Tumgik
#I’ll explain more coherently in a standalone post
vbyg · 3 years
Text
Tumblr media
“Apologies, Lord Philza, we should have warned you.
All bodies react differently to the Elytra bond.”
1K notes · View notes
Note
Hey Kitty, due to your stories I've started to seek out Benny & Brax stories. So far, I've simply picked a few boxsets (Legion and New Frontiers) where I spotted the fabulous Miles Richardson on the cover. I was wondering, is there a better way to go about this? Do you have any recommendations and/or a listening order you would suggest? Thanks in advance and I hope your wrist is getting better :)
Legion is... a bit of a tricky place to start in, all things considered. It’s kind of like throwing yourself in at the deep end, because it somewhat relies on knowledge of the previous few box sets (Epoch and Road Trip) and the characters that were introduced in those. Those, in turn, follow off the end of the Collection stories, but to be honest if you just want to jump in at the box sets that’s perfectly fine - Epoch’s made to kind of be the ‘jumping-on’ point. All you have to know is that at the beginning of Epoch, the universe has been sort of ‘reset’ and Benny’s looking for her son, Peter, who was lost in the resulting chaos. The rest kind of explains itself.
Brax isn’t in Epoch or Road Trip, but Ruth is and Ruth’s a darling, and there’s some pretty good stories in both of them all things considered, so!
EDIT: OH OH GOSH PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS BIT IT’S SO IMPORTANT all of the Benny stories from Epoch to Missing Persons are available for free on Spotify!!! like, completely free, no strings attached and in fact there’s a lot of Big Finish stories legally free to stream via Spotify, here’s a full list
Two alternate points to jump into the Benny stories, since you’re looking for benny-brax dynamics:
1) The Virgin books. There’s plenty of places to find these online (since the original publishers don’t get revenue from it, it’s generally considered Okay to download them, although I’m sure you can find physical copies if you searched for a while).
Benny and Brax first meet in Theatre of War, which is part of the VNA Doctor Who books (Benny’s still Seven’s companion, Ace is also there) and also is honestly a really really great book. There’s also a Big Finish adaptation of this story if you prefer that!! it’s a bit different to the book but still a really good spin on it. This one’s pretty much standalone.
Brax’s next cameo is in Happy Endings, and it’s very very brief although rather sweet. Happy Endings is the Benny Gets Married To Jason book and it’s honestly genuinely just a lot of pointless fluff.
...and then he comes back in the Benny solo books! These are a mixed bag but Dellah!Era Benny is a lot of fun and a particular favorite of mine. All you need to know (if you skipped the rest of the VNAs) is that Benny has retired as the Doctor’s companion, got a depressing divorce with Jason (f in the chat) and is now working as a Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar’s University.
Dragon’s Wrath is where they meet for the first time - good good book! Their dynamic is peak here. 
Brax does show up in a few other books but I can’t for the life of me recall a lot of them. I’ve still got to sit down and read through all of them in order some day, there’s a coherent overarching plot and everything. Where Angels Fear is definitely one where Brax shows up, uh. someone else help. it’s so late
anyway anyway Tears of the Oracle - best book. i first read it way WAY out of context and i still loved it. they’re best friends and it makes me sob every time. ‘she’s like family’
anyway yeah, Bernice Summerfield New Adventures - find a zip file of them somewhere and read them, they’re p good! and this is the era that Sepelio is set in, in case you didn’t realize this (i know at least one person didn’t)
2) The Collection-era audios (and tie-in books). Okay, I’ll be honest, I haven’t listened to this particular era in... nearly five years. And it’s a headache to get your head around, because some of the audios are closely interlinked with the books, and the books are hell to find, and there’s some Very Iffy Content for some of the stories and. I know y’all come to me for Benny Advice a lot but my memory’s so dreadful. half the time when writing i just operate on gut instinct for canon events and rely on the fact that this fandom’s so small nobody’s going to call me out on being ridiculous. Or I can also blame it on timeline shenanigans.
can... can someone jump in and give a guide to the collection-era stories and which ones to listen to/read for Plot Purposes? I know someone with knowledge is out there. it’s honestly an amazing story arc, I just wish I had the time to lay everything out properly.
The following, however, are pretty standalone and feature Brax heavily.
