly productive month for me. New (Final? Ish?) draft of The Last Scion done, got a bit of work in on my prose fiction, and got a very nice review of one of my short stories! So, that was nice.
This week I’m semi-between projects. Part of me wants to fling myself into something, part of me wants to take the opportunity to catch up on chores I’ve been neglecting. I think I want to ride the high of being productive as far as it will take me, but we’ll see how that manifests itself.
And a general question for the thread: how do you approach writing romance?
I have to confess, I’ve never had much interest in romance myself. There are a handful of love stories I enjoy, but they tend to be exceptions. It’s one of my weaknesses as a writer and something I’d like to find a way to work on.
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I started May off pretty strong and then fell off towards the end just because of the convergence of so much in my work/personal life. I did, however, end up joining a writing group to get some more specific feedback during the writing process that has already been helpful. I’ve got some ideas on some minor rewrites to the prologue I have posted that will hopefully have a major impact with just a few lines. I also submitted a short story to a writing competition, so I’m excited to see how that goes.
For June I’m just looking to write 1k words a day, and to hopefully knock out the rest of 1st major Chapter 1 branch, which will be about 1/2 of Chapter 1 done. Already 2 days behind on that… but I can knock out 3k in a day if I really buckle down.
Hope you all make your goals for June!
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Exactly! On the Writing Excuses podcast, they call it “rising and falling action”. Hang on, I’m gonna try and find a good link for that.
Edit: Here’s one! Writing Excuses 8.15: Narrative Rhythm. Might be interesting to those among us who are struggling to figure out when to rush and when to breathe.
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May was a fairly unproductive month for me due to lack of motivation. I had enough discipline to release a small update, but both size and quality of it fell below my usual standard.
Now my mind is overcorrecting by filling me with passion for new, wild, terrible ideas. I feel a fervent urge to write an overly literal IF adaptation of The Raven, where the protagonist uses forgotten lore to fight devil birds on Pluto. Hopefully I’ll think better of it, though I kinda hope I won’t.
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That’s either a great idea or a terrible one, and if I ever make up my mind I’ll let you know which.
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I see clearly that the biggest two factors in how well a story does is the speed of words produced, and amount of power fantasy and romance. Writing quality is unimportant. So sometimes I feel like, what am I doing here?
But then I realise it’s fine because I really enjoy writing well. And writing well is a useful, transferable skill. Sometimes I need the reminder though!
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I’m curious to know more about your findings here. What leads you to believe these two factors are the primary reasons a story succeeds? And when you say speed of words produced, do you mean how quickly the author can get it from WIP to published?
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Just from browsing a lot of projects, seeing how many messages, patreon subscriptions, and so on. By speed of words produced, I mean the daily rate of writing. An author that writes 3000 words a day will be more successful than one who writes 500 words a day!
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I agree that romance tends to be considered a very important element in games here but the rest is debatable. Aiming to write well is an excellent goal, good to focus on that.
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I am also of the opinion that most players don’t care about the quality of writing beyond passable punctuation and grammar, which makes aiming to write well feel a bit unrewarding, but it is what it is—or as they say, c’est la vie. At the end of the day, you want to create something you yourself feel satisfied with.
BTW, what is the name of your WIP?
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It’s Below the Skyline! And yeah, writing something good feels deeply internally rewarding, so the lack of external rewards is easier to accept.
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My today’s problem: trying to write from a POV of a character who’s convinced an NPC who’ll be important later is guilty, while I as the author know they’re not.
Feels like I’m out of practice. I’ll need to read some Ludlum ASAP.
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Hi, so coming at this from my personal experience, I think you could probably change the axiom to be:
If it doesn’t serve the theme or mood, cut it.
…because the power of those kinds of moments is the feelings they create. Building a mood can be very important for long-form fiction or specific genres, where the times that you spend with your cat are serving a role in telling us about the character’s life and using events and imagery to set a mood for the reader to be invested in.
