I usually write both at the same time. I used to write all variations at once, but lately I’ve been writing one variation at a time. I still code as I write though.
I haven’t had any caught so far, but I’m usually so excited I tell people what they are before letting them read it. I will probably be very excited with my current WIP when enough is out that readers start noticing themes and metaphors.
Snippet Day Post
I wrote this today. It won’t be part of my WIP, but I was inspired by an ask I received on my Tumblr, and wrote a scene of one of characters analyzing his life, 50 years after the events of my WIP take place. It was a good exercise and I’m actually pretty fond of it. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I’m particularly fond of this part:
Lukyan turned to see his wife, so distracted he hadn’t heard her approach. Married for half a century, and she still looked as young as she had at his wedding. It was easy to see why so many covet the eternal youth of the elves and leodra.
He didn’t have a problem with her staying young and beautiful as he aged, but he did struggle with becoming weaker than her. He used to be a renowned swordsman and war hero. He had an arctic bear as a battle companion. Now, he could still lift his sword, but the ease of manipulating it, decades of training had drilled into him were lost.
If they were attacked, he wouldn’t be able to protect her in the way he used to. She would probably be the one protecting him. Even apart from battle, she was physically stronger than he was. If one of them had to carry the other, it would be her carrying him. That’s what he struggled with. It wasn’t a petty jealousy of her beauty, but a petty jealousy of her strength.
I know that was short, but I’m just really proud of these specific paragraphs, so I decided to just stick with those this month.
I got slightly long-winded with this, so putting it under here
On my hosted game, I have no idea (but if they told me they did I’d be ecstatic). On my fanfiction, yes. I have one fic in particular that’s basically an original work at this point that’s inspired by the base material. And while my readers are (very) few, I’m lucky enough that they immediately pick up on what I’m putting down, despite the fact that it’s my most esoteric prose. It’s also the most “me” thing I’ve ever written, very unfiltered. So when someone looks at that and says “oh my gosh, you think and feel this way too?” it’s like… idk, not to be all weepy but it makes me feel somehow more a part of humanity I’d write no matter what, but having someone who understands is like magic.
I get this too! It makes me so happy haha
How dare you (I say as I laugh so hard I spill my tea)
Different readers catch/see/experience different things – some even will connect to the same bit of my writing in different ways.
I am humbled by it.
I will never forget the time that first person posted that my writing made them laugh out loud; I sometimes think back to that when imposter feelings are raging.
I was honored by the first person asking to write fan-fiction from my writing as well. Both because they wanted to write fanfic to begin with but more importantly it blew me away that they respected me enough to ask me before doing so.
I think another experience well worth experiencing is when a reader sees something in your writing that you did not necessarily plan, but that harmonizes with what you were trying to do.
The converse is when someone sees something you don’t want – when this happens it is a great opportunity to review and reflect on your writing.
I ended up writing a speed written entry for Ectocomp. Wasn’t planning to, but it doesn’t count as another WIP if it’s already finished does it ?
I love writing short games. I had forgotten how shocking easy they are to turn out a comparative lot of words all at once when you have something planned out to write and it just seems to almost write itself. Especially when you just go for it without having to worry much about long term consequences and complicated stat checks. (How good it is, is another story but it was fun.)
And because it’s not a HG I could play with the CSS colours. I mean how cool is this next button?
Hover :blink on:. Move pointer :blink off: (Yes I’m very easily amused by some things! )
I wish we could use thing like this to have an optional “customised colour game setting” option (along with the classic colours). It’d be a lot of fun for some games that might benefit from it.
(BTW if anyone knows how to change the hover colour on the choices I’d love to hear about it. I’ve never been able to work that one out.)
Double post from me (sorry).
Not sure if anyone else is interested but after re-reading Call of Cthulhu (which I used in my ectocomp entry) and then reading another dark themed game where things are told from different people’s perspectives to slowly unravel the mystery (you know who you are ) I thought it was interesting the way you see more often in the mystery/horror genre than anywhere else where multi person accounts and second hand sources are sometimes used to good effect. You see this in Dracula as well where they include a lot of logs, diary and journal entries.
