Dear IF Seal

[if-seal]

Say hi to your new advice-giver, IF Seal!

In honour of the dear dormant @if-confessions and the even older, beloved Story Hospital I am here with an advice blog to hand out cheerleading, encouragement, advice, and maybe even some writing and narrative design wisdom to interactive fiction creators and players.

If you have questions like...

I'm stuck on a branching scene that's turned huge and can't figure a way of getting through it.

I'm worried about players wanting to take actions in my IF that I don't want to include.

I've fallen in love with an IF and want to give critical feedback but don't want to offend the author.

I've made some characters that I LOVE but once I start the story I just don't know what to do with them.

Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account and I want to change that.

Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account... and how much does that really matter?

...or anything else, I am here to help out!

I hang out in @hpowellsmith's bathtub from which I dictate my many and varied thoughts.

I post an answer each Monday. You can find an archive of answers here.

Please send in questions here, or on the Choice of Games forum, or on the anonymous form, and I will share my sealy knowledge and experience!

A few notes:

If you're talking about a particular game in a negative fashion, please anonymise it. If you don't, I will assign it a comedically anonymous title

I am not much of a Tech Seal and it is unlikely that I can answer detailed technical questions, but I will try to point you in the right direction

I am not interested in answering "which scripting tool is the objective best" because unanswerable questions are beyond my sealy ken but I will have much more to say about "which scripting tool might suit this project best for which reasons"

If you send a non-anonymous ask, I will check that you're happy to have your name on it before I post an answer

Enjoy!

[if-seal]

Hello, IF Seal, I have a question!

I really want to write an IF about this... Sci-Fi alien race I created. I'm a Linguist student and I made a whole language for this alien race with different types of dialects and accents and exceptions to the rules and everything just for fun. The alien race even has different physical regional variations. It's been a passion project/hobby for about a year or 2 now. So, to uh be quite honest, I just want to make a medium where I can share my little project.

The only thing is... I'm worried people won't want to read it. I mean, you'd play solely as this one alien race no one knows Anything about... And I'm also worried it'd be too... bland for readers. I also have the player character be set as human only (for right now), but I do want to provide them the option to play as my alien race, in case they're curious, but I can't seem to figure out a plot that would make both of those options possible.

I don't plan on any like magic fights or rebellions or super cool science stuff... It's literally just... a human exploring a planet that they have some knowledge about but not a whole lot and just... immersing themselves into a foreign environment and just... living and learning.

A lot of popular IFs I see and read all seem to be very actiony adventure orientated so I'm a bit nervous no one will want to read my story because it's like minimal romance, practically 0 epic cool fights and technology and magic, and just... vibes.

I'm also worried about choices being a problem. Obviously an IF needs choices, but I don't want them to feel arbitrary or just shoved in there just to have it. Since it's not a super action heavy super "important"/"world saving" plot, I feel like there won't be many choice options available or the readers will feel like the choices don't matter to the story.

Dear Linguistic Friend,

If it helps to hear it, this seal thinks your alien species and your conlang ideas sound like a lot of fun and I am sure that plenty of readers would think the same. It is easy at the early pre-writing stages of a project to get in our heads and wonder if the idea is any good... but to know how it will feel to write, you'll need to make a leap of faith.

And I think you may be ready to give it a try! You have done lots of preparation and you like the idea of exploring a planet, learning more about the species that lives there. So what I would say is: try writing something small in the setting, it doesn't have to be a pivotal moment or even something that ends up going into the finished game, but getting a feel for your MC and for the kinds of things you want them to do will improve your confidence by a great deal.

My instinct, which you are of course free to take or leave, is that it may be more manageable to start out with a human MC, figure out the storyline for them, and then perhaps move into an alien MC once you are feeling great about the game. That way is less risk of overloading yourself and you can zero in with laser focus on what you love about the game and setting.

Which leads to the next part of your question! If you love your game, and when you're talking about it and writing it you focus on showing off that love, players will have fun with it. There is space for contemplative, introspective, "quiet" games that do not have world-destroying stakes.

