So would I be able to have a dead sibling or cousin and still go on to have romance later? I’m not a fan of dead boyfriends, even if they’re several years into the backstory… 
Well, maybe you could add in a new male character then, if you prefer adding things to changing them!? 
(Although I’m thinking that this discussion should probably go over to your WiP thread rather than staying here, and I haven’t really looked at that since it was announced and I saw how sparse the male ROs were… 
)
No I can’t, sorry.
And I doubt you’ll enjoy the story - given what you’ve just said. 
You’re free to check it, but I have no intention on adding more main/semi main characters at the moment. It’s not a full-on romance story anyways. It’s just a war, fantasy story with romance flavors. Something that fits in, will hopefully be done well, but isn’t the main theme.
So yeah; Considering that, and considering you seem to have a problem with pretty much everything I wrote, I think you’d be better off reading/playing a fully romanced themed game. Don’t mean anything mean by it, it just seems to fit what you want from a CS game. It’s all. 
By the way, @ParrotWatcher, the way things stand with male romance atm, each gender and class has a chance with Mael, and the warrior class has Uross, along with Mael.
That just might be because of my sexual preferences but when a game i recently started has an RO with gender-natural name i find myself forgetting what gender it was 
So i guess it’s not a big deal in IF, though again, it might just be because of my preferences…
I always love romancing females (since i’m a lesbian irl) but …yeah, wonder why. Is it just because of their female looks, or …what? You know.
For example (this is gonna be TMI, be warned! XD) - I can’t imagine myself kissing or cuddling with a man…it doesn’t feel ‘right’…and as far as ‘the other thing’ goes, that doesn’t ‘feel right’ either, lol! XD
Btw, when (in a choice script game) I say ‘looks’ , I meant my imagination of their looks, obviously. xD Though, I doubt it’s just that…I think @needs-to-be-loved is onto something regarding names.
I hope this doesn’t seem offensive, but I can’t help but wonder, @Tanja.K, if you might be a people-pleaser type person irl? 
'Cause I’m feeling quite a disconnect between how you handle the issue in your own thread, and how you have been talking about it here and the RO thread.
In your WIP thread I only recall seeing you encouraging people to discuss RO’s and give suggestions. Before you changed the RO list, you even had a note asking people to tell you if they thought it was unfair.
Then, in these two threads, you say things that make it clear that you are overwhelmed by the requests, and feel pushed, and that worries me.
Like this sentence:
What I mean to say is, you seem to take suggestions really strongly, and feel you have to comply, and if that is the case, I think you need to think about how much you encourage such behaviour from your readers, or this whole thing will be really tough on you. 
Because people will suggest things, when you open a thread for a WIP, and they will try to convince you to see things their way, unless you’re assertive and make it clear that it’s not open for discussion. (And some propably even then.)
I’m writing this in the hope of being helpful, so please tell me if I crossed a line. 
I actually said i admit it’s ‘my fault’ since 1. I’ve invented the romance system and 2. I ‘was’ a pushover…(If not in this thread, it’s in the romance one; The ‘it’s my fault though’ text.)
As for me feeling pushed…take the example from this thread. After listing off all of the problems with adding in more characters, I still get someone asking me ‘add more!’. I honestly do feel a bit pressured by it but - again, as i mentioned in one of these threads - it’s totally my fault. Not the readers.
Also, in my own thread i try to stay more professional for some reason (fail?) while in off topic and other threads I sort of ‘let go’ more, and share my issues, personal life things etc…which is weird enough on it’s own…and I should probably stop it? o.o
But yeah, that’s …how it is anyhow.
And it’s fine. If you have any other questions, I’m open to listen.
To be more clear: I did ask people for opinions…and I’m glad I did, and I’m glad they’ve gave it.
But the whole RO things has gone a bit…far? I guess? I really DON’T feel like i can make everyone happy with my - removing gender locks decision, for example. It’s still not ‘good’ or ‘fair’, because there aren’t enough options for each preference. (According to some.)
But - again, again - it’s totally ‘my bad’.
If you look back, you can see I admitted that on one of the two threads so…I never blamed the fans or claimed I was being pushed into it unfairly.
My natural impulse is to delve into psychology talk, but I’m fighting it (because this is not a therapy session, damnit!), so I’m not really sure what to respond. 
I know this might be hard to hear, but it’s not your job to make everyone happy. Personally, I’d rather have a few well-written romance options that are only one gender than multiple options that don’t fit into the plot. But my opinion, and even all the other people’s opinions you asked for, don’t matter in this situation. The only one that does is yours. You’re the writer, and it’s your story.
If you feel that the romance option is getting out of hand, trim it down. It’s your story, not any one else’s. If they aren’t happy about that, then they can write their own story with all the romance options they desire. Tell the story you want to tell, not one you’ve been forced to write.
Bringing this back because I want to hear people’s answers now, in 2021!
