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I think a wholesome progress thread might keep me more motivated, for longer.

This is my first concerted effort to write for pleasure in quite some time. It’s been fun knocking the rust off. I am aware of the common trend of people procrastinating and then using the anxiety of the closing deadline to quickly put together a product. So far I’ve worked a little on my story each day.

I could easily end up without access to a keyboard for weeks at a time between now and the deadline. As such, I can’t work that way. I have to make good habits right away and make steady progress. I must plan to finish with time to spare. My hope is to be editing by late February.

While I’d like to write a branch and bottleneck with lots of cool state tracking, I’ll probably more or less write a linear story first, then start branching wherever feels right.

I was looking at the prompt about a detailed magic system and wrote the following on my notepad during work.

“Magic:
is common, but obtuse
Consumes raw resources
Time consuming
Skill and labor intensive
Powerful, above all

Between two roughly equitable armies, effective magic tactics shape victory and defeat
Players make strategic decisions while managing their resources.

Defining Fires

Three rings, concentric, one of shaped steel, one of polished stone, and one of delicate glass, are set into the hilltop. The outer ring consists of 18 pieces, each identical, and shaped like dragon scales. Each scale is tilted to the side and embedded into the earth about halfway, so that the ring seems to run counterclockwise. Freshly disturbed earth lies nearby in four neat piles. Each piece of shaped steel weighs 50kg.

The second ring, the one of polished stone, is composed of 12 pieces. They are cut into rectangles and inscribed extensively with horizontal lines and tiny geometric shapes. They are much larger than the shaped steel, standing, partially buried, almost the height of a man. They each must weigh a metric ton and half.

The inner ring, the ring of glass…”

That’s all I got done, but this idea is probably permanently shelved since I ended up with a different prompt. I’m actually quite pleased with my prompt so far.

Who else has started? If you had a different prompt, which one would you want?

I have to say, that's quite an intriguing worldbuilding concept. Even though you got a different prompt in the end, I'm sure you could still find some way to weave it into the story if you want to.

And I know consistency is super important especially for longer projects, so if you're motivated by deadlines, setting mini-deadlines for specific branches or plot points has been a helpful technique for me. But you're on the right track with planning to finish early in case life gets in the way.

As for my entry, I'm rather behind schedule and haven't written nearly as much as I'd have liked. Also, there a really strong writer who's apparently trying to write a better storygame than me, and as much as I hate to admit it, they're currently ahead. But don't worry, I'll catch up soon enough.

I'm starting to realize I've incorporated elements from different prompts into my storygame. So even if I had chosen a different one, I could have written the exact same storygame and no one would be any wiser. But there's definitely at least one which is more relevant than my current prompt.

Best of luck with your storygame and I hope this thread keeps you motivated!

You made me acknowledge something. If one measures general success by Word Per Day, then the project could swell indefinitely. Even if one meets or exceeds their stated goal, they might not complete a project.

Instead, one might focus as you suggest, as long as the branches or plot points are part of a known outline. Keeping to a certain schedule, in that case, does assure the completion of the project.

I might try ballparking a word count for each chapter, then maintain my current words per day goal.

I have no worries that you will have a finished product. I hope that it will be your best yet.

I generally am much better motivated by verbal and psychological abuse, but I guess I can dig this too. I took the mystery box and I’m keeping my prompt a guarded secret until the end, but it’s a pretty great one. I definitely wouldn’t trade it.

I’m making fair progress. My average (not counting today) has been 400 words, but I hope to pick up the pace in the next few days. I’m also hoping that I’m done with research. I thought I wouldn’t have to do any, but I’m consistently wrong about everything.

I am definitely shooting for a victory here, but realistically, all that I am actually reasonably sure of is that this story will be better than my first one.

I definitely wish the two of you luck, but not too much. Lol

Everyone should strive to be better than they were before. It's admirable and attainable. Best of luck to you.

My friend showed me this after I told her I kind of wished I chose your prompt- wow

I also started mine and to be honest if I had a different prompt, I would want the insane asylum prompt (#17) because it seems like something I could adapt to my magic thing. I look forward to reading your story because the prompt is really cool!

I started, and I wouldn't trade my prompt for the world.

By "started" I mean I've made a few pages and typed maybe two

wow me too! I wrote for like 3 days then got a writing block and havent written since

Well, make sure you push past that. I wouldn't recommend any stalling.

That deadline is much closer than you think it is, trust me.

I was stuck on a character and eventually got a name for them. Tell me, how would you expect someone named 'Cameron' to act?