The Extinction Event - first audio ft. Brax. nothing especially special but it does establish some of the basework for some of his later Questionable Stuff.
The Mirror Effect - delightfully creepy, beautifully effective characterization, benny & brax & adrien & jason trapped in a creepy haunted mirror location and trying to get out. 
The Crystal of Cantus - maybe not entirely standalone BUT how can i not put this one down. very funny and very horrifying. benny and jason and brax go on a fun field trip and find out the True Meaning Of Cybermen. benny gains a fuckton of trauma.
...and then after Crystal everything gets plotty and complicated. not that it wasn’t before, but... oh well.
There’s also some books/short story anthologies in this era that are standalone/don’t require much context. Their names all escape me. Once again, help?
BONUS: Many Happy Returns - the Benny anniversary story which is more like a framing device for a fuckton of other stories set within pretty much every era. Cameos from everyone. Delightful and heartwrenching. Really really good, but maybe get some basis in various parts of canon before you check it out. Or maybe check it out and then start jumping around to find bits that interest you? I don’t know. I went through everything in painstaking chronological order from the tender age of 14 and now here I am, writing gory cannibal fanfiction about an emotionally repressed theatre professor and his disaster archaeology best friend.
...anyway, hopefully this helps at least somewhat! It’s past midnight and i’m wracking my brains as I try to remember what bits of an extremely extensive canon I enjoyed the most. let me know if there’s anything you need clarification on, I’m aware this is a bit of a disaster post.
9 notes · View notes
poipoi1912 · 6 years
Note
As a fan of your writing (I’ve read all your barisi fics several times over), I’m always reading your fic update posts and tags. If you don’t mind me asking (and apologies if you’ve asked this before) but what is your fic writing process like?
First ofall, thank you so much! I appreciate your message, and I’m happy you enjoy myfics. I have to say, as a latecomer to writing, it’s still so heartwarming tosee others having this reaction to my stories, because I spent so many years beinga reader and having these exact reactions to other people’s stories. It’s just…lovely. So thank you.
As for mywriting process, well, it could use some improvement, clearly D:
I wouldbreak it down into two distinct categories:
When I’m Struggling
If I’mfeeling uninspired of blocked, I do one of two things:
Open up arandom document and start writing nonsense, usually dialogue-only, until a linejumps at me and I think “this is worth building a story around,” if that makessense. Lines of dialogue are the driving force of my stories, more than plot. Atleast when it comes to my standalone stories/episode tags.
Or,
Stopwriting. Take a break, go outside, see friends, binge a random show, watch amovie, read a book or a fic from another fandom. Any one of those things cangive me inspiration, because Barisi is always in the back of my mind. It mighttake a while, but it’ll come. I actually find that I’m particularly energizedafter a break, so I’ve mostly stopped feeling guilty and now I simply embrace these periodsof inactivity. Instead of blaming myself and thinking I’m letting you all down,I focus on the fact I’ll feel refreshed and more creative when I return.
When I’m On A Roll
Oh boy. Wheredo I start?
Episode Tags
When itcomes to my episode tags, or even my shorter standalone stories, I do what Idescribed above, even when I’m not blocked. I just write dialogue, and I tryto come up with a vague setting (Barba’s office, the precinct, a bar, Sonny’splace, etc). That’s all I start with. Words and a place. I write whatever comesto mind, even skipping scenes and moving to the next setting, and writing evenmore dialogue. That’s always the skeleton of my shorter stories.
As I write,as the lines just pop in my head, I tend to find the “purpose” of the story,and that’s also when I pick the POV, depending on that purpose. Maybe it’s Barbarealizing his feelings, maybe it’s Sonny expressing his feelings, maybe they’realready together but they take the next step, maybe one of them needs toprocess a painful experience related to a case, maybe they both need toexplain. Whatever it is, it stems from the dialogue, and I never have it when Istart writing. It eventually manifests itself, lol.
After I’mdone with my long long dialogue bits,I go back and fill in the blanks. I fuss over the opening, every time, and Itry to keep it dynamic (it’s usually a line, in fact). I want it to beeye-catching and to immediately grab you and transport you into the story, evenas you’re missing vital pieces of information (like the setting, which I tendto reveal later on). Speaking of the setting, at this stage I also sketch outthe physical details, like what they’re wearing (coats if they’re outdoors,just shirts and vests if they’re indoors, rolled up sleeves if they’re at abar, etc), or what they’re doing (are they sitting? Standing? Walkingtogether?), so I can make the story more illustrative.
