#8: An Unexpected Moment of Punctuality
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
Project update
I’ve now finished the first pass of chapters 1-4 for my first draft!
At 18,000 words of summary points (“A will have a conversation with B about xyz”), surprisingly, I don’t think I actually need a 5th chapter. I planned to have 5 chapters because I wanted to expand the story of my life to include a whole chapter of the best parts since I came out publicly. As it turns out, I feel like the correct place for the happily-ever-after fairytale climax is right on the precipice of that. It’s true that my life since that point has just become better and better since then, which begs the question: why not tell that bit?
Well, the fact that my life has been overwhelmingly positive in the last 2 years is sort of the point of cutting the story short with a “happily ever after”. A story is a collection of ups and downs, and we can only identify the highs after the lows. Highs alone make for a plateau, and the longer we dwell on the highest peak, the quicker we notice that without flaws and problems, there is no more story to speak of. A story is just the recollection of how someone wanted something very badly, and how they went and got that thing. Attributing something like 20% of the game to unfettered positivity may actually detract from the highest high of the tale. The end will essentially be a montage of positive moments, yes, but I think an epilogue sort of arrangement is more than enough space for that.
This is a story with a happy ending and I think leaving the player with the highest, most intense peak that I can, without giving them enough time to get used to it, will maximise the memorability of the story. If a sunset lasted all day, it wouldn’t be very special, in fact it would be the most basic thing imaginable, indistinguishable from the sky itself. The beauty is in the momentary intensity that breaks up what was there a moment ago, and it is vivid because it lasts only a short while. I want to end my story on a sunset, and by definition that means I have to take it away before the sun has gone down completely, lest I leave you not with a sunset, but staring at the empty sky.
I might change my mind in a week’s time, because that’s how life is, but for now, I’m feeling content. Now, I need to let the story sit until Wednesday without looking at it, and then Ylaria and I will go through it together. I think it’s good advice to myself that if I can tell a whole story in 4 parts, then I shouldn’t use 5 to do it. I didn’t look at the story today, but instead I began documenting the technical details of it in a diagram.
The story is broken into chapters, each chapter is broken into scenes, each scene has locations, each location will need music and sound effects, and so on. The actual progression of the game is driven by dialogue and player choices, so there are blocks of dialogue with certain characters, which means I need to tally the number of voiceover assets required, and the dialogue is supplemented with specific mechanics, which I have to start documenting for so many reasons, but for example, different mechanics require different control schemes from one another. Even something as simple as tallying the number of characters I have is good information, because that means I can then document how many character models I need, how many animation cycles will be required… and on and on it goes. The purpose of such a diagram is to make a well-informed, defensible, quantifiably evidence-based best estimate for the time, and thus money, that building a prototype would require. That’s incredibly important because I intend to apply for an ACT arts grant to do so, and the application will be reviewed by a panel of industry specialists.
Personal reflections - Progress so far
I’m honestly a bit shocked that I’ve finished my first pass over the story within the time that I expected to. “How can that be?” you might reasonably ask, given that it’s a version of my own life story. The reason is because it is vitally important for me to get the cornerstones of the symbolism in the game correct, because even as a metaphor or analogy, there are better and worse metaphors, greater and lesser analogies, more and less powerful similes, and what all of that means is that I have to work hard to create something of high quality, because as difficult to quantify as quality is, it nonetheless exists. This is essentially Chekhov’s Videogame - every single choice must be thoughtful, deliberate and specifically tailored for the moment, there must be no accidents. Yes, this first pass through is very rough, and there will always be room for interpretation, but I am happy with how the basic pillars of the story are standing on their own right now.
From Wednesday, the second pass begins over this first draft, which will include not just reviewing the whole thing from start to finish, but writing most of the actual dialogue for the first draft. I’m not worried about this at all, in truth. “But Zora,” I hear you say, “writing dialogue isn’t about volume, it’s about quality!” and yes, that’s true, the quality of the dialogue is paramount. What I have found over many years, though, is that if 25% of what I write is good, then what I actually need to do is write a lot and then come back around and trim the other 75% like a gardener styling topiary. When it comes to the written word my brain is usually much, much faster than my hands can keep up with, and under ordinary circumstances I am usually performing a game of restraint, Bruce Banner style, against myself to keep it under control. From the pages upon pages of material, I think every writer surprises themselves with unpredictable outcomes, because ultimately, nobody really knows where their inspiration comes from. Well, if you’re a conceited person you might like to say with pride that you do, but that just tells me that you haven’t looked especially long at the illusion of your own stream of consciousness, because it takes only a few moments for it to vanish upon inspection.
Things are good, and I look forward to styling a whole garden of as-yet undiscovered but beautiful brambles of wordplay, because I like little more than the pursuit of diabolically lyrical nonsense and wisdom, smiles and heartbreaks, and fire and fury.
Games I played
This week I’ve played:
Gung Beetle (A bullet heaven roguelike wherein you are a dung beetle rolling the garden, sticking guns to your ball to shoot invading ants)
Made by Secretly Ants Studios, one of the founders of which is my dear friend Tom Melling. This is a prototype, not a released game yet!
I think this is going to be a lot of fun when it’s eventually released. It features the cycle of randomisation you would expect from a roguelike, including pickups, levelling, base building-flavoured character progression, lots of enemies and enemy types, and satisfying sound effects including flies who buzz around with laser guns after they launch from the catapult of an aircraft carrier.
Keep your eye on this if you like the genre!
Extracurricular game dev update
I’ve been continuing my online course in independent game development which focuses a lot on game marketing. This has been invaluable, and I’ve made many adjustments to the way that I view and conceptualise my game as a result. This course has made me realise, even at this very early and conceptual stage, that I’ve made some mistakes in my execution of the plan. I’m very grateful, and very thankful, to have discovered that before I’ve even really started. I’ll be making a lot of updates to this site after I’ve delivered this first grant, which is really exciting, but the biggest thing for me is pure excitement to be capitalising on incredible industry knowledge that I would never in my life have been able to accumulate alone.
I need this game to be a success - not for money, but because this game is much, much more important than money to me. Societal attitudes towards transgender people are a problem, and this game is going to improve them. This game’s purpose isn’t only to tell a trans story, and it isn’t even just to improve lives. The purpose of this game is to save lives. That’s why I need it to be a success.
