Thursday, March 24, 2016

18,776 Words Later, I Figured Out The Story I Was Telling

Yup. That sure is a lot of words. They are good words, too! I'm proud of many of them. Most of them! Here's the problem: they don't really tell a story. I went into this project with a great setting and a decent character and a vague feeling that maybe I should have a plot. I decided that I would figure out the plot as I went. And I did! After nearly nineteen thousand words and four and a half vignettes.

My original plan to deal with this was to go back through the vignettes I'd already written and add plot. I'd just put in a few extra scenes, throw in some choices, and voila! - a story. I've realized that that's not quite how it works. Often, the best way to improve a work of writing is to take stuff out, not put stuff in. Plus, it turns out that the IF platform I've been using, Inklewriter, makes it incredibly difficult to go back over stuff I've already written and add more choices.