I would suggest having a think about the choices you want to offer the player, however. Choices do not have to vastly branch the plot (or involve perilous stakes) to be impactful. What is important to the MC regardless of player choice? What could the player define as something that's important to the MC? What feelings might they have about their situation, surroundings, or goals and so on? I made another post on this topic recently so this may be a useful one to have a look at.

Best of luck with your alien story, Linguistics Friend. Try writing something that you feel excited about, and the confidence will come!

[if-seal]

Hey IF seal. first of all, i love seals so nose boop to you!

Second, I'm working on my first IF and I think it's going really well, the only thing is... I have a hard time trying to fit choices in.

A lot of the time, it feels like I'm just doing page break/next page with a lot of my passages. I'm worried my potential readers will get bored of it since I feel like it reads like a book and not like an interactive game right now.

I have choices for dialogue options that come up and ways to affect the relationship with other characters and even some stat checks/personality builders, but it's like the first maybe 10 pages after character creation is just page break after page break with minimal choices.

I know first impressions are important, and I don't want to scare away readers who want more interactivity, but in the beginning, I feel like I need more exposition and explanation to set my story.

Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated!

Dear Exposition-Loving Friend,

I am sending a nose boop right back to you!

There is plenty of room for wordiness in interactive narrative, and for kinetic novels as well. Sometimes a story can benefit from slowing down and savouring the atmosphere like sinking into a nice body of water and enjoying it.

For the moment, when you are first drafting, I do not think you need to worry too much about reworking the beginning. It is very easy to get bogged down worrying about that early part, but it is also one of the easiest parts to tweak and reframe.

That said! I wonder whether you actually need as much explanation right at the beginning as you think. Could exposition be sprinkled through the early sections, or even left until later? What are the essentials needed to understand the stakes of a situation, or the world you're writing in? How does the game feel if you include those essentials and allow further details to emerge when they become vital to the player or the PC?

As you progress through writing, if you are finding that the game feels too narrow or players are saying they'd like more choices, I suggest letting go of some control and have a think about what players might like to do in the situation. If you are a tabletop player or watcher, imagine being a DM asking "what do you want to do next?" and see where that leads you.

It can also be helpful to ask the PC "how are you feeling right now about [the essay you're working on] [the curse that has been put on you] [your sibling estrangement] [the upcoming birthday party]" because it both gives the player the chance to express their character, and it also gives you the writer the chance to show that the game is "listening" to them later. Callbacks to the PC's earlier choices, whether they're actions or emotions, are really valuable, and even little touches that don't take much work make a big difference.

You can even combine this with lore exposition, such as explaining "the space station gardens are simulations based on historical documents of a dead planet", then enabling the player character to state things like "I try to walk there every day, it's a break from paperwork" / "It's all fake so what's the point? I always stride past to go to the coffee shop" / "I linger, wondering if they got the smell of the flowers right" / "I'm overcome with sadness for a moment, knowing all this is gone" / "I brush my fingers along the screen, feeling like I'm in touch with ancient life".

All of this helps players feel in touch with their character, and like their character is a part of the world and acting within it.

I hope this is helpful, Exposition-Loving Friend! May you have fun with your choices and setpieces alike!

-

Read the rest of the IF seal archive here

[if-seal]

hello, if seal :)

I guess I just needed to talk to someone to get this off my chest.

I'm young compared to most of the members of the if community. I really love writing; however, ever since I was a kid, I had this habit of comparing myself to other people. In my schools and classes as a young kid, teachers would grade the "best story" or writing style and this only increased my fear of writing as there was always someone better than me in the end.

There's this story idea I want to make it into an if so bad; however, when I sit down and write some planning or scenes, there's this deep sense of inferiority within me as I fear of how the audience will perceive my writing style. Especially considering how many of the audience members in the community are a lot more older than me, I get afraid that my writing will be perceived "childish" and "immature".

Sometimes this fear makes me run away from my projects and I leave it hanging or barely planned for months on end. Sometimes this fear makes me think "maybe I should improve my writing skill" and, again, I never get to properly finish or start with my projects I want to jot down badly. I know this can come off as "lazy", but I get really scared that my writing is horrendous to people.

