Another good daily quote
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Okay, going to be serious this time, (Which is rare seeing how non-serious I always am XD) The last month was a bit hectic, exams, guests, a lot of bad Juju happening, but the thing is, it built character, it changed me for better, and that better me has better goals, and that’s what matters. The month ended and the new month will bring in new opportunities and new ways to test my abilities.
My first and foremost goal is: Read a whole book.
I don’t know if it’s me, but I have trouble reading, I’m EXTREMELY picky, and sure, I’m busy as all hells, but I find time here and there. The problem comes with finding a book and sticking to it until the finish. So that’s my first (Any recommendations on romance would be highly appreciated! <3) I’m reading a lot of comics and watching movies to get my creativity going and it does help a lot.
Second is: Writing more then 35K words
I used to write a tonne of words in a month but I don’t know what’s been going on lately, I’d blame things but I’m not one to put blame on things and rather fix it ya know, less whining and more grinding, but unfortunately, with femboy dating simulator, the grinding path has taken a WHOOOLLLEE different meaning
Heh, any ways, where was I? Oh yeah! Making twinks and femboys great again! (You have no idea how much it doesn’t pain me to say that. I, a pure and humble… I dunno where I was even going with this. ANYWAYS
Goal 3: I just wanted to have a third goal for the sake of traditionalism cause I think people should always have 3 things.
Hope I did it right this time 
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This book tends to younger viewers but maybe the book: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
But if you like historical fiction, PLEASE PLEASE read these two books, (they have romance.)
real. 
I became a regular a few days ago. Of course it made me smile realizing that I’m 100% in the community. But in the word community is unity, so try your best to interact and say nice things about others work!
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Congratulations! I remember my own such moment with fondness. 
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What kind of romance do you like? I see your WIP is dark fantasy romance… Have you read A Court of Thorns and Roses? (I personally enjoyed the Throne of Glass series better but ACOTAR seems to get a lot of people hooked on dark romantasy.) I quite enjoyed Caraval, Six of Crows, and Second Star to the Left (the latter is a Peter Pan retelling by Megan Van Dyke where Tinkerbell and Captain Hook are a thing). I haven’t read a bunch of Cassandra Clare, but I loved the Dark Artifices trilogy (I cheated and watched the Shadowhunters series instead of reading the first books). Two non-romance books that I think are absolutely hilarious are Lamb by Christopher Moore and the legendary Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Good luck with your reading and writing goals! Do let us know what book finally sucks you in and keeps you hooked until the last page.
Thank you! I wasn’t sure. It was probably a good thing, as I tucked tail and got back to writing. 
I was simply going to explain that I’ve made it very easy to wander down that particular EPIC path, but it hasn’t been reviewed by my editor yet so how it will end up is yet to be seen. Your suggestion of an accomplishment is a good one. The scene has added a level of violence and impact that wasn’t present before, so…I don’t know how it will be received, but it sure left an impression on me. Definitely wasn’t expecting that twist in the story. It was not in my outline but I sure hope it gets to stay in the game.
I hear that. My personal struggle with IF is when the story is taking me in one direction and the expectations of house style and providing as much player choice as possible are conflicting with what the story is telling me. (I might be the writer but the story and characters are more in control of this thing than I am.) I have the advantage of an editor with far more experience than myself guiding me along, and am grateful for that valuable feedback, but when I did beta testing for TMP the additional feedback was exceptional (and overwhelming at times). I often find it tricky to balance the storyline and player experience, but it’s ultimately worth the effort.
Good luck with the more episodic approach. I hope you get the feedback you need to help steer your story in a direction both you and your players enjoy!
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Thanks!! I’ll give it a read but fingers crossed XD
One that’s slow burn, where the romance is forged in the fires of action, igniting from the sparks of small, suppressed feelings, or from the stone cold hearts which turns anger into a dangerous inferno of raw, detrimental love, something that’s not just “Lemme just get into your pants after 3 pages (unless they do give a back story later on)” (I mean those kinds books are okay, but not really my cup of tea.)
Currently reading Fourth wing by Rebecca, which is pretty great, that isn’t to say that your recommendations will be pushed away, I am making a book list which I’ll look into, and, hopefully learn from them. I’ll look into all that you recommend! <3
What??? How does that even work? “A thing” as in friends right? Right?? 
