I have no idea what I'm doing when writing.

I'm at a point where there's a lot of rendering and dforce simulating going on, and some of the key scenes for chapter two are written out and waiting to be illustrated with the results of said rendering, so I'm taking a little writing break as Daz3d is hammering away at my processor and graphics card to write this post.

A lot of the positive feedback for Light of my Life seems to be about the writing, which is really surprising to me as the only other thing I ever wrote was First Contact, and Light of my Life is the second, and I think you're supposed to write a lot first before it you get to be any good at it. I'm half inclined to pass it off as being just above average for a genre where the standards are often really low (although there is very, very good stuff out there as well).

Anyways, as an experiment, I wanted to try and write a small post on the process behind the writing. Let me know if you think it's interesting and if you would like to see more of this, or maybe like to learn about some other part of the process of making Light of my Life.

For today, I wanted to share with you the story behind what I think is the best line of dialog in chapter one.

Beware, chapter 1 spoilers ahead. Also, you should probably also skip it if you think reading about how stuff is made sort of breaks the illusion. 

So the line in question is this one: "Macy: And we know *exactly* how that feels, don't we?"

The line is completely skipable because it's in a section that contains a fair bit of exposition, and I try to make it so you can skip those if you want to. If you decided not to ask about her work during the dinner on day 3, you didn't see it. I personally think it's the strongest line in there, and I'd like to tell you how it came about.

When I blocked in an outline for the first week of game play, I had this dinner slot penciled in as a moment for Macy and the PC to bond a little, and to provide some background on Macy's work.

First, a bit of set-up: Macy is working evenings because that's when you bond with Denise and I needed her out of the way. But, it is just a 4 hour time slot. To prevent presenting Macy as a freeloader, it has to be exhausting work, for low wages. 
Now, if the dinner is crazy busy it's doing well, and surely they can take on more help, especially if the wages are low.
Macy's boss could be an asshole, but the horrible boss scenarios is a tired trope in adult VNs/dating sims by now, I don't want the main character to have to do a knight in shining armor skit, and really, would Macy put up with an asshole?

So, given all of the above, the solution is that Macy's work is a Mom and Pop establishment with Mom getting on in age and Pops having a serious medical condition with hefty hospital bills. It ticks off all the requirements and echos the overall "good people fallen on hard times" theme of the game.

As soon as that's written up, the next line out of Macy's mouth just writes itself. "We know how that feels, right? Medical bills for a loved one piling up, having to count every penny."  It wasn't planned for, it wasn't set up, it's the only thing for her to say that makes sense at that point.  

The great thing about that one single line is that it does so much work, more than any other line in the game I think. All at once acts as a moment of bonding between Macy and the PC because of the shared experience, portrays Macy's as a loyal and emphatic character in spite of the earlier interactions you had with her, and hints to the extent of the grotesque tragedy that befell the household,  

Pairing it with the render of her poking her food nonchalantly in the PCs direction (which was actually a failed attempt for an image of her being angry at the PC, re-purposed into filler) was just another bit of unintended side effect falling into place.

A lot of the writing process for the game is like that. Like I said in the bio, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm enjoying the heck out of it, and I hope you will as well.

Did you have a favorite line or moment? I'd love to hear about it.