[1.21] Skinnying down the episode

Hey guys! I'm sorry for being quiet here, and on Discord. I've been struggling with the writing in this episode, and it wasn't clear to me last weekend how to fix it.

For story reasons, we need to send the heroine back into the club for a barmaid shift. My idea to spice it up was to do something cool with wardrobe, and give her an excuse to wear some hot gothy fuck-me boots for a shift.

It seemed cool in the outline. Our illustrator lovely Victoria created some gorgeous art, and we had some cool scenes of the heroine getting the boots, the bargirls cooing over her new look in the dressing room, the regulars commenting on and loving her whorish new look, etc.

Shakedown run
Unfortunately, once I'd put it all together, when I tested it…I hated it. I hated it so much I didn’t even bother sharing it with any of the normal testers. It felt contrived and, worse – boring. I have been a very sad crab about this.

I know it’s just a porno, but the story’s so important to me. When it doesn’t work I get dispirited.

Still, fear and despair are all parts of the creative process, so I just accepted it wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and worked hard on fixing it.

Diagnosis
In an effort to figure out what was wrong, I replayed the last episode, and at the end asked myself: as a player, what would I want to happen next?

When I pictured what I’d been planning, I realised that I’d just gotten the pacing completely wrong. ☹️ Going back into the club as a topless barmaid is fine, but it needs to be a sexy little blast, not a long drawn out procedural.

An experiment: leaner episodes
I cut a bunch of stuff, rewrote it to feel more like a little montage than a step-by-step simulation of a barmaiding shift. It’s now much zingier, sexier and faster paced.

I’ve cut so much that it’s actually now too short to release, even as a mini episode. My plan is to skinny down the planned length of the Big Mac side quest and roll it into this episode. So, the structure will be:

– Short punchy scene set in the club

– Short punchy first date with Big Mac

I’m much much happier with this approach, and if it works out I think it’s got some important advantages going forward – not least that if the episodes are a little skinnier, then we’ll make faster progress towards the part of the story that I really want to write (the heroine bargirling).

I’m really sorry for the delay; I wanted to blast this out of the way quick and I messed up on my first pass at it. I’m working really hard on making a faster, better episode and I hope you’ll like it. 🦀 ❤️