Because of the family stuff this week I didn’t do very much new writing - which I expected but it can feel a bit intimidating to go from that to a full writing day (which I hope to do tomorrow). Thanks to the generosity of friends I have had a quiet afternoon to myself so it has been really nice, today, to do some edits to earlier chapters, put into practice the thoughts I’ve been developing about how characters relate to their genders (and what if anything that means for their fashion and style), and do some gentle writing of the start of Chapter 3 so that it doesn’t feel so scary looking at that 8000+ file of code tomorrow 
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This past week has been productive… more productive than I thought it was going to be.
I like this plan of yours and I think I will take and run with it tonight. 
Building momentum in this manner should help make tomorrow a bit easier for me as well.
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Unrelated but Wait, Nepal? I’m flying there right now.
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Wave hello as you come into the Ktm valley, you’ll be flying right over my rented home in Dhapakhel. 
I grew up in Lalitpur and Syangja, thanks to my parents’ work; worked here myself as director of an INGO from 2015-22; and am now back for my wife’s PhD research, which will hopefully keep us here for a few years.
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I assume you speak fluent Nepali?
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Depends on your standard for “fluency.” I was lazy as a kid and so missed my best opportunity. No one would ever mistake me for a native speaker. But I can hold a comprehensible conversation about a pretty wide range of topics.
(Especially if you want to talk about the establishment of a public trust. Got a lot of specialized vocabulary from the Sansthapanapatra development process.)
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How do you say “truth”? And “pug”? (The two most important concepts in any language, obviously.)
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Truth is “satya,” as in Hindi and Sanskrit (cf. Gandhi’s “satyagraha”).
I’m afraid I’ve never seen a pug here, and assume you’d have to get by with “pug-bhanine kukur” (i.e. a dog called ‘pug’). Actual Nepali-speakers, please correct me.
My globetrotting friend Leon says the first phrase he learns in any language is “Don’t shoot, I’m a table!” In any real crisis, that gets across two vital bits of information: (1) I’m harmless and don’t want to be killed, and (2) I speak the language very poorly, so don’t ask me any more questions.
If you want to follow Leon’s advice in Nepal: “Goli nagarnos, ma tebul nai hũn!”
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There’s at least one.
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I’ll keep an eye out.
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I may have to copy Leon. Not getting shot is probably a far more useful skill than being able to point at a pug and go “Pug!”
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Just remember the New York exception: if you try it there, all you’ll get is a headline in next day’s paper, “Hero Cop Brings Down Rogue Table”.
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I must say I find it interesting how what you want to do with a language influences how you learn it. In theory, that’s obvious. In practice, it means that, due to my fascination with a Puccini opera, I can say “The executioner’s unicorn is mischievous” in Italian several different ways, while if I woke up in Rome tomorrow I have only a vague idea of how I would go about locating a bathroom.
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I’ve been working on taking care of my wrist and hand debilitation, especially now, as I’m moving into a period of greater activity, again. I can auspiciously report that I have a new, custom-sewn finger brace. So far, it’s holding up under the pressure.
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I’ve got my magical girls sorted! Time for the villains! I’m thinking they’re a cult disguised as a school club. And everyone thinks they’re kind weird. They wear black cloaks and talk about resurrecting the dead. But idk… maybe they’re playing DND and just super into it. 
Plot twist: They’re not super into DND. They’re actually trying to resurrect their queen, whom Ran defeated years ago.
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I think a cultish type group disguised as a school club is great for a magical girls IF, and sounds like tons of fun! Be a bit careful with having D&D be the club activity for that group though. It’s a bit hard to believe at this point in time with how popular it’s become, but there was a point in time where the “satanic panic” was a thing, and people may get a bit defensive about the pastime because of it. But again, I think it sounds like old school Saturday morning tv kind of vibes, and I’m all for that.
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Hi everyone! The start of the month has been a bit rough on me - after mulling it over for a while I decided to scrap my current (and only) project and start on something new altogether. But as painful as it is to lose 30k+ words, I’m confident it was the right decision, and that my new idea offers a far more unique and interesting setting to explore.