I guess my question to this weird ranting is: should I just...put myself out there? Or should I just not?

Dear Fearful Friend,

I very much understand this and I am sure that the majority of experienced writers do as well.

When I was but a seal pup myself, I shared what I wrote and sometimes it had positive reception and sometimes not! When I looked back at it, sometimes I felt terribly embarrassed. But then with further distance, I learned to be kinder towards my younger self and take a great deal of pride in their creativity.

Which is not to say that you will have reached that point now, or that reaching it is easy. But the only way to help yourself feel less anxious about your projects is to practise. You may never feel entirely confident and comfortable, but my advice is to try to embrace writing for yourself first, and then shifting gently into sharing it with others (if you end up wanting to).

I know it is very hard, but comparing your writing to other people's polished work is a tempting but false perspective. We can often be our own worst critics, and we see all the imperfections that others might not - not to mention the fact that everyone else's beautifully polished work was a first draft that the writer gnashed their teeth terribly over.

I wonder if you might enjoy trying to write something small, the IF equivalent of a short story, or even just a scene. Something for yourself, without the pressure of wondering what someone will think. Is there a theme or character idea or something else that grabs you? That might be a good hook for you to make small steps rather than something that feels more overwhelming.

I believe that if you want to share your work, that will be scary but there is also the potential for great enjoyment and satisfaction.

As for writing being immature... well, what is immaturity really? I do not think work from younger writers is necessarily immature, but it is also natural to be inexperienced in writing, and to develop over time. But again, practice is your friend there.

I do not think you are lazy, and I hope you feel confident enough to write something you enjoy!

[bellamy-ifs]

Hey, young anon.

I can definitely tell you one thing: writing in school classes is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from writing your own stories.

I never had good grades when I had to do "creative" writing at school. Most of the time we had to pick broader subjects to write about and none of them were really of interest to me, and at the times we could choose our own topic freely I still struggled to find the correct words and have my stories flow well compared to others. My grades in creative writing were always just mid, and I honestly didn't enjoy it at all even though I love languages. Every time I'd just end up disappointed by the result.

I loved to read as a child already, and one should think that writing would come easier to me. But it were restrictions like topics and time pressure that made me do not as well as my peers did.

For always comparing yourself to others... I totally get that. It's tough. I also do that all the time.

There are many great writers out there, and it's incredibly tempting to keep comparing yourself to them.

That said, from the way you write I doubt you are the worst writer out there - on the contrary. I think the way you write is a pretty good indicator that you're not half as bad at writing as you may think (and as your classes might have led you to believe you are).

Will you be a really good writer? What even defines a good writer, or a good story?

Some people don't like flowery speech and descriptions, some people don't like complicated words, some people don't like modern words used in historical settings, some people don't like too simplified stories.

Some people only like certain genres or don't like your writing style.

And all of that is totally fine.

There's always going to be people who don't enjoy what you write. And you yourself are always going to be your own harshest critic. Being a writer is not easy, but looking at your stories and seeing that people are actually interested in discovering your worlds feels very rewarding.

So please, write your own stories. As the lovely seal has said, you can start slowly! The hardest step is always the first one - the beginning. And in this case, that means actually writing.

Don't pressure yourself into posting something if you don't feel ready to do so yet. It's totally okay to take your time.

[if-seal]

Thank you for the additional lovely motivation @bellamy-ifs!

[if-seal]

hello, if seal :)

I guess I just needed to talk to someone to get this off my chest.

I'm young compared to most of the members of the if community. I really love writing; however, ever since I was a kid, I had this habit of comparing myself to other people. In my schools and classes as a young kid, teachers would grade the "best story" or writing style and this only increased my fear of writing as there was always someone better than me in the end.

There's this story idea I want to make it into an if so bad; however, when I sit down and write some planning or scenes, there's this deep sense of inferiority within me as I fear of how the audience will perceive my writing style. Especially considering how many of the audience members in the community are a lot more older than me, I get afraid that my writing will be perceived "childish" and "immature".

