I discovered today that GoogleDocs has an upper character limit of 1.5 million characters. What’s worse, after hitting said limit, my document started glitching up so that it became difficult to even edit it in order to delete anything (or download it, or make a back-up copy, or select and copy text, etc.). Good times.
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The more I write, the more terrible my work feels… geez, but I still hope I can finish Chapter 1 before April
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@holysalmon Is the imposter syndrome kicking in 
.
Keep going!
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If you’re not an arrogant type of person, it’s pretty normal for at least some of your work to feel terrible. And some of it might be. That’s all well and good. You can fix it later! So don’t let those feelings of inadequacy deter you! Bad writers eventually shell out competent writing like monkeys writing Hamlet on a typewriter in a locked room, and mediocre writers tend to come up with something brilliant at various points in their career if they just keep at it. But truth be told, there’s a good chance you’re doing better than you think and you’re letting perfectionist tendencies kick in far too early. That perfectionism will serve you better after you’re done with your final chapter and you’re doing editing passes.
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That sounds like a big exercise in editing. Gotta switch the pronouns and the verb tenses… Make sure there’s nothing too omniscient in the narration (unless, of course, the character is omniscient!). It’s extremely easy to miss things just from the sheer volume so if you do this, good luck!
If you mean for you, personally, to write? Fair. If you mean in general? Maybe it’s not the conventional choice in ChoiceScript IFs but I’d still disagree. I feel like 3rd person POV ChoiceScript story could work, though it might necessarily look different in a few ways (how the choices are presented and what choices are presented to begin with, I imagine, would benefit from a different approach). lf some people can make 1st person POVs work, I’m sure 3rd person would be possible. (Neo-Twiny Jam idea unlocked)
Although belated by a few days, on Tuesday I got some! And cake for my parents, though they offloaded the leftovers onto me. Very delicious.
pie 'n cake photo
That right there is a slice of double mocha cake, slice of earl grey and white chocolate cake, and a lemon meringue tart (ie a tiny single-person pie). 10/10 would get that lemon meringue again if the occasion ever allows. And kinda wanna get the earl grey cake for my aunt since she likes earl grey.
Oh yeah, I used to always write fiction in third-person past-tense. After working on ChoiceScript projects, the next fic I wrote ended up being second-person present-tense. xD Oh boy.
Oof, I’m so sorry and I hope you get things in working order again.
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No, I would love to write that. I mean it might turn too many readers away for no particular benefit other than having me as a writer be slightly more confident in what I’m doing.
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Thanks. I’m looking for a good alternative to GoogleDocs now. I appreciated the free-ness and portability of GoogleDocs, but having to split my document up isn’t ideal.
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I remember switching to WordPad when some files broke on Google Docs, never had a problem with that. Plus it comes with windows
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I recommend Ellipsus, if you’re looking for an alternative!
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After a year off (and 50+ countries visited), I am delighted to say that work is back on for Dance of the Night. The WIP is 130k, and is fully playable through two chapters.
The third chapter is currently being written. There’s been some substantial changes to the first two, most notably a chance to spend some time with one of the ROs (Fred Smith… is there another side to them?), a new way to ‘die’ and come back as a vampire, and also a move of the trans option to the first chapter. You can literally transition as a vampire in 1777 in a way that, I hope, gives agency to players that want that option, while fitting in with the wider theme of the story.
Right now I’m writing the first half of C3, which will show all the consequences of the choices made thus far: it’s a little bit of a choke-point, because there are four potential world-states (America exists and Napoleon was defeated; Britain rules America and Napoleon was defeated; Britain rules America and Napoleon rules Louisiana; America exists and Napoleon rules France) that have a bearing on what happens next.
You can read the work so far here: CoGDemos
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Hey, it’s so nice to see you back! I hope you’ve had a great time travelling (what an amazing itinerary!), and that getting back into the project goes well.
In other news, I’m deep in Chapter 5-6 revisions, and wrote a ton over the last couple of days expanding stuff. I’ve almost finished coding Chapter 7. There’s still some shunting-around and reworking of things to do regarding one of the subplots, so next week I’m going to be chatting with my dear co-author and figuring out that side of things.
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Old reliable WordPad… I do want something with tabbed headings I can click between, which unfortunately WordPad doesn’t have.
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Thanks! I’ll check it out.
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For all of you doing your choice script writing in a word processor application - you have my full respect seriously. How about the libre office option?
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Hi everyone,
Is any kindly mod available to help unlock my forum thread?
I have my next major update online.
Cheers 
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Leaders can do it too. I opened it for you.
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Awesome! Thanks @Cecilia_Rosewood
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I’ve reached a somewhat annoying conclusion from reading over what I’ve written so far - and that’s that I started this story too early in the timeline.
Now that I’ve written a bunch of it, and looked at my plans for what is effectively a prologue, I’m convinced that it’s too much. The MC goes through a bunch of events with little opportunity to deviate from the path, meets some people they’ll never see again on a planet they’ll never visit again, and then I’ve effectively forced them into failure due to background events that they can’t see or control.
I think if I was writing a novel, with a single path, this would work better. But because it’s a game, and I do want it to be successful as a game, I’m genuinely considering discarding the writing I’ve done so far, shifting the start time up, and letting the stuff I’ve written about be found out in conversation, flashbacks, and choices.
I wonder if anyone else in here has bumped up against the same issue, and how people feel about appropriate starting points in general?
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I think it’s great that you’ve realised this now instead of later, and can see what you need to do about it. Starting the story at the right point can massively change its quality. At least now you have a detailed backstory that you can build on, reference, and maybe repurpose as you need to.
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