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ok, so recently I haven't written at all. I've done RP in games etc. but haven't just sat and written for months and months due to a very very busy life and lack of inspiration. I've said before in earlier posts that to write I simply MUST BE inspired or it just doesn't work.

So I signed up for the comp as a really last ditch effort to try again and for a few days failed badly. I didn't write a word. Then I tried to plan it out, make a set framework etc. again not a word.

Finally I just opened a blank page and looked at it yesterday and thought, let's just start with this tiny idea and follow this guy along this morning. Yesterday And today I have written thousands upon thousands of words and am steamrolling ahead!

Thank you for this competition!

Woo! I was waiting for this. Sounds like you don't want to tell us anything specific about your story so far, but I'll be looking forward to reading it when it's done. Can't wait for 01/01/15!

Fantastic job!  That is how you defeat "writer's block."  Just allow yourself to write "trash."

 

luckily its turning out to be good :)

Obviously will need a lot of tidying and editing later but for now I'm making progress!

Ok, this is becoming my progress thread!

I will post updates on my progress and story stages here as I go, mainly if you don't see anything here in several days or over a week, bug me!

Currently my plan for the story may change a lot however several decisions have been made.

1. I'm going back to the basic editor. There is simply no way I could get this finished and have properly working items etc. in it, I'm just not good enough with the editor ad will be pushed for time anyway.

2. For progress description I will describe the story as being 3 different paths, 3 chapters in each path. (Obviously this is a massive over-simplification and ignores all the sub-paths and linking branches etc. but its just to make describing progress easier).

3. Editing is going to be really hard and take up a lot of time, the story might not be fully edited and clean up due to the sheer amount I have to write.

OK, current update.

I wrote around 6-7 thousand words on Thurs and Friday. This, along with the work I had before (a few thousand more words) means I am now mostly finished the main path in chapter 1 of path 1. This is great news for me since it means progress and only a few thousand more for the other branches in chapter 1 path 1. Then I can move onto Chapter 2 Path 1. This is bad news because it means that this story is going to be huge again... I will also have to come back to add the linking branches etc. once I have moved the story on to ensure consistency.

That's great, but... got any plot details for us? :P

Ok fine...

It's a modern post apocalypse story/game. It begins in a fictional metropolis the size of greater London or New-York, cities than could easily take days or even weeks to cross on foot. By your reckoning, its only been 2-3 years since the complete collapse but 5-6 since it all began.

So why oh why did I enter a competition with a deadline when I am already far far far too busy in the rest of my life.

This story would be very hard for me to finish in the it e frame even if I had loads of free time...

So, made some major changes to the underlying paths of the story today having written a few thousand more words since the weekend. This has added an almost rediculous amount of extra work to the project however the more I wrote the more necessary it became that I made the choice. I had different paths planned and progressing however within those paths the choices felt far too restricted and almost like I was railroading the reader after a few basic seeming choices at the very start despite the range of choices available. So I have added plans for huge extra plot lines to every major path...

From what I've hear you're an insanely fast writer, so you can do this.

I wish I had the inspiration you had, man how did you do it? (I really want to write on some of my stories, but I don't have any inspiration whatsoever, soo, help?)

For this one I just had an idea based off watching too many movies and reading too many books that all followed the same sort of idea. I always wanted somthing different, somthing that caught my interest for other reasons. So I thought up a 'what if' scenario and that turned into this story.

As for inspiration to keep writing, I am a terrible planner, I have to feel the desire to write and go with it, I'll put thousands of words down in a session then have to tidy, punctuate and edit it later. If I stop to edit as I go then I loose the inspiration and can't write.

