World of Writecraft

[klward]

Kyla Ward (1st level Necromance-er) has earned the achievement

SECOND DRAFT OF ACT I

I started the rewrite last October. The process is taking longer than I had hoped, due to the large slabs I ended up having to rewrite from scratch so they made sense. I already know there will be large changes to the second Act. I can only shudder at the likely state of Act 3, which I wrote in such a rush last year.

Consciously dividing this novel into Acts was one of the things I did when planning the second draft and has actually helped enormously. I have great respect for traditional narrative, despite being co-author of  "a piece of outre weirdness with an experimental structure" (as Prismatic is described by Rob Hood in "The End of the Line", Black #3. Thanks again, Rob! ) Among other things, it allows me to compare my word count with the same point in the first draft. At this rate, the second draft will be about 10,000 words longer, less depressing and make more sense.

Necromance is the first volume in a projected series. The next two books have been plotted in detail and the two after that in brief. I have written the majority of the world "bible", including a detailed history starting three hundred years prior to the books, and drawn some interesting maps, as well as putting together a soundtrack. I am, in short, reasonably ready to run the RPG, if only that would get the rewrite done and my regular group had any tolerance for highly emotional, character-driven stories heavy on investigation and mood (come on guys! You know what happened the last time I tried to run Call of Cthulhu!)

This writing stuff is intense. And things keep happening, like bits of relevant information falling into my lap and places described in the book (which is set in central Sydney) looking and feeling strange, and maybe, possibly, some ritualistic synergy? I put it all down to normal, writerly obsession of course. And fatigue toxins.
 
Now to go let the creatures of Azeroth know how much I love them.

Comments

[xnbach.livejournal.com]

You kind of hit the thing that always hit me about the appeal of RPG writing, it's all charcter and setting without having to worry too much about things like plot and narrative structure. That made it as good a place to start as any.

Of course now, I much prefer writing fiction to writing RPG's. Part of that is massive sodomizing we got from Eden which completely got me burned out on the whole industry, but part of it as that I find writing novels so much more rewarding than writing RPG books.

Not that I have really made any money at it yet, but that's not so different from Eden considering the fact that they still to thios day owe us money.

[kylaw.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the thing about RPG writing exactly! But then, whenever I ran one of my scenarios past the group, I would get upset when they didn't follow what I considered the only possible narrative arc, going against their carefully prepared characters and metagaming, etc. I am probably more of a novelist.

Still, I figure that RPG credits combined with novels and maybe a script or two (I've got a writer's credit on a Tropfest entry this year) might look good to the computer gaming industry. Still got a lot of catching up on the medium to do, but it's already apparent to me just how essential good writing, as well as world and character design, is to a game. To take an extreme example, the X-Box gangster game "Saints Row" exists in its snappy dialogue - beyond that, it's a shoot 'em up. And the space opera "Mass Effect" is basically a film interspersed with episodes of shooting and running around. It's all very interesting. And yet another reason to stop mucking around with World of Warcraft...

SO, what are you working on? Either I've missed a lot of posts or you don't tend to discuss your work on LJ. Respond offline if you prefer...