I have plenty of experience outlining and writing more traditional stories, but I’ve found getting started with interactive fiction a rather daunting task. Unless I’m working on a comic script, I’m used to taking a looser, more experimental approach to writing. Interactive fiction seems like a medium that requires more structure than that, especially in the planning stages, so I’m curious what other people’s workflows look like in the early stages. Do you go all out with spreadsheets, flowcharts, and detailed outlines, or do you sketch out scenes with rough writing and placeholders?
2 Likes
Unfortunately, I make it up as I go. I want to start using some kind of flowchart program though to do a bare outline, especially for dialogue trees.
I, personally, write scene-by-scene: I keep the general outline of the plot in my head (and everything else, really), start from the very beginning, and then, from there, I just go where the story takes me.
As for the ‘roughness’ of my drafts, I prefer to write and edit immediately, so I don’t go as fast as I probably could have, but at least I don’t have to go back and re-check everything very meticulously… I feel like you can have that sort of approach since you’re writing, well, a WIP, and you have people who’ll do some of the typo-finding for you.
If we’re talking about coding and such, then I like to implement some of the ‘bare minimum’ choices (stuff like ‘spare’ or ‘kill’), and then, when I think more nuance is needed, I add more choices between the two extremes. Also, I sometimes add more flavorful choices if it’s the point of the story where it’s just constant text, and text, and text… Need to keep readers engaged.
3 Likes
That’s really useful to know! A lot of the research I’ve done on writing interactive fiction has emphasized the importance of thorough outlines, so I’m glad to hear that less structured approaches can work for people as well. Working through and editing the story in chunks at a time while adding in branches as necessary sounds like an approach that could mesh well with my existing workflow.
2 Likes
ooh i love this question! with my current IF, i did do about a month or two at first with a barely-there outline and just “winging it” with immediate drafting, but that quickly became terrifying and felt very much like a bad idea that would leave me stressed and unsatisfied with the work. i took a few months off to think, which was good, and now i’m just worrying about getting the outline to a very thoroughly structured one, as airtight as i can manage.
i’ve ghostwritten a few novels, and those are usually a lot more flexible for me in the planning stages—i get the major beats down, as well as the characters and the setting, but i leave a lot more details intentionally open to changing during the actual drafting. characters usually change quite a bit in my novel or short story writing, because there’s less text to go through and change (relative to IF), so it doesn’t feel as daunting to check for consistency throughout a piece—many less words to sift through than a choicescript game.
for IF, i’m looking at the outline with a lot more focus on the nitty-gritty details. i’m aiming specifically for lean pacing (minimal chapters, with each serving a specific purpose in the PC journey/progress, and with their own beginning-middle-end), aggressive bottlenecks for mid-story branches to keep the whole thing from getting even remotely unwieldy (first project, manageable workload priorities ya know), and keeping the project thoroughly self-contained in terms of thematic arcs and all that stuff. i do have several documents specifically for writing random stuff about characters/setting/themes, as well as small chunks of dialogue or descriptive text or choices that spontaneously come to mind, but the outline itself is very much brick-by-brick detailed scaffolding for the eventual game itself.
it’s possible that at a later date, with another project, i would be a little less thorough/meticulous with the outline, but i sort of doubt it. i’m enjoying getting everything really cleanly laid out for myself, so when i do start drafting it’s just filling in the blanks.
2 Likes
It’s all about what works for you. I’ve found that my writing approach is my writing approach whether I’m working on a screenplay, a novel or my IF game. I’ve never been a big outliner, but that’s just my personal preference. I plan out the main beats and work out the key details in my head and then I just go. I feel my writing flows better when I’m creative in the moment. Sometimes I feel intricately outlining can sometimes stifle my creativity. But that’s just me. Everybody has their own process and has to work out what works for them.
3 Likes
Your point about the relative difficulty of checking for consistency without an outline makes a lot of sense. I’ve had plenty of short stories where I realized sometimes during feedback sessions that I entirely forgot to remove a paragraph related to a scene I cut, and sifting through all sorts of branching story paths to figure out whether I’ve left a piece of dialogue where it shouldn’t be sounds exhausting.
I wish! What I do is write a bunch of random scenes, and then figure out how they fit together.
1 Like
I’ve been using my friend’s method based on Skyrim’s development, and I really like it!
I pass over the story from start to finish, again and again adding more detail each time focusing on a specific thing every pass
A pass goes:
- Moodboard/Vibes - Write down whatever sounds cool into a list, I like playing music for inspo. Especially when I’m working on character
- Throw it in - “I like this, I want to put it around here in the story”
- Finished adding? Test it out - (or have someone else test it)
- Justify - why should it be there? Does it make sense in the story? make notes or update the story around what you added. So it makes sense how it lead to that and where it goes after. (Don’t be afraid to remove it if it doesn’t fit!)
The first part for me was a basic story. Each scene was maybe a few sentences long, and the only choices were ones that change the story (so not many).
Pass 2 were basic character outlines
I want a bad boy, a preacher’s kid, etc. And to justify I asked if they could affect the big, story changing choices.
By pass 9 I was changing bits of the story to fit with what I wanted, but these early passes were more about the outline than the actual writing. And I made sure it was modular, so I could swap in any new content easily
4 Likes
My usual MO when it comes to writing stories is that there must be a definite beginning and end first. This way, I’ll easily figure out what went on from point A to point B.
2 Likes
I made a blogpost about this a few months ago:
In general I work best when getting the structure down first with placeholder text, then filling in the “real” writing after. I like being able to focus more fully on code or writing. I do shift around as I go, but that’s the overall shape of it.
10 Likes