May 2025 Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
41

To be fair, that’s quite the writing goal.

5 Likes
42

Here’s my monthly interactive fiction digest for April! Let me know if anything’s incorrect or if I’m missing anything.

Choice of Games release:

Hosted Games release:

Current full game beta testing:

Expected releases next month:

New CoG WIPs:

Heart’s Choice WIP Update:

New HG/Hobby WIPs

HG/Hobby WIP updates:

New Steam Pages:

40 Likes
43

My May goals: I have a writing deadline for the end of the month that I’m… hoping to make. It’s going to be tight, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to put up my revised Earth Has Teeth chapters as I’ll need to be very focused on The Deadline. Fingers crossed.

In general I’m trying to be online less - in the wake of a number of news events in the UK and beyond, doomscrolling makes a big dent in my time/energy/mental health, so I’m making an effort to block various sites after a certain amount of minutes. That’ll have a positive impact on my work as well. So that’s another goal for me this month.

25 Likes
44

I picked it up an year or so ago at the insistence of a friend, but wasn’t serious about it, hence dropped to 350 and left. About three months ago I returned and took it seriously this time, and now I absolutely love it.

You can’t expect it to be horror with that name :sob:, though in all seriousness, that does sound interestingly bizarre.

And 2200 official is crazy. That’s like just below an IM. I hope you can achieve it cause that will be a worthy achievement.

6 Likes
45

Hahaha fair enough but I couldn’t resist with the Knightmares part

Yup, 2200 National Master is a life goal of mine but surely years of hard work away

6 Likes
46

Thank you @LeannaMandragoran for making the Writer Support Thread this month! April time passed me by so quickly I decided to step back from the forums and focus on editing Chapter 8. Writing this chapter is super difficult for me, like trying to find God in hot brickwork. :upside_down_face: Mine own fault.

What’s been helping the most is using an egg timer. Have others used this technique? Using the timer to keep track of, well, time, I do 20 minutes of writing and 20 minutes of distraction. With this method, I managed to do a huge chunk of edits and squeak in my monthly newsletter before April ended. My May goal is to continue edits (including line edits & brainstorming another unique scene) and do the monthly newsletter.

@poison_mara I’m so glad you’re back! I missed you. Thank you for returning.

@HarrisPS Thank you for the digest, wow!

10 Likes
47

Good luck with the month and for the rest of the chapter - I definitely know the feeling of a particularly tricky section, it feels endless.

I do use a timer - it helps me keep focused and also take breaks because my mind wanders and/or I get achey in body and brain if I work in one stretch too long. I find it really useful!

9 Likes
48

It’s good for getting the mental AND physical wiggles out! :grin:

7 Likes
49

April. Bought a notebook for journaling. Spent more time watching notepad reviews. Bought a new notepad.

My writing last month blew way out of scope, funny how that happens. I need to refocus so this month I’ll forget about pretty words and just finish the story. Lay out the plot beats, the mood the chapter should have, and code in whatever major branching choices I want to happen.

10 Likes
50

I’ve only just started releasing my work with the intention of monthly updates, for the exact reason to help keep me going. I did expect that feedback would be a part of this, so it will be interesting to see what happens. On the one hand, having a deadline with “actual” consequences is in theory good for keeping me going. On the other, I do suspect that I will grow disappointed if I release multiple updates in a row without any sort of feedback.

@Omeg Taking a break is not a bad idea, last thing you want is to become disillusioned with your creative work. I hope you come back more inspired than ever to complete it. Even if you don’t receive feedback now, it doesn’t mean that when you’re done, people will have nothing to say about it. There are so many WIPs to keep track of, sometimes we fall into the cracks. I assume most of us authors have experienced this at different times. Just wanted to say you’re not alone.

11 Likes
51

For this month I want to try to do a hotfix+ update for All the Way and to get an update for Dice & Dungeon Masters done.

For my All the Way hotfix+ update:

Summary

The earlier will (sadly) require revisiting the dreaded never ending volleyball mini game where I realized that somehow the code for switching servers got missed and this resulted in some other things needing to be tweaked. I also need to do some other fixing; chapter 10 had a ton of typos that were rough (even) by my standards, but I have that mostly tidied up now. And then I’d really like to get chapter 9 done where there will be some 80’s / 90’s party games, drunken revalry, and plenty of bad decisions for the prot and her friends to make. Also would like to get chapter 11 done where the super natural thriller aspects finally begin in earnest, and if I could sneek in a teaser for chapter 12 which deals with the first round of fall out, that would be awesome, and chapter 13, which will introduce some cool cult stuff, the world needs more cool cult stuff, at least in it’s fictional games.

For Dice & Dungeon Masters update:

Summary

Will probably start with a few more of the random dungeon encounter scenes, though I’d eventually like to expand on some of the current chapters and hopefully get into the next one. This will involve revisiting the real-world problem scenes (familly, schoo, work, etc.) and the fandom tv show content. Would like to get the next section of Lyr/Lyra’s game going, but this would also like get more game focused play options available for some pic up games the prot can try. At some point I want to advance the game to having a sandbox section where the prot can run around, go on dates, play random table top rpgs, watch their shows, and deal with real world drama, but that’s going to probably be a bit in the future. Also would like to play with arrays for this game, as arrays make sense at least for player character creation where multiple characters may be created, discarded, die, and/or be retired or actually played.

Plenty to work on . . . but yeah, these will be my last two planed updates as I have been driving myself crazy trying to balance them with all the other aspects of my life. After these two I plan to continue on with my goals, but only present them to the forum when I feel there is sufficient content, which will probably mean that I will need to bug moderators and leaders to reopen my threads periodically.

