If your like me you have too many ideas you wish to work on but understand that you should focus on no more that two at a time. Thus you come to a state of indecisiveness trying to figure out which game idea you want to go with.
Currently I’ve narrowed down a few a ideas and put a poll for them on another thread for my shelved WIP. Though even this is just only one of the things I’m using to consider what to focus on. Even at this I’m still unable to decide.
I already know about the you need to work on something you want to and are motivated on stuff. But what are tangible and actionable ideas that can be used to help myself decide?Techniques or strategies that worked for you to pick just one or two WIP ideas to focus on?
And heck, for authors who have completed games but had many ideas. What advice would you give for evaluating if you’ll stick with a game long term cause I also want to finish what I start.
What I did was run through the story super fast in my head. Take a few minutes to think up the premise and then rush through the middle part, straight to the endgame. This made me realize that the story I thought I had entirely planned out had massive hickups that I still had to work out before I could confidently start writing the code.
Another fun way to see which script feels better is to grab a moment from the middle of your story and write a couple thousand words around that part. It gives you a feel of your story without you having to think about the beginnings or ends.
There are many ways to decide, but these two have helped me. There’s also this thread that helped me as well.
I have a “calendar” of sorts where I list every (planned) scene that’s going to happen in my story. So far, I’ve only got about 40% of my scenes on the calendar, so it’s not like I’ve got every single word mapped out. But having that calendar helps keep me on track by telling me where I’m headed, and it’s also a relief to know I have a plan. This is especially great when I get stuck and need to work on something else–I’ve already got a list of other things to work on.
If you can sit down and come up with specific scene ideas (“beyond this is how it will start,” “this is how it will end,” etc) for a premise, then I think that’s a good indication that that idea is a good (fruitful) one.
It’s good to know the broad strokes of your story (beginning, middle, end), but if you’re struggling with how to put it together in concrete scenes, you’ll probably struggle to write those scenes too.
