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I have the day off tomorrow and Monday. Super long weekend, yay! But I want to use some of that time to actually make some progress on something. And my lack of enthusiasm for my various stalled projects is matched only by my lack of any better ideas. >_<

EXPLODE THE MOMENT!!!!!

...what? XD

Do not question. Embrace.

Too late, I asked Google. ;P

It looks like a perfectly good writing exercise, but not terribly applicable to the problem of having no good ideas.

One detail leads to the next, and suddenly you have a scene.

...maybe. I'll try it, anyway. Thanks.

Details, details, details. You take the moment, and overload it with all the details you can think of, exploding it. List how the moment feels, tastes, sounds like, smells like, but don't focus only on what it looks like. Many authors focus only on how everything looks, and their stories are never as good.

@Kiel_Farren

xD Still not sure why I was tagged, but is it because Taco's starting to sound like me...?

Roleplay as a gay owl who gets lynched by the KKK.

r/WritingPrompts (to get you writing/ideas)

Or you could take a walk, read a book, discover what you're interested in, etcetera to weave a story you're willing to write.

If you don't want to write a certain story don't waste your time.

Thanks. ^_^

I was just replaying a favorite piece of choice-based IF, Metrolith. I'd love to make something like that, only bigger. A game about exploration. Maybe even randomized to a degree, though I'm usually pretty leery of randomization in IF.

 

Indie horror month 2013, eh? Looks interesting, will check out... which'll probably be like in a month :/

Not sure at all how, given you're using CYS editor, you're going to implement randomization. I think nmelessx accomplished a random name generator, but for situations or choices.... ehhhh

I see news of my traitorous ways has yet to reach you. XD

Which is to say, I'll be using Twine or ChoiceScript. I just hang out here for the company. ^_^

Don't worry. I'm a mercenary too. I use Twine sometimes because of the branch-page layout, which I find helpful in terms of organization, or to write some drafts before copypasta'ing edited pages to CYS. Ultimately it just serves as a backup for my stories.

Cool. Looking forward to seeing the results at some point down the road. ^_^

Me too! XD Except with school and preparing for college. 

Heh. Yeah, I'm glad to be done with school. XD

Do that one brain-smashy thing that I suggested earlier. It works, but I never feel enough motivation to do it much these days.

...brain-smashy thing? o_O

Just here to gripe about being uninspired some more. Feel free to ignore me. >_<

I just want to be able to make something cool. I'm a half-way decent writer, in terms of stringing words together in a readable way. But when it comes to ideas and plotting... sigh. Yeah, not so much. And yet I can't let go of the idea that I could be, should be a writer... somehow.

 

Have you tried writing something like a short-story rather than a CYOA?

Short stories rely even more than other forms of fiction on the quality of their ideas. >_<

I've attempted to write novels, if that seems relevant. Yay NaNoWriMo. I think my best attempt hit 10k. :P

Maybe it's just you thinking that your ideas are bad? I mean, honestly here, a lot of your games have really interesting settings. 

Thanks. And I'll admit to having high standards. But beyond that, I just get stuck. How should the protagonist of Hunter become a Hunter? What does Justice want her new Paladin to do?

Or, for that matter, what should happen next in Liminal?

Damned if I know.

Out of curiosity, what order do you write in?

Like, do you have an idea, write it for a bit, and expand on it?

Or do you start from the ending, and work backwards?

Do you plot out EVERYTHING you want to happen, or just the main points?

Are you actually stuck with what to do next, or are you stuck on how to do the part that happens inbetween two main points in your story?

I try to pin the ending down as soon as I can, because then at least I have an idea of where I'm headed, if not how to get there. Paladin and Hunter both have endings. In my head, to be clear. Not written yet. In both cases I wrote straight ahead from the beginning, and stopped when I got stuck. I definitely don't plot everything out, just try to have a couple goal-posts in mind.

I'm certainly open to process suggestions, if you have any.

I think it might help to have a friend to bounce ideas off of (whether RL or not). A lot of problems I personally have are from thinking that one path to get to a major node isn't 'good enough', and it makes it hard to continue without having someone else say it's solid. Dunno if that's your problem though.

What I did with the first branch of Undead Persona was have a solid idea of what I wanted to happen, including the climax and what brought it to that and, while I can't vouch on whether it'll end up good or not, the bottom line is that 125-paged (varying word lengths) storyline is actually finished. For that though, the protagonist had a pretty forced impetus and the story just kinda followed that. Did your ideas have a 'goal' in mind? Not just a final-scene, but an actual thing pushing the character forward?

That's one of the problems, yeah... lack of a strong driving motivation for the main character / player. :/

Can't help you too much. I listen to music to get my creative juices going, and when I'm stuck I think backwards. As in, I think of where the next plot point is, and decide how the story needs to progress to get there.

If I'm just lacking motivation, reading other storygames or similar style media helps.

To help more I'd need more specific details on how you're stuck. Well, actually the real thing I'd need to know about is the world and characters that already exist in your story, to best determine how everything should play out to lead to the result you want.

Thanks, you've definitely given me some food for thought. I may try actually writing some of the scenes further down the timeline, to see if I can get a better sense for how I should set them up earlier. And push comes to shove, I may detail Points A and B and everything else in play... because even if you can't help, I suspect carefully describing the problem may help lead me to the solution.

Another thing I'll add is don't be afraid to change how things end up. Getting too attached to a certain idea or plot point that just doesn't fit properly with your storygame will lead you to giving up on it.

I had an entire character arc in my through time game that I ended up scrapping because I realized she didn't really fit in well with everything else in the story, and hers was one of the first ones that I thought up.

Do you think you might be able to salvage one of my old ideas?

Depends on the idea, but I'd certainly be curious to hear more. And welcome back. ^_^

I have a few, really.

Most of them center around a sort of college for mages.

In one of these ideas, you play as a student mage who has just completed basic mage school and is required to either go an advanced magical institution or join the army as a battle mage. In this world, the majority of the world's mages reside in a single country and are governed by a council of Archmages that co-operates for the most part with the government of that country in order to keep its autonomy. This, of course, changes as the game progresses.

I like mages, and schools for mages. ^_^

How much worldbuilding/plotting do you have? And how do you feel about Choice of Games? Feel free to PM me if you'd rather continue the conversation that way.

I was actually planning on doing something to that effect. provided I finished "Magick Academy" and got to its sequel, but it wouldn't have been an army you could join, more like the magical version of Interpol.