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http://chooseyourstory.com/story/just-a-doll
Prompt: A Horror Romance

So yeah. Now that I'm officially in the contest, I gotta do this thread thing. Anyway. There's a link to my story on sneak peak. 

It's hard seeing the one you love descend into madness.

Ideally, I'll be posting # hours working on it since last update and what I've accomplished so far. 

Learning from my past mistake, the amount of writing will be able the same or less than what I planned for my past contest story, but hardly any scripting. And I'll be saving the extra bells and whistles like drawings until afterwards. 

Gotta go for gold this time~! *glances my current -211 points....*

Work time: 2-3 hours. 
Pages: 1 finished / 8 made / ??? planned 
Word count: 551

Gotta go to sleep though. I'll work on it again tomorrow. 

Interesting beginning anyway. Wondering what the deal is with the ghosts.

Work time: 3-ish hours. 
Total work time: 5-6 hours
Pages: 2 finished / 8 made / ??? planned 
Word count: 1495

I have the third page almost finished. Deleted a page here. Added a page there. Did some fancy work with the links. Made a whole 2 variables, though afterwards realized only 1 was necessary. 

Eventually a proof reader would be nice. I'm paranoid about my tenses and poor spelling. XD

Hey, how do you base maturity ratings? 

There's violence/abuse, and there's a scene in which there's nudity but it's not sexualized - he's washing his clothes in the river and it's a chance to know just how bad his scarring is, showing he's just as broken physically as he is mentally. 

Anyway, not entirely sure whether it should be a 5/6/7 on the maturity scale. 

Seems like a six just to be on the safe side I guess.

I'd like to see an article about that, but I didn't seem to find one.

Endmaster's got the one on ratings, but IIRC it's more about what's pushing it too far even for a 7/8.

If you're talking about the How to Write (Im)Mature stories, I've read that one.  But I struggle with knowing where the ratings fall, mostly because I was raised by parents who were very particular about what I viewed.  So my idea of what an average child, or teen, should be able to access is a bit...skewed.  I guess I just feel that if I rate something too high, it will just disappoint people, but, as a parent, I'm worried about rating something too low.  Not that I think there's a lot of actual children on this site.  At least, I hope not.  Some of the stories here, while well written, are not for children.

I mean you don't even have to sit there and try to calculate a rating from individual incident of violence or nudity. If the general themes of the story are pretty mature, then a 6 or a 5 at minimum seems about right. Younger kids likely would have trouble following along either way even if you glossed over the scenes you're worried about.

And honestly I don't think anyone here has ever not read a story because the maturity rating was too high. Being too low meanwhile is a reportable issue, so better safe than sorry.

I'm not worried about people refusing to read a story because it's too high.  In fact, I'd be more worried about people not reading a story because it was too low a rating.  My worry is more that someone will be disappointed that I didn't 'deliver' the things they expected from any given rating (especially given my prompt this time around.)

Work time: 1 1/2-ish hours. 
Total work time: 6-8-ish hours
Pages: 4 finished / 8 made / ??? planned 
Word count: 2473

Slow and steady wins the race. >_>'

Work time: 2-ish hours. 
Total work time: 8-10 hours
Pages: 6 finished / 8 made / ??? planned 
Word count: 3316

Recently got a commission. Paid work > unpaid work. So that has/will be cutting into writing time, but not too terribly much. 

Nice progress, hope you can keep it up!

Why did you have to put this in sneak peak? I got to read the start of an amazing story and will now be impatiently waiting for you to finish it. So now, don't even think of procrastinating! Good luck! :)

Alright, so I've been slacking a bit in storywriting. 

Update: I'm working on it right now. 
Since the last update, um. 
eheheh. 
I feel like I'm roughly around the halfway mark though, and the month is only half over. So as long as I don't get caught up in commissions and real life stuff again, I'll be able to finish with a bit of time to spare. 

I'm aiming for something setup like Snow, bittersweet memories, but a lot more writing. I read it as a guest (read a lot of stories as a guest). 
But now I feel like it's an over-used story type because then Bucky went and did a story of minimum standards setup the same way. *sigh* It's sorta too late to change the story type now though. 

It's always rough halfway through. *pat pat* You'll pull through! >:D

Halfway done already? I'm jealous!

Same. I'm like... *stares at story* ;-; I dunno. A third of the way? 

I'm quite flattered that you think it's something to be jealous of. 

At least you know what halfway looks like, more or less.  I have no idea how much of a percentage I have done since I have no clue what the end total will be.  No clue at all.

Frick. One of the ending pages is 1000+ words already and I'm only half done with that page. 

So either risk breaking the flow by having a no-choice link or I need to really size it down. >_< 

Alright, I managed to get it down to about 1,250 words. 

It's the last page before the end of the game. Do you people think that's alright? I know the general consensus is that the max comfortable word limit is 1000 per page, but there isn't much that I can cut down on nor a natural break to put a link to the next page. 
If not, I can see if I can tweak things a bit more to provide a natural break for a no-choice link. 

Personally, I'd prefer the break, but if there's no natural place to put in the no-choice link, don't force it.

Before you start hating,  I know I sound like a goon for even saying this but am I suppose to contribute to this? 

I'm confused as to what your question is.

Work time: 3-ish hours. 
Total work time: 11-13 hours
Pages: 7 finished / 9 made / 13-15 pages are going to be in the finished story.
Word count: 4574

(See? Told ya'll it was nothing to be jealous of. XD I'm sure everyone else has double digits of completed pages by now.)

CYS has a 20 page minimum

It does? Fck. 
I'll have to see where I can put in some more pages then. 

Double digits? Fuck off. I'm at 203, and only one of those pages is plagarized fanfiction from an alternate version of Mice and Men where they're gay.

Wow. Now that's dedication. XD

Or rapid fire spewing

Yeah, I'm amazing, I know.

Work time: ??? hours. 
Total work time: 11-13 + ??? hours
Pages: 8 finished / 5 that're three quarters of the way done / 13 made / ???? pages are going to be in the finished story.
Word count: 6978

Hey! Yay! Update!
1 page left to write, 2 drawings in need of drawing, and a few link conditions in need of conditioning. 

With the extra week, I'll definitely be able to finish it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have. 

3 endings, 20 pages. 

So! Update - finished and published. 
It's nothing long, but I hope that the writing makes up for it. Despite the shortness, there are 3 endings (which are probably quite obvious.) 
I don't think I'll be one of those people who unpublish it to edit it right after the contest. I'm satisfied with my little game. 

I just realize you put this in Love & Dating and if not for this thread I'd really be looking at that title and wondering what the hell I was clicking on.