I mean, I’d totally call it bonni if it was a word I’d use with any regularity, but I do come from a dialect family that shortens everything that can be shortened and half of what can’t.
2 Likes
I forgot about excerpts!
I kinda did one yesterday in my WIP thread already so I’m gonna go rogue and do it again.
Directly after fighting a bunch of superheroes, MC comes back to the safehouse and decides to call the one normie dude they know.
Dime, why are you calling the civillian. Dime. What are you doing.
Hesitation. Confiding any of this to Alistair crosses the line from foolish into out and out insane.
If you speak to him, it has to be in the vaguest of terms, stripped bare of almost all detail. Would such a neutered conversation get any of this off your chest?
*choice
#It might.
Only one way to find out.
#Probably not.
But your phone is already in your hand.
You hit call. You get an answer on the fourth ring.
"'lo?" says a bleary voice.
*if expressive > 65
"Hey man. I know this is a little out of the blue, but it's @{aliname $!{aka2}. You know, |}your friend from the shipping container."
*else
"Um, is this Alistair?"
"Speaking, yeah," he murmurs, sounding half asleep.
"It's @{@{aliname $!{aka2}. You know, |}your friend from the shipping container."
There's a pause. "For real?" @{(expressive > 65) He sounds marginally more awake.|}
"Yeah. @{expressive > 65) Hope I'm not interrupting anything."|Sorry for calling so randomly."}
@{(expressive > 65) "Other than my sleep? Naw, nothing."|"All good. Often call folks in the middle of the night?"}
Ohhh shit.
You kinda didn't think of that.
*choice
#"Sorry, I kinda didn't think of that."
8 Likes
I find it kinda amusing how many of our excerpts are from superhero genre 
2 Likes
I like superpowers I guess! I know it’s a crowded genre on here, but if I was gonna do a big project, I wanted to be passionate about it. 
5 Likes
Here’s a mid-month excerpt from Honor Bound Chapter 7 that includes some student gossip:
This week I’ve been making really good progress on Chapter 11 - I’m around halfway done which feels great. I’ve also had some very helpful feedback about the pacing of Chapter 7 and giving some conversation scenes extra breathing room - I’m not sure whether I’ll have implemented it by the time I put it up publicly, but it’s firmly on my to-do list. It’s the kind of feedback that fresh eyes see much more than I do when I’ve just written seven conversations and am eager to be done, and I know when I come back to it refreshed, I’ll be better at giving that space for moments of connection.
12 Likes
Not really an excerpt or snippet, but my fill for the previous assignment for the IF writing group on Discord.
The challenge was to write a scene without sight.
Stroll 3
You briefly lose your footing when the solid crust at the edge of the marsh gives way under your feet, but the splash of your knees hitting the water is drowned out by the rain pouring down around you. It’s the whole reason you chose this night in the first place. With the combination of a new moon and a rainstorm you can’t see a thing, but, more importantly, the border guards can’t either.
Gliding your hand across the coarse material of the belt around the waist of your wetsuit, you check if everything you fixed to it to help with your crossing is still accounted for. Compass. Thermos with hot coffee. Combat knife. Some small personal belongings you didn’t want to leave behind. And, of course, your USB drives filled to the brim with your notes and pictures of all kinds of classified military operations.
For now only the compass is of use, so you take it in hand, hold it level even in the downpour, and seek out the side of the needle pointing north by the ridge on the upward facing side. Your fingers are growing numb from the cold, so you press down on the ridge to make sure it’s the right side of the needle, and then turn until it’s facing your left.
Your feet drag through the mud and murky water that slowly rises up to about waist height while the wetsuit presses in against your skin more and more. It would smell like rot and decay on any other day, but the rain stops the scent before it can get into your nose, even though you are somehow still able to taste it on the back of your tongue.
There are some sharp pieces of wood, well, it might be bones. It’s not unusual for something to get lost in these marshes, that you only notice the moment your hand brushes against them at best or when it jabs into your side despite the protection of the wetsuit at worse, that you have to work your way around from time to time, but for the most part the trip is pretty straightforward. Walk. Check your heading on the compass. Adjust if necessary. Walk again.
