October 2022's Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for October 2022.

:spiral_calendar:

:birthday: Happy Birthday to October babies.

:mega: Thank you, everyone that 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:

:jack_o_lantern: :mage: :candy:

One important aspect of all of our writing journeys is to look for ways to improve.

As everyone knows, I have been on a massive rewrite and editing phase for my Patchworks project.

Copy editing is a daily part of my routine while doing this.

With this in mind, I thought I’d showcase three helpful tools that I find essential in helping me write better.

https://hemingwayapp.com/

When using these tools, remember that they are not perfect, and they are also not specialized for writing interactive fiction.

Because of their generalist focus, it is essential to keep your chosen style-guide (ie Choice of Games Style Guide - Google Docs) in mind and that nothing beats actual humans reading and testing.

This past month, @dashingdon has opened a new hosting site: https://moody.ink/

Thank you for putting so much time and effort in supporting every single one of us, Don!

It is awesome 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 October, let us know!

Finally, my personal goals for October: I’m afraid it is the same as it has been for a while; to continue my rewrite and reworking of the Patchworks project.

I am anxious to share my writing with this community… hopefully sooner than later.

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This month, I plan to finish my book. And, therefore, my trilogy!

The main difficulty now is coming up with something epic enough to satisfy long-time readers and bring three books’ worth of adventures to a satisfying end. But I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got planned. You might even be able to kill Hitler. And that’s not even close to the most epic thing you’ll be able to do!

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And then I heard someone say we might be getting a Shadowrun game? Hmmmm? Yessss?

(I’m replaying Harebrained’s trilogy these days and it’s giving me a hankering for RIGGERING!)

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Three 400,000 word games in about three years without suffering quality issues? What is that, some sort of record? Whatever you come up with for the last bit, it’s going to be worth the nonexistent free time I’m going to have after I replay it about a million times and I’m confident I speak for all the other fans of your games that are out there lurking

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…Which one of you told me I’d have free time until September arrives? Yeah, you were right. Uni life hit me HARD. I’ve literally never been this busy before and things are reeeeal chaotic. My writing progress have been basically little to none because I’m so busy and when I’m not I’m left just wanting to rest. Which sucks, because I really, really want to actually finish my WIP :frowning:

I’ve managed to write a few blurbs here and there, but nothing towards the main thing. So… I guess my goals for this month is to AT LEAST make some progress on the main game, because I don’t think I’ll be able to do much else lol. Hope you’re all doing better than I am, and good luck as always

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Howdy again everyone.

This month was kind of awful, in more ways than one. But I didn’t stop writing, even if only very little, so at least I have that going on for me. My over-indulgent story now stands shy of 50K w/code. Baby steps. Hopefully this month I shall finally finish the prologue (highly doubt it though).

Either way, all I really want to accomplish this month is to not give up and keep on writing.

Best of luck for everyone attempting to meet their own goals, hopefully this month will treat you well.

Ramble Under the Cut

Beware when I say ramble, I mean it.

I’ve come to the realization that my story, at least it’s execution, is really boring. No, not to me, as I’m personally invested. But I doubt anyone else would look at it and be entertained. It’s my first attempt at creative writing so that’s to be expected. And of course I am capable of improvement (I think so at least), but here’s the thing. This is a passion project of mine, never have I went in this with hopes of publication or high appraisal, it was truly just something I started because it made me happy. Still does, despite the anxiety that sometimes comes over me when I think about why I’m doing this. In a sense I want to see what others think, as even though it really isn’t a good story or prose, I still can’t help but desire for someone to like it. The confirmation that it’s bad somewhat terrifies me, a childish part of me still worried that my enjoyment of a thing must be quelled if others find it “cringey” or bad or what not (which, yeah, admitted that’s what my story is like). Anyway, my point being that now I’m unsure if I should ever make a demo for it as I initially planned, even if I would really want and would appreciate some feedback, it feels like it would be a very selfish thing of me to do, to post something, asking for help making it better when I’m doing this for myself alone, not with the intent of providing something good for the community. All the criticism and help I would implement, would only be towards what I think makes the story more enjoyable for me, not the audience. Of course, people would only do it if they wanted to, but still feels a bit disingenuous of me. Maybe I am, as is my usual, making a tempest in a water glass, and even though it makes be a bit sad I should just keep stuff to myself, just enjoy it as is and not risk the stress of my silliness being exposed to the world.

Well, all this complaining won’t do much, nothing at all really. But I just wanted to voice this concern of mine and get it off my chest.

If this is too venty, unrelated or dumb for this topic, please say so and I’ll delete this part, as I really don’t wish to make a nuisance of myself.

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I don’t know wht my goal should be this month. I don’t think I can be able to end a game for my own game jam. At least I hope people find the jam interesting and help authors to improving while having fun.

