Writer's Blog: The Great Rewritening

Before I get to this week’s blog post, I’d like to make some announcements:

1) All the last three January stories will be released tomorrow (Lady Death chapters and a UCRT fairytale staring Nick as Cinderella). 

2) Clarence’s interview will be on the 31st so ask any lingering questions as this is officially the last call for questions!

3) The UCRT+ Live Q&As will be this Sunday at 10am and 7pm PST (I’ll post a reminder for it tomorrow.)

4) I’ll be removing the Hero Zero tier for February in order to focus on finishing up its reward backlog. My writer’s brain has been burning most of its sadly limited energy to figure out Mind Blind’s trajectory, and as a result I haven’t finished off many of the due short stories. (This doesn’t mean that I haven’t started them; my problem lies with being able to figure out the various ending bowties. As a result, most the 500-word stories have taken on lives of their own and have become significantly longer.) I apologize for the ongoing delay and am taking steps to make sure that your reward gets to you as soon as possible—I won’t be reopening the HZ tier until I’m all caught up on backlogged rewards, and then I’ll be doing so in a more limited capacity that I’m sure I can stay atop of during this final exhaustive stretch to finish Mind Blind.

Now, onto The Great Rewritening, a title which sounds better when you say it aloud then it looks on paper. (Seriously, it sounds epic when vocalized.)

After reading all your comments on my last post, I reached the conclusion that I was being silly by not taking the steps that I needed to make sure Mind Blind is the best version of itself. The fact of the matter is that I didn’t know how to code when I started writing Mind Blind. I stand by my decision to learn choicescript piece by piece, as it was the only way I’ve been able to retain any information. However, it also meant that I coded things in such a way that didn’t really give the game the nuance that I desired. That’s even when I knew which variables to code in, which half the time I didn’t!

Things have changed over these past two months. I’ve solidified the endings. I know exactly how I want each scene to play out, even if I can’t definitively say whether it’ll take two chapters or three (word count is hard to predict). But I know the important things: how Button’s relationship with Hope and John will impact the final scenes, how their opinion towards Vengeance will change dialogues, and how their successes and failures will influence their ultimate available career paths. Instead of a vague “this is kinda sorta what happens in the ending,” I now envision a definite number of solid “~The Ends~.” 

But I didn’t put in the coding in early chapters to write these endings.

As a mystery, Mind Blind requires a lot of foreshadowing. If this were a regular novel, I’d have been retroactively adding in clues and hints to past chapters as I continued to make progress. Instead, not wanting the headache of having to recode everything nor of resetting everyone’s saves, I decided to hold off until my second draft. The problem is that I want to write the endings as if these clues are already in the text, yet the story won’t make much sense if characters are referencing events that readers never played through.

Thus, with only two (maybe three?) chapters until ~The Ends~, I’m starting my second draft early. Writing (and equally importantly, coding) this second draft will enable me to write the first draft of the endings the way that I now envision them rather than hastily slapping together a plotline that I feel deflated writing due to knowing it will completely change anyway. I want to always give my best effort, and my recent struggles with Chapter 17 have solidified that not continuing from a solid groundwork would result in only a shoddy temporary placeholder. And that's just wasted time that makes the final published game further out of reach.

Going forth, I’ll be posting the second draft versions of each of Mind Blind’s chapters, starting with Chapter 1. My goal is to completely rewrite and recode at least a chapter per week, although realistically many of these chapters will only take a few days and some might take more. This means that there will be 3-4 updates per month, but it’ll be rewritten and reworked chapters instead of completely new material (although I want to overhaul and add in enough that some chapters will no longer be recognizable).

For this rewrite, I really want to make sure that I include reader feedback; there’s always going to be possibilities that I overlook and fantastic ideas that I don’t envision. The great thing about Patreon is that it provides me with a convenient pool of test subjects—COUGH—I mean, helpful volunteers!

Here’s what I have planned:

After each update, I’ll be asking for high level “Big Picture” feedback. What dialogue options do you wish existed but currently don’t? How can scenes be improved? Is there any way to make Kenzie’s intro scene even sexier?

My hope is that you’ll share ideas on how Mind Blind can be improved via that chapter’s designated Patreon Post and a new channel on the Sanctum of Spoilers. With targeted feedback that’s given chapter by chapter, I’ll be able to read your suggestions while rewriting, so they’ll be fresh in my mind. Although I won’t be able to include all suggestions, I feel like this is the best way to ensure that I’m taking your opinions into consideration and to guarantee that I don’t overlook any desired possibilities. After that chapter gets rewritten and posted, the next chapter’s feedback post will go up.

Chapter 1’s post will go up on February 1st, and will include more details on how to provide feedback if you should so desire (and I hope that a lot of you do, because it will help me a megaton). If you have opinions on Mind Blind and want to advocate for any new routes/traits/more-Kenzie-sexiness (or recommend any other ways the story can be improved), I can’t wait to hear from you!