Writing the first draft faster? An issue with choices

[inkbrush]

Hello, lemmasoftians!

I'm the type of writer who likes to finish writing the first draft as fast as possible. A speed writer, if you will. When I write stories, I tend to write a few thousand words every day. But, I've noticed that my word count heavily slows down when I work on interactive stories or visual novels where there are many choices involved. Just when I'm getting into the flow of writing, I get to a branching option, and whether it's a small or big branch, I always dramatically slow down with how fast I write when I get to writing an option. My guess for this would be because you have to use more logic while writing options since you have to figure out where everything connects again and making sure that every choice is equal to each other (and that there's not a better choice--unless you're going for that).

So, my question is, how can I help to pick my speed back up when writing choices? Should I maybe write through a single choice and continue the story in a more linear fashion until I get a word count that I'm satisfied with, and then go back and add in the other choices and figure out how to branch everything and how to bring it back together? or is there an easier way to go about doing this?

[Katy133]

Maybe try using a writing program that would help you visualise the different branches more easily. Like Twine. That way, you can jump around between branches quickly.

I've also found it to be easier to write a basic plot summary/skeleton for each scene before getting into dialogue or details.

[ketskari]

Should I maybe write through a single choice and continue the story in a more linear fashion until I get a word count that I'm satisfied with, and then go back and add in the other choices and figure out how to branch everything and how to bring it back together?

About what I do. Although I would map out what choices you want ahead of time, otherwise a scene might fall into the trap of feeling like the choices are just added in as an afterthought. I usually do a few passes. One each for the choices, and sometimes an extra one for adding variations to the text based on variables.