November 2024's Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for November 2024.

:spiral_calendar:

:birthday: Happy Birthday to November babies.

:mega: Last month’s thread was hopping, thank you, everyone who continues to participate in these threads – it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.

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.

It seems no authors were looking for feedback this month. If you are in need of feedback and would like to be added to this month’s list (or next month’s), please tag me and let me know.

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 2024 Support group

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!

Finally, my personal goals for November: It is the same as it has been for a while; to continue my reworking of the Patchwerks project based on the feedback I received.

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Thanks as always for the thread and resources, Eiwynn!

As for me, I’ve never been the sort to ‘officially’ NaNo or anything, and that’s not changing, but I’ll be in the support thread over there nonetheless, posting wordcounts and trying to hit a goal.

Specifically:

  • 40,000 new words in Blood of the Living

I have a surgery this month, on the 18th, and I am expecting the recovery process to take up a lot of time and energy. So while I might have otherwise tried for something closer to 50k, I’d like to give myself some grace and hope I can make 40 instead.

I’d also like to try getting something started on the maybe-novel, but right now I’m just enjoying tinkering with it a bit. An almost-sure sign that it’s doomed to peter into nothingness, but not necessarily a waste of time, either.

Good luck to everyone with your goals this month. :slight_smile:

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Now that I’ve released Lily Adventuresses! Episode 1 and made the prologue for Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2, there’s another game jam I’m looking forward to – GameJamPlus 2024/25. There, I’ll make chapter 1 of Lily Adventuresses! Episode 2.

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That’s unfortunate, but I suppose I could use a break anyway. (From testing, I mean. Still, I’m happy to take a look if something gets added in future.)

My current project is at 200k words, and the final game would likely be about 250k or so, though this number could probably go up further.

Even then, I’m also wondering how much effort I should really be putting into it, considering that it’s probably not going to be very popular. But then again, I’ve no idea what a popular work is even supposed to look like now. :sweat_smile:

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Still inching my way with my wip The Empire.

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So, bit of a mixed month on my end.

I was quite happy with what I’d started in September. The more I wrote, however, the more it became clear that there were some issues, specifically around pacing and consistency. It started to feel more like parallel stories in a shared setting than a malleable story reacting to its setting.

I felt that most of these problems could be attributed to process, so I’ve started over, with a new story and some changes to both my mechanics and outline.

For example, mechanically, I like writing on paper. It’s nice and old school and an escape from my already stupidly high daily screentime (yay work!). I’ve always written like this, yet, for interactive fiction, I’ve found it much harder to keep an overview of all the moving parts this way. So back to electronics it is.

Similarly, for my outline, I had a pretty good grasp on my story beats. What was a lot less clear, were the choices surrounding and affecting them. So I had to go and have a good think on those.

There were a few other things and I’m sure there will be more in the coming month. As such, my goal for November is not focused on things like word count, but rather on refining how I write, preferably in a way that I can execute on daily and be happy with the end result.

While also ignoring that BioWare decided to use this exact moment to release a new Dragon Age. I’m sure that will go well :neutral_face:

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Good luck with your surgery! Get well soon.

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My goal for Exit Through the Gift Shop is to get the first chapter (post-prologue) up for playtesting. It has been quite the slog so far, as I am defining and coding game mechanics that will last the whole book, but I am so excited for you all to get to visit the museum (the 1930s version), interact with the building, its people, and your family, and, take photos to build your Family Album. I know it won’t be all perfect at first blush, but my goal is to get enough of the mechanics in place that there is a skeleton to support the basic reader experience I have in mind. Then I can iterate and tweak - and then move on to the next chapter (1940s). So my goal this month is not a word count but a development goal - complete a technical pass of Chapter 1 and launch for reader feedback.

Oh, and I am also speaking with a rights holder that will shape the content for the rest of the book. Wish me luck!

Oh, part 2: And I received New User of the Month Award for Oct. Woot! I have no idea why but I hope this month I can live up to whatever made me earn it.

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Good luck!