Honestly I just post update and then get a dopamine dose of "Ohmigosh! One person liked my work! (Even though my work is 
(Not self depreciating, I just didn’t know how to write back then and rewriting is being a pain, especially when I’ve been doing that for the past 2-3 months and will continue for another two 
) If your book and writing is great then an audience will build up automatically (But that’s just my opinion tbh)
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I’m of the same belief, I just feel like posting on Tumblr is like talking to the void and the void talks back, while posting on the forum is… idk, I haven’t had much luck in getting feedback here on my WIP, though the writer support threads have been lovely. I noticed that most of the recent replies on my WIP have been me updating on a weekly basis, and it just feels kinda lonely I guess. I don’t really care about gaining an audience so much as I want to know how to improve.
As a sidenote, I’m considering posting to the Feedback Exchange thread
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Let me begin by saying: Every author who finds themselves and what works best for themselves has better success than trying to imitate another like a doppelgänger.
I have watched you grow Rockman, and it pleases me enormously to witness it. I am flattered you want to imitate me, but each of us is unique, and I’d rather celebrate that then have clones!
This is so true for those of us that are both passionate and empathetic; our loved ones deserve us to renew and focus on ourselves so we can embrace them healthy and whole
Writing is a demanding Mistress and if we do not give our due to her, we will punish ourselves. 
I strongly agree with this.
Managing scope is the biggest lesson I had to learn. I still have my original notes for both of my most complete projects and they envisioned grand epics; not so now.
I think Seth Godin’s quote has a lot to unpack, and most of us need to learn what it means to “write for my readers” (the first of which is yourself). I know it took me years to piece it together, bit by bit.
Each of us has their own “right” way.
The “User Trust Level” forum “feature” is not only wonky, it has “quirks” that require workarounds to function properly, so, please do not use this system as a measure of self-worth!
I remember when the forum software told me I used up all my Likes, and that I had to wait 24 hours to like more people.
I was shocked that the designers would limit such a positive action in such a rude manner.
I understand the reasoning for these design decisions, but feel these features should be optional for those communities that experience the need for them.
With that, I shall bow out for the night, unless the “notice fae” plant a notice in my awareness and I am drawn back.
My hope is that this monthly thread will grow and establish itself as a tool that helps both authors and readers fulfil their needs.
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I hope you do. I went looking for @love4tae’s Vengeance WIP (and then gave feedback) because she posted on there – sometimes I’ll see a story I enjoy and the author says they are looking for feedback, so I plan to go back and give feedback… but then the story gets lost in the flurry of threads, or I’ll find it again but most of the posts in the thread aren’t focused on writing feedback and I second-guess whether I should be the party-pooper and post my long-winded lists of typos so I decide not to… uh, anyway, the point is with the exchange thread I 100% knew the feedback would be welcomed AND it was easy to find the thread because of it. So I think if you post it, it’ll direct more people to your work.
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Definitely more than friends. Enemies to lovers with slow burn and spice. I haven’t read Fourth Wing but it has quite the reputation. I hope you enjoy it!
^^ All of this. 
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Hello everyone. I would like to borrow some of your knowledge, if you will.
A few years ago, I was committed to writing a story on choice script, but for a lot of reasons, including a lack of faith in my English and just straight up managing to delete the entire draft for chapter one, I decided to shelve the entire thing for the near future. Paradoxically, giving up on the project was a blessing in disguise since I now write regular mysteries for a site, and while I’m no Agatha Christie, I’m quite pleased to have written more than 38K words spread around 30+ mysteries since March 2023 and am confident that my writing is objectively better than it was back in my daydreaming days of 2021. But the issue is that I’m quite stuck at the moment.
By the very nature of the entire thing I’m doing, I need to write in the past tense instead of present, and I don’t write any dialogue because the point is giving a chunk of backstory and another of possible motives, not unlike a detective investigating events that already came to pass. The end result is something very stilted and “shopping list-like.” Luckily, I have been able to flesh out a world I’m quite fond of by having a good chunk of those stories take place in it, but my ultimate goal is to one day write a “Lord of the Rings” (cohesive story with a certain group of characters in a certain time frame of the world), but right now I’m just writing a “Silmarillion” (multiple stories jumping back and forth.)
