Player Comments on Sneak Out

You said you wanted feedback, and luckily for you, I’m feeling generous. Here are some tips to instantly improve your writing! I’ve organized it into helpful levels: start with the simple stuff and slowly work your way up to more advanced tips after you’ve mastered the previous ones.

BEGINNER LEVEL

Plot: Foreshadowing & Consequences

Do you know what separates the lolrandom stories from ones with memorable plots? Foreshadowing! If you want ‘sneaking out of the front door’ to be the bad choice, add something in the scene before to hint at this. Maybe the front gates are alarmed, and the protagonist briefly wonders whether this is the case with the door. The same with the stranger: could you describe him and allude to suspicious behaviour like a cunning glint in his eyes, or him being too pushy about getting Adrien in his car? A problem I noticed with this story is that there are only two choices: the correct one and the wrong one. But without anything to tell readers *which* choice is correct, it’s pretty much a guessing game. Would jumping out of the window break the protagonist’s neck or would it be safe? Would walking alone at night be more dangerous than this random stranger? Given no context clues, we cannot make an educated guess, so there’s no sense of accomplishment when we finally make it to the achievement page.

Characters: Personality & Goals

This has also been mentioned by the others, but none of the characters are memorable. They’re essentially archetypes from the overbearing mum to the rich popular girl. Even the protagonist has no personality whatsoever. But this is an easy fix: first, give the protagonist a goal in the story and tell the reader why this goal matters to them. He wants to go to the party, but why? Is there a specific person he wants to see there? Or is sneaking out exciting for him and makes him feel like a cool rebellious teen? If we have a reason to root for the protagonist, to care about what happens in our story, we are more likely to connect with his journey.

Writing: Details & Sentence Structure

Right now, this story is 1k words, which is shorter than a Thunderdome entry. I’m not saying that you have to write a long story for it to be good. However, when you have such a low word count, it’s no surprise that the story itself is a little sparse. You want to immerse the reader in each scene. It’s a good start, with the descriptions of the floor creaking when you go to the front door, but paint the details of the shadows in the room, of the protagonist holding his breath with each creak of the floorboard, eyes frantically darting over to his mum’s room, a silent prayer on his lips that she doesn’t wake. Also, a lot of the writing tends to be ‘you do this’ and ‘that person does that’. Try to play with sentence structure. Have some fun with it, changing the rhythm and pace of your story!

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

Plot: Structure

If you’ve been paying attention in your English class, I’m sure you’ve already heard of this. Perhaps it could help you when you’re starting out with stories too. Stories have an exposition (don’t info-dump, just show the protagonist’s goals and where they are at the start of the story), rising action (something to up the stakes, perhaps each part of the ‘sneaking out’ journey gets more and more suspenseful), climax (the moment where everything builds up to, aka the ‘will he or will he not make it’ moment), the falling action (solve some of the unanswered questions, the protagonist triumphs or fails), and finally the ending (whether it’s positive or negative, make it satisfying - I also recommend leaving the reader with a new unanswered question if it’s a bad ending so they’re more tempted to go back and play other paths). This would stop all the elements of your story from simply being ‘you’re in this situation, what do you do?’ repeated several times. Note: once you’ve learnt to build up stakes and develop a plot, you’ll quickly find that there’s no need to constrain yourself with this or any specific structure as it’ll differ according to the stories you want to tell.

Characters: Conflict

There are two types of conflict: internal and external. First, let’s talk about the internal. If you’re following the steps right, you would already have your character’s main goal. Now, give him a fear. What is he most afraid of, that he would do anything to avoid? And for easy conflict, throw that thing in the story! Is it getting caught by his mum because she is an extremely strict parent? Is it FOMO? Is it being the only one without a date at the party? This is where you can add external conflict, too: each character should be given two things. First, a personality that distinguishes them from the rest. Second, a purpose in the story, by helping the protagonist achieve his goal or being an obstacle preventing him from achieving his goal (or maybe even both).

Writing: Showing Not Telling

My first thought was that there is a lot of ‘telling’ in this story. Look at this excerpt: ‘You make your way over to the drinks. And grab a waterbottle underneath the table. You find Chester! You walk over to him. He has Ellie-Masie Rosenthal next to him. You're a bit jealous.’ The first fix is, obviously, varying sentence structure, but you’ll have done that in step one. The next glaring problem is how you’re telling the reader what to think. Let them form their own opinions: describe jealousy as a rude statement the protagonist says, without quite knowing why he said that, or a sinking feeling in his stomach. And finding Chester, could you describe this? Did the protagonist see a familiar silhouette by the windows waving at him? Or did he notice his friend was too engrossed in conversation with someone else, so he ducked through the crowds, until he tapped him on his shoulder to get his attention? Stretch out the suspenseful scenes: what does the protagonist see, hear or feel? What thoughts run through his mind? This would stop your writing from sounding like a summary of events rather than a story.

You know what, this textwall is already longer than I thought so I’ll leave the next level for another time. If you apply the first two, your next story would already be a lot better. But all things considered, this is a good first attempt! I only caught one SPAG error (‘at least’ is two words) and you seem much more articulate than most of the new noobs spamming the forums, so well done for that :)

What do I say? It needs more characterization, more world building, more length (even thunderdomes are longer than this, and this has branching!), more reader freedom (no one linear way to go with some options where you die), yadda yadda yadda. It needs A LOT.

Not bad for a first game, but it could use a bit more story. Here are some ideas: Perhaps you want the reader to identify more with the protagonist. There is a simple trick: Start by showing the protagonist doing something well. Also how about some character development. You have a little bit of this already: in the beginning the protagonist comes across as a bit shy while Chester is the cool kid. In the end the roles are almost reversed. But the transition needs more polishing, try bringing it to a point. Often its good to create circumstances where the protagonist must change and then makes an active decision to turn their life around.

Severely lacking in detail. You could do with describing things more, rather than just stating what happened. It would also help make some lines in the story make more sense, for example 'Damn. Natasha is rich!'. Prior to this line, nothing in the story has indicated this. It's not mentioned in any dialogue, there's no actual description of the house and besides, why you would mention this if doesn't impact the story? What changes if somebody who isn't rich, were to host this party?

'You hear the music blaring through the windows. You enter the house!' Why the exclamation mark? If you wanted to show the player character is excited, you could write something like 'You jump up the steps leading to Natasha's house and rap your fist against the door.'.

What does this mean? 'He has Ellie-Masie Rosenthal next to him.
You're a bit jealous.

She's pretty well built.' Is Chester in muscly girls? Does it mean she's curvy? I don't understand.

SPAG seems fine, though as I've mentioned the punctuation usage is a bit strange.

Beyond all this, not much happens in the story. You don't really get to do anything other than sneak out, attend the party and then go home. Not very fun.

This storygame is a really good first attempt! What I would reccomend would be more description on each page of what's really happening. For example, what it smells like, what you can hear, yadayada. Sensory details go a long way!

This is certainly a storygame that exists. Not a bad first effort, but to quote the only likeable character and the only character with character, Chester, this is why you're a virgin.
3/8.

So lame! You walk out the front door like a normal guy? lose. Get a ride from a nice guy after you tell him exactly where you're going? Surprise it's a pedophile. Dead. Cocaine? Dead. What a stiff. As quoted by my main man Chester, "This is why ur a virgin."