I think I suck at battle action choices–or I hate doing them, or both. I think I’m fair enough at writing battle scenes/action sequences in traditional fictions and books, but for some reason, doing the action branching in IF just totally slows me down and bums me out! It’s probably because I gave myself too much to do with 9 magic classes and 4 weapon types + upgrades for each type of weapon, but… stuff like this is really hard for me to do!
I HATE IT.
Anyone else? What do y’all struggle with?
Having confidence in myself lol
In all seriousness though this pretty much sums up my feelings about my own writing. I read all these other stories and all these other authors craft magnificent sentences that I love and admire. Then I look at my attempt to craft sentences and I feel like a kid scribbling with a crayon, attempting to write cursive. 
It helps though to have other people read my writing and give me the confidence boost I need sometimes. It also helps when I put something down and then pick it up literally ages later cause I have whiplash and go ‘I wrote this? Damn. This is cool!’
More specific to IF but sometimes I feel bad when I can’t think of interesting variations to even the smallest of choices (i.e. dialogue options). I feel like they aren’t varied enough and it feels like I’m failing my readers and that people are going to complain about the story being too linear.
Biggest IF struggle:
It is more fun writing certain branches… so those tend to have more in them initially.
I always view editing as a chance to improve… this helps me deal with all the negatives associated with edit/rewrite for me.
Plus when alpha/beta readers validate it is better, that helps a lot.
Eiwynn advise: Have the reader test both the “old” and the “new” material – usually this will help validate your initial feelings and allow you to move on in a positive head-space moving forward.
and regarding your demo… I love it, even after you revealed those nasty vile vampires 
Editing and burnout. While I’m confident I can usually finish the first draft of a story, given enough time, I struggle a lot with editing, especially when it goes on for long periods of time. I have come to hate scenes and stories I previously enjoyed just because of how long it took to edit them.
It’s something I’m really trying to learn to navigate better, because editing is obviously such an important part of making a story worth reading, but it’s still a weakness of mine.
Also, a unique challenge with IF, is giving the player enough choice that they feel in control of their character, while also being able to let the protagonist feel like an organic part of the world through internal monologue, quick fire banter, etc. I think I’m getting better at this, but it’s a balancing act that I’m still keenly aware of when I write IF.
My biggest struggle in writing are those moments when I look at the scene I just wrote, scrunch my face and wonder how in the living hell my characters ended up in that position because that was not where I expected them to go at all. Being forced to rewrite 10K words of material because I thought they would do A and, instead, they did B, is annoying as hell and I end up either having to rework future plot or having to ditch everything and throw things at them to see if they’ll do what I want. My characters get out of control…
As my buddy and I are now attempting to put together a demo, I’m discovering that that particular annoyance is a flat out nightmare in an IF–and I’m not certain how to remedy it because it’s the choices that cause the characters to go bonkers in their responses. For those of you who lean toward character-driven rather than plot-driven, how do you do it? Well, let me rephrase–how do you do it without turning what should be a fairly short prologue into a deluge of words that never ends?
I segment my story … meaning within each plotpoint I allow each character to drive their story from A to B.
This allows me to tell character driven stories within the main plot without destroying the overall structure of the story.
Which is most likely why some branches are more fun to write and leads me full circle to my last post above.
Finding the balance is key for each project. Don’t get me wrong … there are times that my writing will end up changing the overall story structure, and then I have to go back and revise all the big picture stuff…
Being character driven writers, we feel more comfortable letting our characters dictate details … but we are still writers trying to tell a story and need to keep that in mind when writing as well.
That makes sense. I always tend to be a bit more big picture and let them run amuck and drive the story. Learning to segment it for IF will help, I think.
And I can see where some branches would end up more fun to write than others, in that case. Some characters just aren’t cooperative!
Starting and sticking with it. Probably because I always go in blind.
dialogues. i really have a hard time making them sound natural.
Battle scenes and flirting. Hands down. Especially in IF, where I don’t want to break immersion by having “THIS IS A FLIRTATION CHOICE” written in, so I have to go with the blushy internal monologue that I’d probably never really include if it weren’t player choice, and the obscenely bold I-want-you-in-my-bed-now choice. For the battle scenes, I just… find them boring. Like there’s nothing else to it, I love picturing them, but when I put them down on paper it just comes out as bleh.
Also, trying to please everyone, I guess is the best way to summarize the feeling. Finding a variety of choices in dialogue/action sequences that the player might rightfully take, without having them be repetitive or boring. Allowing players choice while still keeping the plot moving (like leaving in the middle of the quest cannot physically mean that the players get form A to B… so why else would they keep going?). Making sure that every branch and choice gets similar amounts of love. Although if you’re choosing “sleep” every time there’s a choice, it’s gonna be a pretty short IF for you, I’m sorry.
I think they all vary as to the BIGGEST, but if someone could teach me how to flirt through IF, that’d be wonderful.
