Monthly Extra: Newsletter - Things I've Learned Writing a Hosted Game

Or something like it. I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on what a newsletter is, but in here you'll find some stuff on writing, some stuff on coding, and lots of stuff on my experience creating Leas: City of the Sun. Possibly a little infodumping too, it's hard for me to tell in this case 😂 Regardless, I hope it's an enjoyable read! (There's also a little snippet of writing in the first section, fyi)

Let's start with something fun ✨ I've gotten questions about how I write the wilds a few times in my dms, and this seems like a good place to answer in a little more (though hopefully not too much) detail. To explain the wilds I've got to explain a little (though hopefully not too much) about myself, so I hope you'll bear with me for a paragraph of that.

Take buttercups as an example. You know, these flowers:

Did you ever hold them up to your chin as a kid? Sometimes if you angle it the right way, the flower reflects the sunlight to make a soft yellow glow on your skin. We used to say if you got the glow, it meant you liked butter. (Makes perfect sense, I know, but remember we were between 4 and 6 years old lol.) I never forgot that. Decades later I still can't see a buttercup without thinking about that specific shade of yellow glow. I never bring it up unless one of my friends from the age of five is around, but part of me always goes back, vividly, looking at that flower.

And then that becomes the wilds:

I look up, just as a canopy of vines floats down from the trees twenty feet above. They stretch towards me, little yellow flowers the size of my eyes budding and blooming in seconds as they near me, and though I can't see my aura the way Keo does I know when they touch it. Each one glows with a soft golden light as it reacts to the energy in the air, detaching from the vine and floating around me, tumbling in slow motion over and over in the sea of my magic.

"They like you," Keo smiles slightly.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "Did my aura's color change?"

"Yes. You look like the sun."

Boom, there's the buttercup glow. The wilds are kind of just how I see the real world, in certain moments. If this was interesting I can write more another time about other aspects of the world/characters, or go into more detail about the wilds, but for now let's head to the more brass-tacks section of writing and hosted-game-specific lessons I learned.

(As a sidenote, I always was dubbed as liking butter 😁🌼 For some reason I eventually started taking issue with this - sure, I did like butter, but I wanted to decide it for myself dangit. I still loved the flowers.)

Writers have strong opinions about these. Planners and pantsers. Just to be contrary (I guess), I'm on both sides of the border. Looking back, I'm sure I never would've written Leas or any ChoiceScript game if I'd begun with an outline. I also never would've finished it without one. Here's the process that worked for me:

• I started with a general concept that I knew I'd be able to write about for years without getting tired of it (more on that later). I've loved fae stories since I was a child, so I knew generally it'd involve them. But I had to start writing to get an idea of what the world, characters, and plot would be like.

• I wrote, reworked characters, wrote, reworked plot points, and majorly revised both at least three times each (the original versions of all 3 ROs, prior to the first demo, feel only vaguely like their final versions).

• Once I had the first 3 chapters down, I needed a real outline. I would've written myself into a corner more times than I can count without one. And I almost did, even with one - which led me to the not-so-fun exercise of cutting the scope of the plot in half (more on that later, too).

So, yeah. I'm a fan of just writing and then adding in an outline - at least for my own process. I haven't done this with Book 2 because it's not necessary, but I did do it with the beginnings of Apotheosis and it's working for me so far. Having done it once, the process is faster: I only needed to draft out most of chapter 1 before I started the first version of an outline. Yay for irl XP! 🤪

I've picked out my top three, and I find it funny that they all boil down to me sitting myself down and having a firm talk about how no, I'm sorry, but we can't cram ten books' worth of content into a single game 😂

• The hardest lesson I learned was to not write more than one large chapter that has three completely separate routes per game. This was a complication born partly of the fact that I write long chapters. The chapter 7 dates were so much fun to write. I was also exhausted by the end of writing them. They're quite long dates, and I've noticed a lot of other IF games I've played make their dates shorter - I get why now 😅 Although I guess I'd say that more accurately, the long dates were fine but the problem was that I then had to write chapter 9. Which does the same thing all over again, but over twice as long!

• Lesson #2 for myself: If a chapter has 3 routes, either put them all in the same setting, or all in different ones. This led to me having to rewrite Keo's chapter 9 route entirely. Having one RO's route in a different location made it feel either much better or much worse than the other two routes, depending on how you looked at it. Between this point and the last one, it's no wonder I called chapter 9 "the bear" so often. It added a solid 3-6 months of development to the game as I made and fixed these mistakes. Lessons were definitely learned.

