Rapid Development and its Effects on Creative Work

[Sapphi]

So this could technically be in the Get This Thing Off Your Chest thread, but I think it's a valid enough problem to be its own discussion thread.

Since the goal of every creative individual is to continuously improve his craft, it goes without saying that early work is probably not going to be as nice and polished as later work. But should you as a creator ever knowingly finish a piece that is below its potential just to "get it out of the way"?

Tonight I had a talk with the one person I feel who really believes in me and has some justification to do so. He is not a writer or creatively-minded but he is good at picking out flaws and is very supportive of me. Recently I'd been telling him all about X story I'm working on. More recently, I've been telling him some new ideas I got for some of my older, less-fleshed out stories.

His response was "Don't get distracted. Finish X before you begin those others." The problem with that is that X happens to be something that is probably going to be novel length in scope. The other stories I have planned are shorter.
So I tell him, "These other stories are going to be very short."
His response: "That's what you said about the long one, before you expanded it."
Me: "I expanded it because it had a lot of potential, and as I developed the characters the story had to grow too."

He just doesn't believe I can finish anything. Prior to stumbling upon Ren'Py, I endeavored to draw a comic. I finished the first draft. It spanned 4 70-sheet notebooks, drawn on both sides. He read it and liked it. I told him I would finish that story before doing anything else. But I was in high school. I went to college. I read books. I got smarter. I think the premise of that story has potential, but my execution was terrible. I want to rewrite it. He says rewriting is bad, because it never gets done, because during the process I improve even more and then have to rewrite the rewrite.
He asked me, "How many times have you rebooted the current story you are working on?"
I answered, "A lot, but the theme has stayed the same. I've reworked it so many times because I've been learning, and I can see what works and what doesn't. And I am still learning. Do you want me to just shove it out the door and not fix the mistakes?"
Him: I want you to finish your stories and not get distracted.
Me: I'm only 21 years old. I am nowhere near a professional writer's skill yet. I am still learning!

Basically, I think I come up with good premises, but I don't want to ruin them by tackling them too soon. I am working on all of them, but intermittently. He sees this as distraction and as a sign that nothing will ever get done; I see it as not being wasteful with my time. It just depresses the heck out of me because I feel like he doesn't believe I have good judgement when it comes to my own work. OTL

Thoughts? Advice?

[Auro-Cyanide]

Haha, I know exactly where you are coming from XD

The thing to remember is that you will never be perfect. Ever. So you have the choice of constantly reworking something for all eternity, or you finishing something, take what you learn from it and move on.
I can say with conviction that finishing Nanoreno did SO much for teaching me, and since I was forced to finish on a certain date I didn't have the chance to get to distracted with details. Sometimes you have to let things go for the sake of the overall project. And a finished project is worth more than an unfinished one that may or may not be approuching perfection.

But that is of course easier said than done. BCM spirtes. Must resist urge to redo. Do. Not. Have. Time.

[redeyesblackpanda]

Ah... I feel similarly at times. I've looked at my old writing and thought "this is crap!" Even with the project I'm working on now, I wasn't satisfied with my earlier writing. What I've been doing is writing large chunks, doing incredibly heavy editing, then continuing again, since I'll never finish it unless I take some time to continue writing.

That being said... I've got a plot bunny that I've been toying with for about half a year. It's something that I already recognize is beyond my current abilities, but it's significantly more exciting to me than my current project. To build my skills so that I can write it, I'm focusing on my current project and just letting the idea marinate

[papillon]

I'd have to agree with him to some extent - it really is important to finish something, even though you know you can do better if you started something new now. Because you're *always* going to be learning and growing and changing, and it's really easy to spend years working on all sorts of projects and never completing anything. Gritting your teeth and getting the job done is an important skill in itself. Plus all the other skills that only get applied at the end of a project, like final polish, managing a release, etc.

Remember, it is always possible to revisit an old idea later now that you can do it better. You can do a remake!

I always have to struggle with the temptation to run off with my new cool ideas when i'm in the middle of the hard sloggy parts of my older ones. But if I didn't finish those older games, I'd have nothing to show for myself.

[Gambit74]

I'm gonna have to agree with what your friend is saying. Back before I started using Ren'Py, I used to juggle between 2 projects I was working on in RPG Maker VX. I really liked both of the ideas I had and didn't want to let them go, but merging them into one game wasn't possible due to their differences. In the end, I ended up with neither because I wasn't getting anywhere :\ .

Now that I have moved on over to Ren'Py and have decided to go with a less complicated medium for my very first game, I am finding that focusing on just one project before starting with another is a lot more efficient. The only times when I start writing something else now is when I need more ideas for my current story due to writer's block. The side stuff I write are short stories that help enforce or emphasize certain elements or characters that are in my story, which often helps me move along with my current ideas as well as getting a better view of where I'm going with them.

[Samu-kun]

If you're interested in getting a product out, it's best to just release and apply what you've learned since you started to the next project. But if you're just trying to hobby, then sure, just keep repeating everything until everything's to your satisfaction. The trick is to determine when to get works released and when to just hobby.