Sometimes this fear makes me run away from my projects and I leave it hanging or barely planned for months on end. Sometimes this fear makes me think "maybe I should improve my writing skill" and, again, I never get to properly finish or start with my projects I want to jot down badly. I know this can come off as "lazy", but I get really scared that my writing is horrendous to people.

I guess my question to this weird ranting is: should I just...put myself out there? Or should I just not?

Dear Fearful Friend,

I very much understand this and I am sure that the majority of experienced writers do as well.

When I was but a seal pup myself, I shared what I wrote and sometimes it had positive reception and sometimes not! When I looked back at it, sometimes I felt terribly embarrassed. But then with further distance, I learned to be kinder towards my younger self and take a great deal of pride in their creativity.

Which is not to say that you will have reached that point now, or that reaching it is easy. But the only way to help yourself feel less anxious about your projects is to practise. You may never feel entirely confident and comfortable, but my advice is to try to embrace writing for yourself first, and then shifting gently into sharing it with others (if you end up wanting to).

I know it is very hard, but comparing your writing to other people's polished work is a tempting but false perspective. We can often be our own worst critics, and we see all the imperfections that others might not - not to mention the fact that everyone else's beautifully polished work was a first draft that the writer gnashed their teeth terribly over.

I wonder if you might enjoy trying to write something small, the IF equivalent of a short story, or even just a scene. Something for yourself, without the pressure of wondering what someone will think. Is there a theme or character idea or something else that grabs you? That might be a good hook for you to make small steps rather than something that feels more overwhelming.

I believe that if you want to share your work, that will be scary but there is also the potential for great enjoyment and satisfaction.

As for writing being immature... well, what is immaturity really? I do not think work from younger writers is necessarily immature, but it is also natural to be inexperienced in writing, and to develop over time. But again, practice is your friend there.

I do not think you are lazy, and I hope you feel confident enough to write something you enjoy!

[if-seal]

Say hi to your new advice-giver, IF Seal!

In honour of the dear dormant @if-confessions and the even older, beloved Story Hospital I am here with an advice blog to hand out cheerleading, encouragement, advice, and maybe even some writing and narrative design wisdom to interactive fiction creators and players.

If you have questions like...

I'm stuck on a branching scene that's turned huge and can't figure a way of getting through it.

I'm worried about players wanting to take actions in my IF that I don't want to include.

I've fallen in love with an IF and want to give critical feedback but don't want to offend the author.

I've made some characters that I LOVE but once I start the story I just don't know what to do with them.

Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account and I want to change that.

Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account... and how much does that really matter?

...or anything else, I am here to help out!

I hang out in @hpowellsmith's bathtub from which I dictate my many and varied thoughts.

I post an answer each Monday. You can find an archive of answers here.

Please send in your questions and I will share my sealy knowledge and experience!

A few notes:

If you're talking about a particular game in a negative fashion, please anonymise it. If you don't, I will assign it a comedically anonymous title

I am not much of a Tech Seal and it is unlikely that I can answer detailed technical questions, but I will try to point you in the right direction

I am not interested in answering "which scripting tool is the objective best" because unanswerable questions are beyond my sealy ken but I will have much more to say about "which scripting tool might suit this project best for which reasons"

If you send a non-anonymous ask, I will check that you're happy to have your name on it before I post an answer

Enjoy!

[if-seal]

Friends, I have been away for some time but I have been flipping through my inbox with my large flippers and have a good number of questions and answers now queued up. I will begin posting weekly or perhaps fortnightly on 6th July.

Please send in questions here, or on the Choice of Games forum, or on the anonymous form.

In the meantime! Here is the Q&A archive for perusal while you wait.

