23/09/2023 WSC Patreon Devlog

Hallo! And now it is time for the WSC devlog for this week.

Let us begin...

Summary

• Finished all Ch 7 scenes for Raif and Yren
• Started on Ch 8
• Started revising Chapter 2

Ramble

It was a pretty productive week this for writing and basically...just writing. Which is fine because that is what I'm focusing on and where I need to be making progress! I have reached something of a crossroads writing-wise where I have to give some thought where I'll be focusing my energy in the next week or two. But I will get into that below.

Writing

So this week in writing I finished up all the Ch 7 scenes and started on Ch 8 stuff. Now here's the thing.

I'm somewhat getting into a section where the plot is revealing the motivations of the antagonists. And the issue I'm having is that one of the more significant revisions I want to do is to expand, alter, and shift the motivation from what it currently is to some related (but also fairly different) things.

That makes this section pretty tricky to write since the new concepts and planning exist but are somewhat nebulous still. While the old stuff is...old and I know it's going to be irrelevant after I edit.

So I can try to write the scenes according to what I think the new motivations will be (which is tricky) or I can write the scenes with the old concepts, knowing that what I'm writing is irrelevant and will be completely (which feels like a waste of time.)

All the Chapter 8 reveals rely on earlier foreshadowing, which is really important to remember. For the new concepts and revisions, none of that foreshadowing really exists in the story right now. So it's hard to write Ch 8 according to the revision ideas.

It's especially problematic because MC's reaction to different revelations will be really different depending on the revelation. Imagine being told someone is looking for you to get interior design ideas versus being told someone is looking for you because they want to bite you. You'd react pretty differently to those two statements. Knowing that Wil's response to all of what's happen will change greatly once there are different reason why it's happening makes it difficult to write a chapter very focused on finding out what's happening, why it's happening, then...reacting to all that.

One way to combat this is to go back and start revising the story now and then continue writing after I have the foundation laid for these new revisions.

This is really opposite to how I normally write though most of the time because I usually try to focus on writing mostly sequentially. I have noticed I write best when I write in a structured way. The more chaotic I am in my writing, the more I jump around and write out of order, the slower my progress. Now, I don't always write in a 100% sequential way and I do try to be flexible and open to different strategies when I need to be.

There have been two times that I stopped drafting and went back to the beginning to revise or re-write before the story was complete. Once was for Elliot's route in Changeling - and I actually did it twice for that route. Once was for Caleb's route in Gilded Shadows. Both of these routes were very hard for me to write (for totally different reasons) and I did reach a point where I realised I had to go back and make major changes to be able to continue forward. 

That said, it's one thing to do that for a single route and another to do that with the entire game.

So I'm kind of at this crossroads where I have to decide if I'm going to potato-draft my way through Chapter 8 as is and clean it all up in a single revision or try to revise and clear up some of the ideas then finish the potato draft.

Or do both at the same time, which is really NOT how I am used to working. But this is a new game structure/style for me and I want to remain open to new ways of working if my normal strategy isn't helping me progress forward.

So yeah, technical difficulties have been encountered. I am figuring out how to approach the problem.

All of those considerations aside, I've reached 80% completion of the draft this week, which was my "intermediate" milestone I was working towards.

This is almost at the 375,000 word mark (I think it's like 372,800 or something like that).

So it was actually a decent writing week despite the week being absolute rubbish. Overall progress is looking something like this.

Kav, Noel, Raif, and Yren (aka KNRY) have all reached about the 60% mark in terms of route completion. They're actually at about 58% towards the target but I'm rounding up.

Art

I may have gotten a new background sketch this week? Or was that last week?

WHAT IS TIME?

*five minutes later*

I checked my email. It was this week. LoL

So Son Huynh is working on the engine room background currently. Just slowly plugging away at the BGs.

Nothing else art related happened this week. The shift in seasons is really doing a number on my hands so they are very hurty at the moment and I was hesitant to exacerbate it by drawing.

Other

Not much to report on coding I don't think. I did some minor UI tweaks this week, if I'm recalling properly. But it's mostly QoL things, and nothing spectacular; just things like tweaking how "seen" content and "previously selected" choices appear to the player.

Since this game relies more heavily on replaying seen content over and over, I'm trying to add features that will help players tell the difference between what they have and have not seen or selected on past playthroughs.

There will be multiple ways to do this - including the flowchart.

My goal, though, is it to make the replay experience less tedious because you will have to replay some content multiple times. Therefore, I feel like it's useful to know at a glance where you've been before. 

Upcoming

So upcoming week, I will be writing but I don't know...what yet.

As I mentioned I'm trying to decide how I want to approach the rest of the draft. I may be finishing up chapter 8 (which means about 2000 words per character + an indeterminate amount for the "common" scenes) and I may be working on revisions to help facilitate finishing chapter 8...

And I may be doing a bit of both.

I just know I will be writing.

That's all for this week. I will see you next time! 

~Esh