Day Eight is over and I’ve managed 1525 words (rewriting the initial intimate scene with Nell)
A question I’ve now got is how to handle the issue of people having different body parts, as a romance option would handle things differently depending on the combination of their and Robin’s genders/body type.
What are people’s thoughts on this?
@CC_Hill is a madwoman so she writes like every possible goddamn variation she puts in the game. Your other option is to write stuff in a way that works with the different combinations.
Depends on how in-depth you’re going. If you’re being vague, focus on feeling above all else. If you’re going into the dirty details, and not just doing a vague gesture at body parts, I think making each variation feel tailored to the readers setup makes for a more satisfying experience.
I give some customization options (because I find those variations fun to write) but it does make those scenes significantly longer. I don’t mention differences between gender versus body types, as in the characters don’t have a conversation about it, since that would expand the work more than I feel is needed. Also, I don’t gatekeep the “typically” gay experience away from the straight or lesbian one, since different folks prefer different things. My ROs do have different preferences though, which just means they’ll be more (or less) excited about certain things
Edited to say, my ROs are genderlocked and that does make things significantly easier. I prefer writing with a specific RO gender in mind (otherwise I accidentally default to thinking of them as female) which means the variations are caused by the player’s setup/choices and I don’t have to write the inverse setup. I personally prefer gender-locked ROs, but I encourage other writers to do gender-selectable so long as they understand that it’ll make romance scenes a lot more work
I think this makes sense. It all depends on how explicit and how in-depth you want things to go.
But it’s also good to stay in your comfort zone and not push yourself by adding stuff you’re not comfortable writing. Because some scenes will require some research and, rip your Google history.
Just if you want an idea of things to add per combination, here’s a list here.
I want to go a bit more in-depth but not go explicit so it’ll be a fine line between detail and a fade-to-black.
I’ll find the line I’m comfortable with 
EDIT:
It’s ironic, I’ve written more explicit things before (mainly for some adult audio scripts) but that was done with an account I don’t link to my main socials. Althought I don’t publish my games under my real name I do link it to it and it feels weird to me to write explicit stuff where someone I know could possibly read it. I’m still traumatised by the time when I wrote a story where I ended up writing the love scene with the same details as the fight scenes and that was the scene my mom ended up reading (I was 19 at the time, 41 now, but it was definitely a mortifying experience 
)
I’m trying to make a code skeleton but even with using a lot of [describe x here] and [insert x here], Chapter 1 made it to 8k words and I’m not done yet. This code skeleton’s word count is going to rival most every Chapter 1 I’ve ever made
In other news, it seems my little bb WIP is definitely ballooning in word count. How do I stop the ballooning? Is it possible to stop the ballooning? How is the ballooning?
Oof, a code skeleton! I could never, I’d have no idea what I need until it’s written already. I do the opposite, I write it all out and put little indicators for what the code needs to be. Then when I’m done, I copy it over in chunks and add in the code.
As for the ballooning, who cares? I don’t think it’s possible for something to be too long, as long you do the proper editing and think the scene should be there. So if you like everything and decide to keep them, that’s fine.
Well, it can be too long if it’s taking too much time to finish or too much effort to make sure all branches are interesting, and you have a deadline…
I started a whole long post, but I quickly decided that it was getting too specific and explicit for this thread. Instead, I’ll be brief. My advice is to focus on reactions over actions, not just because it makes (IMO) a more interesting and engaging scene, but because they’re much less tied to gender variability. What’s more, reactions are both physical and emotional, so they serve as a way to tie the sex scene to what comes before (and after).
Frankly, that sounds pretty terrible. I’m sure some people want their MC to be a Black Hole Sue devouring everything in their path, but as a writer and a reader, I’m not interested in a cast of characters who just twiddle their thumbs all day because doing anything might damage the player’s ego. If I were interested in that level of shameless power fantasy, I’d read an isekai light novel for free, as opposed to buying or making an IF.
That’s funny, because I’m currently feeling self-conscious about how short my opening chapters are. I’m not stranger to ballooning, but it only happens to me in the late game, once all the necessary setup is done and the story had a chance to branch out. If it’s happening to you while you write the skeleton of the first chapter then maybe you should re-consider your design philosophy before it’s too late.