Based on experience, like a basketball obsessed skinny kid with daddy's money but a strong loyalty to family

That comes from multiple Camerons

thank you I will be taking aspects of this

I would envision a Cameron as a gaunt tall man, definitely a smoker and severely underweight. Extra bonus points if other people describe him as a living ghost. He's a man of few words, quiet and reflective, is very awkward in daily conversations. He would be quite the loner with few friends. It would take quite a while for him to open up.

His sleep schedule would be abysmal, seeing that he would carry some dark shadows under his eyes. He's a light sleeper, gets nightmares every now and then, doesn't fall asleep easily. Whenever he sits down, he always has to have something to fidget with in his hands. I think that Cameron would be quite competent at his job, but he's not particularly enjoying it. He kind of drifts through life aimlessly with not a lot of lingering attachments.

I think that he would be thinking about committing suicide from time to time, but he's too much of a " coward" to actually do it. He kind of tends to get in a negative headspace pretty easily, becoming very numb to everything around him.

As for when he would act: hmmm... There would be some form of loyalty, but the type that stems from guilt not out of love or duty. It's more like: "If I don't this now, this person will despise me or I owe this person so much already, I can't have him do this." 

If he does anything what could be considered heroic: he would be mentally screaming from the inside and panicking. However, I do think that he wouldn't be nervous trainwreck when it comes to things related to his job, sort of the only thing he's actually good at.

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Well, this is pretty much my interpretation of what a Cameron would be like, eh, a massive bumbling fuck up. However, it really is up to you what you want to do with your character. One of the things that I sometimes like to do is to not give characters any names during the planning phase so that I can sort out their role in the story a little easier. Names are a very arbitrary thing.

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I do wonder about the identity of that "writer" who wants to write a better story than Mystic, that person must be some nutty halfwit. You have my permission to behead that individual and dip their head in tar.

hm...interesting. I think I should dip someone's head in tar at some point, that sounds cool. maybe I'll just put it as a passing mention though

Suppose I knew a Cameron. Suppose she was one of a pair of twins, identical except for a scar on her head. She'd been trying to help a cat down from a tree. The cat did not need her help. Feeling cornered, the cat jumped, landed on the girl, dug in with its claws as it tried to steady itself, and leapt to safety. She was a scarred twin.

The incident didn't make her fearful. Instead, she became bold. Unsympathetically, she dove headfirst into every problem, looking for any solution. The twins grew steadily more distinct in behavior and temperament, as if reacting to one another, insisting on otherness.

Or something like that...

I love twin relationships maybe I'll add a twin and then kill them

Damn, nearly a month too late. You just needed to watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off and all questions would have been answered.

I originally wanted the epistolary prompt but I was a big homo who waited too long and it got snatched right in front of my nose.

But I managed to get myself the prompt about magic vs tech, I'm planning of placing the story right at the end of the Age of Magic of some generic fantasy world, and making the MC be one last magical roar into the big uncaring world.

At the moment there's some ideas of making the magical elite the totally-not-Romans beset by beastmen/orc hordes who managed to combine their martial society with gunpowder. Though underground refugees that formed a totally-not-dwarven culture rebellion are cool as well.

The one definite thing is making the MC narrate his entire rise to demigod status in first person because I like the way that writes. How much of it can get actual branching or even actual writing depends entirely on how often there's a dead night shift. If all else falls I'll shit out another 3k length ministory to save myself from !shame!

Got a bit of a first page going on, so I'm proud with my progress thus far.

I think the totally-not-Romans are great to write about. Have you thought more about the beast/orc hordes and the not-dwarves?

UPDATE #2

I’ve finished chapter 3 of the main path. My intention is for there to be 7 chapters. It seems like I won’t be writing much branching in the first 3 chapters. There will however be some choices with state tracking. My first goal is officially to write through one complete story. It occurs to me that if I do that first, then I will have a finished product in the end. Even if I only branch at the very end. It’s at least a finished product.

I’m already getting some anxiety about producing something that I’ll ultimately be happy with. I need to ride that anxiety forward! I have the day off now, but for the better part of this week I won’t be able to sit down at my keyboard at all. I’ll go analog as much as I can and transcribe later. My wife had the idea of printing out everything I have and editing during spare time.

To what extent does everyone outline their story first? How detailed is everyone else's planning stage? I Wrote about 5,000 words before writing my outline, and it's only for the main path. I took time to commit to certain ideas.

Seven chapters? Good luck my friend and I hope that it won't spiral out of control. 

It's actually kind of cute that your wife wants to spell check for you. That's really cool! l'm a bit too embarrassed to let people I know in real life read stuff I'd written. 

I'm slowing down a little due to me being a bit busy with real life stuff as always. Wow, I thought I was a big outliner/planner, turns out you got more written down than me. 

