Successful padding

[Victoria Jennings]

So I have my general, overarching plot, and a hazy idea of how my game will actually function.

What I don't have is padding. And while I normally hate the concept of padding, I'll admit that when it's done right, it's one of the main contributors to the amount of fun I have with games. Again, only when done right. When it's just padding for the sake of padding, and there's not much effort put into actually making the added length worth playing, I'd choose a shorter, quality game any day.

And that is exactly why I have come to consult the writing gurus of Lemma Soft Forums; any advice you have to offer to a novice content designer and writer? How to go from point A to point Z without skipping over any letters?

EDIT: Apparently, my definition of padding was incorrect from the offset, so to clear things up, by padding, I mean something more along the lines of event-planning, the stuff that happens along the way that are subtle, but important to the progression of the plot.

[FatUnicornGames]

Really all padding needs to do is serve a purpose. Does it supplement your story? Is it funny? Is it helping to develop the characters? If there is too much padding and too much of it is pointless, the audience stops trusting you as an author capable of moving the story along. This can happen in long running TV shows a lot.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Really all padding needs to do is serve a purpose.

If it serves a purpose, it isn't padding.

Padding by its very nature is just that - fluff, soft and ethereal without any substance.

Padding (noun): Superfluous material in a book, speech, etc., introduced in order to make it reach a desired length.
Superfluous (adjective): not needed; marked by wastefullness

Padding does not make for good story telling. I can tell you right now, padding is the number one reason I think so many VNs, professional or otherwise, suck. Padding is purposefully slowing the plot down. In VNs, this means slowing down an already glacial medium. It destroys pacing. It runs counter to every facet of good story telling. It is the reason most television shows start to suck - when they've run out of A plot and start filling episodes with increasing padding to stretch out a premise that is running out of ideas.

It is important to understand what padding IS. A character going into sweats and freaking out over a test, when the test isn't important to the plot, is padding. A character going into sweats and freaking out over a test, when the test IS important to the plot, is not padding. A character going into sweats and freaking out over a test, failing the test, and then being faced with a similar event relying on remaining calm to resolve a major plot point is GOOD plotting. A.k.a. any scene loading Chekov's Gun is not padding, nor is any scene that actually advances the A or B plots, anything else is.

[Victoria Jennings]

All right then, I suppose I wasn't clear on the actual definition of padding. My main point is that while I can lay down a foundation pretty well, I'm not good at planning out individual events that aren't directly and obviously relevant to the foundation. For example, I might know that the story is about a heroine that saves the world, and by the end, she does so after gaining a motivational boost in the form of a lover, but after she leaves the first city, I have no clue where she'll go, or how the sequence of events will lead to the most central plot points. I guess that just takes practice, but I'm wondering if anyone with more experience than I has techniques they wouldn't mind sharing.

[Destiny]

Padding can also help with the athmosphere.
Thats why I find it especially important in games where a desaster happens after a while.
Make the player feel all nice and cozy and "fallen in fluff" to pull them out and throw them in the broken situation that issues.
In "unspectacular" games it's also often a nice add to show what a normal day for the MC consists of.

Except from that:
-> LateWhiteRabbit says it all

[FatUnicornGames]

Ok, there was a misunderstanding about what padding means. What I said about filling out your story still stands.

[J. Datie]

Of course, even if you're not advancing the plot, every scene still needs a purpose. Here's a list of things a scene can do:

* Advance story - The scene must move the story forward. This could mean introducing a problem or making a problem worse for the characters.
* Show conflict - The conflict could be between two characters, a character and nature, a character and time, and so on.
* Introduce character - The reader needs to meet each character at some point. A careful writer does not introduce too many characters in one scene. This could confuse the reader.
* Develop character - Along with introducing a character, a writer can use a scene to show the character's good and bad points.
* Create suspense - Suspense keeps the reader's interest going, perhaps more than any other element of fiction
* Give information - The writer can weave information into a scene so the reader knows the needed background of the story.
* Create atmosphere - Using conventions such as setting, weather, and time, the writer can create a certain mood in a scene.
* Develop theme - A piece of fiction should have a theme. Each scene should bring out the theme to the reader.

Each scene should do at least one of those things. Also, I have no idea where I stole this list from.

[AnthonyHJ]

Okay... Given that this is my day-job and I lecture on this...

My technique is to take the main plot points and work out how you get from A to B, usually as a set of bullet-points. After that, I work out B to C and so on until I have an idea of the logical flow. In a branching novel, I suppose you have to work out how to go from A to B and then from A to C, as needed. This, I do on paper.

In any case, I would then take those sub-headings as stepping stones and write like a dot-to-dot. Instead of trying to pad out A to B, how you go from "new in town" to "first date", I would be looking at how to go from A.1 to A.2, "new in town" to "meet girl", and then work out A.2 to A.3, "meet girl" to "say hello", instead.

Work out the whole plot first though. If you know that some of the threads join up again (e.g. you can insult some, but you can later on apologise to get back into their storyline) then you need to write the plot and dialogue in such a way that it works for both cases. (or at least that you can identify the points where you choose one of two lines depending on the earlier choices)

So, I suppose you want this kind of structure... (I'd have liked nested lists, but they seem not to work right)

* Act 1 (first major event)
* * Scene 1 (first sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * Scene 2 (second sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* Act 2 (second major event)
* * Scene 1 (first sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * Scene 2 (second sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* Act 3 (second major event)
* * Scene 1 (first sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * Scene 2 (second sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* Act 4 (second major event)
* * Scene 1 (first sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * Scene 2 (second sub-event)
* * * Conversation 1 (first time you talk or have internal monologue)
* * * Conversation 2 (second time you talk or have internal monologue)