How do you write a story?

[Ophelia]

Hey,

I'm not talking about how you go about actually creating a story but rather the act of writing down the story.
I'm just starting to work on a project and I feel a bit (read: extremely) disorganized and don't exactly how to plan my story and how to actually write it out.
I've looked at Freeplane and yWriter and want to take a look at Twine, but none of them really seem like what I want. Freeplane is nice to put down and organize rough ideas and information, yWriter is nice for writing the story itself with its chapters and scenes and characters and locations and short summaries of the scenes and everything, but that still wouldn't actually help me with working on all the choices and branches and variables and everything. Just writing everything straight into Ren'Py would result in a big, confusing mess for myself, I think.

So, how are you experienced VN Makers actually writing and planing your story?

[GhostWriter37]

I'm no expert, but I think Twine could be a good tool for you. I look at is as something of a slimmed down version of renpy. You can look at it as giving you the bare bones of your story, that way you can get a "bird's eye view" of how things go and how the paths travel and intertwine and since it is text based, you can write however much or however little you feel comfortable with to get things organized to your satisfaction.

But, then again, this is one of those places where there is no wrong answer and what works for one may not work for another. Hope I was of some help.

[OokamiKasumi]

...how are you experienced VN Makers actually writing and planing your story?

Have you considered this option?
-- Planning the Multi-path / Branching Plot Game

[Ophelia]

I'm no expert, but I think Twine could be a good tool for you. I look at is as something of a slimmed down version of renpy. You can look at it as giving you the bare bones of your story, that way you can get a "bird's eye view" of how things go and how the paths travel and intertwine and since it is text based, you can write however much or however little you feel comfortable with to get things organized to your satisfaction.

But, then again, this is one of those places where there is no wrong answer and what works for one may not work for another. Hope I was of some help.

You're right!
I finally got around checking out Twine and it is indeed pretty neat to get the rough story planning done!
But I guess I will use all three - freeplane for an overview of the informtion, twine for planning and ywriter for actually writing. (:

Have you considered this option?
-- Planning the Multi-path / Branching Plot Game

Yes, I already saw this and it helped me a lot, thank you!
I also used the "GamePlan" you uploaded, otherwise I would have been lost when trying to use freeplane, thanks. (:

And I just reread that again (I already read it last year and took only a quick look at it recently) and it made me realize that I haven't thought about a pretty major plothole at all! Guess I'm gonna do some thinking now.

[SHiNKiROU]

My programming course it's for all science students because designing programs is relevant to designing stories and structuring arguments.

Try to divide your story to units, and in each unit, say what should happen before (guide to order your scenes), and what should have happened in the end (the postconditions: the scene must make X know about Y and Z must happen, and a choice must be made, etc.)

In programming, there is testing, and testing in writing is listing potential plot holes.

I'm using WikidPad. I divide the story to Outline, Ideas and Script. The Outline outlines the story in macro structure, and I create wiki links to outlines of specific scenes.
Ideas are fragments of outlines to be transferred to the outline.

I also made a separate page about variables and endings, and how the variables an change.

[Ophelia]

.... and what should have happened in the end (the postconditions: the scene must make X know about Y and Z must happen, and a choice must be made, etc.)

That is a really good tip! I'm definitely gonna try to use this!

[Starshine]

Just writing everything straight into Ren'Py would result in a big, confusing mess for myself, I think.
[/quote]

Me to, i usually write things in Word, before pasting it into anything to check if i have wrote everything correct. I suppose recruiting people to work in a group would help you along, the only problem is finding people who have alot of time to spare. You wouldn't believe how many talented writers there are out there. Some people are amazing at proof reading.