I am in the zone right now. as I just 3k in three hours. Even if 1’5 is a heavy editing of old stuff I am proud of myself.
It is not the game I was waiting to make forthe jam but still is fun. Still, this game won’t bring me any popularity here on the forum due if there is a game less cog liking I cant imagine it.
Today, I received a compliment from a reader who enjoyed my character customization options … the truly special thing about this is that they said they think about what I did from time to time.
This is both inspirational and nourishment to my writer’s soul inside, to know that something I am trying in my game is actually working and making a positive impact!
Thank you, kind reader, for giving me the fuel to work extra hard today!
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Question for everyone contributing to this thread: how detailed is your outline?
What outline? 
But no, more seriously, I just have the major things that happen in a chapter in my head and figure out the rest along the way. Very, very minimal planning.
It depends if my mood is hyperactive, lethargy or depression.
My outlines vary, even as I write over the life of the project.
Initially, I have the basics covered: plot beats, act break downs, even scenes listed
As I write, I go back to the outline and revise it and expand on it as I feel needed to road-map my way through the story.
It will always act as my gps, but it may be a wonky journey as I write and it “updates” the directions needed to get to each point on the journey.
As an aside, I do this with character sheets too.
I have the general outline of the story (characters, plot beats, major events) written out, but I when I’m writing I come up with everything on the fly, even if that includes new characters and events.
I’ve been thinking on this, and it might be a cool little side project to try and emulate the text based adventures of generations past via ChoiceScript. It is in no way, shape or form an ideal, or even usable, engine for this purpose, but it would maybe work as something to mess around with. Could even be something of a community project.
Right now I’m trying to figure out what my stats page is going to be. I’m not going to have a lot of skill or personality checks, but I do want to have them, if only for role playing purposes. I figured out the skills, though I’m not convinced I’ll use them. But I’m struggling with the personality traits, which I definitely want to have. The MC was raised at court (royal court, not legal court), and is now living in a foreign court. The MC is a proper “lady” so I’m trying to decide what the different personalities the players can have while still fitting into the setting. I have “bold vs demure” and “earnest vs playful.” I also want to have being “gentle” as an option, but I can’t think of an opposing trait that isn’t kinda mean. What do you think? Do you guys think that’s enough? Or do you have any suggestions?
Callous?
The opposite of “gentle” is always going to be a bit mean feeling, imo, but you could probably take a “old southern lady calling you a moron in the most polite way possible” tone with things instead of just straight up meanness.
“Firm” is an option. It’s not mean IMO.
How about: “gentle” and “stern” or “strict”
Airhead? XD But no, um, Careless vs careful would work for your gentle stat.
Depends on what you mean by “gentle”. Could be “reckless, brash” if you are emphasizing on one’s actions, or “firm, strict” if you are emphasizing on one’s attitudes towards matters.
edit: I haven’t had a lot of time to post on the older threads and this is why I suddenly have a lot of unread things and stuff to respond to. I hope I will be back in sync soon.
@Anna_B I would advise thinking about what “gentle” covers that “demure” doesn’t, as it feels like if it’s to do with gentleness/calmness/quietness in manner, they may overlap a bit. If it’s about moral attitude, perhaps something like Kind/Pragmatic might work?
Re outlines, I have very long ones for my CoG projects as it’s the process of getting the projects rolling; Honor Bound’s one was 26 pages (!!) although that was partly because of me being especially verbose. For my Royal Affairs expansion, I’ve done an outline of a couple of pages in a notebook in the same way as I do for individual chapters. But the most important outlining part for me is coding before I write - it means there’s much less waste as I’ll often recognise an issue while coding and be able to course-correct sooner rather than later. The broad-strokes outlines often change a lot during the project, especially on a chapter-scale level.
Today I am in a bit of a tired grump because there is (mild, but exhausting) illness in our house and I have had a couple of days of sickness - today worse than yesterday. I finished up my Chapter 5 draft on Tuesday and have been poking around and slowly and grouchily doing some edits to the earlier chapters.
Ok I’m not sure if my story should be like an isekai where the heroes are sucked into the magical world or for them, it’s just The World. Previously I’ve described the magical world and the human world being parallels, but now that doesn’t sound right. Then again, I’ve never written isekai.
Why not try writing a paragraph or two for each way of structuring your game?
Usually, these types of wrinkles get ironed out only when you explore your ideas a little.
I have many short blurbs exploring different ideas, and save them because you might revisit them someday and reuse them.
I just learned about it. I have seen the term but wasn’t quite sure. Looks like “Portal Fantasy” is an appropriate description. I’m with Eiwynn on the advice to explore each direction. Sometimes I just think about it, rather than write it:
Like if Dorothy just lived in OZ, she wouldn’t be able to be bored in Kansas, Go to Oz, get scared, then go back to Kansas and say “It’s not that bad here.” If she were just a resident of Oz, well I guess Oz wouldn’t seem all that strange, the ruby slippers may be known to you, you may know what they do, or have an idea. But what would they do now? Maybe teleport you around Oz? Maybe you wouldn’t even follow the yellow brick road at all, or go the other direction. Maybe you’ve been down that yellow thing before. There is a kooky old guy there pretending to be a wizard or something. So you go left into the woods of blankity blank. Or perhaps …
Looks like the choice will effect everything. Certainly, if you go “resident of Oz Dorothy”, you will have to have a more extensively built world. The reader will expect Dorothy to know more things about Oz. The inquiry would change, character arc would change, the event meaning would change, the milieu would change in tone, but not so much setting, just more setting.
Reminds me of a comic I saw where a boss was like “ok everyone pitch me ideas for the new isekai anime.” The employee’s like “why does it have to be isekai? Why not just a fantasy world?” Then the boss gets mad and throws him in a portal.
A bit of me whining perhaps, but… I think I hate writing romance options.
Like, it’s one thing writing romance in non-interactive mediums, where you can follow some actual structure and space things out as you’d like. But in IFs, the element of choice makes pacing things out a complex task with many moving parts, if you decide to even bother with maintaining any narrative structure. And though I can’t yet attest personally, I suspect the self-inserting aspect of the medium makes things even harder in terms of achieving reader satisfaction.
I’ll keep writing the flirting and eventually dating sequences, because I’m kinda committed and do genuinely enjoy character interactions there. But if I ever finish my current project, I fully expect someone to complain about how an RO won’t fuck them immediately, or how the romance path they entered at the last possible moment didn’t have much build-up, or how two out of five ROs having sexualities beyond “playersexual” is genderlocking and a clear sign I hate the player.
I directly Hate with bold letters writing romance. I don’t enjoy it one bit and is a nightmare to even think about writing the variants.
But being blunty honest we have to add romance, even if we hate it. It is a must, because audience here only cares about romance, the rest for the majority of audience it is completely accesory.
Thankfully, I don’t have to waste my time in writing romance in my jam entry, that is a breathe of fresh air.