October 2026 Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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welcome back everyone, and happy october!

:ghost: :leafless_tree: :jack_o_lantern: :black_cat: :spider_web: :crystal_ball: :fallen_leaf:

:spider: a short introduction… :spider:
to any new participants, this is a continuation of the monthly Writer’s Support Thread, a CoG Forum tradition started around 2020 by @poison_mara and continued for several years by the late Eiwynn.

these writer support threads are a no-pressure way for us writers to keep track of our monthly goals, writing progress, and any writing-related thoughts or whatever that come to mind throughout the month. all are welcome to join, whether you’re actively writing, in the planning process, or just considering writing in ChoiceScript in the future.

typically the first day or two of the month sees everyone who wants to participate in the thread listing their goals somehow, which we then reflect on for the last 1-2 days of the month. on the 15th of the month we have ’snippet day,’ where anyone can share any snippet from their project for practice sharing their writing with an audience. snippets don’t receive feedback by default, so if you are open to feedback, make sure to mention that (and consider joining a ‘feedback exchange’ if you’re specifically looking for it!).

and of course, to any returning participants, hi! excited for another great month with you all :slight_smile:

:jack_o_lantern: announcements! :jack_o_lantern:

  1. IT’S HALLOWEEN JAM MONTH!!! see the forum post here by @poison_mara for information. the deadline is 31 October 12:00pm GMT +1, and the minimum wordcount to enter is a super-manageable 2,000 words. thank you @Cecilia_Rosewood for the suggestion to add this here, can’t believe i forgot!! :laughing:
  2. Below the Skyline by @dozendietcokesaday is in BETA TESTING!!! check the forum post out here, and message dietcokes to get the link to play. and of course, if you have time, leave some feedback if you want to help out before the game gets submitted to Hosted Games!
  3. Shadow of the Curse-Eater by Kim Berkley is currently being worked on by @Brian_Rushton, who’s working with CoG to finish it up, and is now playable on CogDemos! check the forum post to see what feedback in particular would be most helpful to brian.
  4. more announcements to come…probably. tag or DM me if you want anything posted here!

:ghost: optional discussion prompt :ghost:
since it’s officially october, i think a spooky/horror-adjacent prompt is in order. works in the horror genre of course have spookiness, creepiness, unease, and danger in spades—but i’m of the opinion that even non-horror games (and stories in other mediums!) can only benefit from the occasional suspenseful moment. how else are you meant to experience those “edge of your seat” moments while reading a book, or playing a game? even a heated confrontation between friends or partners can be suspenseful if the reader/player can’t tell how it’ll play out.

as such, for this month i’d love to open up a discussion on this theme: suspense. how do you create suspense in writing, if you’re in the camp i am (that suspense is awesome, and we should use it)? is there any particular way you think is impactful in our medium of interactive fiction to create suspense, or do you think there are universal tactics for creating suspense that apply to most, or even all, mediums? do you even like suspense at all in your stories, or do you prefer other methods of creating emotional stakes or investment in a reader/player?

:fallen_leaf: :crystal_ball: :spider_web: :black_cat: :jack_o_lantern: :leafless_tree: :ghost:

once again, happy october, all. excited to see what we accomplish this month!

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Ah, a brand new month. Good thing I’ve completed chapter 3 of Lily Adventuresses! Episode 4 (and it was quite long, since I had to squeeze in two quests, three towns, and three dungeons). My aim for this month is simple: Complete chapter 4.

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Happy October! Goals for this month are finishing a branching scene in the current chapter of my WIP and revamping code for relationship stats. I’ve been stuck on this scene forever for life reasons.

i’d love to open up a discussion on this theme: suspense.

I am firmly in the camp that suspense is awesome. I like to refer to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic bomb-under-the-table theory. Unlike surprise’s sudden jump scares, suspense is all about a controlled release of information. When you let the audience see the ticking clock before the characters do, a mundane conversation can be agonizing. It’s that torturous delay between the realization of threat and the actual strike.

In our interactive fiction medium, I think that dynamic becomes so beautifully cruel(? the right word escapes me) because the reader is no longer a passive bystander. Giving a player incomplete data creates tension unique to IF. They know a threat is looming but lack the stats or information to be completely sure which option is “safe,” and just clicking a choice becomes high-stakes. It forces the player’s anxiety to mirror the protagonist’s, and I find it such an addictive tool to write and read with.

