November 2023's Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for November 2023.

:spiral_calendar:

:birthday: Happy Birthday to November babies.

Thank you, everyone who continues to participate in these threads – it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.

If anyone has specific questions or concerns I may help with, please let me know.

:open_book:

As writers, we use our words as tools, and sometimes, as weapons. It’s our responsibility to listen to new conversations, to keep abreast of the ever-changing sociopolitical climate, and above all, to think before we write.

It’s often hard to keep track of evolving language and social movements, of phrases in the vernacular that were perfectly acceptable ten years ago but are now taboo (and vice versa).

With that in mind, I am revisiting a topic first discussed back in 2020. The use of food to describe people.

The following resources were pointed out to me by @Fiogan, so be sure to credit them for their awesomeness.

Here is a two-part article that starts as a solid foundation as how to represent people of color (PoC) in a way that they desire:

And, finally this article covers hair:

Remember, NaNo is upcoming.

There is a support thread made for this: NANOWRIMO support group 2023

It is wonderful to share everyone’s journey during the month; both highs and lows help each one of us realize that we are not alone in our journey.

If anyone has something special going on in November, please let us know!

My personal goal for November is to : complete my current pass I am on for Patchwerks Chapter 4.

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Thanks for the thread, as ever, @Eiwynn!

My goal for November is to finish Ch 2 of Stormwright. Back to that now!

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Always grateful to see another of these threads go up; thank you, Eiwynn!

My goals for November are basically holdover goals from October that turned out to require more work (and words) than I was expecting.

November 2023:

  • Finish Asphodel’s epilogue, then post it along with Chapter Ten for public consumption.
  • Get at least halfway through what’s left of Diaspora’s epilogue.

I think both of these are quite doable; the challenge will simply be to do them. Usually I try for NaNoWriMo with whatever project I’m currently working on, but this time I think it will be less “write a whole metric tonne of words” and more “write half a metric tonne of words, then edit and release,” so I won’t be holding myself to a specific wordcount this time around.

Good luck with you goals this month, everyone! :slight_smile:

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Thanks for kicking off the November thread!

In case anyone missed it, do check out my digest of October releases, updates, and new WIPs. I’m going to try to do this again for this month as it has been so positive the last two goes.

I’m aiming to do Chapter 6 of Honor Bound this month and do a couple of small tweaks to Chapter 4-5, and to respond to feedback from the limited beta test for the Royal Affairs expanded epilogue. I’ll be putting up Chapter 3 for people to play next week. I hope to do some work on an outline but there are some factors that make that a bit of an unknown; if I have time, I’ll start planning HB Chapter 7.

I am feeling a bit anxious today about how my in-progress work will be received once it’s finished because of the ways in which it diverges from what people have enjoyed previously. What I say to others who are experiencing this is something like “it would be soul-destroying to repeat the same thing forever, and whatever you’re making, the most important thing is that you’re enjoying it”. I will try to listen to my own advice.

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You are an inspiration to many of us, Hannah!

Royal Affairs is among my favorites, so I look forward to all the new writing.

I do not think there is a peek into yourCreme-de-Creme world I dislike, so as you take me on your curated journey into this world, I always look forward to the discovery of new things.

. :revolving_hearts:

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First off, the beginning of this month will mark my huge comeback into the local video game convention circuit, as I’ll be exhibiting my visual novel, Bittersweet Harvest, at ESGS.

And once that’s over, I’ll take care of the 2nd round of revisions for Falrika the Alchemist as well as work on the incubation stage for another visual novel I’ve made for the recently-concluded Game Jam Plus.

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Goal: NaNoWriMo
Obstacles: NaNoWriMo, having a social life, eating, sleeping, fulltime job, and a kid.

Best of luck to everyone’s goals this month.

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Wait. What are those… things?

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Same, that seems like an alien language?

Anyway, last month for me was, kinda rough… I won’t get into the details since this is a writing support thread not a therapy thread, but at the end of the day, I basically did no writing for all of last month.

Saying that though, the creative writing club that I joined at my university has helped immensely, in both my writing and life. It became a shock when I realised that I had something to look forward to every week instead of the same cycle of numbness.

Anyway, enough about me, here’s my goals for November:

  • Basically the same as October’s goals, since I didn’t finish them.
  • Complete the rewind section in act two.
  • At a push, complete the entirety of act two.
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Last month I had a sinus infection (still do, but it’s better since the antibiotics), and that’s set me back on school work and my application into my college’s education program (though I don’t know why I need to when I already go here. So, October wasn’t very productive. And while I’d like to get stuff done in November, I wouldn’t count on it

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October was a good month for me, but I’m going to chalk it up to being hyper-fixated on writing and not hold myself to that standard.