Moreover, I have a big problem with dialogue because I simply never developed this skill these past few years in contrast to the rest. Whatever I write in this regard is either like two automatons mimicking human speech or I overly compensate in the flowering and end up with Shakespeare. Can I get some advice on how to write “normal” speech as a non-english speaker and how to stop writing as if I’m dictating a to-do list. I’m quite tired of “This happened. And then this. And some more of this.” It’s well and good for what I’m doing currently, but I feel like I hit a wall of improvement. I think the better word is flow. How to write something that flows uninterrupted like a wave instead of precisely hitting the floor like a soldier goose-stepping.
Summary
One year ago, the Kingdom of Nortmannland’s simmering tensions erupted into civil war in the wake of Lord Mathinson’s assassination at Lieutenant Colonel Alan Warwick’s hands. A polarizing individual lauded and vilified for his vehement opposition to the intervention in Wehlenar’s belligerent adventurism, years of political maneuvering came to fruition with the decree for the royal army’s withdrawal from the conflict, a decision written not in ink but in blood. As officers and soldiers were forced to respond to the frontline’s impending collapse, raising casualties from the ill-fated summer offensive and executing an organized retreat all at the same time, disaster came to be unavoidable. But while a cautious man was likely to have recoiled from the storm of critique and the attempts to attribute the events that unfolded as their direct responsibility, Lord Mathison was undeterred by the opposition. In an ill-timed act that ended up claiming his life, the nobleman proposed a drastic reduction in the size of the army to a bare minimum and the redirection of funds to the navy, a plan that favored the burgeoning merchant class to the detriment of the ever-more jingoistic political class of military officials-turned-politicians. This turned out to be the last straw for Lieutenant Colonel Warwick, a veteran officer of the Imperial Highlanders, who forced his way into Lord Mathinson’s parliamentary office and brutally attacked the aristocrat with a sabre, before moments later defacing his diary’s last page with the word ‘traitor’ in bold, black letters. As a great deal of the country’s radicals were patiently waiting for permission to shed blood, which the Lieutenant had just given them, Warwick set into motion a series of events that may very well tear the kingdom apart.
…
Once upon a time, the 7th Imperial Highlanders regiment swore allegiance not to the King of Nortmannland but to the Emperor of Ironthain. And while the old country no longer has the same prestige, territory, and wealth of the past, Colonel Johannes Magnus’ old boys have held on to the regiment’s tradition and sterling reputation over the years, even as they serve a new monarch. The first to enter, the last to leave, is a common maxim amongst these tenacious combatants, whose bearskin headdresses instilled dread in Princess Ursula’s Hussars whenever their charging mounts rumbled towards their silver bayonets. Indeed, under his command, the regiment’s élan was likewise undisputed, with the enemy being reaped like wheat at the end of a harvest month. Yet slaying the enemy on the field of battle is only one phase of the art of war, and an army that does not have proper logistics and the support of their population is not unlike an oblivious blind man walking towards the abyss. Of course, such lessons were largely ignored by politicians like Mathinson, as Colonel Magnus’ efforts to lead his troops in spite of the obstructions at the final stages of the war were for naught. The hubris of those noble lords who seldom dirty their smooth hands with any kind of labor, let alone wield a saber in combat, to dismiss the army as dogs with no will of their own rekindled the flames of wrath that had been stirring within for a long time. As the country descends into anarchy following Mathison’s well-earned demise, Magnus and the lion’s share of the royal army’s troops rally around the old goat to reinstate order, hell-bent on hanging Lord Black’s liberal scum, Isaac’s peasant rabble, and the Lord Regent’s traitors. Once more into the fray, the old boys go, fighting the enemies of Nortmannland when weaker men turn tail and run.