For this current story I concentrate on why I would find this world and this story interesting then half put myself into the the world as kind of a person floating above the action and 'follow' the main character. It often means I have to change my initial ideas as I write somthing I didn't expect or I just go with a random thought and the story progresses in a totally new way but I have to let it go that way because if I get too caught up in following a set plot line or planning out every word then I write nothing. Basically so long as I am enjoying the story I can write quickly and put large amounts on paper, most of my concious thought is about ensuring I am enjoying the story so I can keep writing lol

If you are stuck a trick might be, find the bit of the story that you like the most, the bit that interest you the most. Then just start writing, don't plan where it's going, just write the first things that come into your head for the charicter to do then. Whether is debate with someone or head off into the hills to explore or to monologue at the person they have tied up. Just write with no editing or planning and see if it gets you interested with what comes out.

I'll try all of them and tell you which works.

So, I have not written even close to what I had wanted by now due to a very busy life and distractions.

I have however made progress on the first Path, I've also made yet another major plot alteration. This one shouldn't cause me too much more work but I felt it was a better choice for the progression of the plot. I was needlessly dragging a section out and trying to think about what could be added in, so instead I cut it shorter, moved the plot forward and added a section later on. This leaves the main path the same length overall but makes it flow better.

Only at about 21,000 words, so much to do.

Well, even if you haven't done as much as you wanted, I wouldn't beat yourself up over it if you written that much.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Didn't write anything today. So much to do.

Maybe I should just cut a path out entirely... But then I'd hate myself for doing it...

erm.... Not much...

Due to life being busy and some new distractions I have made very little progress, just a couple thousand words so I really need to make big progress this weekend...

Everytime I try and shorten things I end up adding new paths and branches etc. it's not good that the more I write, the more I add...

So you're making progress but not in the way you're supposed to? Does this mean we need to confiscate babies from you?

Wanted another 20 to 30 thousand words more by now and only have 2 to 3 :(

Going to try a big push this weekend though

So I've stalled a little bit, not got nearly as much done as I had wanted by now. I did make some more progress and wrote a few thousand more words but in the grand scheme of things it's not as much as I wanted, however I wrote In The first cameo appearances.

On the good side of things I have tied up the majority of loose ends in the first half of the first path and can push ahead with the two main branches of it now.

so long as I don't stall too badly again I should have 2 paths at least playable by mid to late December. Then two weeks of editing. It prob won't be the full story I envisioned however I will defiantly submit something. Even if I continue to work on it after.

You will ... defiantly submit something? xD "Defiantly submit." Not a phrase one hears every day.

(Teasing aside, keep it up, man. =D)

Being able to defiantly submit somthing is the sign of a real man ;)

Delayed reply: To quote Morgan, YKINMKBYKIOK.

When I see "YINMKYBYKIOK" I sort of assume it's part of some terrible ritual. 

To quote EndMaster, YKISMKAYFD

(Your Kink is Not My Kink and You're Fucking Disgusting)

Well good and bad news,

The good is that I have made more progress towards getting to a stage where it is publishable, lots more little paths, a few cameos and lots of main story parts added since the last update.

The bad. I just lost a significant amount of writing. I use a shared computer some of the time and it looks like my most recent draft was accidently deleted so I have lost approx 6,000 words which sucks majorly considering how tight this is going to be... I will be aking a final push to have a publishable project over the next week. That gives me 8 days to write and a couple to get it all put into the site... I'll know by next Friday whether I can meet the deadline or not.

Published and entered in the comp.

Published 40mins before midnight. now I must go collapse and sleep

I apologize now for how horrible and unedited 'Apocalypse yesterday is' I will unpublish it and hide in a corner out of shame later

so madglee has confirmed the extension and so I have unpublished to enable mass edits!

This overall is a good thing as it means I can fix all the small errors, add in several ending I just couldn't do properly in time. Many of you are mentioned in cameos hidden throughout already too :)

Update after ages cos I had forgotten I was trying to force myself to keep this as a motivational check for myself!

Being honest, very little has been done since the original deadline. I put such a ridiculous amount of effort getting something ready for that deadline that I burnt out a bit and spent all of January and most of Feb just doing RL stuff and taking a break from writing. I have recently added a little to some branches and fixed a couple of little problems and errors.

