26/06/2022 Pateron Devlog

26/06/2022

This Week's Summary:

• Edited up to Ch 8

The Ramble:

Ch 4 ended up getting much heavier edits than 1, 2, or 3 - I ended up wanting to set up some plot elements that get mentioned a bit later in the route and refocus some of Morgan's thoughts and goals to something slightly different.

There was also a bit of repetition of some talking points for the characters so instead of having them rehash those things over again, I ended up shifting away from those points to other areas. Though, in some ways, it's a relatively minor shift, it impacts multiple conversations that characters have in a way that essentially means I had to re-write those conversations. Which is why Ch 4 ended up having pretty extensive revisions.

Ch 5 started with something similar. I refocused a conversation away from one plot point and toward the one set up in Ch 4. This meant essentially rewriting a lengthy conversation.

The rest of this chapter involved normal revisions - trimming wordy sections or removing repetition, and occasionally fleshing out unclear points.

Ch 6 is essentially a group conversation and I just spent a lot of time trimming, adding, rephrasing, etc. This was originally a quite short chapter (less than 5000 words) and also very linear with less than 10% branching. It is now a little bit longer though still quite linear - but now it's over 6000 words. Most of that additional word count is in some branches toward the end of the chapter so it's a little more branched as well (around 15%). I also added a distinct affection-based ending to it as well.

Ch 7 This chapter was largely two characters talking with a shorter romantic scene at the end. Most of the edits were around continuity and smoothing out the story Rory tells Morgan.

Ch 8 I've really just started this chapter and I feel like it may need heavy edits toward the end! We shall see.

I think I will try to come back to chapters 4 - 6 after I get through the rest of the route. I re-wrote and restructured so much that they probably could use another pass just to smooth them out a bit.

Overall, I know the early chapters are a bit long and exposition heavy. There's a lot of new lore to introduce and while I try to do it via dialogue, it's ultimately still Character A telling Character B a thing in some places. In addition, I know that later chapters are, in some ways, pretty sparse and will need to be fleshed out - so keeping my overall length limits in mind, I was feeling very much like I should focus on trying to trim down the first five or six chapters.

I ultimately trimmed about 1000 words from Ch 4 and Ch 5 (each), which gives me a much bigger cushion to play with in later chapters where I know I'll probably be fleshing out descriptions and inner dialogue. My maximum uncoded word count is around 117,000 words and I'm currently at just over 109,000. 6000 words is a pretty decent cushion to play with as long as I don't go nuts.

*sweats*

Sneak Peeks:

None this time!

Upcoming Week:

E D I T I N G

I don't think I'll finish this round of editing this week. So I'll end up spending all the week on this revision stage. I may get close but I don't know. It just depends on how much revising actually needs to be done.

I wrote this route pretty fast, and I wrote part of it sporadically while doing other things before sitting down to focus on it. That means it's inevitable that it needs more edits. But I definitely prefer to draft fast and have a longer revision stage since I find revising easier (and more fun).

So yeah, that's it. I'm being Edit McEditeron for a while!

Also keeping an eye out for any CG moments. That's always one of the hard parts. After the CG beats I know I will be hitting (best end, love scene 1, first kiss, bad ending) there are really only 3 CG moments left to put in random places. It can be really difficult to decide where and how to use those.

I'm making notes about what moments I think are best though. OwO

Anyway, that is all for this week and I shall see you next time!