IF Seal Archive

Here's the question and answer archive for my advice blog, IF Seal. Have a question of your own? Ask it through the Tumblr blog or this a

[if-seal]

hello IF seal! <3 (🐟 <-- fish 4 you)

i am working on a choicescript game, and it feels very sisyphean at times. since there are many choices/branches/diverging paths, sometimes its jarring to spend what FEELS like a long time writing, then see that it only fills a page or two of the game!

its not a bad thing, and im sure will get easier with time, but it is a big change coming from "regular" narrative work (i.e. not choice-based game writing) to ChoiceScript writing.

so, with all that said, i wanted to ask if you've worked in non-game writing spheres before, and if so how does the writing process differ from IF? also, regardless of what sort of work you may have done in addition to IF projects, how does it feel completing one of these sorts of games?

hopefully this is sort of a fun question, i just thought it would be fun to hear your experience with completing/working on different writing projects (and how it feels to call something Finished!). thank you so much!!

O hello Generous Friend, thank you for the fish!

I do very much relate to this, especially once the initial energy of the new project has dissipated and one has to deal with all the consequences of the narrative hooks one has put in:

So, yes, you are not alone! Sometimes in this kind of project it's a case of just trudging through, enjoying the smaller moments as much as you can, and not thinking too much about how far you are through a chapter.

...now, to break kayfabe for a bit...

For non-interactive writing I've written academic essays and have a bunch of unfinished novels hanging around. For both I often had trouble reaching a required wordcount (in the case of essays) and rushing through passages and not giving enough breathing room to ideas or scenes (in the case of both). In contrast I've developed better pacing for game writing, a sense of when I want to linger on especially important moments, and how choices affect pace.

I've also worked on non-choice/text-based games, choice-based-but-not-prose-based games, and done game narrative work that doesn't involve writing at all. All are very different: there was often writing lines into spreadsheets, discussions with other narrative folk and people from other departments, flowcharts, large-scale planning, and a variety of other activities. I realise that sounds a bit vague which, uh, it is because a lot of it remains under NDA or is from cancelled projects and such (the nature of working in the games field, unfortunately).

King of the Castle is one game that is easily accessible that I worked on in a writing and design capacity. Although some of the day-to-day writing work was similar to IF - I was writing mostly dialogue and some prose in ink - it was a very different experience due to being multiplayer and the shape of each story being very branchy.

All that said, completing a CoG game does feel different because it's a long process - at least 18 months, usually more - of mostly working alone but responding to player feedback. By the time the release comes, it can feel quite distant and I'm usually looking ahead to the next thing, but for players it's new. It's also a weird experience having been writing pretty intensely for a while and then it's...over. (But it isn't really over because there are fixes to make and sometimes updates to add if I want to, and questions and comments to answer and much more!)

So it's a weird combination of pride, tiredness, satisfaction, and nerves. Mostly nerves, I'll be honest. I never really get less nervous, but my strategies of dealing with it have got better over time.

Thank you for the question, friend! I hope it was interesting!

[if-seal]

IF seal, I have so many questions but my main one would likely be; do you have resources you could give us? Especially related to learning coding and how to start making and planning your IF. I'm not new to the IF community, ive been around for around 2-3 years and ive finally gathered the courage to try and make my own and im starting planning basics like the ideas and plot lines and whatnot but I don't have any idea of where to go from there. What do I do, am I meant to go on and start writing it like I would a fanfic or do I make characters first, do I make the plot and worldbuild first?? I'm very lost, IF seal and i don't know where to start...

Another question would be; how do I make IF friends? I wanna talk about my plot ideas with others who enjoy IF's, maybe even create a baseline Tumblr account where i can just gather ideas to look through and chat about it but should I? What do I do for that? I like rubber ducking with people and bouncing ideas and such between me and others, but none of my current friends enjoy IF like I do.

Dear Lost Friend,

I do hope you are enjoying the new year. Some of what I say will be rather "how long is a piece of string" so I apologise in advance for that, but I hope it will be useful regardless.

Here are some resources for practical basics:

For ChoiceScript, I recommend looking at the introduction to the basics and working through the tutorial step by step. The ChoiceScript wiki is also excellent.

For Twine, I recommend the Twine Grimoire Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Grim Baccaris. There are various UI templates around as well - a quick google showed me this collection, and there will be plenty more to find on itch as well.

For ink, there's a basic guide here.