…
Those who are fortunate enough to be a part of the Kingdom of Nortmannland’s peerage are entitled to certain rights and privileges that elevate their status in polite society above that of the commoners. Be it high-stakes gambling, parlor games, or extravagant balls, the life of a distinguished gentleman like Lord Arthur Black was teeming with possibilities. Among these activities, social networking at the capital’s aristocratic clubs was the quickest path to rubbing elbows with some of the most influential and highest-ranking officials in the country. Yet ancient bloodlines and surnames are not necessarily a guarantee of wealth, as by no means are every one of the estates fertile, productive, or flourishing, nor are all of their respective owners able administrators. Such dilemmas are useful bargaining chips at the negotiating table, and shrewd men like Lord Mathinson understood the merits of forfeiting a modicum of their reputation for the ever-present importance of gold coins the likes of Lord Black ought to provide. Thus, a mere handshake and polite smile dating back a decade bound their fates together. For several years, this unspoken agreement, where Lord Mathinson delivered inflammatory speeches at parliament and Lord Black stood by his side as a confidant and a patron, benefited both parties well. Really, what are a handful of capital contributions to Mathison in exchange for relishing in the splendor of notoriety without having to move a single finger? A bargain, even though a sharp mind sensed he was already beginning to be overlooked. As fate would have it, Mathinson’s death created a golden opportunity for the heir apparent to shape the political winds to his liking, tapping into the anxieties of the petite bourgeoisie about a return to the status quo and retaliatory actions if certain individuals like Colonel Magnus and the Lord Regent are allowed to grasp power once more. As for the peasant’s ever-increasing disgruntlement with men like himself, it is nothing a few well-placed coins in the right hands won’t solve.
…
The Department for Public Safety and Order is a pretentious name for Nortmannland’s Royal Intelligence, counting among its ranks all those men and women who are willing to sully their good names for King and Country. The bulk of them are a part of the unwashed masses, seamlessly capable of mingling inside drinking establishments or vanishing as one unremarkable face among many inside unruly gatherings to assess emerging threats to the crown. Nevertheless, unlike the unmasked candor one comes across at the bottom of a beer mug, certain types of seditionous conspiracies are coated in a smooth veneer of class and propriety, concealed behind closed doors where only those of blue blood are entitled to enter. Like Lady Wellington, the baroness of l’Argenmart, attracting aristocratic agents equipped with a deft touch and silky words is one of the organization’s key traits. Yet despite the relative ease with which treason is purged inside the kingdom’s borders when there’s peace, the war divided RI’s attention between domestic and foreign affairs, with reports beginning to deteriorate in accuracy and reliability as the years went on. Far from having been the sole issue, the political pressure from Lord Mathinson’s wing in parliament brought about implicit insinuations of disloyalty upon her character as peers scrutinized the supposedly strained bonds between father and daughter born from a forbidden marriage with a noble man of less prestigious status. Such lingering separation still fell short of giving any comfort when news of his tragic passing came to her ears. Nevertheless, the time for mourning is long past, as conspirators gather behind their banners to depose the Lord Regent and turn the young prince into a marionette puppet for their agendas. In this period of troubles during which the royal army turns its back on the legitimate government, merchants demand further curtailing of the crown’s authority, and peasants actively revolt against their betters to declare a republic, the secret negotiations with their former enemy Wehlenar for intervention may be their only hope of holding onto control of Northmannland.
…
Outside of the immaculate halls of parliament, where blue-blooded aristocrats frivolously squandered time scheming and skirting a fine line between offering fleeting glimpses of the truth and everlastingly lying, the ordinary people struggled from their better’s negligence of the so-called noblesse oblige. A decade of conflict witnessed not their sons and daughters dispatched to war but all those who were liable to the volatile whims of the nobility to succumb on forgotten battlefields far away from home: farmers, laborers, and serfs. Indeed, their memories were condemned to fade away with few reminders that they ever existed at all. Whenever the gentlemen do grace the field of battle, it’s a long distance from harm’s way, sitting atop majestic stallions and advancing living chess pieces in a game of life and death that these men so much delight in. Like many of his friends, Isaac had to face the Hussar’s fury not by coercion but by necessity, as the royal army’s compensation is unmatched by almost anyone who might offer honest work in Nortmannland’s countryside. In the foreign country of Wehlenar, he gazed into countless eyes over the course of a decade. Eyes full of hope for a better future. Eyes longing for the comforts of a home they would never see again. Sunken eyes of hunger from the harsh winters. Empty eyes from bodies sinking in the mud, dying for abstract lines on a map that offered little peace in their final moments. Most of them call for their mothers. Such experiences leave behind thousands of broken men, ever disconnected from the present and haunted by the whispers of past terrors. Yet they also leave seasoned war veterans with resentment against those who sent them into the fire as they begin pondering questions once forbidden: why should a lord rule over me? A king? An emperor? These comrades now swear their allegiance to a leader they chose, one who endured the same misery and despair as they spread the word of the revolution amongst the masses, for if the aristocracy won’t hold themselves accountable, the people will, by force of arms if necessary.