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Thanks for the thread, @raywilson. I’ll have to give that question some thought—I have the instinct that while most of the usual suspense techniques work well in IF as well, there’s probably a little something extra to be gained from the sheer haptics of how these games are played. The physical clicking, the slight delay as a page loads, that sort of thing. I don’t know that I have a more fully-formed thought on this yet, but it’s something for me to ponder, I guess. :slight_smile:

My goals for this month:

  • I would really like to edit Chapters 4-7 this month, but I might only get through 4-6, depending on how much editing is needed.
  • I’d like to get at least a nice 5,000 word chunk on each of my new projects, which will have the prerequisite of getting my basic systems set up. (Relatively easy for the new CS game, much harder for the potential Twine project!)

I hope everyone finds all the time and luck they need to meet their writing goals this month.

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New month! My plan this month is to finish and submit Ch. 9 out of 11, get at least 5K into the climactic Ch. 10, and add new scenes or expand old ones based on the feedback in the shadow of the curse eater thread.

I agree completely. This can be a bit of a balancing act. Too little information can ruin the suspense since we have no expectations (like “do I go left or right?”) but too many safeguards like instant undos and minimizing lingering effects can make it feel bloodless.

One choice I remember feeling was high stakes was in Crème de la Crème where you face off against a royal scion in a tournament and you’re asked to throw the match. You have your school riding on you, the royals putting pressure on you, and your own friendship with the person to consider. I remember deciding not to throw it but I really hesitated since I didn’t know what kind of repercussions it would have.

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I completely failed at my September goals, which were to finish writing, testing, and editing Chapter 6 of The Rise of Cthulhu and to hopefully get started on Chapter 7. I got a good deal done in the first few days of the month, but absolutely nothing for the rest of it due to a variety of factors beyond my control. I’m over 10k words into writing Chapter 6, which is about 2/3 of the way done. My goals for October are the same, and hopefully this time I’ll manage it.

My WIP is horror-themed, and I use suspense throughout. Much of it is a slow burn as the mystery deepens, and readers often find it hard to know who to trust and get nervous every time they have to make a choice in certain sections. Well-timed page breaks can increase suspense by not revealing certain things until the Next button is clicked, and by making the players afraid to click on it because of what could happen next. Even places that may seem safe and mundane may suddenly become very dangerous indeed.

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Can we have a shoutout to the Halloween Jam in the main post? It’s October now, so crunch time!

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added! thank you for reminder/suggestion!

editing this message to give myself somewhere to write down my goals for the month (because i forgot to yesterday, lol). honestly it’s gonna be an extremely insane month irl for me, i’m working as the first AD on an indie feature film happening in my city and it’s A LOT. so my goal for writing…hm. i’ll say i’d like to do actual writing/drafting during 5 days this month, and if i could make good progress polishing some existing chapter 2 content (i should not have rushed chapter 2) i’ll be very happy.

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Happy October! I really like the suspense prompt, especially for interactive fiction. Giving the player just enough information to know something is coming, without knowing exactly how it will unfold, can make even a simple scene much more engaging.

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Suspense! I like to create suspense through an accumulation of small details over time. This creates a looming sense of foreboding. Different from a “horror movie” type of suspense where you’re waiting for the jump scare though.

I also like experimenting with the opposite — nothing happens for a long stretch, then you get whacked with a bombshell. The Danny storyline in my game is like that. Four scenes of doing absolutely nothing before the fifth and final scene recontextualizes everything.

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Wow. September really did disappear in a blur.

Goal for September is to make meaningful progress into C5. Would be good to get straight back into the rhythm of 10k words a week, which would mean having 45k words of C5 by end of Sep, but I plan on giving myself a good bit of grace.

My real priority, at least for the week to come, is to get back into the habit of writing a bit every day ASAP. I trust everything else will follow that.

Annoyingly I met my ‘word count’ goal for the month without issue, but badly failed on my ‘true’ goal of writing a little bit every day.

Was going really well in the first half of the month, but work and coordinating house repairs took too much out of me over the last couple of weeks. I hit my 10k/week average, but the output was very frontloaded. I’m not very happy with some of the writing I did, too - though that might not be a rational view, I’ll see how I feel when I start doing readthroughs.