Then, I goover what I have but this time I focus on describing Sonny and Rafael’sfeelings and expressions, in-between all that dialogue. Their smiles, theirfrowns, their sighs. I expand on the feelings (or inner thoughts) of the POVcharacter, and I describe the facial expressions of the other character, as thePOV character perceives them (which could lead to misunderstandings, or lovely realizations).I find that makes the dialogue a little more vibrant. I don’t want you to justhear their voices, I want you to see their faces as they speak.
Then, I goover the whole thing again and add context. Backstory. Feels. Angst. Dependingon the scenario (an established relationship, a first time, pre-slash, etc), Ialter the tone of the expository paragraphs to better match the overall purposeof the story, and the vibe between Sonny and Rafael in that particular moment in time.Sometimes I’ll add fictional flashbacks, sometimes I’ll add canon references whichbring out new feelings, sometimes I’ll let my POV character go off on atangent. I find that enriches the story, having a better grip on the maincharacter and their state of mind, as well as having a better handle on the connectionbetween the main pairing.
Then, I goover the story again, and I try tofind key phrases to repeat/sprinkle throughout. I love overusing repetition tohighlight emotion. Either because the POV character is stuck on a particular thought,or because they’re single-minded about a particular goal (like love). I try touse repetition to draw out an emotional response from you as well, so you canall feel the exact same thing the POV character does. To them, it’s a randomthought they can’t get out of their heads, and to you it’s a literary device tobetter describe their obsession.
Then, about2 minutes before I post a story, I come up with the ending. I never even botheranymore, I just use a placeholder ending because I know I’ll change it when I’mdone. My endings tend to be a little more, for lack of a better word, poetic (ifnot pretentious lol, which kinda is a better word). I just start typing and letit happen. Whatever comes out, structure and proper syntax be damned. That said, I do always try to leave my stories withan ending-slash-beginning. Not exactly open-ended, but open. Opening a door tothe future, if you will, so you can all imagine what happens next.
Tosummarize: I write the dialogue first, then I find the angle and pick a POV,then I fill in the blanks with descriptions of emotions and expressions andplaces, then I fill in the backstory, and then I write a random emotionalending using repetition, my favorite trope :D
Longer Stories
Oooooh boy.
This iswhere the trouble starts.
I writenotes. Notes upon notes upon notes. Usually on my phone, because inspirationtends to strike when I’m on the go. I tell myself “for the next 2 weeks, I’ll justwrite down anything that comes to mind about this particular story.” It doesn’thave to be connected or even coherent. Anything goes. Sometimes I’ll write acrisp 3K in one sitting, sometimes I’ll come up with a single line of dialogue,sometimes I’ll come up with a rough draft for a scene, sometimes I’ll come upwith the actual ending, sometimes I’ll just write dialogue for 3 days straight,sometimes I’ll come up with a plot idea.
See, thelonger stories need to have a plot. And plot twists. The purpose can’t just bean emotion. It needs to be something bigger, a change in the characters’ lives,or careers, or relationships. It needs to have multiple settings, and (sort of)equal parts dialogue and prose, and it needs to be more intricate and interesting throughout,so it doesn’t drag. And, if it’s part of a series, it needs to reference theprevious parts and feel like a natural continuation, both in terms of thecharacterization and the plot. All of that means that longer stories are harderto write.
But it alsomeans that I have more leeway to come up with different and new ideas, andincorporate more of my favorite tropes, and go deeper into characterization ina way only a longer story would allow, and build an actual world, a smalluniverse with its own rules, a universe in which I have to be just as loyal toSVU canon as I have to be loyal to my own versions of these characters, so Ithink the good outweighs the bad :D
Aaaanyway,after I have my notes (which are usually around 20/30K, no lie), I take a fewdays to copy-paste them into one huge document. Then, I arrange themchronologically. Roughly, at first, I try to put them in order, as they would logicallyoccur (for instance, if I’m writing, say, a wedding fic, I put the announcementfirst, and the rehearsal dinner later, and the honeymoon even later, etc, andthis is all hypothetical of course). That gives me a basic outline of thestory.
