6/5/2022

10/30/2024 12:38 PM

12

0

0 wins / 0 losses

Sage

I'm in. I have a better idea of what I should plan for now, so I should finish this one instead of turning in a patched together, incomplete mess at the end.

Congrats to Sherbet! Haven't read any of the stories yet, but I'm going to give them a go in the weekend when I have time, as long as they're still published. Honestly, you're way too kind with mine, like I said, it's basically unfinished, despite it having an end. I wrote about 10%, then added another 10% and tried to reach a conclusion for the story with just that. It's 20% of the story if I'm generous and even then, it was a rough draft. Anyway, I'll hopefully do a much better job next contest. I might fix this one eventually. I might actually remove the whole harem plot or keep it as a background thing since it won't be part of a contest anymore. Probably won't though, but I plan on making some shorter stories in the coming months, and get better at forcing myself to write consistently.

Lots of lessons were learned from this. Like not being a dumb cunt, and keeping the scope of the story small when you know you're lazy and are on a time limit. Or how you can't always count on the time you have, cause you might lose 3 weeks for work. Basic bullshit, that I should have known, and yet here we are. After giving up on it and not writing anything for over a week, content with my future place in the shame pit, I decided to "finish it". It's about 26k words, about 14k of which I wrote the past two days. So the writing is very rough as a result, it would need a lot of work and at least a second or third pass to make it decent. Although with all the content cut, I doubt it could be, as it would need at least 200k words to paint the picture in my head, maybe even more with all the extra variables and all the other garbage. Suffice it to say that I hate it, and I'm still unsure of whether posting it or taking the shame is worse. I have to go to work though, so I can't put any more work on it, the endings especially are particularly rushed shit. I hope people get at least some enjoyment out of it, but I doubt it. Here's my master-piece-of-shit: https://chooseyourstory.com/story/golden-gaze-~2d-establishing-a-foothold My objective for joining was to actually commit and finish a story, and in that I have failed, despite it technically being "finished".

So, 11:59 EST, is that AM or PM? Just so I know how long I have left.

Yeah, I feel you a lot on the whole cutting down. Even the small window in to my story that was supposed to follow the events around the prompt is not going to be what I wanted, since there's just no time. Joining late and having 3 weeks of no writing cause of work, basically made me cut most of the branching and a bunch of the cast. At this point, there's a few death endings and 2 major endings planned and the choices are also cut down a lot. I'm hoping I can finish in this state at around 30-40k words at most, otherwise it's going to be a problem, since even like this it's going to basically be a first draft, as I'm likely not going to have time to go through it even a second time. I hope it's decent enough and finished. After that I'll maybe finish and flesh it out later after the contest, or just completely remake it around the core of what's there already. But then who knows, I'm a lazy prick, so...

Yeah, and obviously I didn't go in to that last point as much. Sure sometimes people appear not to be logically consistent, but it could just be you don't know their internal logic. So that's a bit muddy in and of itself. Character should generally have enough dimension to them, to where you have some leeway. but still... it's important to keep a character mostly consistent within their principles and ideals, since when the key moment, the stressful or traumatic moment happens and they do break character for good reason in that case, then it is all the more impactful. If your character is just wishy-washy and just basically does random shit, it doesn't work anymore and can even break a story, especially if it's a main character. But yeah, there has to be an inciting incident/event, to push a character to act "out of character" so to speak, at least that's how I feel. And obviously it's harder to keep consistency in a choice based story. I've had to think a lot in mine, how to do it, since the main character is older and very well defined in who she is. So she's not someone that will easily change or is impressionable, but I hope I've given her enough depth so that it works. And I had to think a lot on how to make choices that are impactful and stay within the character's core principles and loyalties. And I think I'm doing a fairly decent job so far. But there some instances in which I just removed choice in some key moments, just because there are certain things about her that are absolute. Like her motherly love and loyalty toward a character, and it would just ruin the character to go with anything else but the "cannon" choice in that moment. And a lot of the choices are just not going to be character defining choices and more how she deals with the resources available and what that leads to.

I'm not sure I understand what you think makes characters interesting or bland. And I think a lot might fall apart for you as it progresses because of how little you say you focus on plot and the world. I mean it's fine not to start off with a fully fleshed out world and plot, but you should have a general idea and key points that define it. The world isn't just backdrop, it's what defines a character in a way. Why is your character X way? It's likely because of the world he lives in, people around him, etc. He's not an interesting character in isolation, he's interesting because of how he interacts with the world and characters around him. I usually start with a character idea, and that changes and then I draw from that and define the world a bit, and that in turn changes the character and then I add what journey is the character going on, what are his motivations, weaknesses and what is the world like, and all of this just interact with each other and keep changing one another, until I have a starting point and general idea of where this is going. It's going to get fleshed out later, detail will be expanded. But I generally have a good idea of the key plot points and key ideas for the world before I start writing. Cause even smaller things about the world, like what I base the culture on can drastically influence the character not only appearance wise, but even choices they might make. It's all world building, their past, everything, it doesn't just stop at like some generic backdrop. And obviously, then you kind have more historical or current day settings, with an established world, but even that you have to ask, how does this current world instance and its ideas and problems influence the character, is it reflected on them and why? I feel you treat the world and plot too much like an after fought, and that might lead to why you feel characters end up underdeveloped later on since they have nothing to interact and conflict with. And this bothered me, because maybe I misunderstood it but "if I can see the logistics of how the character operates too clearly then the audience would see it too" what do you mean by this? Are you talking about characters being well developed and logically consistent as bad? I don't think people being able to tell what a character might do in a situation is bad, in fact that is a very good sign of solid writing. An act does not have to be unpredictable to be enjoyable. In fact, a lot of modern media has an issue with having characters act out of character just to create tension or surprise/twists. And it is bad. In any case, sorry about throwing my own unrequested advice/argument, just bored and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

I mean sure I'd thought of that, but since about 30% or so is still the same I gave this a go as it is the exact situation at the start, just how it develops changes based on certain things, and I thought it would flow more naturally ... I don't know. It's not a huge issue, just wanted to know if it was doable.

So as to not make a new thread I might as well ask here. If I want large chunks of the page to be different depending on certain variables, is there an easier way of doing it then just creating multiples of : %%Variable%=%3%Paragraph version 1 first paragraph%%%%Variable%=%4%Paragraph version 2 first paragraph%% %%Variable%=%3%Paragraph version 1 second paragraph%%%%Variable%=%4%Paragraph version 2 second paragraph%% %%Variable%=%3%Paragraph version 1 third paragraph%%%%Variable%=%4%Paragraph version 2 third paragraph%% Like so, for each separate paragraph? Since this only seems to work up to 1 paragraph. And you know, this seems to work fine, just wanting to know if there's a cleaner way to do it?

I mean yeah of course you don't. I've always just lurked on the site. Anyway, thanks I guess. Only reason I joined this contest is just to give myself a deadline and force myself to finish a story.