I like horror, for example, and it’s both legitimate and important to spend time where nothing is really happening, but you’re building rich, visceral imagery to create the underlying tension and/or anticipation in your reader.
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Hi, everyone!
Work on my project Once in a Lifetime within Godot continues, but I want to keep my writing up and work on something game-heavy within ChoiceScript in the meantime. Something that doesn’t need… as easy of a UI in order to juggle and navigate.
As a result, I’d like to present an up-and-coming production.
The dark, cold expanse of space crawls in every direction, with little more than the sprinkle of stars, the flaming embrace of a burning gas giant or corrosive atmosphere, and the pathetically small pops of massive planets.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Humanity has crawled from beyond a broken planet, war-torn and ravaged hundreds of years ago, to emerge victorious in its self-centered space race. Corporations explore galaxies using quantum technology, all looking for the next rock to break or planet to crack. The fringe edges of space host ragtag bands of unruly souls, each looking to spill blood, smuggle drugs, and stomp on the rule of law.
Yet, humanity never managed to rise above the rule of nations. We knew them once before, as the USA, France, the UK, Russia, China, Italy, and Japan, and the list rolls on and on. Just because they left their homes doesn’t mean they left their ideologies, pride, and unscrupulous nationalism. Now? These individual factions have evolved into a mixture of populous councils, each claiming their hold on various stretches of the dark galactic.
We’re beholden to their laws, assuming you care about that kind of thing. For all I know, you’re blasting open rock, hauling cargo, smuggling the next generation of high for the kids, chasing pirates, enforcing the law yourself, or much more. Maybe you’re a nobody, homeless, kicking the bucket in a broken-down stretch of sand on some dusty planet. Maybe you’re a hero. Who knows?
Life’s what you make of it in the Frontier.
The Frontier is a science-fiction intergalactic RPG written in ChoiceScript. You’ll begin under one of several game-starts, including an open-ended one, in which you’ll have the opportunity to take on a profession, to make your cash and survive anyway possible while juggling the dallies of life in the vast expanse of dreary space. Utilizing a mixture of unique gameplay mechanics, survival options/settings, and stories, you’ll meet a wide range of unruly characters and options over time.
The Frontier is a passion-project that was born of my love and desire for space-RPG’s. Unfortunately, barring a few projects, being able to live your life in space is… not very possible in the gaming sphere. Not in the way I imagine it. So while this is through text, my goal is to provide an expansive experience where you get to live out your dreams in a twisted, warped science-fiction universe taking place in a start year of 2917.
The Frontier contains the following proposed features:
- Pick from a variety of unique starts, each developed over time and populated with unique mechanics as you emerge onto the unruly dredge of space.
- Utilize a RPG leveling system, complete with a skill tree allowing you to specialize and gain access to unique capabilities, options, and mechanics.
- Survive! You’ll need to balance the needs of the human body through juggling ailments, food, drink, sleep, and more.
- Slowly scrap together enough for a ship, put together through an expansive customization system that impacts your capabilities in combat, travel, and more. Alongside…:
- An intergalactic map! Using your Quantum Drive, you’ll have the opportunity to travel to many handcrafted systems, each with their own unique planets, starstations, all populated with richly described Points of Interest (PoI’s).
- And much more!
As of right now, The Frontier is actively in development, and I’ve already got the first start partially operational (Mining). I’ve been working on coding key statistics and systems, and optimizing an underlying set of code to ensure that every elements of combat can be calculated. There’s a lot to do, but I wanted to see how others felt about it, so without further ado.
POLL! Would you play the Frontier?
- Hell yes, this is a dream project!
- I would definitely play it!
- I’d look into it.
- …Maybe?
- Not for Me.
- Hell to the no, sir!
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voters
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Sounds fun but ambitious. But yeah, I’d totally play that.
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100% ambitious, and I have absolutely zero disagreements there. Hence why I also have plans to develop it over a long period of time, and do it incrementally with the community. Thankfully, my prior project Once in a Lifetime (the ChoiceScript version) prepped me for rapid CS development.
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