Blogs
 


  Oddworld Forums > Blogs > Venks


Rate this Entry

Rushed Writing Solving Game Story Problems

Posted 05-07-2012 at 05:00 PM by Venks
I have to say I've fallen in love with the concept of rushing writing to meet a certain deadline while also keeping a certain word count. I came across the idea from NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month.
Apparently every November writers are encouraged to write a novel in 30 days. These writers get together in libraries or online and write, write, and write.
To reach their goal they're supposed to keep continually writing, never stopping, even if you're not sure exactly what you want to say next. You have to accept that what ever you've written before was pure gold and keep moving forward never looking back. Even if there are grammatical or spelling errors. That's what editing is for.

I borrowed this idea for my game Berathen: Spirit Detective which will be coming out on May 19th. I've been working on ideas for the story for quite some time and I have to say I was just never pleased. By the time I had decided on one thing I was changing my mind about something else.
When I took to my new writing exercise I would find myself repeating statements and misspelling words. At first I was rather discouraged by my shoddy looking work, but at the end of my sessions I was always impressed by the sheer amount of words I had somehow typed. Forcing myself to write like this was really helping me pinpoint details in the story which I had previously unwittingly avoided.

Writing isn't exactly something I normally find that interesting, but there was definitely something exciting about rushing against the clock. Writing my game's story as fast as I could trying to finish by the deadline. I wasn't exactly writing a novel, my goal was much shorter, but the idea was the same. If you also have problems coming up with the story for your game, or simply writing, I suggest you give this idea a go.
Total Comments 4

Comments

Nate's Avatar
Makes me think about this quote, from here.

:
“I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King's book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you'd have a novel. It was immensely reassuring - suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it's how I've written books I haven't had the time to write, like my children's novel Coraline.”
Posted 05-07-2012 at 08:46 PM by Nate

Venks's Avatar
Niceness. I was just reading Everything's Eventual. Stephen King has been a rather powerful inspiration for me.
Posted 05-08-2012 at 03:29 PM by Venks

Splat's Avatar
I tried NiNoMaWaHuh once (yeah, I don't remember all the letters and scrolling up would be far too much effort) but didn't get very far. Just ran out of ideas after a couple of weeks.
But I'm glad it's working for you. I believe OWF's ex-member, Teal, was a huge advocate for it, too.
Posted 05-08-2012 at 05:56 PM by Splat

DrSasukeichida's Avatar
I had a game story idea its called forgotten legacy and its a really good story set in the world of oddworld
Posted 12-28-2014 at 01:59 AM by DrSasukeichida

 

Recent Blog Entries by Venks





 
 
- Oddworld Forums - -