I understand that you are also looking for advice on structure and process, though, which is a rather larger topic.

My first suggestion is to try making something small: the equivalent of a short story, or if you have characters in your mind that you like, try sketching out a branched conversation or short scene about them.

If you are making something big, my friend @/hpowellsmith has a blogpost here about writing longform IF. Paul Wang has a large archive about his writing process here. Some of it may be useful for you, some may not - take what you like and leave the rest.

Interactive narrative benefits from outlining your ideas before writing so you have a sense of the different endings you're aiming towards. What could the PC be aiming for that explores what you want to explore about your setting? How could characters help or hinder that, and how could the PC's actions change the world around them?

As you start to flesh out your ideas, you will learn more about your own writing process and whether you like to start with characters, setting, or plot. What I do recommend is to always keep the PC's place in the world, and their actions, in your mind. A static setpiece or characters having long conversations outside of the PC's activity may be just what your story needs, but consider how it affects the PC and how the PC is able to engage with them.

As for IF friends, I think getting in touch with writers whose work you enjoy is the first step! There have been various discords around the place although I am not sure which ones are currently active, but others may chime in on this! If there are IFs that you especially love, then chatting with other fans of them is also a way of getting involved with the community.

I hope this is useful, Lost Friend, and that you find a fun way of getting started with your project!

[if-seal]

Question: I’m not really motivated to do marketing after I finish my game. However, I would like to make it as easy as possible for readers who enjoy it to tell their friends about it! What would be most helpful for this?

Dear Marketing Friend,

My strongest recommendation is to put your energy towards the things that bring you satisfaction.

While your game is in progress, marketing might look like writing regular devlogs, sharing little peeks at what you're doing, or putting up playable sections of the WIP.

IF communities are rather scattered in various directions but as well as the Choice of Games forums for ChoiceScript games, there are a fair amount of writers on Tumblr so you may like to make a blog for that, or an account on itchio where you could host a WIP. Accounts here on Tumblr such as @/interact-if often share writers' work; the @/neo-interactives discord is wider-ranging and focuses on a variety of IF genres, as does the intfiction forum.

(I note briefly that intfiction and neo-interactives are predominantly non-commercial-focused: jumping in with an eye to purely market a commercial product is unlikely to be much fun but chatting about IF craft and play will be much more fulfilling. This is good to remember across the board, actually.)

You may also like to create a mailing list or a blog with subscription capability to keep people up to date with what's going on with your work. This is also a good way to let readers know when your game is released.

In general, especially in this niche space, ratings and reviews are incredibly helpful so reminding readers of this is useful. You may like to review games that you've enjoyed and/or get in touch with other authors to let them know what you've liked about their work.

I hope this is useful, Marketing Friend! I will also point you towards a previous marketing question and answer here.

Best of luck with your project!

[seasideseals]

for the first time in history, the ross seal has been photographed underwater ! all creds to justin hofman and ayla townsend ! <3

[lolrel]

Gently, gently. A nap is always a good idea, and kelp forests are amazing.

[fernicenty]

a star of the ocean ✨🦭

[if-seal]

dear if seal,

i do not have a question, but i hope this is the right place to put this! thank you for combining my two favorite things ever and also providing many amazing nuggets of if wisdom. much love, many hugs, and many fish 🐟🐟🐟

O you are so very kind, thank you! YOU are one of my favourite things as well!

[if-seal]

i want to make a blog and drop an intro post for my wip, but then i think of the general wariness some people have towards new blogs, since there have been countless no-demo blogs that go inactive without ever posting anything. i guess i don't want to be overlooked, or some part of me is afraid I'll end up ghosting. i Could wait until I've written at least ch 1, but i feel like that's several months away and I'm anxious to get the ball rolling, you know?

I'm aware i shouldn't worry about others' opinions so much, but what would you do, if-seal, if you were making a new a blog right now?

Dear Anxious Friend,

I do hope you are still feeling good about your game idea! I entirely understand the sense of excitement that comes with new ideas and the burst of energy that happens when we want to tell everyone about it! And perhaps part of us wishes that part of it was already here so that we could show off something concrete.

