Creator Insights 05: The Chapter 1 Sprint

It can be good to wait and plan. Other times it may be worth it to go and see what happens.

Where we left off, we were discussing the lightning fast creation of Tinderkell: Siltria. And from how fast the momentum we had setting up the story, we would carry that straight into Chapter 1. It was our testing ground for this format, and while it was much more unrefined than the later chapters, it was a huge growing experience and has allowed us to get ahead and have an easier time pushing forward.

10. Use What You Have and Let it Run Wild

So diving in, we had some story beats thought out for Glass, but much of the specifics of what would happen in chapter was more of an unknown. We pictured an inspection of “The Dawn” a Nokovoan cargo ship Glass was traveling on her way to Siltria. Iplyn’s pikeship, a Qothic vessel used mainly for melee engagements, would run a routine inspection that could lead to Glass being detained, until a chaotic event would grant an opportunity for Glass to escape.

This was a wild and reckless way to start a story, but it is also profound and it set the tone. And with it, we adjust how we want to reach our planned destination.

Many of the characters we would meet would either be drawn on the spot like Iron, or done with minimal concept art like Captain Iplyn Delaford. A lot of this was us cashing in on our years-worth of world-building, and was the biggest reason we could get away with designing so quickly.

11. Story Over World-Building

Relying on world-building did pose a risk. Here we were introducing a universe we were passionate about to an audience that has no reason to care yet. It could be very easy to fall into the trap of writing world-building exposition in the place of writing a story, so we thought that maybe if we really worked to sell people on Tinderkell, they’d be as passionate about it as we are.

We decided instead to do the absolute minimum of exposition, and instead focus on writing a good story, therefore keeping the years of  lore work tight to our chest. The only time we mentioned much of anything was when it became essential for the reader to know, and strived to imply/show this information through characters. For good measure, we also gave Glass a bad case of brain-fog from the seasickness she had been experiencing, allowing a temporary delay of information until the reader became situated with the story.

This isn’t the only way to go about introducing a story, but it’s the one we chose, and ultimately we felt like it was a good choice for us. We slowly gained an audience as we started this story, but it wouldn’t be until months later for the interest in the story would even start to translate into interest for the world. We even had a few comments applaud us for not overloading the story with lore, only the amount we needed to support the story.

12. Make Your Medium Digestible and Fun

The actual production and logistics of early Tinderkell was also interesting. We initially just kept this story within our Landy’s Lounge (now Tinderkell) Discord server, and after a few updates it was already becoming unwieldy for someone to come in and read from the start, as well as trying to even run polls. (This was a time before discord polls).This would prompt us to quickly make the Tinderkell website in time for Update 7.

Early test version of the website

User interactivity was completely new to us, and throughout this chapter we really had a lot of fun experimenting with how to incorporate it into a story. One of the most interesting ways that this shaped the plot was the acquisition of the fireworks, a silly pick that had ended up completely derailing Glass’s day. Secondly, acting on the impulse of submissions with the door was something I was laughing my ass off with. Fortunately for Glass though, had she not had the brain fog holding her back, she’d likely be dead.

The audience makes a difference here. We only had 5 submissions or so back then compared to the 50+ we get now. Or that we had only a dozen votes on the items, but 700 on whether Glass bows before the Lightkeeper. 

Join us next insight when we cover how we slowly introduced the world of Tinderkell in Chapter 2 to Glass and the audience.