Using thatoutline, I again fill in the blanks. I separate the notes intosections-slash-scenes, and I find the setting for each scene. I find ways toconnect these scenes, either with a fun segue or just with a fade to black lol,so the entire story is coherent. I might have to rearrange something, or even chuck it to the “Unsorted” section in the end, if I can’t figure it out right then. At this point,I also re-read the entirety of my notes and do little edits/touch-ups, by adding moredialogue, or putting a new character in a previously written scene, etc etc.
Once I’mdone, I have a very detailed and specific outline.
And then Istare at that outline for like 2 months without writing a single thing :D
That’s thescary part. Actually writing the story. A story for which I have thousands uponthousands of notes. A story whose ending I’ve already written. And it is not easy,lol.
Again, I tend to fuss over the opening, to the point of debilitating uncertainty. After that, I might get going and write several thousands of words, butI also might get stuck and write nothing for weeks. At that point, I’ll usuallyskip a part/scene, and write the next thing that comes easily to me, just toget the ball rolling. Then, after I feel a little more inspired, I might goback and complete what I missed.
I have aterrible habit of re-reading and editing what I already wrote about a million times,which unnecessarily lengthens the entire process (and sometimes even preventsme from writing anything new), but I lie to myself and pretend that’s okay,because when I’m done with a story I am DONE. I don’t have to do an intensere-read/edit of the whole thing because I’ve already done it, in smallerincrements. I just do a final read-through and change a word or three. So that’sgood (no it’s not).
To summarize: NOTESSSSSSS
Seriously though, at best, I’llsit down and give in and let my inspiration guide me. I’ll just write and writeand write, mostly dialogue (because the rest can be added later), until I havesomething real I can use. Or, I’ll come up with a smaller outline for a scene,hitting specific “marks” until I get it where I want it. That’s also useful,because the next day I can just add more details and lines and make it work.
At worst(at worst when I’m still inspired, I mean, because the literal worst is “nowriting at all”), I’ll re-read the last 5K I wrote, and I’ll keep tweaking it,and I’ll get stuck on a particular paragraph for like 2 hours, and then I’llhave no more time to write and I’ll be left with nothing more than a needless rewrite ofthe work I did in the previous 4 days :D
Eventually(no but eventuallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, like 2 years later) I tend to get really caughtup in the story and it begins to consume me and I feel compelled to finish it.For you all, but also for my own sanity. So I sit down and devote myself to itand do nothing else until it’s done.
And then Ipost the story and sleep for 3 days.
So yeah.
In Conclusion
It can be astruggle. And that’s without taking real life into account. There are wholeweeks when I’m not sleeping well, and I’m too busy, and writing gives me aheadache. And then there are weeks when I’m totally stressed and the only thingthat brings me joy is writing. There’s no explanation or reason. Some days I’ll wake up and start typing ideas on my phone before I’ve even really opened my eyes, and some days I’ll procrastinate and leave a word document open for 2 hours with nothing to show for it.
Generally I try to go with the flow, and only push myself when a breakthrough is in sight, if that makes sense, otherwise my writing can feel forced. I’m also not afraid to totally discard some stories, because I don’t want to write for the sake of writing. I want each little story to have a reason to exist, at least in my head. I also tend to allow myself some periods ofinactivity no shit lol, and I use them to recharge (creatively but also physically).
But Ialways come back
15 notes · View notes
simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media
New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/how-to-write-a-series-for-your-blog-and-why-youll-want-to/
How to Write a Series for Your Blog (and Why You’ll Want To)
The post How to Write a Series for Your Blog (and Why You’ll Want To) appeared first on ProBlogger.
Have you ever written a series of posts for your blog – a set of posts that are deliberately linked together?
If you haven’t, I hope I can convince you to give it a try.
Some bloggers feel writing a series of posts is more daunting than writing individual posts. But it’s often easier to come up with ideas for a ten-post series than for ten standalone posts.
Here at ProBlogger we’ve run a number of series over the years, including 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which I’ll be coming back to later in this post.
So why should you write a series of posts instead of just individual posts?