Anywho, no word count goal though if I can manage somewhere between 20k-50k I will be happy. Upon finishing these, more or less back to Sense & Sorcery, where I hope there I will at least get the sandbox sections a bit better. Been jiving out to the Wyldermyth sound track and have been thinking there’s so much more that can be done with all these games, to better evoke a true story based interactive experience. Hopefully bit by bit my games will get there.

P.S. Unrelated to writing but tangential to it, may I state Life is Hard, even in the supposed first world. While I haven’t had any epic sword battles with invading monkeys or anything cool like that, sub pump died last month so down 1.2K for that, and this month my lawn mower has decided permanent retirement is it’s new life goal, so probably down that much again. With the whole unwanted alteration of my country and the economic and social upheaval, its certainly a hard juggling act trying to keep up with the jones’s when most months one feels as though the jone’s not only road one over but are now backing up just to be sure.

I think it would be nice if there was one, to keep the tradition going. That said, my personal participation would depend on how things are going in my own life at the time. I keep wanting to try one of these game jams, but hard to find the time and energy to give it a good go, for myself at least.
Hope you are feeling better!

Same.

Me: Here’s something I spent uncountable hours creating with crazy amazing characters and good world building mechanics. I hope people enjoy it!

Usual Response: Crickets reading a news paper or “People” magazine or whatever crickets read instead commenting in their cricket voices to try to be quiet, they are reading.

It can be very disheartening. Not that I am not grateful for the positive responses I do get, when I get those. Though, sadly, human nature being what it is, probably it takes three bits of positive feedback to measure against one negative one or several rounds of radio silence.

So anyway, I am thinking of switching things up a bit due to this and other reasons. I think unless your already well known or somewhat gifted at marketing, this is often the response WIPs seem to get, though there are some very lucky WIPs out there that are crushing it on their first go.

I do wonder, for those that wish to share, if there’s things any of you lesser known authors would advice in regard to marketing your games that might be helpful for other aspiring authors? As this seems to be an aspect of challenge that several thread participants are experiencing, seems a relevant question.

Here here! Glad these threads continue on. Kind of cool to have different hosts each month.

Victory!

Seems like a solid plan.

12 Likes
52

Hahaha I felt like “damn I’d rather people tell me it sucked ass so I could at least know what to improve or know what is missing” but the crickets hurt. I know sometimes it’s not a rational response. Maybe it could be lots of people read it and had no time to comment. Or maybe some of them are lurkers who are not regular commenters or forum members. I would sometimes feel ungrateful to my testers for feeling disappointed if no one or only a few people commented.

I felt like, I see a lot of people gushing over other stories or providing morale support to the authors, and I wonder if my story is just too blah or something or too esoteric or niche if not many are doing the same for my story. But some stories may not involve those kinds of fans. My story is about overcoming poverty with a possessed mic, not cheesy romance and cheesy drama, for example. At least, I hope

9 Likes
53

Sorry to hear that you’re feeling a bit discouraged Zodac01. It can feel like you’re putting so much sweat and tears into your work, only to be met with silence. That sucks. I don’t know what’s a good way to deal with it, but I think many authors feel something similar a lot of the time.

6 Likes
54

I’m not sure what the general opinion is on update frequently, but I’m not personally into whole draft drops. Such a long draft is kinda overwhelming if it’s the first time I’m seeing it. It’s harder to give feedback if I have a big amount to go through. It also feels like I should just wait for an official release. Which isn’t exactly fair, but there you go.

That being said, I don’t like super frequent updates. I don’t really like having to replay the whole story for half a chapter, or a full chapter that’s half completed

8 Likes
55

I wrote a thing!

Also, rhyme schemes? Equal stanza lengths? Never heard of them.

The girl with twigs for hair

There once was a girl,
with twigs for hair.
It grew on her that way.

They stuck straight up from her head
and branched wherever they may.

Her mother despaired
Her father cried
And she? She played with dolls
Four sticks
Some wire
A bit of cloth
It was convenient that way.

By the time she was a teen
They grew to antler size
And at the tips
Grew little leaves
And birdies nested there

Her peers
they didn’t understand
And called her names for years
But she? She didn’t notice it
Since she was feeding birds

Until one day
They lured her away
And tricked her into the woods
Until one day
She found her way
To a girl with spots

“Hello,”
She said
“Who are you there? And why do you look so sad?”
The girl, she cried,
And said to her,
Her skin, it was so bad.

The twig girl hummed, but was confused
It looked just fine to her.
A spot and swirl here and there
Why would that be refused?

It turned cold soon
They found a cave
And in it built a fire
Of little twigs
That fell right off
The branches of the first girl’s hair

They grew together from that day
The girls with twigs and spots
She made her crowns
Of little twigs
And leaves
With flowers at the ends

12 Likes
56

Well, April (and frankly January, February, and March) was a bit of a rough month for me in terms of writing. Finally got my revisions done on The Last Scion and sent in. Still a lot more work to do on that one, but progress is progress!
I’m not sure what my writing goals for May will be. I think I’ll try to mix in more time for my conventional prose fiction, maybe go back and fix up some of my old short stories to send out, or finally pull out one of the dozens of half-formed ideas I promised myself to come back to when I had a break.

11 Likes
57

Do you have any conventional fiction published already?

8 Likes
58

Yeah! I’ve been in Analog, published a few things with an online magazine called Mysterion, some anthologies, and I’ve also written some stuff for the Battletech game universe. Mostly sci-fi, I’ve only had one fantasy story published (my most recent one actually, a spin on “Beowulf”).

17 Likes
59

That’s so cool! I’ll keep an eye out for your work!

7 Likes
60

Upon revisiting my original (secret!) goal for May, I decided that it would be more realistic to make that the goal for May and June. The last version of this [REDACTED] took a little over three months, but that involved rewriting the whole third act. So I’m cautiously optimistic that this time, two months will do.

10 Likes