Usually, what I do is hobby until I've improved my skills to the basic industry standard for my genre and then work on releasing. Once my skills are decent compared to the other works with similar resources behind them, it's time to keep moving forward without looking back until the work's done and then apply what I've learned to the next project.

[Obscura]

It's such a long, tough road when it comes to writing that I believe you should do (and finish) the story you are most passionate about.

If they are equally interesting to you, knock out the smaller one first.

I know certain writers who can work on multiple projects simultaneously, but they are an extremely rare breed. The rest of us will never get anything done if we keep going from project to project without completing one.

A possible conclusion is that you just aren't that excited about any of those projects as much as you could be. You're still waiting for that one big, thrilling idea to grab a hold of you and not let go. In which case, my suggestion is the same: knock out the smaller project first.

Good luck!

[nyaatrap]

If you want to improve your skills efficiently, get his advice. There is nothing good to keep your ideas dearly. You should use them soon, or in other word, sacrifice them for yourself.

[Camille]

If you are happy with the way things are going, then more power to you. But for what it's worth, I think your friend is right. I spent years making those same kinds of excuses, too, and ended up with a bunch of unfinished stories and nothing real to show after years of hard work.

If you are writing for writing's sake and don't care much about sharing your stories and becoming a professional, then it doesn't much matter whether you finish or not. You should do what feels right for you. For me personally, I think that actually finishing projects is a great learning experience. I've only really started finishing large (as in above 15k words) writing projects since working with Ren'Py and it's just been one great experience after another. Like Papillon said, too, there are some things you can only learn after finishing.

[LVUER]

I agree with him. And I also read from lots of article by professionals and apparently they are agree with him too. Just finish it before moving on to other, it will give you more experience than you constantly creating new things or re-creating an old one just because you think you're better now (you will always be better than yesterday anyway).

If you always find "This one is long but the new one is shorter" then start creating a short one starting from now on, and keep it short (no expanding it, at least make the "pilot" episode).

Besides, before you go on making a long one, you should create lots of short one. This is from comic (I'm also from comic background before moving to VN) but I think it applies to game and animation/film too.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Your friend is right. Here's the thing, you will ALWAYS SUCK compared to your future self.

I've always done best working in restraints and time restrictions. Most great works from creators are the same way - something about a "crunch" improves quality usually. Mary Shelly's most famous book is the one she spent the least time on. Tolkien's most readable and enjoyable novel is the one he completed quickly for his son with an editor. Necessity is the mother of invention, and invention is often a brilliant spark to any endeavor. Having decades, total creative control, and vast sums of money certainly didn't improve Lucas, Spielberg, or many other directors' movies.

As other people have pointed out, you need to finish your projects to practice all the unique stuff that comes at the end of a project. Otherwise, you'll only be good at the beginning and middle parts of projects, and then you are right back in the same boat!

And FYI, artist secret for you, you will never be completely satisfied with your creative endeavors. If you were, you would stop! You would have achieved perfection with no reason to go on. Being an artist is a pursuit of a perfect image, theme, or story, that will never happen.

[Anna]

Huh, this sounds familiar to me, it's what my coder/editor is always telling me. She always says "Focus on the project we're working on now", because if we don't, we will lose interest in it because of the other projects. And when you lose interest, it's pretty hard to get it back when your new shiny project seems much more fun to do. Most of the time the reasons why the other projects seem cooler to do, is because they're new and not yet in the actual work stage.

Either way, I would listen to your friend and just try to focus on one project first. No-one is expecting you to be perfect in your first or even second project. Take those projects, finish them and learn by doing that.

What I do to restrain myself is write the ideas I have down, and then ditch them in an 'ideas' folder somewhere on my computer where I can't see it. I have a new idea every week and am a perfectionist, so I need to remind myself what my priorities are. Besides, working on three projects at the same time would drive me mad (especially during writing).

Last but not least, keep in mind that even a very short visual novel takes a ton of work to do (look at NaNoRenO), so don't underestimate it by thinking you can easily finish a project in between.

[nyaatrap]

You should make a deadline. When I started making my first game 6 months ago, I decided I should done in an half year. I didn't know about ren'py nor story writing at that time (I was only able to draw), but I made it in time. This half year gave me huge experience. The obvious reason why I could complete my first game without hiatus is I made a deadline.

[SusanTheCat]

I just realized that all the projects I've finished were because I had a deadline.

Susan

[nyaatrap]

Can I say more practical but a bit off-topic thing?
About the length of a deadline, it should be 3 months the shortest, 1 year at the longest.
One month is just insane. It may good for just a writing, but not enough to complete a whole game (I honestly think Nanoreno is just suggesting half-assed work).
About more than 1 year project.. it depends on your skill. If you are professional, or you've done something already, it's O.K. But other than that, I hardly believe people who is spending more than one year on a first project. I just think he/she has something critical failure on proceeding works. At least, I can say he/she has no chance to become a professional.