How a Series of Posts Could Boost Your Blog
Writing a series of posts, even a short one, can be useful. In particular, it gives you the opportunity to:
Dig deep into a particular topic, showcasing your expertise. Encourage readers to keep coming back for more. Create plenty of internal links between your posts (good for both SEO and encouraging readers to dig deeper into your site). Build a comprehensive piece of content readers can bookmark, share, and keep coming back to (especially if you have an introduction post or an index of posts).
Even if your blog is new, you can still run a series. In fact, it can be a great way to get some solid cornerstone content up there early on.
Two Different Approaches to Running Your Series: Which is Right for You?
When you look at a series of posts on the blogs you read, you’ll probably find they fall into one of two categories:
Type #1: Time-Limited Series of Posts
This type of series runs for a set period of time, and every post published on the blog during that time is (usually) part of the series.
For instance, a three-part series of linked posts may appear on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And on the following week, the blogger goes back to standalone posts.
We’ve done this on ProBlogger with ‘Theme Weeks’ such as Creating Products Week — a series of five blog posts on how to create products for your audience.
This approach works well if you want to create cornerstone content, or build up a piece of series content you might use later for an ebook or even the basis of a course. (More on that later.)
Type #2: Ongoing, Regular Series of Posts
This type of series can run indefinitely, with posts appearing on a specific day of the week or month, or even at a particular point in the year. And standalone posts appear as normal between installments of the series.
The series might look like:
A roundup of news/posts in your niche each Friday. (We used to do this in our “Reading Roundups”.) An ongoing monthly series on the first Tuesday of each month. For example, if you blog about healthy eating, you might publish a new recipe at the start of each month. An annual review of your progress in your niche each December or January.
If you want to build a sense of consistency and community on your blog, this can be a good type of series to use. It can also help you beat blogger’s block, as it gives you specific things to blog about. (Well, at least some of the time.)
Coming Up With a Great Idea for a Blog Post Series
It can be tough enough coming up with an idea for one blog post. So how do you come up with a great idea for a series?
For a fixed series with a limited number of posts, you might look for:
A topic that you’ve already covered, but not in much depth. A series could give you the chance to really dig into the topic and examine different aspects of it. We did this on ProBlogger last year with a series on guest posting. Beginner-friendly topics that would make a good introduction to your blog or niche. The posts themselves could all be on different topics, but you can link them together by having them aimed very much at beginners.
For a regular, ongoing series, you might look for:
Something you could blog about pretty much indefinitely. It could be the week’s news in your niche, your monthly results from affiliate marketing, or common mistakes you see beginners making in your field. A particular style of posts. You could have a weekly “Q&A” like Trent Hamm’s “Reader Mailbag” on his blog The Simple Dollar, or a “monthly motivation” post where you collect together inspiring quotes.
If you’ve got several ideas and aren’t which would work best, why not ask some other bloggers for input? (If you don’t know many other bloggers yet, the ProBlogger Facebook group is a great place to meet some.)
Structuring a Series of Blog Posts
Hopefully, you already feel confident about structuring individual blog posts. If not (or you need a quick refresher), check out these posts from our subject matter expert Ali Luke:
How to Plan Your Blog Post from Start to Finish 5 Critical Elements You Need to Check Off for Every Blog Post
But when you’re structuring a series, you also have to make structural decisions about:
The series as a whole. It will need a beginning and, if it isn’t an ongoing series, an end. These might be short sections of a post, or posts in their own right (for a long series). For instance, you might write a post to introduce the series and explain what’s coming. You can then update this post with links to the different parts of the series. The individual posts within the series. How can you structure these so they ‘match’ as parts of a coherent whole? You could: use a specific type of image, or brand your images in a particular way title the posts consistently have a particular format for each post, such as a quick recap at the start and a task or assignment at the end. Interlinking the Posts in Your Series
It’s crucial to link the parts of your series together so readers can easily navigate between them. Remember, not everyone will read your series as you publish it.
Some readers will be busy, and will want to catch up with the whole series later. But many more (hopefully) will come to your series in future weeks and months through search engines or social media.
You can interlink posts in any number of ways. Here are some you can try. (You may even want to use two or three in each post.)