I plan to write and include one more branch by the deadline, this will be a lot more writing but I think I can manage it now if I put in as much effort as I did before and average a few thousand words each weekday.

I have also enlisted a couple of Elite Ninjas to do a quick playthrough for me to let me know just how horribly bad it is before I publish it :)

Good luck man.

I'm thinking... Lets just merge our games together at a random junction in the middle to make one super game!

As long as I get to take part in the cat-porn then fine.

So I have been making progress again! YAAAAYYY!

And randomly while trying to tie off a loose end  branch which was intended to lead to death... I felt that the story wanted it to continue so turn what should have been 2 or 3 pages of writing into another full story branch that will eventually link into a main directional arc that hasn't been added yet due to time constraints.

I will now try and finish the two smaller branches I am working on without adding even more to my workload lol

Boo yah. ^_^ (and I love being referred to as an elite ninja)

So I both hate and love how I write.

Today and yesterday I added maybe 30 pages all told, each page with a fairly large amount of writing etc. and I was really happy since how I write lets me do that fairly easily. I have a general idea of a plan for the overarching story but I let the writing go where it will and just keep writing and writing so that I often don't know what is coming next and can even be surprised myself by what comes out. This means I can produce a lot of words and progress very quickly as I don't need to stop every 2 mins to plan the next page out.

This also means that I keep giving myself more work. Somthing I thought was going to be one small looping branch that would take maybe 30 pages all told to do before linking back to a main arc branch has just taken 30 pages to do the opening for it and split into two completely separate sub-branches cos thats just what felt right when writing. So now I have two large looping branches to complete instead of having finished one small one.

I think they will be fun though and like where the story ended up pointing at least!

So I was forced to look at what I have so far and come to a decision.

As expected, I will not even be close to done the full story as this will take months more of writing then editing etc. but I will have a story with multiple branching arcs leading to their own endings. Sadly there are also a couple of endings that are clearly tie offs and not as satisfying as the full endings.

So my choice became, do I tie off the current branches I am working on right now (maybe 30 more pages) then stop writing and work purely on editing. Or do I keep going with adding to things and making some of my tie-offs feel more like proper endings and leave the ending, meaning I know for sure my game will be full of minor spelling, grammar and syntax errors?

I decided the former. I will keep writing until the deadline and make the story feel as complete as possible and do what little editing I can in between. I know I will hate myself for the spelling and grammar errors when I hit the publish button (As will Nate and Madglee when they see them) but I also know that after a time I will be taking it down again to add in the further branches and arcs I did not get too the first time, thus allowing me to edit it later and republish after that.

Right, back to typing furiously...

Awesome!  Looking forward to this!

And if you were to go by a short version of your name what would it be?

Boring

Fire

Fire-Lion

lion

@Boringfirelion

Doesn't matter to me.  I'm usually called all of these.  If I were to choose, however, I would probably pick "Boring."

Excellent, excellent...

So I have decided I must be a little bit twisted. I'll explain why.

I'm a romantic, I love well done romance stuff as PART of a story, I don't want an entire story of soppy mush, but I am a true romantic at heart and think it can definitely add to a story when done properly and not just gratuitously.

I also didn't intend for this current story to have any romantic interest really. I had a vague idea for something more akin to becoming a guardian/friend that I might still add later as I think it would really work on one of the later arcs I will be adding in.

However, while writing my currently already over extended and added-too branches, it just kinda came up. It made perfect sense to have it in there, so I started adding in a small romance option that will lead to a romance/happy ending. At the same time I began the parallel branch where you.... lets just say make drastically different life choices. I then find myself moving between branches to move the story forward in tandem between the branches so the same events can roughly happen while you cause them to alter and bifurcate through your actions.

Romance, then horrific brutal death. 

I think I have read too many of Endmaster's stories to switch between them so easily.

Telling any more would give away what are hopefully going to be fun plot twists so I'll leave it there :)

Well for now...

Published! It is horribly riddled with errors and mistakes but the deadline is here and I did what I could. I will finish it and edit it properly after that.