The recipe for (writing) romantic disaster āš¤Æ
Writing for a monster dating sim requires more than just smooch scenes, find out the recipe for fictional disaster
Hi electrically thrilled ,
The drawl of winter makes for a real crawl.
At this point in the year is when I progress the slowest. Every year I think 'I am certain I've got it right this time', but alas, the eternal tilting of the planet and global shift of the winds to become bitterly cold on this end is just a bit stronger than my flesh bag can fight against.
That, and juggling a few too many things at once: besides my part-time job, I'm applying some essential updates to my website (and exploring subscription platforms š), commissions, and of course working on Hateship... which I imagine is what should be the priority here, right? Social media is fully on the wayside.
Usually, around May is when I declare a 'seasonal break' (and another during December, for obvious reasons). In the future I'll make it more clear when my work season begins and ends and bake it into my projects and communications with you.
But for today, we're taking it easy.
Let's snuggle in blankets around the fire for a bit of story-telling.... structure.
Writing for Hateship
Ideally I'd write about process maybe once every two months, but Skakdi monster lads flow through my brain easier than trying to remember what happened in the first session of an urban fantasy tabletop game I run (that newsletter will still happen eventually).
Writing for a game is quite a different beast to a linear story, not just because of the branching narrative allowing multiple directions.
You have to decide how much the player can affect whole scenes, versus just adding flavour. And, if you're looking to make a clear story, taking action needs to make sense.
If a red ball comes flying at them, they know it means to dodge, catch, or hit it back!
If that red ball is hop-scotching through time, then you have an abstract puzzle game which needs more context setup.
Key 'sparkly' scenes ā
My process isn't very consistent across projects, but I start with a handful of key scenes: the ones where I daydream and the juiciest dialogue or sequence just grows legs and runs on its own. Yes, they tend to be the romantic ones, a special description, or otherwise gut-wrenchingly emotional.
Like this little moment in the demo. Reidak is meant to be an incredible presence, so I knew I wanted this sort of description from the get-go:
Reidak: "Hmmmmmmm."
His hum rattles through your bones. With a heave, he lifts onto his legs.
Reidak stands to his full height, only leaning over slightly to note his shadow casting over you.
The golden elements scattered across his armour glint. It occurs to you he keeps them polished.
Reidak: "Think you can handle me?"
Gotta start at the best parts, right?
But those scenes need to then be tied together with transitional or 'practical' scenes. The meat of the story, what's actually happening. Why should we care about the sparkly key scenes in the first place?
Structure š
Building some structure underneath comes soon after I have the vibe for what I'm going for. I love skeletons, and it's no different to outlines.
Yet I tend to over-complicate things with twist after twist, overlapping plot or 'but what if we do the opposite?'
For example, instead of a character being captured, what if they were faking it, and instead of delivering the drama through the escape, instead it's with the main character being captured together with the first?
That sort of thinking can make for stronger core story points, but can also convolute the process. So our monsters have a classic three act breakdown:
- you get to chat to them to decide who to take along
- you go along the mission with them, and...
- depending on your choices, you're presented with a resolution.
The mission is unified across all characters: steal a piece of technology that the rival mob are developing. Without giving anything away; how you progress is similar for each Skakdi, also broken down into acts, but the actual events and your options are different.
Hateship is probably the simplest structure I've worked with. It's almost regimented, at least to me. But this way I can focus on making each character's flavour as fun and playful as possible.
The meat š
You can outline forever but you have to get into the thick of it eventually.
That's the struggle point and often where I have significant self-doubt. Primary transitional scenes are boring. They rely on classic tropes and it makes for second-guessing whether it's interesting enough.
You gotta find the bad guy in the city, but how? I guess with... bikes? Ugh, whatever.
But if all scenes are shiny, then none of them pop out. Imagine if this whole email was indented like this blockquote line!
Here's where tabletop roleplays come into play (heheheh) again.
Game-mastering (or otherwise known as embodying everything else that isn't your players' characters) provides an interesting challenge: building story on the fly. While leaving room for players to contribute, and being structured enough to not lose track of where you're at.
The core lesson I've learned: you can have all sorts of beautiful characters, interesting scenes, mysteries and clues. But holding up all these things is a hook, or a thematic series of events.
Are you infiltrating a mansion? What's the most interesting way to go about it? The game will be very different if they're sneaking around because there's cameras and lasers everywhere, versus breaking in with force and barricading themselves in because their enemy is at the doorstep and you they nowhere to run.
These 'framing events' are not the most important scenes that cause your players and readers to weep or scream with delight. But they're the catalyst.
The puns, the situational jokes, the specific scene prop that becomes a symbolic cornerstone for a character.... can't exist without the context established.
Once there's a hook, everything revolves around it with ease.
So as I'm writing Hateship, I keep asking myself: what's a fun way for you to take your chosen Skakdi (date) for a spin? What makes sense for them, what can they show off, and how can you contribute? And this often is enough to keep the ball rolling.
I'll give you a teaser; Avak's a weapons engineer, we establish that from the start. Thok very much isn't. You're going to a scientifically advanced mob's party. Who do you think is more inclined to take advantage of being a total nerd and use his tech during the mission?
....well to be honest, Thok would put on glasses, make it extra fashionable, and attempt to flirt on-topic just to get attention.
But wait, isn't this a dating sim? Shouldn't that mean lots of talking and reminiscing, not action?
Much of the romance I write works best when it's in contrast to something else. It doesn't have to be action, but it is in this case. It makes the sweetness more poignant. But slipping little cute moments right as you're rushing through a wall of fire is also endearing.
Flavour š§
Which brings me to the final point; once all the essential scenes are down, I go back and weave all those special details in. The brush of the hand, the joke that refers to your chosen character background, the behaviour you picked which hits just right.
Some scenes may change completely again, but I can make those changes with confidence rather than rehashing that outline in abstract ways at the start.
...
Well, there you go, that's what I've been wrestling with this last while! And that will be my focus for the next month, so for the rest of May I'll be quiet on the newsletter front.
stay sharp (and warm if you're on the south end of the hemisphere)!
Jennifer
Project Updates
As last email, Avak's been my template to pull all the events from start to finish together. I've written the majority of his 'meat' scenes, missing only an ending or two and some tie-in lines. Here's some unrelated scribbles of the good lad:
Remember I also mentioned the tracking strategies I'd use to keep myself accountable? Well, here's the accumulation of it:
I'm stealing National Novel Writing Month's project tracking for my non-November writing. I have to approximate the word count because code involves... uh... code, but I'm staying consistent with how I'm calculating it.
50k words might not be the real total but it's a goal to work towards. I just want to feel like I'm progressing.
What else helped? 'Dangerzone Writing', a plugin for Obsidian (a program I use for pretty much all of my writing on anything) that will destroy the content of the note I'm working on if I stop typing for 5 seconds. š¬ Nothing breaks writing block than rambling nonsensically in a rush hahaha.
Production Timeline
- Writing by 16th June, 2023. Strategies in place:
- 30min of writing or coding a day: 500 words min.
- write first thing after Iām back from my day job.
- use my task manager, with a Gantt chart, to break up the writing into smaller goals and schedule them ahead.
- 'Dangerous writing' to get SOMETHING down and keep going!
- Final release date not yet announced.