At some point, in this darkness you can’t tell if hours have passed or only a couple of minutes, your hands begin to go numb and shaky from the cold, so you snap the metal plate in a hand warmer and hold that while you walk until you can feel the ridge on the needle of your compass again.
You take a coffee break at some point, though you wish you brought a watch of some sort, because now it’s impossible to tell how long you still have to go without the comfortable weight of a canister of a hot drink at your side.
The rain doesn’t really register anymore, and neither do the sharp branches you occasionally run into. It’s all been relegated to the back of your mind while you focus on keeping yourself moving, one step after the other. You know your wetsuit hasn’t grown heavier since you stepped into the marsh, but that is not what it feels like, and each new step drags more on you than the last.
You don’t know how long you have been walking by the time you first register a change in your surroundings. The water, which was at waist height for most of the trip, has gone down to about halfway up your thigh. Or rather, the floor of the marsh has risen up. You try not to get your hopes up just yet, especially since the lower water level also means more of you is cooling down from the rain that’s still pouring down around you.
Then you, finally, hit an edge of solid ground and you clamber up it before flopping down on your belly, savoring the feeling of coarse grass under your hands. This close to the ground you can smell the scent of rot and decay you’d managed to avoid this far, and your nose crinkles as you hoist yourself back to your feet.
Now that you’re on dry, well, drier, land a new annoyance makes itself known. There are things wedged between your toes in your water shoes that grate against them on every step. You consider stopping to empty them, but you’re still too close to the border for your liking, and without something to lean against you might lose your balance and step into something worse.
You ignore it and the way the suit manages to cling and chafe against all new spots, and turn your mind back to the same focus that got you through the marsh. One step. Another step. And somehow, at some point, you will get to where you need to go. You only need to keep walking until then.
8 Likes
I mean, I’m not complaining! I’m definitely in the same boat.
2 Likes
I put Chapter Three on the beta today. The plot escalates and you play your first show at a bar with a possessed microphone
9 Likes
I’m checking back in (with a brief snippet) after lurking for a bit. 
I’m making slow but steady progress on my end.
Some quick context before I throw everyone into the deep end. 
The MC has to choose how they want to approach the task of finding True Love - while the first two options circle back to a ‘choicehub’ eventually, the last ones offer different paths (and chapters). But, essentially, the player is choosing between the game being a battle royale or a dating sim here. 
*choice
#While the curse stipulated that true love can break your condition, it never specified it had to be of the romantic variety. Perhaps your familiar’s devotion will meet the requirements?
“${familiarname} you love me unconditionally, don’t you?”
@{familiar Your cat cocks his head to the side and gives you a thoroughly unimpressed look. | Your raven roosts upon your shoulder, ruffling her feathers before letting out a low, mournful caw. | Your rat seems little concerned with your travails. It scurries along the ground, sniffing loudly before displaying their spoils. A…truffle? The treat is viciously devoured. }
*set familiardevotion %-5
*goto gettingtoofamiliar
#You are pure magic! A magnificent being without equal. Someone like yourself shouldn’t require the love of another. The high-esteem you hold for yourself will overcome any curse.
Could the solution be this simple? You consider all that you have accomplished. Once you were a mere orphan struggling to survive upon the streets - yet you overcame all limits imposed upon you. Mere hours ago you held the city’s fate within your palms. You *will* your powers to return.
*set narcissism %+5
*goto okaynarcissus
#Old magic is rife with laws. If you can discover the source of your curse you may find a means to circumvent it.
Few mages possess the talent required to access ancient magicks. Fewer still have the means of intricately wording and casting a curse of this magnitude. If your curse is anchored to its caster then their disappearance might break it entirely.
Though you have other - more benevolent - solutions. The curse's phrasing remains vague. The wording unclear enough to, perhaps, meet its requirements without following them to the letter. It would require access to ancient tomes of the Fae variety.
Regardless, your path leads towards the market.
*set practical %+5
*goto deathandtaxes
#You (begrudgingly) accept your fate.
There is nothing else for it. You will find true love or die in the attempt. Literally.
Every spell starts with a single component. A word, a gesture, a wish. The intricacies of friendships and romance follow similar rules. To understand someone - to love them - you have to first know them. Asking someone on a date is well within your means.
…At least once you find someone suitable.