However...

While sharing thoughts about your idea is a great deal of fun, I recommend caution - simply because if you are several months away from a first chapter being ready to share, you may not have written much (or maybe not anything at all). That means that there's the risk of a few things:

When you do start writing you may realise that some of the details you shared are not actually what you want to include. This can result in worry about whether you should change things to go with what now feels right, or whether you should leave it because it is now "fixed" in stone.

You may realise this project is not, in fact, what you want to be writing at this point in time and you want to make something entirely different.

There may be a huge flurry of interest which inadvertently puts a lot of pressure on you because it is very hard to be writing when you are trying to live up to the excitement people have about something that only exists in their minds.

There may be not very much interest (for any reason: it does not necessarily correlate with how good the idea is!) which can put a major dampener on enthusiasm and make you feel as though it is not worth pursuing this piece of writing.

Talking to people about the idea can take away your time and energy from making the idea a reality.

For all these reasons I recommend writing a chunk of your game before making a grand introduction. Once you feel confident in your writing, you can then make a decision about how much you want to share straightaway. There is nothing wrong with writing a chapter, making an introduction, and then putting up the chapter a short while later. That approach does three things: it helps your momentum because by that time you'll be working on the next chapter, you will feel more grounded and comfortable in your work so you may not feel so compelled to make changes in response to feedback, and it makes readers more confident that your project is one that will see the light of day.

If you have energy that you want to put into a blog, I recommend setting something up and making it private for now - or putting the energy into writing your project or fleshing out your characters, mechanics, or world.

Best of luck with your writing, friend! And have a happy new year!

[antisocialxconstruct]

This is solid advice but I'd like to offer an additional point, based on my own experience.

If you're anything like me, you may find that working on the project entirely in silence is... just kind of a bummer! You want to share the idea with people, or snippets of what you've written so far, or the slick UI you designed.... if you don't want to commit to a formal development blog yet (for any of the reasons IF Seal listed), there's nothing wrong with posting about the project in a less formal way, either on your already active blog OR still on a dedicated blog for the project, but one where you make it clear it's still in the early conceptual stages and a lot is still potentially subject to change.

I do think people are a bit gun shy about elaborate, flashy intro posts for no-demo games that never actually materialize. But a less structured peek at the process of something you ARE in fact currently working on might be more likely to draw some attention (especially with some strategic tagging), and when you are ready to launch your intro, you might already have some people ready to help hype it up for you!

A second smaller point: take things at your own pace, and don't assume a long lull in development is a death knell for your project. I have a game I launched a demo for and then halted for like... three years. And then I came back and made a bunch of progress on it, and people who had played the demo were excited to see it! And you know what... it's still not done lmao I know @zorlok-if is in a similar boat. But I fully intend to keep picking at my story, and knowing that everyone didn't just jump ship and give up on me makes me more confident that I can do that in whatever way comes naturally 🤷

[if-seal]

Indeed, writing not-in-isolation is very rewarding for many people!

I entirely agree that giving readers looks at what you are doing is a great way to get people interested and also show off progress. That is something I did not cover as much as I could have in my answer! I do think that writing at least some privately is good as well before starting an 'official' type of blog, to get some foundations in order. Then you will have something to share (whether that's a large demo or snippets and such) while hopefully feeling confident about what you are making.

Thank you for the additional thoughts, @antisocialxconstruct!

[if-seal]

i want to make a blog and drop an intro post for my wip, but then i think of the general wariness some people have towards new blogs, since there have been countless no-demo blogs that go inactive without ever posting anything. i guess i don't want to be overlooked, or some part of me is afraid I'll end up ghosting. i Could wait until I've written at least ch 1, but i feel like that's several months away and I'm anxious to get the ball rolling, you know?

I'm aware i shouldn't worry about others' opinions so much, but what would you do, if-seal, if you were making a new a blog right now?

Dear Anxious Friend,

I do hope you are still feeling good about your game idea! I entirely understand the sense of excitement that comes with new ideas and the burst of energy that happens when we want to tell everyone about it! And perhaps part of us wishes that part of it was already here so that we could show off something concrete.

