Question for Devs (Not about release date don't kill me)

[Vigilant]

I thought the parenthetical would be wise considering some of the topics recently. I think Aura dies a little on the inside everytime we get a post asking when the game will be out

But since we have multiple writers running around, I wanted to ask you guy's opinion. I have an idea. I've already started to plot around the general characters, structure, etc. So now it becomes just crunching out the story. November's approaching though, so I'm stuck with a choice. I want to do nanowrimo. This means focusing most of my time towards that, so I can either work on something different for this month and let my ideas get a little stale in my head, or I can merge the two, and use nano to write at least one of the stories in novel form.

Any words of wisdom on this? It goes back to I guess how you write out paths. Is it better to get the general structure flow of a story then do the writing to match that, or write out the story conventionally and then match it to a structure?

[Vertical]

Storyfix.com

Done wonders for me

[Aura]

The irony of asking us how to write efficiently aside, I'm really not really sure what kind of an answer you are looking for. If you write as a hobby, then you do that what gives you the most jollies of course. I'm going to presume though that you want to write the best possible story, so...

Generally, I believe in the power of good planning and forethought. However in practice it sure seems that most writers, myself included more often than not, just write off the top of their heads or as you said, "conventionally". Depending on the individual skill of the writer, it's not necessarily bad, as you can create a surprising illusion of careful planning by writing the tail end of the story to utilize whatever there was in the beginning. However, getting too much into the details can get in the way of the actual storytelling, especially as ideas will evolve during the writing process. You give only two opposite extremes as options in the last question, but I think the best way (at least for myself) to do things is somewhere between.

[Suriko]

Of course, like Aura I can only speak for myself, but I agree with all of his points.

I can't really emphasise enough how much having a somewhat basic plan can help keep writing momentum. After doing a big chunk of writing, there's a huge temptation to languish simply due to having become bored of writing for a while. This can become a lot worse, at least for me, if I'm not really sure of how where to proceed next or how the overall path is shaping up (after all, each individual scene is just one part of a whole). Having a plan, even just a somewhat basic one, can help a lot with this and keep my mind focused on exactly what I need to do and when I need to do it by.

[Vigilant]

Thanks guys, I think I know how I'm going to do it now. Somewhere between two two extremes was where I was leaning but I didn't have a good feel for how to do that and this kinda completed my thoughts.

Also Aura you guys are doing great I think relative to me. My last big writing project took over two months when it should have taken a week or two at best

[toast]

I think he should be slaughtered, just to be careful.