I found this youtube clip where they talk about how the multiple layers of narrators can be used effectively, including to make the reader unsure if the person whose accounts they are reading really will survive the experience. (Kind of eliminating the “MC invincibility plot armour” thing that often comes into account which could actually be a great tactic for stories with these sorts of dark plot lines to keep the reader more in suspense about the outcome. Anyway, probably harder to pull off in IF than traditional storytelling (although not impossible). Thought I’d share this discussion of COC as I did find it interesting.
If you want to? Honestly no pressure or rush though . It was just something I was trying to work out and failed miserably at lol. I’m wondering if it’s not a simple colour change setting and maybe buried in the scripts somewhere instead.
I am trying this. I did this and it works:
@{(sibling_count+1) null |${sibling1_name}:|${sibling1_name}: & ${sibling2_name}:}
If you have no siblings, nothing happens. If you have one, it lists their name. If you have two, it lists both of their names. But what if I want a full paragraph bio for each. How do I do that in this format, or should I just use an if/else?
If you want to have actual paragraphs, it’s usually better to use *if and *else. In particular, if you want to have a line break you need to use *if and *else - multireplace doesn’t play nice with line breaks.
Technically you could make a second multireplace on a new line but yeah usually if I find myself using the same multireplace on more than two lines in succession, I consider changing it into an *if instead, as it’s just easier to catch errors in the writing/code in that format.
For my main project, there are a couple of things people have picked up on, though I’m not shy when it comes to telling people what I meant when I wrote something usually. For last year’s halloween jam? I didn’t get any analyses of the messages, metaphors, characters, etc. Though, I will say, without the whole picture (that jam is going to be a full game at some point) it was more difficult to catch certain things or infer things. But I am extremely proud of the hidden meanings and inferences about the characters.
I look forward to writing the whole thing after the first book of The Bureau is done.
I hope everyone is doing well this October. I am unfortunately not doing as well as I would like. My writing is progressing way too slowly for me, and I’m starting to doubt that I’ll reach my goal for the month. I just don’t like what I’m writing atm which just annoys me.
Considering the vast variation in before the ending, I really hope people don’t mind reading a few thousand words with choices by the end of the game. I’m running out of time, and it’s essentially just the part where the PC is discussing all the evidence they found with the team. So it’s
*if blank is true
share blank evidence
*else
teammate picks up slack, potentially missing evidence.
This is essentially the coding for the entire ending since it’s a culmination of everything the player has found up until this point, though I am planning a small epilogue that may have one or two choices in it.
Hurrah! I just finished writing a draft of my first ever chapter in ChoiceScript. I learned so much about the process and can’t wait to jump into my next chapter. Before I do, I see many of you have ways to share chapters for feedback. Can someone please advice me on best practices for doing that so I can share with you for feedback the draft of the first chapter of Exit Through the Gift Shop?
Ever since the month started—I’ve been trying to really sit down and write every day. It’s tough, sometimes I end up just doing a paragraph or two (not me taking a break after every 2 words) for the day. Plus, it’s a big mess—I’m trying to draft the new stuff first before really getting into the prose.
It looks something like this:
character a kicks character b in the shin and they duke it out lol
*choice
#break it up omg
u end up getting punched in the face
#join the fight
with a battle cry u charge character a and clothesline them
Ugly I know but boy does it make me progress the story faster! Super helpful that I can code through it too.
I find that if I write seriously while trying to progress the story, I get stuck trying to “perfect” a single paragraph like an idiot. Lots of procrastination on reddit later, I found out about zero drafting and thought… why the heck not. No ragrets.
Anyway, here’s to hoping I’ll re-open Lightweaver’s WIP thread and reach my end of chapter 1 goal soon!
I’d write no matter what, but having someone who understands is like magic.
?
)
) I thought it was interesting the way you see more often in the mystery/horror genre than anywhere else where multi person accounts and second hand sources are sometimes used to good effect. You see this in Dracula as well where they include a lot of logs, diary and journal entries.
. It was just something I was trying to work out and failed miserably at lol. I’m wondering if it’s not a simple colour change setting and maybe buried in the scripts somewhere instead.