And that brings me to the topic I wanted to get some opinions on today - with a new project comes a new intro, and I’ve been debating what the best approach to writing an intro is. With my previous project it was very much a slow start, introducing the player to the world, giving them some context as to their background, choosing starting stats etc. It was effective at getting the player acclimatised to the world, but my biggest concern with it was the lack of any kind of meaningful hook.
For this project I’ve been weighing up using in media res, with a jump forward to a pretty exciting scene that happens about halfway through the story. But the more I think about it the more I realise how many issues this idea has. If the event takes place much later in the story I’d have be careful not to include anything that could change based on the player’s choices (like their thoughts on the matter for example), and I couldn’t include any choices that have a major impact on how the scene plays out lest I want to railroad the player into those same choices later on. I could very carefully write a short snippet from the scene where any choices the player has have little meaning, or perhaps just write the entire thing in third person to clearly differentiate it from the player’s own perspective, but at that point is it even worth it? Do many people even care if an IF doesn’t drop them into the action right away?
I’d love to hear how some of you have structured your intros to help me deal with this. Do you have any sort of hook to pull people in, and if so what is it? Or do you trust that your introduction to the world and the setting itself will be strong enough to keep people around?
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The start of any story, no matter the medium, is to get the audience to care when the inciting incident happens. A flash forward can work, making the audience want to know how on earth we got here. But like you said, that’s going to be your hardest option in IF, because you need to craft a scene that won’t change in any way depending on your stats.
The traditional (and easier) way to do this is to have an intro section. Let us get to know the MC and their life. If the inciting incident involves a death, show us why the MC (and us) care. If the inciting incident takes the MC on an adventure, show us how boring and normal their life is.
But you seem to want a more active intro, so how about the slightly harder option? You can take us straight to the inciting incident. You can let the audience know and care about what’s going on and who the MC is during the inciting incident and the aftermath. This is a little harder to do, since you also have to focus on something else. But it can be fun when done properly
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Good to hear that you are still moving forward.
Did you get any feedback on how readers felt about the intro? In my experience, the only way to know whether specific writing was working or not as written is to ask.
Some people care about having action right away and others do not.
I tend to open with some sort of action scene, whether that is a baby being born on a ship on the stormy Atlantic Ocean, or something like waking up in a morgue.
With that said, I try very hard to blend in the world-building into the scene as well.
I do trust my instincts on writing the opening, and then I specifically ask my alpha readers: Did the first chapter get you interested?
Some games that are stat-heavy types (like Lucid’s games) can be more “character creation” orientated, and some (like JimD’s ZE games) have a mix of action while building characters out of the gate with stat gathering.
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I wish I found this thread sooner. I am a june baby. My goal this month is to discontinue my IN and just work on writing. I also am discontinuing giving feedback. Bad advice is dangerous. I discovered, rather suddenly, that the current writing trend has changed…down to sentence structure and punctuation. I had my WIP up for more than a month and got very little positive feedback. I made changes and continued to receive different negative feedback. I can actually see why people might hesitate to share their work. It was all for the best. Better to know sooner than later. I found coding and writing to not mix well. One exhausts the other. Being a new writer, I need to focus on writing. Even though I learned the coding well, it still didn’t help create an IN that people wanted to read. I found the forum discussions on coding to be very informative. They naturally are more concrete. But what makes a good IN or good writing? Now that is quite a debate. I was always curious to know the number of writers that never finish an IN. I know with novels, the biggest threshold to pass is simply finishing the thing. I may submit mine anyways for the joy of finishing. One thing I hear published writers say often is this:
“Would you keep writing even though you knew you would never be published?”
If your answer is “yes” then you are a writer. You have stories that need come out regardless of the outcome.
Another thing I have read a lot is there are two distinct type of writers: Discovery and Architect. It is important to understand where you are on that spectrum so you can relate to other writers the right way. Some people use an outline and others do not. This is normal. There is no right way. Just the way that is right for you. Anyhow, good luck everyone with your goals. I am signing off for a while to reconsider my options.
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