I generally have the "big" general outline with the character names and quick summary bout them. Yup, I do write this one first before I start writing. This one contains descriptions of the endings and the general paths I want to do. It's just so that I don't accidentally write plot holes/ forget people's names (tend to do it a lot). While I'm writing, I usually go back and add stuff like important details and other plot stuff I forgot into it.

The story and lore is much simpler, so I don't have many things to keep track of. So the outline is now about 1300 words long. If I make it too long, navigation and looking things up would be a pain.

Then there are the smaller outlines I write for every writing session/story chunk which go in detail what I need to cover for this page. I do these mostly in my head, but when I'm a bit stuck, writing it out helps.

The fear of it spiraling out of control is present and menaces me in my waking dreams.

Your system clearly works for you.

I'm a big proponent of outlining individual scenes when I sit down to write them. If I don't, I'm liable to lose track of the intent of the scene and meander into some detail that struck me as interesting while writing. Better to note that detail in the margin for later.

Most of my creative writing is for D&D. That's a different process. Prep for that is prewriting important descriptions, bulleting plot points, and exploring possibilities to avoid being caught off guard. I have to keep myself centered when writing a narrative or I'll end up with interesting scenes that don't really fit together.

I spent the past week researching one topic, and suddenly lost all interest in that topic after deciding it was time to write something. I am now back to square one and now I only have a vague idea of what I want to do.

Just start typing something. That way you wont end up having to submit a 2500 word quiz at the last minute to avoid SHAME.

And I say this as I have 0 words of actual story typed.  Though I do have main character profiles and a rough outline of of the story.

Well based on my prompt, I don't think a quiz would be a practical way to avoid SHAME. I cannot just start writing because without research I may not do the topic justice. I think that was the issue with Wolves of The Sea and I hope to not repeat those mistakes again. Thanks for the advice though.

HA I have ONE page done, got you BEAT

Speaking of which, I should really, REALLY work on that

well guess what? I have TWO pages done

you one-upping bitch

yup that's me :)

dw its really easy to one-up me if you put in like any kind of effort

lol. Nice one CP.

Fresh- Newb said you lack effort or she couldn't one-up you.

 

I do lack effort

However, I have written two pages, one of which is in German (which I've been taking a class for but it's not perfect), since making this post.

To be fair, you have been participating in the Owl's Challenge threads a little bit, so you've done a bit more writing than CP in the long run. More procrastinating and more writing! Sounds like you've got her beat multiple ways. 

it's very likely

I’ve written 6000 words. The issue is that I never, ever outline for anything. I also tend to write different scenes at once, because switching it up keeps me motivated. Therefore, all my pages are in strange orders and I’m various stages of completeness.

Unfortunately I’ve hit writer’s block like a brick wall. Not that I can’t motivate myself to write, but my writing has sucked. Doubly unfortunate is the fact that outlining the story would probably help, cause I ain’t doin’ that now. The upside is that I did plenty of research and now know a fair bit about the history of the hamburger.

I’m shooting for 62k words (for absolutely no specific reason) which is still very doable.

Mmmmm.... hamburgers.... dang it! Now I have to go get something to eat. I was perfectly fine before I read this and now I'm too hungry to keep writing. I'll be back soon...

If a scene suddenly occurs to me, I usually open a page and quickly write it. The downside is that I sometimes end up with lots of disconnected scenes that I have to build the connecting tissue for, or scenes that never manifest into the story at all. I definitely understand what you are saying. I try to resist doing it too often.

My editing process will be to tighten the text. I want to reduce my overall word count and keep as much content as possible while doing so. I have a lot of words written, but I'm more worried about moving the storyline towards completion.

Ah, it's nice being able to relax for one of these... No pressure to finish, no bothering people to betaread...

You're not in this one? 
 

or are you supremely confident?

He already won a contest, so there's no need to try anymore.

Sad.

Cel already hit his peak.  The rest of his CYS existence is all downhill.

There will still be a major peak, when I become End's son-in-law.

Good luck with that.

We have a saying in Serbia...

It's not the handsome one that fucks, it's the persistent one.

We sometimes arrest those people where I'm from.

Puts Srebrenica in a whole new light

Is persistence the Serbian word for roofie?

Woot

I am off to an early start (for me) on beginning my entry.

A whole 650 words.

nice! more than I've written (combined) in the past... (let me check real quick) 13 days!

I have a lot of words done already, but I've slacked off for the past week and haven't written in a couple days. Currently, a lot is not enough. I should get to it.

I've barely written this week. I'm managing sometimes just 100 words or so, handwritten, each day. Maybe tonight I'll get a little done, but then the next few days I will accomplish nothing. I'll be too busy for 3 or 4 days. Next weekend I'll put myself to work.

