7 Comments

What I'd do in your scenario is take something really simple, give it a few narrative branches and outcomes, then focus on answering those three questions.

I'd take something familiar but simple, like Jack and Jill going up the hill to fetch water, take a few hours develop some branches and basic dialogue in that story, then use that as the template story to figure out the stuff I really want to know.

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Excellent advice!

Definitely wouldn't be a good idea to start with a big novel at this point.

But by mentioning Jack and Jill, you gave me a good idea to look at my daughter's children's books :D

The final goal of this is to learn Inkle, then get back to Godot to integrate and jumpstart my Godot learning (I assume that the progress in Inkle will give me some momentum).

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Glad I could help! Basically, the story at this stage is not important so don't let it distract you.

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"they’re probably the easiest path at this point" - My thoughts exactly before I started developing my visual novel.

Boy was I wrong!

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What surprised you about it?

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The mental energy required to write content.

The main mechanics of my game are more or less settled, so I'm busy adding content at this stage. However, doing creative writing every day after a busy day at work can be much more tiring than programming, 3D modeling environmental design, etc.

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Its pretty typical for writers to have story related thoughts throughout the day, and to make themselves little notes. They can mostly be throw away thoughts. But when you find yourself mentally blank sitting down to write .. scan back through and maybe theres a thought worthy of expanding upon.

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