Weekly update #33

Art

Mudder gremlin

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 4: Actually writing

Actually getting to the meat of things and writing can be hard after you've created a plausible outline for the character. This is the part that actually defines if there's anything interesting in the thing you've planned.

I don't have any good ideas on how to proceed from here. My go-to method is to write a linear but otherwise complete interaction with the character and leave possible deviations or other branching as possible player responses, and then filling those out later. The latter part often sees a lot of scrapping because sometimes the branching can lead into an untenable amount of depth or deviation. Maintaining a reasonable scope for the character interaction is important.

Shouldn't be hard, just a flirty alien coming onto the player, a conversation and a possible sex scene. It seems almost dull and uninteresting to write after all that planning.

I usually try to get into the head of the character and then try to play as them. Coming up with player responses is often easier because the player character is essentially the player and is fairly empty characterization wise.

I find this fourth part of the character writing process the most difficult one. I've been having hard time writing this character during these the two weeks since the workshop part 3. It's mostly because getting into the mindset of character writing requires large uninterrupted blocks of time for me. It's usually preceded by a lengthy session of daydreaming about the character dialogue and interactions, which then later gets translated into writing. I haven't had these necessary blocks of time to properly enter that creative state and I have found myself mostly floundering around with uninspired and flat dialogue.

While pressing buttons to make words appear on the screen is very easy and cheap, It's still terribly difficult if you want to make those words to be able to engage other people.

Flirt, flirt, u so weird alin banana, huh. We shud fuk, ye. Cok in bagina, beeg nut. Ha ha porn gaym.