I'm back to regular work hours and trying to write 4000 words by the end of day Sunday. By Monday evening I want the first major branch finished. I'm really enjoying this so far and I'm very confident I'll have a finished project by the end of February.

My ongoing struggle is deciding when description becomes distracting, and when brevity becomes boring.

Later on, I'll look for someone unrelated to the contest willing to proofread.

How's everyone doing as the first month approaches its end?

I remembered to write today. Sitting on an even six pages out of about twenty to be made. (Hey, I said it'd be short)

I've been siitng at a decent 20 total words for the past two weeks or so. Just wrote 4 more so I'm just about on schedule.

I read it. It was very funny. I hope that you are able to add gay fanfic arc too (where the protagonist is so frustrated with his lacking love life that he starts to write self-insert gay fanfic about himself. Double plus if the love interest in his story is some anime edgy pretty boy character. Triple plus if he posts it on Choice of Games.) Gay and Depressed: Truly an inspiration for all. 

Edit: don't foget to add the twitter internet wars. Whenever a online content creator gets relatively successful, try to be the biggest virtue signaller and dig up dirt about them. It could be a thoughtless comment they made when they were a teenager, that doesn't matter. Paint them as the devil incarnate that participates in book burnings and lynchings.

Sadly enough, I have a growing hobby with keeping up with this perpetual online discourse stuff, so if you ever have a lack of inspiration for such things....

it is the most wonderful feeling when you have ditched your story weeks ago, get a new idea, and churn out 3k in the span of three/four days

I believe in you, Ace

Question though. Why do I always think of a snake or serpent when you come to mind? Did you have an old account that was named along those lines or something?

Yeah I was @Serpent once upon a time. My main accounts were @Jeff21Turtle @MrAce @Serpent @MicroPen and @MrAce321 in that order. There's loads others, but those are the ones that I used for any real length of time.

That's... a lot. I would tag past account(s) of mine, but it'd get rather embarrassing. However, I can say that I draw really epic piñatas.

Nonetheless, thank you for clearing that up for me. I have no idea how I caught on that y'all were the same person. Must've been my sick intuition :p

Unique Names: jeff21turtle, jeff22turtle, helloiamturtle, jeff23turtle, jeff24turtle, jeff25turtle, jeff26turtl, thetyrant21, iamashark, darkdoom333, Nightshade333, helpme987, helpme333, whatisgoingon, helloiamcool, hellohearmeout, fathertime, Pain, thisisnogame, MrAce

Probably still missing a few.

There's also MizalButCapitalized and EndMasterButWholesom lol.

After a month's delay (during which I did read numerous storygames) and then an ignominious defeat in my battle against sleep yesterday evening, I finally got started on my entry. 15 pages! ...which is less impressive if you know how short my pages tend to be, but I'm happy with my progress.

Hey, nothing wrong with that. If you're happy with what you have, then more power to you. If you don't let the project run away from you, then I'm confident you'll end up with something nice.

I've let my project swell quite a bit. Paths to the end are quite a lot longer than I intended. I did some editing and rewriting so far today, so my word count today is in the negatives.

I've written so much for just a single path that I didn't even intend as one of the "main" endings. I managed to stay on schedule for all of January, but I might need to actually get ahead of schedule to finish this story in a desirable manner. Oh shit.

My situation is increasingly similar. I can never let well enough alone. I had an ending worked up, but when I got to it, I found it immensely unsatisfying. So, I've been reworking the end all week. I'm really happy with it, now.

The next few days are supposed to be editing down the main path.
Then adding death links to meet the easiest criteria for a technically finished product.
Then I'll start adding real branching starting from the end to have as many endings as possible by the deadline.

"Oh shit," is exactly how I feel. How's it coming for you now?

So far it sounds like you're in the lead. (Other than the quiet ones who might be too shy to say how far along they are)

I got some good planning done, which has given me the ideas to finish writing a good half of my story. I also have some good ideas for the other half (but very little of it written).

Basically I gotta do more

This is how the dinosaurs went extinct...

I need to smoke whatever you're having.

You'll smoke it when my storygame is published

You either mislabeled the Y axis (should be per day) or you deleted a huge chunk of your story at one point.

That's what I thought also as the x axis (time) is also poorly defined. 

But here is my guess as to how these work on his graph.

Y - (word count) number of words in a given day

X - (time) should be days

That way you can plot the point of words per day and come up with the graphed line. Since, as you noted, if y is total word count, this should always increase unless you delete a chunk of your story. 

Assuming word count is per day and time is the amount of time left until the due date, my sporadic writing habits (much deteriorated since the Myth and Religion contest) have caused what would be my version of that graph to look... interesting

The word you're looking for is disappointing.

And I was actually getting excited by your story as well:(

I meant the writing habits had deteriorated but alr