How to Trick Yourself Into Writing Your Interactive Fiction
This is my best trick for getting yourself to sit down and write. It's how I wrote five million words of Jolly Good without getting paralysis.
There are three distinct types of writing days.
Type of Day the First:
Do the planning/sketching.
You say, "this is actually not really work at all." And it isn't, because you don't even have to be on your computer. You can be all cozy on your sofa or do it in a cafe. You write in your notebook, you doodle outlines, you make long lists of stuff you want in this section. It's not even writing, it's just fantasizing.
So you can totally get yourself to do that. It's actually a huge relief when it's one of those days.
Type of Day the Second:
You lay out the code skeleton and get the broad outline on the page.
You say, "this is actually not really work at all." It really isn't. You don't even have to write anything! You just do the outline of the code, but without any of the hard writing part.
You know, you do this:
And so on. You don't actually have to write the thing! You just put "xxxxx" which means "good writing goes here." Then you stick in the stat changes, if any, which is really not that hard.
It's all placeholders! Here, look, here's a real example from my game:
This is how I actually do it. I just put some easily searchable strings like xxxxqqqqq and just move on with the code.
It's not even writing, it's just doing a sketchy framework.
So you can totally get yourself to do that. It's actually a huge relief when it's one of those days.
Type of Day the Third:
Writing the Prose. Here, you just sit down and replace xxxxqqqq with good stuff. This is just pure creativity.
If it says the following:
xxxxAunt Matilda freaks out and breaks three vases.
You just get to sit and write a little mini story about that. You don't have to think "what shall I write." You *know that already* and you don't have to think, "what will the stat/larger game effects be" because you *know that already*. This is the actual fun part of writing, which is just riffing.
So you sit and you destroy as many xxxxqqqq's as you want to. You can hop all over the outline if you want to, to keep yourself amused. You can embellish, you can weave a fun little micro-story. This is actually the easiest part, because everything but the storywriting part of your brain is off.
It's just spinning a little story and making this little bit of prose as good as possible. It's an incredibly bite-sized and very possible-feeling task.
So you can totally get yourself to do that. It's actually a huge relief when it's one of those days.
This is what I do. I tend to do all of the Day 1s first, then all of the Day 2, and then all of the Day 3s (which take the longest), but you can totally just bop back and forth between them.
I am eager to hear how you get yourself in the writing chair. What's your technique?
Come visit me at The Noble Gases Club for more chit-chat about game design, as we approach the first anniversary of this festive place!
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