I’ve added one of my stories from a few months ago for better context. Any help is appreciated.
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My advice would be to read a lot of whatever is the style you want to go for in English.
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Writing dialogue tends to be one of the harder portions generally, since thinking up plotlines and action and what not is relatively easy compared “Would this person ask this guy that question? what would they talk about and more importantly, how would they say it?” Doubly so if you are like me and the number of conversations you’ve initiated yourself is countable on two hands.
But I would say outside of just a general practice and feedback loop. Try and read and watch things that have dialogue, see how they weave random talk into the plot, or what the characters chat and joke about, especially if they match or are similar in demeanor to one of your own.
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Awesome 
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Hello there,
This is my first time posting anywhere, but I figured it was time I stopped lurking. I’ve been reading CoG for years, but writing IF is an entirely different challenge. When it comes to writing, I’ve always been more of a pantser than a plotter, so having to sit down and create an actual outline was a new experience. Well, when I say create, I use the term loosely. That’s why my main goal this month is to finish my outline. I’ve been using a mind-mapping tool and it’s actually been great for laying out the various story branches. Being able to visually follow the flow of the outline helped untangle the mess of ideas I was previously working with. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what I want to have happen ahead of time instead of what feels right in the moment.
Then, once the outline is done, the plan is to jump back into Chapter One. I made it a good 5,000 words in before I realized I was going to need a bit more structure for this kind of project. This whole getting organized thing has been kind of a bummer, so any progress is good progress at this point.
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Hiya SoothBe –
It is cool that you decided to post in the support thread as your very first post in the community!
In a huge project like a ChoiceScript game that has not only narrative but branching and interactive choices, pantsing is a very hard developmental approach to use alone.
It doesn’t mean you have to abandon this approach entirely, just modify it to help you achieve your goals.
It looks like you have done this, and I am sure your new approach will help you as you advance your project.
Thanks for posting tonight!
.
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Oof, I don’t even know what goal to set for March. I agreed to beta read a short story for my dad’s friend, and I’ve been putting that off long enough, so I think I’ll need to get to that before I start working on my own story again. There’s also just a lot going on, which, sure, were all already happening last month, but as deadlines approach they naturally keep feeling bigger. Also, I think I want to go back and edit the first chapter so that I can get a demo out for my friends to try out (and maybe for the forum? I’m not sure if I want to wait 'til I have something at least a bit more substantial first).
So, step 1: beta read, provide feedback.
Step 2: do first-chapter edits to upload to dashingdon.
Step 3: maybe try to add 2k words to the draft? I managed to write 2k in half of February, so that seems a reasonable target if I might only be writing in half or less of March.
Step 4: ?
Step 5: profit
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A pantser here. Probably What I will say will make angry everyone else in the thread.
You dont need schematics, plotting in a enormous spread sheet and all that.
Only you need is commitment and a vision. The rest is superfluous.
I am talking from the experience of being able to finished a complete 100k in month and half without a computer in a language it is not mine.
and without plot or anything.
If you want write just write. Only you need is iron will and an idea.
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I would add “unless you feel it helps, and/or you just flat-out enjoy doing it”, but otherwise I agree.
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I was going to post about this a couple of days ago and got distracted, but I’ll say now - it’s very normal for a first, second, or even third or more project not to work out. The first Twine IF I published wasn’t the first I’d tried making; before even trying to make a large ChoiceScript project I made several short Twine games to practise branching narrative and see if I could stick the landing (this is why I often recommend starting small with the first few projects because it’s really good for getting more confident in structuring games!)
Before applying to write for Choice of Games, I started three big ChoiceScript projects that never went very far - two of which, a Monsterhearts-ish teen urban fantasy and an magical investigative politicking thing, I actually lost altogether in a computer transfer (not that I’d made much progress on them anyway), and one of which I did put up online but was very much in its early stages. Even my first released CoG wasn’t as successful as my second one… etc.
It’s important to finish things, like Paul Wang wrote in that excellent article. But if something doesn’t end up getting finished, it’s also important to learn from what you’ve done and to bring that through to whatever you make next.
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