I recommend having a road map wet up with milestones. At the very least, set up milestones. These small goals can often grant a feeling of accomplishment needed to get you to the end.
I had about a 6+ month dry spell of solid interaction even after giving updates on a monthly basis to the demo. Donāt let this slow you down.
After someā¦ letās say ādiversionsā in what I was able to get done last month, Iām trying something new when it comes to planning this month. To keep myself from being quite so aimless when I want to work on my WIP but donāt have the energy to write, Iām setting myself a secondary worldbuilding goal. The kind of thing that needs to be done to help me figure out later chapters but isnāt explicitly writing-related. Itās a bit of an experiment, but letās see how it goes!
So, bringing it over from last month, my writing goal for May is to finish storyboarding and start writing the prologue.
As for worldbuilding, magic is going to be a fairly important aspect of the story later on, so I want to turn the rough, chaotic ideas I have into a coherent magic system I can reference.
Good luck everyone! Hope itās a super creative May for you all!
Sometimes people just donāt comment because they have nothing to say, even though they did enjoy whatever it is theyāre not commenting on (āI like itā with nothing else gets old real fast). I know Iām in that camp. (Incidentally, I also like your game.)
Seconding (thirding?) what others have said - I have found that it can be helpful to give a prompt or ask questions of players because often people (including me) wonāt necessarily be sure what to say, especially if they generally like it. Some of the most helpful feedback I got while drafting Royal Affairs arose was when I happened to ask about what people thought about a character or a particular aspect of the game. It really benefited me and the game, and I think players enjoyed it too. Itās always nice to see how your feedback can improve a game, and/or better understand the authorās intentions.
Yes I am going to aim to be more active now this year! I have missed the support and motivation of these threads.
Thank you for the suggestion! I am indeed considering a poll, perhaps later this week, to give more time for readers to play. Excited and curious for the results xD
Ooh Dawn of Heroes! I will be putting your book on my to-read list too. I hope you will get more engagement for it too, given the dedication you have poured into it
Iāll try to tie this together with the planned poll. Thank you fo the suggestion!
Iām late to the game this time around, but oh well.
This study course Iām doing is justā¦ really a lot less interesting and engaging than Iād hoped, but Iām sticking it out because there are no refunds. It does suck rather a lot of the energy out of me Iād otherwise use on writing, though, so Iām trying to keep my goals aligned with that knowledge.
May Aspirations:
45k on Fields of Asphodel. Itād be a nice chunk of Chapter Nine.
Perhaps get Chapter Eleven of Diaspora finished and out for public consumption. Perhaps.
Chapter three, full speed ahead. Thereās always a bit of limbo stage in between chapters in which I donāt know where to start, even though I have the broad strokes of the story in my mind - which has been my excuse for being lazy and not even opening the doc for the past three days .
Have to get back to work eventually, though, so I guess itās time to pull out that writing brain once again.
Iāve a problem with naming in general. My brain refuses to work out a characterās personality until I nail down the names - which can take an absurdly long timeā¦
I usually just find a name generator and choose the one I like the most.
Alternatively, just name the place after their most prominent geographic feature/history event/religious significance. I find this helps, too. (Edit to give an example: there is a location where a comet once struck, and I named it Starfall.)
As for character names - I work in the opposite way (coming up with backstory first before giving them a name) so not sure how to help in that regard xD
You can choose the roman way. Perhaps the early explorers kept asking the names of prominent structures and kept getting similar answers, so a lot of rivers are named just that - rivers.
I often use placeholder names, especially for characters. In the early stages of my most recent project my wife and I would refer to major characters with names of characters from TTRPGs who shared slight similarities when we discussed it, so that we wouldnāt get confused saying Character A, Character B, etc.
I wanted to ask a couple of writers around here - how many words do you tend to write in a day? Whatās a good or bad day to you? I ask because sometimes Iāll sit to write for what feels like forever and in the end only manage to get down a couple hundred words. It feels a bit deflating, but who knows, maybe thatās a totally normal pace and Iām the one pushing myself too hard.
Thatās a tricky question because I think itās different for everyone and there is no universal answer.
Normally (ideally?), I try to hit 2000 words a day (10k per week), but it doesnāt always work. I can have some good weeks, and then, they can be followed by a couple of really bad ones. For example, April was a very bad month for me, and I wrote only about 18k words, when I was expecting to write about 30-35k.
It often feels bad because you donāt reach the goal you set for yourself, but I think thatās more of a mindset problem than an actual work problem.
If youāre not consistent enough, itās not great, but if you push too hard, itās not good either. I think the trickiest part when it comes to writing is to find balance, and that is something I still need to work on.
Donāt let it overwhelm you, though. You can do it!
I try to average 7k a week, so 1k a day. As @Dariel mentioned there are good and bad weeks. This was also not what I started with. Before it was more like 400-600 words a day. That changed after I pushed myself to do NaNoWriMo. Finishing that event helped me have an understanding of what I could personally do and how.
I still have days when I would get lucky to have two hundred words done or weeks that I have less than 3k total.
It is a matter of finding what works for you and making sure you keep a discipline to write often. If you wait for inspiration you wont finish. Keep your dedication and handling each step one foot at a time.
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