• I also wrote too complex a plot and had to pare it down drastically. This was inevitable. The original outline was actually half the plot I started with in my "brainstorming" stage, but I still had to cut it in half again when I hit... I think it was chapter eight? Maybe seven. Somewhere around there.

I've never finished a story of my own until this game, excluding some short stories I've written. It's a big jump, from ~1500 words to over 400k, so here's what worked for me to do it:

• I chose a story/theme I felt I could write about for several years. This required a lot of honesty with myself. It was tempting to just go for the most mainstream topic I could think of. Not to say fantasy isn't popular, but books like ACOTAR (which, forgive me, but I still haven't read - I'll get to it, I swear!) hadn't blown up yet. Or at least it hadn't in my circles, and there didn't seem to be a large market for specifically fae-related stories anywhere. But the only thing I felt could keep my interest that long was the old, strange, and not-very-well-known stories I read as a kid about changeling children trying to find their place in the world and young villagers who became heroes by braving fairy-filled places and all the beauty and ugliness there, and the danger and fun in both. Alright, I'm waxing poetic here but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make: I love this stuff. I always have, my entire life. So if I can write about anything for years, it's that.

• Posting my WIP publicly and starting a social media presence was a huge help. This is author's preference and I know other excellent authors who keep a project private until it has a final draft. For me though, having external deadlines and encouragement from readers to keep going is invaluable. I really appreciate you guys a lot, for the record ❤️

• Taking breaks when needed. This one is what it says on the tin. It seems cliche but I find it important enough to include it in the 'Big-3' things that let me finish the game. Burnout's real even in doing things I love, unfortunately. Protect your health as much as you can; we've got nothing without it.

This bit's mostly for if there's anyone following me here who might like to make a ChoiceScript game. These are some quick and dirty tips/tricks I've found are useful via my own trial and error:

• Art becomes doable for the art-loathing if digital stencils of basic shapes can be used. And as a bonus, those are always free.

• Almost nothing requires bolded text.

• Prior to coding I came up with a system for naming variables, and stuck to it. I also accepted the fact that I'd have to make changes to my system, since this was my first time doing it. (Weep, weep I say, for the pain of changing variables names in a dozen 30k+ files and accidentally changing some actual in-game text when using the "replace all" tool -_-)

  • The system I came up with is: "temporary" variables (things I track in a chapter that don't carry over to the rest of the game) use camelCase. "Global" variables (things that exist during the entire game) get_formatted_with_underscores. Most importantly, all global vars begin with ch1_, ch2_, etc. according to which file they're first mentioned in.

    • It's not a perfect system. The underscore vars can feel long sometimes. The camel case vars can get hard to read if I'm moving too fast. But they're the best system for my brain overall, and I like 'em.

• I prefer to use as little code as possible. Every line of code is a chance for a bug. I don't mean I shy away from it - I'm deeply proud of The Visitor and the Magician, for one. But like, not everything has to have 5 decision trees (I'm looking at you, L:CotS chapter 3).

• I find it helpful to not stretch out plots longer than they're needed for. If a subplot arc is wrapping up naturally, I let it and trust that I'll come up with another one to explore if I need one.

• Again, I can't stress this enough: If making three 10k word dates, it's likely a bad idea to write three 20k+ word diverging scenes in the next chapters. Gosh I wish I could go back and warn myself 😫😆

• I'm really, really glad I let the ROs change so much over time. It made me nervous and the major rewrites were backbreaking work, but I had some really distinct "this is what I'm going for" for each of the ROs when I began writing, and at the end I wound up with 3 ROs who were so much better than my original plans.

• Weird take, but I'm of the opinion that if you have a friend with brain fog, it's worth seeing if you can bribe them somehow into beta testing your game. I have that particular neurological impairment myself, and it's my most valuable asset in crafting the pacing of my stories. Yay for finding moments to turn disabilities into victories! 🎉

If you made it this far, please accept a plate of imaginary cookies and some homemade lemonade from me ☀️ Lol I hope you had fun with this, and/or found something interesting or valuable in it. This is the last major October post aside from the final writing update and the announcement I'll post when the Halloween Jam officially drops, so until then enjoy the spooky season and Happy (early) Halloween!! 🎃🧡