Trying something new: beat sheets
Added 2022-12-30 17:18:05 +0000 UTCThe last episode was really fucking late! 🙁 I hated pushing the release date back so many times.
Most people know that “writing” is really two separate tasks – drafting and editing. Drafting is when you get the basic ideas and structure down on a page (or, in our case, on working in-game screens). Editing is when you work through the draft, rewriting it until it’s good.
"Writing is rewriting." –RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON
I spent forever editing the last episode. Some of the most challenging parts were:
- Making the bargirls likeable (the whole episode fell flat without this)
- Keeping the scenes moving (this was a big problem until I tried time stamps)
- Making the scenes interesting without using sex or violence (e.g. the Kolya flirtation went through many bland iterations before I was able to achieve some actual chemistry)
I’ve been trying to think of a way to cut down the amount of editing I have to do, and I think an answer might be more detailed scene planning. Storyboards are great for getting the structure right, but the details are sometimes vague and it’s these parts that take the most editing.
Beat sheets
To screenwriters, “beats” are the moments that move a story forward. R2D2 escapes the moisture farm; John McClane takes off his shoes; Mr Blonde pours gasoline on the cop.
A beat sheet is a list of a scene (or a whole story’s) beats. I’ve never used them before, but for the next episode, I’m going to introduce an extra planning step, and start with a beat sheet. I’m hoping that more detailed planning will cut down on time spent editing.
Beat sheet experiment
As an experiment, today I wrote a rough beat sheet for a planned future side quest.
The concept for the quest is “bargirl heroine entertains a stag party in a cheap hostel”. From this basic idea, I produced a three-page beat sheet that's attached.
It isn’t perfect (and I’m sure that pushing it out to contributors & community members for review would make it better), but I think it's a pretty good framework for a side quest, and I think storyboarding and writing this would be pretty straightforward.
Writing out a beat sheet takes extra time (because it’s an extra planning step), but I’m hoping it will save time overall by cutting down on rewriting time, which was the big problem with the last episode.
I’ll give it a try, and let you guys know if it speeds me up any.
Comments
I feel I speak for a lot of us when I say, We want more sex for the MC female agent. Please don't waste time adding 'ways' to AVOID sex for her. If you wanted to rework or spend time working on an already released part, please use it by adding MORE ways for her to be sexually used, and abused. This game isn't about a female agent avoiding sexual exploitation. Don't miss the mark, this game is about a sophisticated intelligence agent with an exhibitionist, or submissive or masochistic tendency who goes undercover in a brothel and ending up being thoroughly used and abused sexually, most of it on her own volition. Please don't make it about her avoiding all this.
Sammy J
2023-01-25 16:29:47 +0000 UTCI might be in the minority here, but I see my version of Kate as someone who manages to stay in control of things to a degree where a gangbang with a group of stags would be successfully rejected at this point. That made me think about the slightly anticlimactic bar ending in that scenario. I think it would be cool if we had an alternative sex scene for that: Either just someone random she meets at the bar, and she feels like doing it at least partially to regain the feeling of being in control after the experience with the stags. Or it could involve one of the stags, for that matter: Kate later sees them passing by the club, one of them sees her through the window and sneaks away from the others and enters the club, Kate expects more sleaziness from him, but it turns out he just wants to apologise if they took it too far earlier. In that scenario she could’ve taken him to the bathrooms right then and there, both to regain control in the same way as in the previous example, and as a “you wanted to fuck me? Well, maybe you could’ve if you hadn’t acted like assholes” fuck you to the rest of the guys (no matter if they ever find out about it or not). I think that – or some completely different sex scene playing out after Kate arrives at the bar – could’ve done a lot to help everyone feel like we’re really having a say in how our Kates develops.
Doppelgang
2023-01-04 12:09:28 +0000 UTCI was thinking maybe after the blowbang/gangbang when she goes for a drink, maybe she finds a guy at the bar to have a quickie with as a way for her to “gain back control” after having lost it at the stag party. Just a quick almost angry fuck as a way for her to reassert her dominance of the mission. Weather it helps or not is 50/50.
jdanarchy
2023-01-03 22:10:53 +0000 UTC
