Where do you begin writing?

[luminarious]

With NaNoRenO just a few hours away, I figured I'd ask for any recommendations you might have concerning writing.

My only VN so far was Roof & Dragon which was just a few hundred words long and had a single talking character. In trying to begin the next one, I find myself stumped. I have a couple of characters I could use, some ideas about the place. I even started seeing glimpses of the opening sequence in my mind. But no plot so far has revealed itself to me. Should I just pick one from the tvtropes list of common plots? Ungh.

I read sci-fi and new age literature mostly myself. But I don't really know how to put that knowledge to use. I'd like the setting to remain an unknown modern country, at most twenty minutes into the future.

And then there's the whole dialogue thing. I hate writing those.. I'm not really into having those either, but that's an entirely different bucket.

[shadow190]

Hmmmmh...


Well, I always start with listening to music I like and music, which I think could fit that, what I want to write.
I listen to various songs and just invent stories to them. When there's one story or just an idea, I really like, I listen to song again and again, until I have a very fixed idea of the whole story.


Then, I just start writing random somewhere where I want to start. (Most of the time, I like to start at the beginning anyway, so, yeah.)

Before you write any dialogue, you should know the whole story already, I think.

Maybe this wasn't a big help to you... ^^°

[luminarious]

Well, I always start with listening to music I like and music, which I think could fit that, what I want to write.

Yeah, that has worked for me too. But only for sequences, not the whole story.

Regarding dialogue, I'm trying to find some info regarding stage plays, as these are usually about meaningful dialogue and thus the principles could be adapted.

What's interesting, though, is that I've been writing in English ever since middle school even though it's my second language. Never even occured to me to write in Estonian, despite the language being beautiful.

[number473]

Well, the only thing about writing in your home language is that not many people will be able to enjoy it. If your main aim is for others to enjoy your game... it is a shame though. English is such a b*ized language, it's got words taken from everywhere, and don't let me get started on American English. Maybe that's part of it's charm though ;D </offtopic>

But if you were going to write I would say just write. Start at whatever you've got and then just write the scene as it seems natural to you. It may seem too easy, but try it.

[Meems]

I start by developing the characters. You say you have a couple so far - that's a good start. Find out what your characters want, and what they're willing to do to get it. Then think of all the things that could go wrong.

I usually like to draw my characters when I'm creating them. The way they look helps give me a sense of what the world they inhabit is like.

[lepapillonrouge]

Amusingly, I get my writing juices flowing after I read something else. XD Seriously. I just find a good book (or manga) to read and I get a plot going.

[IxIoN]

Amusingly, I get my writing juices flowing after I read something else. XD Seriously. I just find a good book (or manga) to read and I get a plot going.

I do that too. Hearing music too.

[Ghurdrich]

I generally get inspired from something I like about whatever I'm watching/reading/listening to. Like, for example: 'Hey, after playing Tsukihime, Shiki is really cool. Why? He uses a knife. There should be someone else who uses a knife. I know, I'll make one.'
And then I try and figure out a world where he might fit. 'Well, why would this guy carry a knife around? Because it's dangerous since _____________.' Afterwards I think of a conflict that could occur in that world.

And really, that's all there is to it, for me. That's how I get started. Character -> World -> Conflict. Rinse and repeat until I find something I can run away with. It's all a matter of building it up after that.

[chronoluminaire]

Figure out the main part of the story you want to show. It's perhaps a plot - a sequence of plot events - or it might be a character interaction or something.

Then decide what the necessary setup to that is. Where do you want to start your characters off? What's the Inciting Event that kicks off the plot? Often it's a character going through their normal daily life when they Meet Cute the other main character.

Then figure out the first scene required to start that part of the story.

[Blue Sky]

For me, I always start with Youtube. I look up a showtune or J-Pop number, and than open up a new document. From there, I just type.

If you don't know what to put down, just experiment. Do a freewrite for a while that's character based, and see where that gets you.

If all else fails, just slap your cheeks twice and force yourself to write something.

[PinkMagus]

Well, the only thing about writing in your home language is that not many people will be able to enjoy it. If your main aim is for others to enjoy your game... it is a shame though. English is such a b*ized language, it's got words taken from everywhere, and don't let me get started on American English. Maybe that's part of it's charm though ;D </offtopic>

But if you were going to write I would say just write. Start at whatever you've got and then just write the scene as it seems natural to you. It may seem too easy, but try it.

English is the language that goes around beating up other langauges and stealing their spare vocabulary 8D.

I'm trying to start myself writing too, and I started just by writing a single event, and then drawing a line, and writing another event, and end up with a web of possible events that could be used to create a cohesive plot line.

[Glasskitten]

I recommend cold-blooded theft!



What I mean is that in every single story--no, every single thing no matter what it is--that you appreciate, if you look hard enough you can find that little kernel of beauty that pulled you in in the first place. Often it's a lot more abstract than it looks on the surface. You can usually take that kernel away for your own use without looking like you had anything to do with what it originally came from! When you collect enough of those tiny seeds of beauty, blend some of them together and let them grow as one. I don't see why they shouldn't grow if you water them--though adding new ones periodically seems to help.
It can work in reverse with things you dislike. If you feel that some other story got the whole universe dead wrong, take characters and backdrops that grew out of other sources and write that part of story as it should have been told--taking care to make the specifics different enough from the original that no one will realize what inspired it. The other aspects of the story don't have to be remotely similar.

I'm sorry, that probably neither made sense nor helped. Ghurdrich probably nailed it better.