*set acceptance %+5
*goto fantasytinder
Good luck with your writing everyone! I’ll continue to binge-read any snippets thrown up here.
9 Likes
I like the names of your goto labels. (The last one is missing a space, though.)
7 Likes
Thank you. quickly edits / sweeps that under the rug 
Most of my errors tend to be of the ‘I forgot to add a space’ or ‘I added a period where I didn’t require one’ variety. 
One of the many hassles of the type fast, edit later approach.
5 Likes
And now I’m picturing Goto-fantasy, thank you KotOR II 
4 Likes
To be fair, I’d love to see more robot (or in this case droid) romances in games. Buuut I wouldn’t claim G0-T0 as a candidate myself. 
I think HK’s quip sums the subject up best.
Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds.
5 Likes
I’m curious how people here deal with the potential for “stat inflation” across a series. I’m developing my game as a three-part series (with each book having a resolved story arc, don’t worry lol). The easiest fix I can see is to just switch my %+5’s to %+1’s or 2’s, or whatever (I have to run my program to see which smaller number to actually use, but you get the idea). It seems mathematically solid, but I do wonder if people may feel like they aren’t able to increase their stats as much as they want in the first game, and/or being confused as to why their stat maxes out well before 100. Stats are my weakest point, so I’d love to hear how you guys handle them.
6 Likes
I might just ditch procent bars altogether in that case and use a “x/y” format. Or make it so that in future books the player is supposed to have more stats raised than in the first one. And communicating whatever I’m doing to the reader.
(I’m mostly handling that by having different MCs in different books.)
3 Likes
Hi, everyone.
I left off my reminder about excerpts/snippets, so I am making this follow-up post:
Remember that excerpts shared here are not intended to elicit proper critique and feedback, but if anyone does have an opinion, feel free to contact the author in a DM (also making sure they are ready for the feedback would be a good idea.)
These sharing exercises are to help build up confidence, and some authors may be at the point where the act of sharing is still overwhelming to them.
Thank you!
6 Likes
I mean, the EASY way to handle this is to make the same value mean different things each book, because the MC is handling challenges of a different power scale.
Maybe in the first game the 0-100 scale is referenced against the Den agents, so a 100 in Stick in the Mud means you’re as good as, say, Adaan at being a self-important douche that survives by sucking the joy out of everything in a 100-ft radius. And then in the second game, that 0-100 scale is actually referenced against the world’s population, though, tbf, I struggle to see how anyone could have a higher skill at Stick in the Mud than Adaan.
This DOES mean you have to start games 2 and 3 with code to convert the values of the saved games to the new “scale”, though. On the other hand, it’s probably easier when creating a new character.
I still dunno if I’m going to go for Keo or Rin. 
(I can’t go for both, right?)
5 Likes
I need some advice too, by the way. I have this section in my story where an away team is investigating a ghost ship, and being freaked out of it and taking precautions against ghosts and other deep space horrors; they don’t encounter any (apart from some ghosts of the past, which they categorize as one type of a ghost, albeit not harmful). How much the reader expects to encounter these things later, since there wasn’t any on the ship?
4 Likes
Do you want them to be spooked out and expecting ghosts in the future?
If the answer is yes, then I’d suggest making it a bit ambiguous. We didn’t see any ghosts, but it was spooky. There were weird shadows and noises. It could be that we’re on an old ship, or there could be ghosts. We don’t know, but it’s a scary thought… that sort of thing
3 Likes
Wheeze Laugh GIF - Wheeze Laugh - Discover & Share GIFs
Stahp omg Listen… when you’re right, you’re right.
putting this under a details tag for forum courtesy, since it's a bit long
I like your idea of conversions - maybe I could combine it with my original one to sort of minimize the noticeable effect of both. I.e. not pull back the %+'s so much that I’m using a 1, which would allow players to build skills higher and hopefully feel more satisfied, and then also scale back those skills a little upon starting the new book (without having to scale back down as drastically as 100) 
That might be a good balance! I’ll play around with the numbers, thanks 
For what it’s worth, I have to write them all equally appealing to me, to feel like I’m doing a good job. So if you’re ever feeling tortured, just know I’m intentionally making myself feel worse lmao. (and no, there’s no poly route - I think if I ever made a poly game I’d limit myself to 2 ROs)
5 Likes