However...

While sharing thoughts about your idea is a great deal of fun, I recommend caution - simply because if you are several months away from a first chapter being ready to share, you may not have written much (or maybe not anything at all). That means that there's the risk of a few things:

When you do start writing you may realise that some of the details you shared are not actually what you want to include. This can result in worry about whether you should change things to go with what now feels right, or whether you should leave it because it is now "fixed" in stone.

You may realise this project is not, in fact, what you want to be writing at this point in time and you want to make something entirely different.

There may be a huge flurry of interest which inadvertently puts a lot of pressure on you because it is very hard to be writing when you are trying to live up to the excitement people have about something that only exists in their minds.

There may be not very much interest (for any reason: it does not necessarily correlate with how good the idea is!) which can put a major dampener on enthusiasm and make you feel as though it is not worth pursuing this piece of writing.

Talking to people about the idea can take away your time and energy from making the idea a reality.

For all these reasons I recommend writing a chunk of your game before making a grand introduction. Once you feel confident in your writing, you can then make a decision about how much you want to share straightaway. There is nothing wrong with writing a chapter, making an introduction, and then putting up the chapter a short while later. That approach does three things: it helps your momentum because by that time you'll be working on the next chapter, you will feel more grounded and comfortable in your work so you may not feel so compelled to make changes in response to feedback, and it makes readers more confident that your project is one that will see the light of day.

If you have energy that you want to put into a blog, I recommend setting something up and making it private for now - or putting the energy into writing your project or fleshing out your characters, mechanics, or world.

Best of luck with your writing, friend! And have a happy new year!

[if-seal]

i havent been on tumblr in a hot minute but im sooooo glad youre back!!!! i loved this blog and was so sad to see you discontinue it

O thank you so much! I was very pleased to begin it back then and was sorry to put it on hiatus. Doing it this year has been most lovely indeed! I am so grateful for people sending in questions and messages, I would not be doing this without that.

[if-seal]

Dear IF Seal

First of all, thank you for existing, because just finding out this blog exists has brightened my day considerably!

I'm messaging seeking advice on sticking with projects and finishing them as well. I've had so many ideas for stories that I've simply let fall by the wayside or left on a backburner for too long and worry that trying to start something I don't dedicate enough time to will erode my passion for the story, or demotivate any readers I might pick up along the way. Is it just about practice?

Dear Motivation-Seeking Friend,

Thank you so very much for your loveliness, you have also brightened my day a great deal!

The first thing I would say, and which sums up much of what I say below, is try not to bite off more than you can chew.

Which is perhaps a little glib (I do love to be glib sometimes) but is very much true. I wonder whether any of your story ideas would work as a short game - perhaps with a slightly more linear approach, or with a less customisable player character, or simply a shorter play length. You could try making something that has a few branching scenes, the equivalent of a short story rather than something more on the scale of a novel.

This can help you get in the swing of being in a project from start to finish, and can also help you concentrate on what are the most important places in which you want to spend your energy. Does this game perfectly suit a structure in which the player character can choose between three different magical powers, and therefore you might like to make the player character non-customisable? Maybe it has a complicated timeline going on with scenes that are very different depending on the order they're played in, so each individual scene is linear when played.

I recommend having a think about this before you start the project, and it'll help refine what you want from it as well.

I also suggest sticking to one project at a time if you haven't finished one already. This may not be entirely your method: some people genuinely work best hopping from one to another and back again. But since you are asking about avoiding falling-by-the-wayside, I have an inkling that this may be good advice for you to try.

Of course you will get new ideas as you go, especially when the project you are working on is proving to be a challenge. In those cases I recommend taking a little bit of time to conceptualise and maybe outline the new shiny idea, then set it aside. This means you will have it stored on the backburner for when you'd like to see it again, and at the same time it will help it not take up so much space in your brain. It's been freed! It can be used! But in the future, not right now.

Best of luck, Motivation-Seeking-Friend. I hope you settle upon something that brings you much joy!