Devblog #107

Hey Wizards!
Shady Character One here!

So, after several weeks of trying to write at least 2000 words per week and failing continuously, I downgraded my resolution to writing 1500 words per week and failed that multiple times too. Then came a couple of weeks where I broke the 1000-word barrier a few times, then a couple of weeks that I wouldn’t even do that.

I’m a slow writer. I never wrote as much as I have written for Under Your Spell. More than that, before UYS I mostly wrote in short bursts. Two, maybe three thousand words every other month. But this approach doesn’t work for a work of this scale. I don’t have time to wait for this big burst of inspiration, and even if I could, I don’t think that any burst would ever be able to carry me long enough to write the amount of script that I have to. So I tried to systematize my work. To give myself monthly quotas to fulfill. When that didn’t work, I broke those down into smaller, more manageable weekly segments and I still couldn’t manage that. So… I gave up.

And decided to follow the advice of one of our fans. Break that task down even more.

Due to the fact that I never really wrote on a daily basis, it felt like something that goes against my writing style, so I was pushing really hard against this idea of “daily quotas”. But I was desperate. And so I tried. I decided that maybe I could start with 300 words per day. And so far, it has been working. I have been doing these 300-words-per-day sprints for the most part of last week, and I am pretty close to the target of 2000 words per week. I really hope it will continue this way. Because if it does - wow-whee!

I still think I would write the girl-events in one sitting. It would be even better if I’ll be able to write an occasional ~1000-word girl event on top of my daily 300. But this “little per day” works very well for the events that I would never be able to write in one day anyway. Like the Trial of Mobility that I am working on right now. I am still not a big fan of how its whole idea is coming together, but I have decided not to dwell on it for now and just write on. Even if I decide to change some inner mechanics, it shouldn’t change the written part too much, so I think that I’ll finish it and play it as is. Maybe I’ll surprise myself. Who knows?

Shady Two has been working mostly on backgrounds this past week. Focusing mostly on the backgrounds for the Trial of Mind, which is going to get a big glow-up very soon. So she was staring at her share of brick walls too. But I’ll tell you, those are some cool-looking brick walls. I’d trade hers for mine every day of the week.

Speaking of weeks. I'll see you next one!
Shady Character One, out!