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I am very tired at the moment thanks to lingering covid and various other stresses. But! Having taken a few days off my CoG work at the end of the month I feel a little more recharged for October. My goal is to finish drafting Chapter 10 of Royal Affairs - I’m getting towards the end of it - and do a lot of testing because there are a lot of moving parts before going into Chapter 11, the finale. Endings are always a huge challenge so that’ll need a lot of reading through and testing too; my original aim was to finish by the end of October, but I don’t think that’ll happen. I’ll do as much as I can before the end of the month, after which I’ll have more time to focus on it.

Good luck for the coming month, everyone! :heart:

Oh! And 'tis the season for IF Comp, so I’ll be playing and judging a bunch of the entries!

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@Schliemannsghost That’s impressive as hell. Well done!

@HarrisPS Awesome news! Good luck wrapping it up this fall!

I’ll be around 70k words of Final Monologue in early October. I’d really like to get close to the 100k-word mark by the time Talon City rolls out in early Nov, so that’s the goal. Then I’ll just push as vigorously as I can manage to finish the game by December or January. I think I’m adopting Jim’s Zombie Exodus IAP-approach for Monologue; it will save me on art cover costs and I think it might make subsequent updates a bit smoother? (Not sure about this one)

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Happy October! This month I’m prepping a novel which I will eventually write next month for Nanowrimo. I’m using Katytastic’s “3 acts, 9 blocks, 27 chapters” outlining method. HOW TO OUTLINE | 3 act 9 block 27 chapter example - YouTube

That being said, I doubt my final manuscript will have exactly 27 chapters. Some might be longer. Maybe I’ll merge some plot points down the road. It’s just a base line. I feel It’s a realistic goal for me though.

Summary

My story is about two girl. Camellia Winters is a sweet, bubbly girl who has the power to see ghosts. Camellia is a goth with a tendency towards all thing spooky, but she is eager to make friends and explore new things. Even if her curiosity gets her into trouble sometimes.

Camellia moves into a new house which is rumored to be haunted. Unable to sleep because of the storm, she goes out into the garden. There she meets…

Yuriko Kurokawa. She is a yurei, a ghost who was betrayed by her ex husband and drowned in the koi pond. She does not want Camellia’s family in her house and just wants to be left alone. The first half of the story focuses on Camellia and Yuriko becoming friends (maybe girl friends?)

Should I mark my story as LGBT+ on Nanowrimo? I want explore a possible relationship between my main girls but nothing is set in stone.

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I am hopefully finally in a stable living situation again, and I’d really like to get moving on finishing this (very long) chapter of FoA. On top of that, it would be really nice to have a full Diaspora draft by the end of the year. So, I’m going to try and accelerate a bit.

October Goals:

  • 60,000 words in Asphodel
  • Progress every single day in Diaspora

And we’ll see how they go. Good luck to everyone this month. :slight_smile:

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Oh yay!

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My summer was absolutely terrible, so for months I wasn’t able to get any writing done or concentrate on anything literature based. Now, I think I’m slowly getting back into the swing of writing so I’m crossing my fingers that I can finally get an update out this month, so that’s my plan.

Hope you all achieve your goals for October!

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I’ve been waiting to start my WIP until I got my own computer, and I’m excited to anounce that I finally have one! I plan to spend October just messing around with code and getting myself familiar with it (I’ve never done any coding before) while writing spare scenes here and there before I actually dtart my main project. Other than that my goal is just to write something everyday this month, project related or not.

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And with this post, today’s already accounted for! :smiley:

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Goal for October: finish and post Ch 1 of Stormwright. :slight_smile:

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Howdy everyone I havent posted here in months but I’ve been working on my wip nearly every day. August was a bit lackluster due to the heat throwing my sleep awry.

My goal is to get chapter 8 and 9 finished which probably means 30k more words.

Down with covid at the mo but I think its achievable in October even with the first week being a write off.

I also aim to review lots of Wips on the meantime. So if you need feedback @me

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Now, I’m on chapter 3 with the outlining method I’m using. I feel like these first three “chapters” are ultimately going to be one chapter, or maybe a prologue and a chapter. Then again, as it stands, this outline is just my thoughts, what I want to happen, and some rough dialogue. When I actually add scenes and character descriptions, I’m sure it will be longer.

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Happy October everyone!

I plan to complete chapter three of my WiP this month and maybe revive it, but I might also write around 10k words on my side-WiP, if all goes well.

Nevermind me though, keep writing and chasing those dreams!

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Got a big project that finishes on the 9th. After that, going to try to get something quick and fun done for the Halloween Jam, but three weeks is not a lot of time! It does mean that Ansible Station 24 is going on a bit of a break for a while.

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