That said, here are my goals:

  • Finish the remaining 6 RO routes for Chapter 1 of The Truthkeeper
  • Complete Chapter 2
  • NaNoWriMo 40k words in total across any writing I do

I also have an idea for a dark monster hunter WIP but there’s currently someone else’s WIP that’s a little similar on the forum so I’d rather work on that privately for now. It seems like it’d be either hell or a really fun time to code, we’ll see. Tentative name: Beast Abyss. I’ll be working on it as a productive break from my current project.

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I just started on my newest choicescript project at the last few days of October. That said it has certainly had its high and lows. The more experimental features have been polarizing to say the least. That said my goals for this month

  • Finish the first chapter of The Game of War

  • Create a stats page

  • Make character art for each of the unique species

  • 100k words written this month

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Happy November! Thank you for the thread and the links, Eiwynn. It’s always good to refresh myself on descriptive writing and WWC is a great blog.

October went pretty well for me. I started then restarted my first serious choicescript project, and the rewrite just feels so much better as an opening now. I’m still trying to get a consistent pace down (and to not either beat myself up or psyche myself out about productivity), but I have to reassure myself that I’ve never managed to be this disciplined before.

I’ve learned a lot about branching and just got more comfortable with CS in general. Will certainly be taking some lessons forward about running the maths on how big a tree I’m signing myself up for before setting up something that branches into 24 outcomes again :sweat_smile:

My goal for November is to finish the first two chapters of the project. Ambititously I’d like to complete a third chapter also, cause that feels like an amount of content I’d be happy to use as a demo.

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I don’t think I set an actual goal for myself in October, but it went pretty ok for me in terms of writing.

I actually re-wrote huge chunks of my first chapter, which I believe was necessary and beneficial for my game in the long run. Getting the tone and mood of the story right is very important to me, and I don’t mind spending more time to get it right during these early stages when I still can do so without too much trouble. I’d rather do it now than later when I’ve written three chapters…

For November, my main goal is just to continue working on my WIP.

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I ended up having a lot of life stuff in october and was unable to finish something for halloween jam, which was dismaying, but, ever onward. It’s back to my main project now, and luckily the halloween jam project was set in the same universe, so it was never far from my mind. I even ended up realizing things about some background characters that might prove useful back in the main project.

I’m not sure what kind of goal I’d like to set…I have a lot of maintenance to do; I think I’ll stray away from a word count goal this month

  • implement the edits found for chapter 1
  • finally finally finally settle on an affinity system
  • write at least a little bit, for most days.

The weather is so lovely right now, I’m cherishing my scant few days of autumn before I switch to complaining about the cold. :sparkles:

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My plan for this month is to get my short story done by the 8th and get the first chapter of A Familiar Magic done by the 30th.

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I might not have commented before now, but these threads have been so helpful. I’ve used those tumblr posts myself and they’re great.

My monthly goal is to finally finish adventure mode, write friendship events III, and start on the smaller events. I’m not sure what the word count will be for all of that… I’ll guess 30,000 and see if I’m close at the end! :laughing:

I have a question about variables for everyone and figured this might be a good place to ask. When you make comments for variables in startup, do you only do it for sections (e.g. relationships, chapters, MC stats, etc.) or for each variable? Do you find it helpful while writing, or more so for editing? Do you also comment for temp variables?

I’m currently reorganizing my startup page now and I have a lot of variables, so I don’t know which would be more useful in the long run.

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Each person will find ways to help themselves, but in startup here are the various types of comments I have:

  • *comment Alpha ver. 2.01.01 (I always start with the version I am working on.)
  • *comment morgue_shared (I have a list of my goto sub scene files commented, so I can track them)
  • *comment Singular subject [EX: she, he, they] (I have a few grammar/style comments, so i remind myself of things to keep in mind when writing)
  • *comment Identity and Appearance variables created 01-22-22. Updated 02-02-22 (I have variable categories and dates of changes/updates made)
  • *comment skin4 = texture: mottled, leathery, and abraded and *comment skin5 = complexion and texture (skin1 + skin4) (I have comments to remind me what the variables are actually defined as)

and last but not least:

  • *comment ============= DD SAVE SYSTEM - REMOVE *comment BEFORE UPLOAD ==========================================

I have a few legacy comments like the one reminding myself about the save system quirks for Dashingdon’s.

I hope some of these help and even give you ideas that fit your needs.

Also, welcome to the support thread this month! :revolving_hearts:

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I have comments for sections of startup if I just want to keep them organised and remind myself what all is in them, but I also have more involved, variable by variable comments for things where I think there’s any chance I’ll forget what they mean or what the values represent.

My memory is abysmal so I’m future proofing against it ^^, and it has already saved me from having to go back and double check manually a few times while writing.

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To whichever degree is required for me to remember what everything is. And for whichever part of the process I might need to remember.

In other news, since I finished last month with doing illustrations (and writing job applications, and getting myself injured), I've been doing some character design sketches.

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