LONER_DOG genuinely like. It’s exactly what I needed to read, and re-read. Tysm for making it 💞 It’s also getting my brain into wanting to be creative again, it’s inspirational, I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve gushed as much as I can to friends even though they’re not the target audience but god I wish they were ‘cause I need more people to read your work. Won’t stop me from being annoying in their ear though since I can’t keep all this praise inside ✨
I’m genuinely curious about the writing process, how you handled it all - this is the first vn I’ve played with the multiple conversations at once and I adore it, along with the periodic cast life updates.
I kind of want to try making my own vn, some day. Tbh I just really want to stop trying to push down my desires and embrace making the fucked up gay stuff that I want to see, that I need to see
Anyway. I’m probably going to read it for the third time again. You’re awesome. I can’t wait for your next work 💖
aaaaaaaa thank you so much for (re-)(re-)reading LONER_DOG!!!! And the praise!! and the ask!!!<3
Putting a break here because this includes MAJOR SPOILERS for loner dog.
The writing process wasn't too far off from how I've written stories with smaller casts before, really. Or rather, there wasn't anything super special about it just because it was such an interwoven story.
You can see it in screenshots all over the post mortems and here: I usually have characters in my head during writing and occasionally throughout my day their particles will collide in my head and dialogue will flow and I write it down as a first draft, very stream of consciousness style. I sometimes spent entire days where not a single hours passed without me just rotating these goobers in my head. I actually also talk a bit about the scrapbook approach in my SWSBTS post-mortem, tho MAJOR spoilers if you haven't read the VN it.
But during that I also had a bunch of disjointed scenes that I assembled into an outlined storyboard and then went from there.
For LD specifically, I was sitting on several conversations I had with myself and others with regards to the topic of suicide and the ethics and morality of it, some of which transformed into texts you find in trace amounts between Xelia and Argo, and in heavy quantities around Audrey, Haley, Maya, and Harsh Noise. (I also talk about when to introduce new characters in the LD post mortem, if you haven't read it yet)
notice how the character tags are just ABC
here's some more screenshots from my obsidian canvas (from later in development). I will literally just write whatever and then think about when I put it into Godot when I work through the frame, and mark which texts I put in. I use obsidian for this btw
I milled over a lot during that time, and just kept writing it all down, completely disjointed and not knowing yet who is even gonna say any part of it sometimes.
Where LD did differ in its writing process from other VNs like WTSRTS/SWSBTS was in the directionality. I had no fucking idea what the ending was gonna be for weeks. It was about when the script was halfway done where I actually clicked with the direction of the ending. I had the two main story threads of vargo and haya (I gave them shipping names internally to speed things up lmao) coalesce and knew audrey's meltdown would [happen]* and then haley's body would become a plot thingy and I get to have some truly horrible shit happen.
* Drafting out the series of events in the canyon scene was insane. The scene is about 5.5k words, and I moved to many parts around so often until it actually felt natural and good and had proper pacing. That took like 1 or 2 days to just draft.
The ending was really difficult actually from a development perspective. I knew I wanted to have the other scene happen too (the puppy rescue), but as I wrote the story and characters I was really unsure where and how I'd resolve the rest of the story arcs. With some of my previous work, or most of it actually, I always had a concrete vision for what I want the ending to be from the outset**. I didn't have that during LD for most of the characters and there's several drafts of other series of events I was considering. Ultimately I put a lot of blind faith into my own characters and my ability to organically have them grow and coalesce in a satisfying and sensible way. Audrey's meltdown in the canyon was a fucking lighting in a bottle type idea, as was the character of Xelia as a whole; Those two drove so many of my underlying story deliberations.
** Having the end of the story and / or final emotion of the story in mind fairly early is really good I think. It's a useful benchmark to have when assessing if a story worth telling. is the final feeling you impart on the reader something you wanna convey? it also alleviates a bunch of complications during writing because when you're stuck you always have the fundamental question of "does this build towards / serve the ending?"
And then... it's just a shit ton of iteration. I'll read through scenes. A lot. I look at how they flow into each other. If there's continuity errors. Lots of gut work here.
Sometimes I'll also just vibe out the script in its entirety. I won't even read the text on screen because I know all of it, but I have the game run on high text speed and auto continue and see if the relative emotional pacing works. and if not I make a note and put the infamous [story here] into the script.
Then at a later point I'll be able to look at those points and go "ok I need a scene that serves as padding / conveys this character info / is the comeup or come down of the surrounding text" etc
Your workflow here will also depend on your tools. I move scenes around a lot, and my dialogue tool works well with that. It has a bunch of features that allow me to go directly from notepad raw text to correct syntax. But again super niche stuff. This is what it looks like:
Maybe I also quickly add a few words on cut scenes. They're excellent to have. They're not a sign of you being a bad writer. The final script of LD is 46k words. I reckon I wrote maybe around 55k - 60k during the jam? Ultimately, when you cut a scene, that is precisely because you learned more about your story and characters. You gained a deeper understanding of what makes them work and it's all rich soil for future and better scenes to grow on. It makes your characters feel deeper because in your head as author, they are deeper, and that hopefully translates into a meaty feel for the reader.
Also, no single line is ever worth writing a scene or VN for. If a word does not contribute to the overall work, it has to go.
Finally, you mention LD being inpirational to you, and I can promise you, from the other side of "wrote some really fucked up shit", it's great, and the community you'll find around you because of it cannot be compared to anything else. The message of "make things you want to see in the world" is also one of the core points of a talk I gave at godotcon last year! If you wanna see me mouth off about dialogue system development and burnout avoidance for 30 minutes, here's a youtube link nyanya
Again, thanks for the ask, and I hope you get up to some premium gay shit >:3