Create a tag or category for the series, which is what we did with our guest posting series. Readers can then get all the parts of the series by clicking that tag/category name. If you’re running an ongoing series of weekly/monthly posts, this is probably the best way to organise it. Put a link at the top of each post leading to the previous part(s), so readers can easily go back to any posts they missed. Create a page or post with links to every post in the series. You can do this before you run the series and update it as you publish each part, or do it retrospectively. Put links at the bottom of each post leading to the next part, so readers can easily go through the series. (Obviously, you’ll need to go back and add these in once you’ve published the later parts.) Add links to the body of the post whenever you mention a topic you’ve already written about in the series. (You can also go back to earlier posts and link them to later posts in the series.) This saves you having to repeat yourself a lot, and makes it easy for readers to find the information they need at any given point.
An example of links to all the posts in the series at the bottom of the post
However you choose to link your posts together, make sure you’re consistent. And remember to check back after finishing the series to see if there are opportunities to work in some extra links.
Taking Your Blog Post Series Further
Once you’ve completed a series, or have been writing an ongoing series for a while, it’s worth considering whether you can repurpose your series into something else.
That might mean:
Bringing your posts together as a free ebook, perhaps with some bonus content. For instance, if you’ve published ten monthly recipes on your blog, you could put those recipes into an ebook and add five extra recipes you haven’t published. Publishing your posts as a product, such as a paid-for ebook or even an ecourse. (31 Days to Build a Better Blog went from a series of posts to an ebook, and this year we’ve turned it into a course.)
You might also use a short series as the inspiration for a longer one, or an ongoing series as an opportunity to get readers involved on your blog.
I’d love to hear how you’re using a post series, or what ideas you have for using them in the future. Leave a comment below to share your thoughts with us.
  Photo Credit: JESHOOTS.COM
The post How to Write a Series for Your Blog (and Why You’ll Want To) appeared first on ProBlogger.
Read more: problogger.com
0 notes
rastagong-tearoom · 6 years
Text
Serving of Tea #3: What’s an epistolary VN anyway?
Hello everyone,
Welcome to the tearoom again! Please enjoy today’s serving, I hope it will warm you up in this cold time!
This serving should have been offered several weeks ago already, but current real-life circumstances haven’t left me with much time to do VN related work.    (Well, in truth, I could have found the time somehow, but… Sometimes it’s wiser to actually relax during free time, instead of spending it on more side work.)
Anyway, here are the latest developments, even though they’re almost a month old now!
I’ve done a small share of scripting on Sylvan Disappearance. The end is not any near yet, but I would say it is in sight? And that’s very uplifting to me.
Though scripting is becoming easier and easier, I’m still trying to pace myself, and not to rush through the process. I'm paying more and more attention to the general atmosphere and coherence of the story, since I’ve got to a point where it all starts to come together. This mostly means that I constantly worry that no scene is any good in the end. It’s not the final editing pass yet, but I feel like the moment to start polishing the edges has come!
It is not on scripting that I spent most of my time, though, but rather on the UI and on the epistolary phase of the story!
I had put off working on both for a long, long while.
The user interface
The UI is usually held to be to be a key part of the presentation of a VN. It can easily set the mood from the very title screen. There’s only one problem: I’m not convinced by the utility of polishing the user interface.
I obviously appreciate beautiful and expressive interfaces as much as anyone, and certain key screens like the textbox, the game menu and the title screen do need to be expressive. However, I worry about the fact that highly polished UIs are becoming a minimum requirement for all visual novels, even free ones. More broadly, I think the increasingly high production values of indie VNs and the drive to “polish” can restrict the range of creative expression in the medium. (You may have seen me ranting about this on another social network. I think I’ll just write another blog post focused on this topic next time.)
But anyway, as of now, customising the UI of a VN matters a great deal, so I finally took some time to improve the UI, and I’m reasonably satisfied with the end result!
I particularly spent time on reworking the splashscreen (not pictured here), and I think you’ll like it!
The title screen and the game menu were already pretty much done, but I'm finally satisfied with them.
The epistolary component
The epistolary component of the story is, well, very much at the core of Sylvan Disappearance. “This is going to be an epistolary visual novel” was among the first things I thought of for this project. When I started to draft the story, I had probably conceived more details about the way the epistolary component would work than specific storyline developments.
As the synopsis explains, Sylvan Disappearance is in part an epistolary novel, because Mirabelle receives letters, and replies to them. A good half of the narrative is contained within those letters, though there are also segments external to them.
