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Based on Fazz’s suggestion I’ve decided to make a Motivational Thread to help me keep track of my writing and just let anyone who is interested know what I’ve been up to. I’ll update this every Saturday and can be my sort of substitute for the Weekly Review which I don’t feel I have time to do anymore. Though I’m not much of a Forum fan because it distracts me from writing I think it always helps authors to know about other people’s writing systems because you can steal any ideas you like from them and make them your own :D

For me writing is like eating, if I don’t do a certain amount every few days or so I do a burst of it all at once. I like to take either an interesting idea I’ve thought up or something interesting from history (which I find more interesting than fiction because people actually really did do the amazing things I‘m writing about) and research or plan the hell out of it. Once I know roughly what’s going on what page all I need to do is pick and assemble the words like a painter picks colors to try to convey or draw whatever response out of the reader I’m hoping for. That’s the fun bit.

I usually write my stories on Microsoft Word and then copy and paste them onto this site, what I put on this site is a very small fraction of all the things I write though I like multiple-choice stories because they make the story re-readable and helps the reader have more of an interest in the story in the same way the pictures in comic books make the reader more interested. I’ve been busy with work, travel and way too many all-nighters in crappy bars lately but this month I want to knuckle down and get another story-game published.

My next story game will probably be Battlefield Commanders: The Ancient World where the reader is a General in Ancient Greece and for Alexander the Great and Hannibal Barca (he of the elephants). A funny (hopefully!) story for GMB’s competition called Warrior Cats: In the Real World (which may get me lynched), an Epic Fantasy story called The Soul Stone of Sofia, a story set in Japan with the awful working title The Darwinian War and stories about Billy the Kid, The Manson Family (which is full of dark psychology, drugs and naked girls, three useful elements for a good story), the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, the American Civil War and John Dillinger are all in the works too.

I guess that’s it, if you’re still reading thanks for showing an interest and I’ll update this every Saturday to help me and anyone who’s interested keep track of how I’m getting on and hopefully it’ll help motivate me to write more.

Yes! :D

And your new Battlefield Commanders game sounds promising and I'm excited for it Will. You see I'm a huge fan of grand-strategy type games (Civilization V being one of my favorite games of all time), especially the whole leading an army part. Unfortunately, on this site there isn't much I can quench myself with. There's the Pushing an Army series but it was poorly written, then Warlords which was nice but linear, and finally the last Battlefield Commander, which was superb but also quite linear. If you can make this Battlefield Commanders not as linear and instead with diverse paths, I'll luvya4ever Will.

I'm also a fan of history (... which I guess is why I'm a huge fan of Civ as well as your stories), so I'm pretty excited for your other works too.

Looking forward to the updates.

Are we allowed to post things about how jealous we are of your writing ability and number of good stories published here? Or should we just read, cheer you on, and encourage you here?

Either way is fine with me... :)

Ha! I like flattery but my writing's not that good and I've got poor creativity :) With writing I find the more I write the more chance I have of writing something good, even if it is by accident; it's like if you fire enough shots with a gun you'll hit the target eventually hence why I've managed 1 good story out of 7 (the Ripper one) while most of the rest are so-so and some were so bad I had to un-publish and delete them :D I enjoyed your Cryogenic Failure story a lot and can't believe how fast you read stories, I want the shiny read 100% of stories trophy too!

Oh and I think you'll like the next Battlefields Commander when I've finished it Fazz, it is a bit linear but there's four different campaigns or storylines to choose from and a few little branches in some of them but it's definitely more game than story... the Fantasy I'm writing I'm writing as several stories in one like EndMaster's masterpieces but even though I'm adapting it from something I've already wrote it could take literally years to finish... it's pretty epic.

 

Looks very promising WIll! Though I'm not really into historical storygames, I'm impressed by all of the top quality stories you've brought to the community. Keep on writing! And know that your writings inspire others to follow you and improve on their own.