So I guess I’ll broadly repeat my goals again - keep to 10k/week average for October, and get back into healthy / regular writing patterns…

Edit: On the suspense topic. I really like suspense as a feature in the stuff I read. I’m still trying to find my footing for how to make it work right in Pactbinder. I think I land the emotional suspense quite well when navigating the MC’s complicated social situation, but I do sometimes think that’s less the case in build-up to action; the MC’s competent, analytical narration cuts across the tension in scenes that I could easily write as spooky or unnerving if my character had a different voice.

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Thanks so much for making the thread @raywilson!

I’m continuing to try to reduce my online time so I can conserve my energy - it worked well in September and I was able to recuperate a good amount. I didn’t do a massive amount of work on my secret project WIP, but I’ve made plans and am working on more detailed outlining.

I’m outlining some revisions/expansions and have made a start on some to Chapter 1. This’ll have knock-on effects on Chapter 2 especially, and Chapter 4. Then some more chunky additions that will improve the mid-to-late-game sections a lot. I took as clear-eyed a look at it as I could and realised it’s decent as is, but can be pepped up to make it shine and I want to do that.

My non-CoG work situation has changed further, in a good way, and for October and November I’m moving from part-time to full-time contract work (then back to parttime until I wrap up in January), so I’m feeling out how to keep going with the WIP while not sending myself up the walls from burnout working fulltime + making CoG games consistently (that’s what happened to me from 2020-22! and is why Honor Bound is a lot about work-life balance and burnout!).

Around the edges of the secret project and The Earth Has Teeth I’ve been noodling around with a Creme de la Creme game idea which is a really nice way of keeping my creativity going. I don’t know if I’ll develop it further when the time comes (this would be in the realm of starting it in 2028 or so!) but it is great creative low-stakes muscle-stretching and it does feel like it has the most legs of the various Creme-setting ideas I’ve played around with since the Honor Bound beta-testing.

Question for the floor:

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this here before, so apologies if I’m repeating myself!

I was looking at my games as a big picture and thinking about themes that I return to. I’m always interested in relationship tensions and (in)justice, and obligations pulling on people in different directions, but what I distilled it down to was the poles and tensions/connections between Work and Family. So…

Blood Money is a Family game where Family is also Work.
Creme de la Creme is mostly a Work game with Family underpinnings.
Noblesse Oblige is almost entirely a Work game.
Royal Affairs is mostly a Family game.
Honor Bound is mostly a Work game.
The Earth Has Teeth is a Work game where Work is also Family (a god can be Family, sometimes!)
The secret project is mostly a Family game.

What themes do you find the most compelling in your writing, and what do you find yourself returning to repeatedly over time?

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My writing explores the theme of everyone being bad and sad. As such, I find myself returning to the subject of bad food and rain.

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I failed my single goal for September. I barely worked on my main WIP. I think I bit off more than I could chew. I agreed to give feedback to a few authors; I worked on the Chrome extension to help with beta testing, and — against all common sense — I picked up a new project. It was supposed to be a throwaway short one, Halloween-themed, but it kept getting bigger during outlining. :sweat_smile: I’ll try to get at least chapter 1 ready for Halloween week, then keep the project around for when I don’t feel like working on my main one. But if I can’t meet the deadline, I’ll probably shelve it, like so many others before.

Regarding suspense writing, I think it’s difficult, especially in interactive fiction, where the player is the character. You can’t even use dramatic irony properly. But thinking of horror video games, I think expectation and anticipation play a big part. If I’m sneaking around an abandoned laboratory where I know a big bad monster is lurking, even if I don’t come across it, the knowledge itself is enough to create tension.

I’ve noticed a recurring theme in what I write: relationships with father figures. (Ironically, I have a great relationship with my dad. :joy:) One theme I really like reading about, but have never tried writing, is injustice/revenge.

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Started off October well by killing the main character’s mom.

September: Only 10/30 writing days. Turns out my medication has been fucking me up for like two months so slowly that I only noticed when I tracked my writing days. 12/31 August, 10/30 September. Just weeks and weeks of grey.

Goal for October is a more modest 20/30 writing days now that I’m feeling more myself again.

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I gave an off the cuff response to this on your Tumblr a while ago, but on reflection my answer (Stagnation vs Change and Self vs Community) was a bit off the mark - accurate, both, but probably more symptomatic of the main themes I tend to be drawn to rather than the themes themselves, and was probably too anchored to Pactbinder as my current project.

