From Design to Production: Dealing with writers block

WRITING PART 2

Any writer that tells you they have never suffered from writer’s block, is lying. It can strike at any time. You sit down to write the next chapter and you stare at a blank screen, your mind circles around, you had an idea, it was there a moment ago – but you just cannot seem to form the sentence.

I’ve seen many suggestions on how to deal with this, from the possibly unhelpful “Just write something” to the utterly ridiculous “go for a run”. When writer’s block hits, writers will deal with it in different ways. Personally, I tend to go for the distraction route, this is easily done, since I am easily…

… Where was I? Oh yes, distraction. There have been a few occasions where I have sat down to write, and the ideas just don’t seem to be coming. Honestly, more times than I can count I’ve said to myself “I’m just not feeling it today” and that’s fine. I’m not a professional writer, hell I wouldn’t even put myself into the same camp as an amateur writer! So, perhaps I can be forgiven for not churning out War and Peace every other weekend.

So why do I talk about this? Well, over the last couple of years of working on Dreams of Reality I have come to learn a lot about my habits. To the point that I can almost recognise when I need to stop trying to write something and move onto something else. There are days when I just laze about, watch a bit of Netflix. Sometimes catch up on some AVN’s that have updated (I’ve a backlog of games I want to play… someday.)

Recognising and accepting that there will be days like that helps keep your mental balance in check. Because for every day I spend messing around in Daz (instead of writing (see the ‘Cenc’s bored’ section of discord)), there are several days where I’m in the zone, and I have a burning desire to write, and nothing can distract me.

So, what have we learnt? I am, but human, after all.

I write the first draft of the script in word; I include specific labels of the scenes and I annotate specific actions that I will need to create an image for. When a scene has been completed, I will go over it again and make – what I call – broad stroke edits. Sometimes these can be small corrections, other times I can completely change the flow of the scene. See my previous discussion on Kimiko, for example.

When I am happy with the section I have written, I then move onto working out the images that will go with it. This is done by copying the text into Atom (the text editor for Renpy). I go through the script line by line and annotate the specific images I want.

I will cover the creation of those images in another part. Skipping ahead, when the images and code variables have all been added I will re-read the scene in its entirety and again, edit as required. Even then, I do not class the scene as done. Even in play testing I will be making changes, and when the build goes out for beta testing, a copy of the script also goes to the proof-reader.

She has the unenviable task of taking my ramblings and making them coherent. In other words, she makes my writing look good. And it is thanks to her that this story makes sense.

Writing takes up a large proportion of the workload when creating and developing an AVN. It’s difficult to put a figure on it, but perhaps 40% of my time is spent writing and editing the script. This includes all aspects, from the ‘bones’ to the ‘flesh’.

In part 3, I’ll talk about designing an image for use in the game. For now, I’m off for a run…

Cenc