It's great to see this trend of motivational threads still going. Reminds me that other writers (good writers! huzzah!) are working hard to create something awesome. I just wish I felt more up to it myself. Can't wait to see your next game, Will. :D

Updating my Motivational Thread this week I've written ten A4 pages and completed 1 of the 4 campaigns for Battlefield Commander but I think I want to work on my Manson Family story more and get that published because the reader's character is on drugs throughout most of the story and that offers the chance for a quirky narrative style of snatches of imagery and terrible events blurring into the mundane... it's just hard to find any time at all to write as I am working every day at the moment but I'll see how I get on with the story.

If GMB's still running his(her?) competition I'll submit a little Warrior Cat's story as I've got a lot of funny ideas for it starting with the line "Dave was not like the other girls..."

Last I checked, that contest is still going on. I'm working on talking everyone else out of entering so I can win by default (j/k!)

xD You, writing a WC game... that would be something.

Hey, how's it going with the WC parody?

Fun, I'm just thinking of the most ridiculous things I can and making a story around it :D

And thanks GMB, unless it's in the name I'm not sure if the people on this site are girls or guys and there are one or two that I think might be both... :)

Good luck, man!

P.S: I'm a guy.

Unbelievable.

Not much to report this week. I've written 3 A4 pages of 13 CYOA pages for the funny WC story and about the same number again for the Manson Family story. I'll publish the WC story in a week or two, it'll only be about 30-40 pages long and a funny little entry into GMB's competition, and will probably get unpublished after the competition as it's a long way from good writing. I'm working all the time so I'm doing odd bits now and then but next month I'm planning a holiday to Taiwan and as I wrote most of Hunting the Ripper during a holiday in South Korea I've got high hopes of writing something decent.

I find the old approach of locking yourself in a hotel room for about three days with a few bottles of spirits and cola, some microwavable meals and enough smokables (tobacco ones obviously) to give the local fire brigade cause for concern can be a pretty good way of writing A LOT in a short space of time, particularly if you haven't done very much writing lately 

Smoke... tobacco every day

Sounds fun man, good luck with all the writing :) Hopefully my contest isn't destroying your projects too much :D

 

Smoke anything other than tobacco while you write and your story is going to take  a Lebowski-esque turn fast. 

God luck, Will. Godspeed. 

420 blaze it and praise it! :) :) :)

Now I'm just imagining some guy on vacation taking bong hits and writing CYOA games across the world. Weird thought.

"Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!"

Nah, what I'm writing for the competition is quite fun and I think if I had anything stronger than tobacco to smoke I'd be doing a lot more fun things than writing :) It's quite a good idea actually to write on holiday, two or three days hard work at the start and then after than you can go out and party with a sense of achievement... or just hang around outside fashionable bars telling people you're a writer :D Haha just had an imagine of that: "nah I am look, I can do words, give me that napkin, I have a pencil. C. A. T. See, see? Buy me a drink and I'll tell you more..." :)

Fucking brilliant. Try that. ^_^

Hm, not much done this week though I've finished another campaign for Battlefield Commander so the story is about 50% finished. I don't have any time now and what I've written for GMB's competition is just another WC Parody (though possibly a good one) but I don't think I'll submit it as I don't really want to add anything WC related to the site now the admins are thinking of getting rid of all things furry and war-loving.

I might give the forums a miss for a while actually and come back after the admins make their changes so I can concentrate just on my writing and hopefully come up with something decent next month. It's been ages since I've completed a story-game while good authors like Ogre11 have turned out 3 great stories in the last week or two :) I'll leave the forums alone for 2 or 3 weeks and stick exclusively to the story-game section...

Heh. Thanks!

Indeed, the forums can be a total suck for writing. I have found the way my brain works: I can only type so many words in a day. I can choose where to type those words, but once I'm out, I'm pretty much out! Fortunately recently my words per day quota has been rather high! Those are fun times, let me tell you.