Forums » Newbie Central » Read Thread

I joined a few days ago. Does anyone have any advice for making good story games?

The very best advice is to read all of the featured games.  Read them slowly and think about what makes them work.  What you like about them and what you don't like about them.  Think about their prose style, and their choice structure, and how they lead to interesting and different endings. 

Then read more--dive into the category of your choice, and think about what you like and what you hate.  Read hundreds of games before you worry about starting your own.

That's some good advice, thanks!

Just glancing at the story you started, the description got my attention and was interesting enough to make me want to check it out. That's an important first step.

I think a good start for anyone is to read Gower's guide to dialogue punctuation, since that's one of the most common thing that both new and more experienced authors get wrong. It's not really difficult, it's just one of those things you don't tend to notice until you know to watch out for it.

Reading both some bad and some good storygames and giving feedback on them as Gower suggested is a good place to start. It boosts your reputation among the people who matter, and gives you a much better sense of what the editor is capable of and different ways of structuring a branching story, as well as an idea of the quality level readers are looking for. (You don't have to read them ALL, but just mentioning that Official CYS Really Good Art Person MadHattersDaughter is offering commission works valued at $25 for reading and rating all the games, while supplies last.)

Remember you aren't in a race to publish anything, it'd be better to have a polished work you can be proud of to start with rather than rushing something out. Readers here are encouraged to offer criticism and can be pretty blunt about it sometimes, so you'll want to be prepared for that.

I know yours is in the beginning stages, but if it were published people might bring up:

1) the story lacks detail. Each page is just a few short lines, not really enough imagery or development to draw anybody into the character's head as these events happens.

2) humor can be pretty hit or miss. It's a lot more difficult to write than most other genres because not everyone finds the same things funny. It works best imo when it's mixed in with a more substantial plot that gives the character and reader some stakes in events. That way even when the jokes miss there's still a reason to want to keep reading, and when they hit they're even funnier for being a little unexpected. (But you do you of course, these are just opinions.)

3) just a minor thing, but you might want to vary your sentences more. I'm seeing a lot of 'You do this' and 'You do that.' There's lots of different ways to phrase things to make a passage more interesting even when it gets across the same idea.

I've been checking out a lot of stories, but I still haven't found any that I thought were "bad." I must look harder.
And yeah, I noticed that my story doesn't have much variety or detail. I'll work on fixing that. Thanks for the help!

Welcome to the site, I hope you enjoy your time here.