Pretty much everything I write or even DM for anchors around themes of Power and Community. The former is pretty self-explanatory - it’s interesting to explore the forms power takes, what people will and won’t do and / or sacrifice for it, how they use it if they achieve it.

Community is the other theme, so at least my initial takes weren’t entirely off. That’s families, friends and found families, but also community as a nested construct - our immediate surroundings, our local community, how that intersects with national communities and then even global communities - the way group dynamics change, aggregate, support and conflict with one another as you scale up, and how scale can drive this almost calcification as things institutionalize is so interesting to me…(and then you also see the inverse of those in power can try to shape communities from the top-down by creating institutions, or reshaping them…)

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Happy October all!

For this month I’ve decided to press on for one more update for “Sense & Sorcery” (fill in a few spots that need it, push current end onwards, declare a few vars, maybe work on couple RO paths a little, etc.)…smaller update, so tamper expectations for any of you that play this one, but most progress is good progress. If I get that done probably back onto “AtW” which fits for Halloween nicely.

For the main question of the month:

…no silver bullers from me. Bread and butter ideas from me — word choice, atmosphere, play with expectations and give it a twist. Juxtaposition is also great. I think IF has an added bonus of making it more personal for the reader (these are, if you’re doing it right, largely the players choices after all, which can create a natural tension.) though sometimes this can be lost if the minutia of the larger project.

Wanted to comment on this — while in the end your right about this, I think for a little while you can create dramatic irony as the player wants to select this choice, have thus conversation, etc. but the choice hasn’t popped up yet … this may keep the reader going for a while. But only for so long. Eventually the tension has to be allowed by either allowing the choice or making it a mote point.

Ha, love this question… in the macro the sacred, pain, loss, sorority (hello female prot games …really need to try to pen a male prot game eventually), rivaly, and legacy …and stars and a fall of course….granted these are large enough most works have them, but I do detect little patterns in my work, both due to recycling game engines underneath (similar vars, narrative structure, etc.) and my natural inclinations. While at this point Ive determined a lot of my worlds link up, wasn’t really intended as such, but allows for later cool over projects.

Good wicked writing to all! Hoping for some horribly, terrifyingly wonderful words this month!

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I started the month by trying to catch up on my spreadsheet that tracks my daily word counts. I had a backlog going back to July, which is worrisome. But, it did give me the opportunity to reflect about the summer and revisit some of my journal entries. It’s always good to remind myself of just how much work I did do, instead of thinking only about what I didn’t do.

My goals for October:

  • Finish drafting chapter 5 of Dinner at Wightfield.
  • Check off some of my 7-item list of edits.
  • Update the public demo to include chapter 3.
  • Add words to at least one of my back-burner writing projects.

I’m hoping for a productive October.

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Oh good god it is somehow October.

Well. And I realise I have been saying this since July, I really do need to finish chapter 3 this month. And get half way through chapter 4. Ambitious for a month that only has three working weeks (and one school holidays week), but let’s see how we go.

Two great questions this month too!

Suspense. I think the most interesting thing I have to contribute here is on the adjacent subject of reveals. Reveals are what you get when you’ve built up the suspense about a particular piece of information to such a pitch that the player basically chucks their phone down and has to take a walk to cool off when the final piece of the puzzle clangs into place. And for me, they are the answer to the question: “How do I get this piece of exposition in?” Quite often, the most exciting way to get across a piece of essential exposition is to drip feed clues to it until the reader is so desperate that it will come across as a satisfying reveal rather than a prerequisite.

Themes. The one theme that has been present in basically everything I’ve ever written is identity. I think that’s probably why I am finding my first foray into our medium so fascinating. The whole medium is basically about what happens when the character the player creates enters the world you’ve written. It is necessarily concerned with the question of the possibilities - and limitations - of the individual.

Anyway, good luck with October, everyone!

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I knew I answered this when it first came up, so I did a little dig through my Tumblr tags and found my original response, because I was curious if it would hold up to renewed scrutiny.

I cited “autonomy vs. influence”, which I still think is a valid interpretation, but I have doubts about whether this is a central theme in Dinner at Wightfield. Rather, I think that’s more about “identity vs. belonging”, which is similar, but distinct.

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