[chronoluminaire]

No, you make an excellent point. This is something that Chris Baty recommends when figuring out the plot to your NaNoWriMo novel. Make a list of all (well, some of) the things that you especially like in films/games/etc that you enjoy. Call this your Magna Carta I.
A few excerpts from mine:
• Wacky inventions and inventors; mad scientists
• Characters who build things (like the Recluce smiths/engineer), or create new branches of magic or something
• Sassy characters making pithy remarks
• Benevolent but enigmatic archetypal good guys (Oriel's Boss, Dumbledore)
• The brief moment when a seemingly humourless person grins, thinking nobody can see.
• Sacrificing a queen to win the game (the moment the enemy thinks they've won, it's revealed they've played right into your hands)
• Hints being dropped about plans and/or backstory, without fully giving them away
• Tense conversations with characters risking having their secrets exposed
• Steampunk / valvepunk
• Cyberspace and the interface to it
These are all things that are likely to make me go "yay". As you can see, I've got some examples written by the side in some cases; it's completely fine to add something to the list purely based on one example that did it well.

Then, when planning a new story, look down your MCI list. Look for things that might fit into this setting, this plot. The idea is that if you include elements that you enjoy reading about, you're going to enjoy writing the story more, and be more likely to finish it and to have it sparkle.

[Jake]

Pretty much everything I've written has started life in my head as a couple of scenes that I thought were cool and wanted to include in a story. Sometimes this is literally a couple of fleshed-out scenes with distinct characters and motivations and everything, but just as often it's a feeling I want to get across, or an image, or whatever. From there I'll just daydream about it, sketch ideas and so on, until I have a vague idea of the kind of world the scenes take place in, how it works, who or what's important there.

If I want to develop any of these into a story, I need a conflict to base the story around; stories are just boring slice-of-life documentaries without a conflict that the protagonist tries to resolve. (It doesn't have to be a literal fight; "Derek wants Sandra to love him but Sandra doesn't know he exists" is also a conflict.)

It's quite likely that one of the scenes I've had in my head will suggest or even provide that conflict for me. If I'm thinking of a western-movie showdown on an abandoned street in a ghost-town, between the hero sheriff and the bad-guy outlaw whose gang are hiding in the shadows ready to turn a duel into a running gun battle, then I can work backwards from there. The conflict stems from the sheriff's desire to bring the gang leader to justice. Why? If it's just because he's a good guy and the gang leader is a bad guy, it's boring, and it doesn't excuse him putting his life on the line in an obvious ambush, so what other motivation could he have? Maybe the gang leader's kidnapped his fiancée. Why? The obvious answer is that he wants some leverage over the sheriff, maybe he wants him to turn a blind eye while the gang leader moves his treasure from his no-longer-secret hideout. Why doesn't the sheriff just go along with his plan? Maybe he's an ex-outlaw himself, and he can't risk being incriminated in a conspiracy and his old life catching up to him. I'll keep working out details of the conflict until I have an idea of why everything happens, what the conflict is and most importantly what the resolution of that conflict will be.

Sometimes, I'll have a particular theme or message I want to get across in a story, in which case I need to make sure that my conflict - and the resolution - fits in with this theme. The resolution is probably the best reinforcement of the theme, so that's the bit that's most likely to be driven by it. If I wanted to have a theme of "you can redeem yourself from your past mistakes by doing good deeds", then the sheriff will prevail over the bad guys and the gang leader ends up in jail. If the theme is "a leopard never changes his spots", my ex-outlaw sheriff might kill the gang leader in the duel and then take over the gang himself, only to be rejected by his fiancée when she finds out.

Once I've got the details of the conflict sorted out, I'll lay out key moments through the story from beginning to end in a text file, and try and come up with events that are both believable and also keep the reader's interest. So I'll try and open with a hook (maybe the Sheriff gets reminded of his old outlaw days by the gang leader, who knows his secret) and string the story between evenly-spaced interesting plot points (hideout gets discovered, fiancée gets captured, showdown). It's sometimes useful to go off and find a point-by-point story-structure-theory description somewhere (Such as Syd Fields' so-called "Paradigm", for example) and check how well your plot aligns to it; doing this can show up potential issues, and give you something to work to if you're not sure how to pace or structure your story, although of course no canned formula is ever 100% universal.

After I've decided upon the plot structure, I'll go back over it and expand each of my plot points into a paragraph or so of description, fleshing the whole story out at once. Then I'll go through and turn those paragraphs into collections of sentences, one per scene (more or less). Then, I'll (in the case of a VN) drop those scene sentences into an editor, mark them all as comments and write my scenes between them, knowing as I write each scene what's supposed to happen between who and why.

(Writing dialogue would take another post of equal length to cover, and I don't think I'm particularly good at it myself...)

[CaesMRaenes]

If you're having a hard time coming up with a plot, get up and away from the desk and go out for a walk. Go buy yourself some ice cream or journey through the park, imagining yourself in the position of the main character (or even side character to get a new perspective of the situation). Music helps. Writing scattered scenes is a great way of getting your groove back. You could even write some poetry or just random scribbles while droning out the lecture of a teacher.

But after so much writing, it's always nice to take a step back and say, "Forget it. I'll wreck my brain over something else like a video game."

Spending time away from a project lets you refresh yourself. You may even come back and tell yourself that you have a better idea to come up with.

Well, that's how I do my design projects. If they're giving me a headache and I can't think of something else, I'll just put the project away, come back in a couple days, and completely revamp it because I got a new and better idea.