Usually, epistolary novels frame the narration as a succession of letters or documents presented linearly. You read the letters from a character to another (Goethe’s Werther), the entire correspondence between a few characters (Les liaisons dangereuses), or even a succession of loosely-related documents (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Call of Cthulhu to a certain extent). When writers reuse this framing in interactive fiction and games, it becomes much more dynamic. Indeed, through interactivity, the player can virtually embody the narrator who explores a set of documents or letters within the setting.
There’s a loosely-defined subgenre of interactive fiction which relies on this framing, because it offers very interesting possibilities to present a narrative, especially mysteries. In the visual novel format, Christine Love's Hateful Days series relies on a virtual databases of letters, diary entries and logs from a futuristic society that the player explores to understand the reasons of its demise. Her work has been hugely influential on a number of other works, like A Normal Lost Phone, where the player navigates around the virtual interface of a lost mobile phone to find its owner, or Her Story, where the players watches hours of recorded interrogation by the police to solve a crime. (Other iterations of a slightly different kind, like Mystic Messenger or Bury Me my Love, put the framing of narrative documents in the present tense through instant messaging, making the player respond to messages in real time.)
All these stories present their set of documents, logs and letters with the same device, a virtual interactive screen, itself contained within the game. This device can be compared to the framing layer of epistolary novels, where the letters are themselves read by characters within the storyline. In the same way, these interactive works have the player explore documents through databases, computers and interfaces which are contained within the setting of the game.
Sylvan Disappearance uses a virtual screen too, but more artificially: the screen is a mere substitute for a more manual process, that of reading and replying to hand-written letters. The goal of this epistolary screen, as I call it, is to embody the process as seamlessly as possible, for the narrative to proceed smoothly.
I had already programmed a functional mockup before starting scripting, but it was not graphically polished yet, and offered no kind of explanation for the player.
I have taken some time to polish it, and it is finally complete! Without waiting any further, here are a few previews:
As you can see, letters are represented by coloured sheets of paper. The colour indicates the status: red letters are still unread, orange letters await a reply, blue letters have been read and replied to. In the end, it looks like a basic webmail interface…
As for the way it works: The story follows Mirabelle through snippets of her life in a seaside city, at work, with her friends, and so on. At the end of any such day, Mirabelle comes home, picks her mail and finds one or several new letters on her desk. This is the epistolary phase. She must then read the letters, and reply (replying being automatically done). It is possible to re-read any previous letter at any time, which will probably come useful at certain points.
I’m honestly very satisfied of the epistolary screen from a technical standpoint! It took…… a lot of time to get it right. Not so much for the screen itself, but rather to organise the way it works within the script in a clean, coherent and readable manner.
Here are a few of the challenges I encountered, if you do not mind technical discussion:
Organising letter data. Each letter has both immutable metadata, which never change, like “who sent it” and “when”, but also a number of status flags like “unread” or “awaiting a reply” which do change in the course of the story. They had to be cleanly separated so that the status flags would be saved by Ren’Py, while the metadata would just be available as constants at any given time. In the end, letters have their own custom class with attributes for the status flags, while metadata are represented by Python namedtuples generated at initialisation, and added as attributes as well.
Compartmenting the narration of each letter into independent Ren’Py labels so that any letter could be re-read. Replies also required independent labels. Smoothly transitioning from the epistolary screen to the narration of a letter and back, handling the status flags, the music… it all required a surprising amount of code.
I had to write a number of short tutorials to introduce certain features of the screen, and to script a hook which could trigger them at the right moment. Also, a help menu to replay the tutorials.
Dealing with rollback and saving during the epistolary phase was hell and I do not believe I could summarise the matter at all in less than 500 words. But now it works as smoothly as intended, phew.
It was not as bad as it sounds! I really enjoyed working on this whole system.
I won’t be writing more in-depth descriptions of it, but I do hope it can be useful to other VN devs. The code of the game will probably be open sourced at release, and I’ve tried to put comments everywhere in the code to make everything readable. I could also make a standalone tutorial detailing everything about the entire screen? Feel free to ask if you would be interested in such a thing!
Thanks for reading this long and technical update. I’m not sure of when I’ll be able to get back to VN dev properly… but the end is getting closer and closer. See you next time!
0 notes