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Thank you as usual @Eiwynn! :revolving_hearts:

I feel scattered in the space I’m currently in. I’m writing the sequel to my game but the first is still months away from releasing, and it feels like walking through a dark tunnel while hoping I’m headed in the direction of light :sweat_smile: But onward I go. I’ve always said I’d never participate in NaNo but I’m going to do a modified version to keep myself focused. My goal is to add 20k words to chapter one - which should be doable since I averaged 30k-40k words per month towards the end of writing my first game.

Wishing you a speedy recovery!

:joy:

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Good luck to everyone with their writing for this month!

I’m working on my outlines but as they range from partially-secret to top-secret, it’s hard to be very specific. Hoping to get them drafted and maybe revised too in November!

I’m going to be making promotional blog posts for Honor Bound, and also hope to share some more general stuff about outlining as I go.

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October did not fo well for me. I lost about a week and a half of writing time due to some real life issues and getting sick.

My goal for Novemember is once again to write 30k words for Guardian of Time, and my stretch goal is to make a map for my world.

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Good luck to all this month! Based on several factors, chief among them being the company’s recent announcement that they will not be considering any increase to the Hosted Games author royalty rate, all my ChoiceScript efforts are on indefinite hiatus.

BUT-I am still getting in the NaNoWriMo spirit. Instead of 25,000 words toward Grandparenting, I am shooting to have my first completed screenplay by the end of the month. It’ll be hard writing in such a new format, but on the flip side I can actually do this on my phone some too, instead of being shackled to one computer like I was with CS. I’m not worrying about formatting with the first draft. Just doing it in Google Docs as best I can before I port everything over to whatever script software I end up getting. Probably Final Draft, I guess. It seems to be the standard.

@Foxcat In regards to what you said at the end of the last writer support thread, don’t get caught up on November as the only month to do something like this. If life has put you in a bad position to try to write a ton in November, punt. The point isn’t to write a ton in November. It’s to write a ton period. It works just as well if you do it in December, or January, or even May if you can’t handle it right now. I pray you get to be on more solid footing soon.

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Can I get some good luck for finishing my magazine illustrations too? :stuck_out_tongue: I have a deadline for them and all!

On one hand, I agree. On the other hand… there’s a dedicated support thread for that specific thing only in November!

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Rah bah bah. There’s a writer support thread every month of the year that’ll work just as well.

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Goal for November: Edit and update!

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omg almost forgot to write my goals. phew!
my goal: release chapter 1 of Deux à Deux to the public before the end of the month.

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I’m sad to hear about grandparenting but a screenplay sounds exciting! May I ask what it is about? (Or is it a secret :shushing_face:)

Is this sorceress or have you been working on a different one? :grinning:

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Scarlet Sorceress. I have been updating the Dashingdon link… just because. :joy: It is still a mess though, and will likely need a ton of cleanup and revisions before I open this to a beta, and that will likely come with a cogdemos option too.

https://dashingdon.com/play/chanceoffire/scarlet-sorceress-alpha/mygame/

Link is here if anyone wants to try it. But it’s a mess. You have been warned. :joy:

Hustler, I’m sorry to hear that you’re leaving your choicescript work, but I fully understand and respect your decision. I know things weren’t always smooth with me, but I just want to say no hard feelings, I appreciate having you on the forums, and I wish you success in your new project.

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Appreciated, and I’m sorry for any miscommunication on my part. My analytics can come off cold at times, but I never intend to hurt, just inform so people know what to expect beforehand. And I’m just on indefinite hiatus. Maybe I pick it back up, either because I need to financially or because I decide I can’t resist the temptation of finishing Grandparenting (even with the chapter that got nuked, I still have over 50k words in) or writing that wrestling game I have noodled about. But at this point I need to try something else for a while. It’s a much smaller chance at much bigger rewards, might as well roll the dice and see what happens. I highly doubt I can achieve the success of my brother-in-law’s friend that’s out in Hollywood writing horror films on the regular, but maybe I’ll get an IMDb credit one day.

@Jacic Nah, I might as well talk about it. Good chance to practice my logline (and get my spellcheck to accept logline as a word). It’s called They Are Risen, and is a Christian zombie film set in the days right after the crucifixion as the undead assault Jerusalem.

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