Sean

Writing/Twine/Narrative Games Questions

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Hi,

 

I guess I know some stuff about these things so I thought I'd start a thread if folks have questions about getting started, weird little problems you might encounter, ideas, the desire for feedback (probably harder for me, to be honest, but I'll try), etc.

 

You can get twine here

 

If you're making something narrative, it's a great way to start. It's actually how I started Firewatch right after I left Telltale. 

 

I don't know much about inkle but it might be worth a look.

 

I know a bit about Unity, but we use a proprietary system so not sure how helpful I can be there.

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Thanks for the linkle! I keep meaning to try that out, maybe this is the right time to.

 

Allow me to start with a question that may or may not be worth much because it might be more particular to me than I think.

 

When writing do you have trouble making your writing feel like it's genuine? I often feel like my writing just slips into a style of clever fiction, the kind where there's surprising plot twists that might excite you but it never feels personal in a way you can connect with.

Whether or not that is something you've felt, I'd be curious to know what you do to get in the right kind of mindset for writing personally engaging stuff.

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With Twine games (or any games where you navigate onscreen text), what metric do you think a writer should use to determine the amount of text per screen? Do you think in general it's better to keep individual screens brief and keep the player engaged by clicking through, or is it better only to leave clicking for when the player is making a decision?

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Patrick beat me to the exact question I was going to ask. I've started many twine games, and finished none precisely because I've obsessed over that question without really satisfactorily resolving it in my head.

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Thanks for the linkle! I keep meaning to try that out, maybe this is the right time to.

 

Allow me to start with a question that may or may not be worth much because it might be more particular to me than I think.

 

When writing do you have trouble making your writing feel like it's genuine? I often feel like my writing just slips into a style of clever fiction, the kind where there's surprising plot twists that might excite you but it never feels personal in a way you can connect with.

Whether or not that is something you've felt, I'd be curious to know what you do to get in the right kind of mindset for writing personally engaging stuff.

 

Hmm.  I think spending a full college experience getting a BA (I ended up with English/Film but studied a lot of policy, international relations and law) sorta prepped me for that.  Having to write in a workshop, hone your chops, and pursue honesty in the writing about all else (above a good plot, a funny moment, whatever) was just something that was beaten into me by the professors at USC. But character voice has also always been something that's sort of natural for me to pick up on.  I guess you can't just try so hard -- you need to practice and practice and practice and then once you create "real" characters, writing them feels more like transcription than it does creation. "Oh, Henry would just say X here because that's what Henry, a person, says and I know him pretty good."

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With Twine games (or any games where you navigate onscreen text), what metric do you think a writer should use to determine the amount of text per screen? Do you think in general it's better to keep individual screens brief and keep the player engaged by clicking through, or is it better only to leave clicking for when the player is making a decision?

 

My style is just keep the screens super duper brief. There is nothing stopping you from taking something that is ten sentences and making it five clicks to get through. If you do that you might even find something interesting (ie: some branching or a clever use of click-text) that you didn't expect.

 

A good example of this is a story I wrote about a man and a woman's relationship.  You get pick your first words that your'e going to say to this woman at a bar and then once you've chosen the words, it jumps to a single screen with just the clickable words "You are drunk." Your choice is made BEFORE this slide -- so it goes "Pick A or B" then "You are drunk." and then A or B executes. I landed on it as an entertaining bit of design because I was taking a two BIG screens and chopping them up.  So yeah, chop chop chop.

 

I also think Twine is not a good place to prove that you're a good fiction writer.  It is a place to prove that you are a good game designer.  I, personally, don't like twines that are written in the style of a novel -- say, a full adjective laden sentence describing the smell of the air.

 

For instance, lets say I'm writing a Twine game that is set... uh....hmmm.... ok, it's set on a safari in Tanzania.  It starts like this:

 

Option A

 

Your boots crush down into the dry grass as you hop from the back of a Land Rover. The heavy smell of diesel rushes into your nose; the grimy byproduct of the hulking engine that now quietly ticks in the scorching, African heat. The fumes and your own exhaustion work together to create a lightheaded dream state, only made worse by the circumstances of this tenuous mission -- you are here to hunt and ultimately destroy the bloodthirsty specter that killed your best friend -- an insatiable Lion named Fartface.  [Head out into the bush]  [Rest a while with your driver]

 

Option B

 

You step out of your Land Rover into the oppressive heat of the Savannah. It was a long and impossibly bumpy journey, but you're finally here to hunt the lion that killed your best friend.

 

The abominable Fartface. (new page)

 

***

 

You're lightheaded from the drive; the taste of diesel in the air doesn't help either.

 

[Head out into the bush anyway]  [Rest a while with your driver]

 

Ok, so it might just be a matter of personal preference, but I want to play Option B.  It gets straight to the point and doesn't seem to want to impress me with the quality of it's writing (although it's certainly not awful; I had to look up how to spell abominable).  

 

PLUS! I just proved my point.  Writing it the 2nd way I noted that the first page delivered me the info I needed to make future choices (I'm here to kill the Lion -- made even more important by it being the thing I click on)  AND it made my lightheadedness the most important thing in page 2.  Seeing that happen while I was writing, I added the word "anyway" to the first choice to highlight that heading out into the bush is a risk.  Of course, I'd probably make the driver get eaten by Fartface if you stayed, so that's fun.

 

I think keeping each page of a twine as conceptually tight as possible is a good way (but not the only way) to go about trying to design a good game.

Remember: be an impressive designer first, a good writer second!

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I also think Twine is not a good place to prove that you're a good fiction writer.  It is a place to prove that you are a good game designer.  I, personally, don't like twines that are written in the style of a novel -- say, a full adjective laden sentence describing the smell of the air.

 

Isn't this an attitude about games writing in general, not only about Twine? I always have trouble when confronted with this argument, even though I feel the same way about the situation - I'd like my games to keep text to a minimum even though I'm a very narrative focused player.

 

 

I think keeping each page of a twine as conceptually tight as possible is a good way (but not the only way) to go about trying to design a good game.

Remember: be an impressive designer first, a good writer second!

 

This is highly interesting to me because I just stumbled about this discovery while watching Jon Ingold talk about designing 80 days in the GDC Vault, which I highly recommend watching.

He was making this exact same point - shorten the text because people will probably not read it anyway but they will always read the choices you give them. So it's better to create more steps for the player, maintain an illusion of branching and give a sense of moving forward rapidly even though the choices themselves are effectively meaningless.

I think it also explains why I stopped playing Sunless Sea (although I loved the atmosphere) but loved Sorcery! 1 & 2 and am currently on my 4th playthrough of 80 days.

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I've been meaning to try this for a long time now.  Have a short story that I'm going to start working on soon and I think it would be a fun exercise to turn it into a Twine game.  

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