I’m sorry, did you say “asshole”? We don’t allow language like that on this fuckin forum.
3 Likes
I’m having a bad cold, and instead of spending my time on the couch writing, I am procrastinating by trying to learn to make stuff in Unity (with a few sidesteps into Blender tutorials), while I’m all foggy-brained and tired.
Perfect state of mind to learn new programs! 
8 Likes
After a day of sitting at my computer on and off and writing about 100 words, my brains have now completely leaked out of my ears and pooled on the floor.
I’m left wondering how people manage to write so much and so quickly.
All those ideas in my head and some spark of inspiration for what I want this next paragraph to do - and then out come the words and they are just lame, nonsensical crap. Bleghh.
I need to go watch one of those inspirational movie montages on Youtube or something.
9 Likes
I’m similar in a way, would “eagerly” (relatively speaking) work on a code thing, but when it comes to just writing… why is it not coming out faster… or why does brain wants to procrastinate. 
I think it’s fine to just play to your strength. 100 words is still more than 0, at least your code is probably elegant and does cool tricks. 
8 Likes
Absolutely. I can spend hours coding all sorts of random systems that I have no clear plan on how to use to actually make a story. I’ve also had loads of fun designing in the process to allow for completely dynamic characters, conversations and events - which I’m now having to write all the permutations for!
As you say, 100 is better than 0 - it might take me 10 years, but I’ll eventually have a chapter or two written 
9 Likes
Oh man I wanted to make modular (plug-and-playable NPCs) thing too (but not in CS)! …Alas not smart enough to figure it out in one sitting, and also needed to focus on writing the first draft of the story, two sentences at a time (10 year likely, 10k hours for any unmastered skill, right). 
Best wishes to fellow “non-writers.”
8 Likes
I’m currently writing my first proper dialogue sequence of the game and I’m worried the my characters aren’t likeable enough - or at least, not hitting the right spot for what I want. Similarly, that the narrative carries the player along as I want.
I’m thinking about posting what I have up as a WiP. Typically it is advised to have about 30k words. I have about 9k of the prologue - then I have all the coded mechanisms for the core functioning of the game (surviving in a bunker). There is a chunk of story missing between the prologue and getting to the bunker though.
As a definite non-writer and someone who has never really crafted a world, or characters or anything like that before, I’m very much drawing on the good old ‘whatever I come up’ method of writing. Do you think it’s a good idea to put up an early WiP to gather feedback? Or is it worth perservering to a more joined up demo (even if it means greater re-writes in the event that it’s a lot of rubbish)?
7 Likes
Go for it! test it and make sure it doesn’t crash, but if you think feedback could result in you making sweeping changes 9k is certainly enough
6 Likes
Done!
Ready. 
This is kind of incredible. I am achieving things! On time! At this rate, I can risk even higher expectations - perhaps I’ll have a demo link up by next year. No burnout yet. Is this what the True Writer achievement feels like?
Wishing the absolute best of luck to everybody during the coming month! 
12 Likes
@Sinnie I had an actor friend who told me once: never apologize for where you’re at. I turn to that often. You have to figure out so much along the way that, if you don’t get on your way, you can never figure it out. The best part? If you just put something down, you can keep changing it until it’s good. Cheers!
8 Likes
I finished my rough draft of the new branch I’m working on yesterday! The branch is around 16K, but that will probably change as I make edits to the draft.
I’m focusing on two NPCs who were previously pretty underdeveloped, and I feel like I’m learning a lot about them through writing them. I think I’m finally starting to understand who they are as people, which is pretty exciting, and even better, I like them, and can’t wait to keep writing them. Now to try and get that enthusiasm across as I edit this draft in the coming month, lol
Hope everyone is doing alright, and treating yourself with kindness, whether you’re making deadlines on schedule or not <3
8 Likes
Hi everyone,
For the first time in a while, I am happy to share that I made all my monthly goals.
Project One received some wonderful feedback, just when I had thought the feedback loop was dark for good. As a result of this feedback, I rewrote/reworked about 20,000 words into a (hopefully) new and improved version.
Project Two’s goal came together much better for me than I had expected. I had a few days when I actually wrote 3,000 - 5,000 words, so the scene I was working on was finished this past weekend.