Fair enough! I don’t think it helps that I didn’t go into specifics to what the guy was talking about (his talk was about reader interactivity and not being given any choices during big moments; so if you’re just sitting back watching an NPC do something cool during a choice-based game with no means of reacting, it can feel bad on the player end. Having cool moments where the player can do nothing was the advice, and I just did a poor job getting that across on account of my general foolishness).
So not so much ‘the player needs to be doing the badass thing’, but the player must be involved with the badass thing, because seeing the badass thing and interacting with it is a lot better than just being told about it or seeing an NPC exclusively be involved.
I definitely agree with your point, having a well-rounded + dynamic cast of NPCs you can connect with is part of what makes those big moments rule regardless.
Tbh I believe it’s supposed be simpler and I’m doing a wordier version of it, which helps in moving me along and letting me know what *choices I’ll need. The skeleton has a bit of muscle, is what I’m tryna say
I used to do this for my first WIP, but now I find that coding in the branches helps me organize my thoughts better. Using CSIDE to view the thread really helps. Though I also prefer writing in gdocs, which makes coding a bit more difficult, even with a font that helps view the indentations.
Yup! For me, it’s less of a deadline, and more of the impending doom of burnout sucking the fun out of writing.
Yeah, that’s the reason why I’m worried about the ballooning now. If it’s this wordy when things are relatively simple, it’s gonna be a lot more work than I originally anticipated the further along I go.
I fully agree with you and if I were someone else viewing my situation, I’d give the same advice… and yet, I’m having a hard time implementing it. For now, I’m assuming that the ballooning is in the 50k range and is just requiring an extra month of work, which is still within a reasonable range for me to deal with.
I’ll give myself this one excuse though; the first chapter has a fight scene, and those tend to be code-heavy. I’ve somewhat streamlined my process with fight scenes so that the player gets more content with less branching, but giving the players’ a choice on how to deal with a fight will still make a code skeleton wordy.
I usually write all of my common scenes first, and just fill in one choice or *if in a set, so that I have something that plays from start to finish, but it’s not as involved as filling in every choice. Technically not a skeleton, but I still call it the skeleton draft because that makes the most sense in my brain.
Same, I always copy my work from CSIDE into docs when I finish a writing session to keep as a backup, but looking back over it is always a mess.
From CSIDE you have the option to print each file as a PDF for a backup, and that keeps the formatting intact. But what I do is keep the whole project file in a backed-up service like Dropbox or Sync. This also makes the scene files available on multiple devices that can see that backed-up service, so I can work away on my laptop using CSIDE or on my tablet using a text editor, and be updating a single file. I periodically save a copy of the whole directory to an external hard drive as well, in case the cloud service becomes unavailable.
I feel you on this. My current project has a lot of action, and I’ve ended up cutting out a lot of planned weapons-routes where the player was able to snag different objects from the setting to help.
Code-skeletons are the only way I’ve found to keep myself on track. Although I resorted to a rather extreme option where most of the text of the game is stored in separate sub_scene files that exist outside of the main scene. Not sure if I’ll carry on using that method for other games, but it really helps me keep an eye on how many choices actually branch the narrative’s structure vs how many are just flavor shading.
Good news everyone, I basically finished writing my demo (I just need to finish writing the RO event). All I need to do is edit it to remove all the typos and fix any issues the beta testers have and I am free to release and then sleep forever.
yipppe.
Congrats!
Day nine has ended with 2,747 words (rewritten a passive conversation with a drunk and different ways of dealing with him as well as the blacksmith scene where you can reunite or meet Salah.)
I am still thinking how to approach romance scenes, but I am do have a inkling of what I want to do.
Hah! Speaking of drunks, cut out a large section of my code today which was going to let readers choose their drink of choice. As someone who has never had alcohol in their life, I realized quickly how out of my depth I was (and even more out of my depth when I asked my bartender friend for help. The second he started naming drinks I realized how beyond me this is). Replaced it with coffee choices for the time being, and will come back to it if ever I can get real field research!
Vile sludge! Cocoa or death!