@Franzinyte – What you are doing is very special. Not only are you writing an IF story, but you are writing one that is not in a favorite genre. That not only takes a strong person to do this, but it also takes a resilient one as well.
Feedback is something that many of us struggle with. If you want to talk about this issue together, please PM me.
While this is a very personalized and unique answer that you seek, I think the core answer is within the purpose of your WiP and what I see as the “truism” that spawned the generic advice of having at least 30,000 words for a demo.
A very experienced author gave me the advice to only put forth a demo when you are able to showcase what you hope your readers are going to experience. Each author, and each project an author writes is likely to be different.
If the scope of your demo is to flesh out a narrow and well defined question, then a smaller demo is usually more than enough to get that question answered, especially if you ask it specifically and clearly.
One major trouble with posting an early demo, is that the feedback you receive may be focused on things that you are working on, but are not yet part of the demo you pushed out. Feedback of this nature, is usually counterproductive, because your response of: “wait and see, it is coming” only frustrates both the readers and yourself.
I am also interested in forming a small focus (reader) group (virtual and online) with a few like-minded individuals from this community. If anyone else is interested in this, please send me a PM.
On the 30th (for me), I will be back to open the October 2021 Writer’s Support Thread.
16 Likes
I fully agree with @Eiwynn while speaking from my own experience.
@Sinnie I posted a small WIP twice and received feedback addressing things that were to come where I was thinking exactly that: “yes, I am getting to this”. I was (and still am) writing in a less common genre/sub-genre in a very distinct style, so I was happy to have posted my WIP as I also wanted to see if my style worked and I did get the answer to that question. However, in practice this has meant that now the thread has closed which gives me the time to get the book to a stage where I can release the next update and more complete demo.
So, I did get something out of the experience although it was not what I originally thought it would be. In general, I would say wait, unless you want specific feedback.
@Eiwynn I can’t seem to send you a PM. 
8 Likes
Indeed, thank you all for the thoughts. I’ll toil away for a little longer and try and wrap it up into a sensible first demo. I think it would do me a lot of good to hear some honest criticsm of my overall story writing (as opposed to a few lines here and there) and characterisation.
There’s no doubt going to be serious issues, so being able to address them as soon as possible can only be a good thing
7 Likes
It’s close to the end of the month, and I am so very close to starting chapter 6! All I need to do is figure out how to end chapter 5.
Has for my goals for the month, I’m quite happy with how things have turned out, I’ve mostly finished chapter 5, I’ve started writing the middle part of chapter 3 (considering re-writing the climax of that chapter too) and I’m trying to figure out how to write Extinction’s description in chapter 1.
7 Likes
I wrote 0 words this month. Which bothered me a lot until I had a Bad Day™ yesterday. Now it doesn’t seem so bad.
9 Likes
I hope that your Bad Day is behind you and you can have some good ones to balance it out. Don’t let it get you down.
I managed to overcome being way behind at mid month to finish my 10k words with an unfortunately very late night tonight. I’ll pay for it tomorrow, but tonight I can enjoy it.
6 Likes
Success! In fact I didn’t really need to pare down the usual goals exactly. I ended up with 29k on Asphodel, which is only just shy of my usual monthly goal, but I can feel pretty good about that instead of slightly disappointed, so I’ll count this as a good thing. And Diaspora is moving along, which is my only goal for it at this point, heh. Got some planning and some writing/outlining done on it, which felt good.
@Sinnie Echoing what others have said, I think one thing to keep in mind when deciding when to release a demo is really whether or not you’re giving yourself and the readers a fair shot by giving them enough to really get an overall sense of where things are going, in terms of genre/writing style/tone, etc. Obviously you can’t get feedback on the whole plot right off the bat, but at least making sure the premise is clear, and those other things are in evidence is a good start. That may take a lot of words, or not so many, so any word count target is by nature somewhat arbitrary. Good luck though; here’s hoping you get a lot of helpful feedback when you do drop a demo!
Congrats to everyone making progress, even and especially where that’s more psychological than word-count related. 
13 Likes
Hi guys, how’s it going?!
I just started out with the choice script lang and i’ve completely owned Dan cox’s tutorials…
does anybody know where i can get advanced tutorials cus he didn’t cover alot of things.