The Pen is, Mightier Than the Sword #2

Hey-ho folk-e-dokes, how is your week going so far? It’s Wednesday, yet another hump day, so let’s sink our teeth into a little somethum’-somethum’ to help pass the day and pave the way to the wild weekend! And what a wild weekend it’ll be! Trust us, we’ll speak of that later! So today we’ve got another ‘How it’s Done’ post for y’all! Bet comfy, and let’s dive into some Spooky specialities! Writing workshop, ho!

Well now, what brings about today’s post all of a sudden? Well that’s pretty simple really. As of late we’ve seen quite a few people across the interwebs of lewd creations asking for help with writing, some asking for help shaping their stories and others aiming to get their foot on the ladder of this scintillating industry. Some have even come to us directly for advice, which is pretty sweet, we must admit! Now, those who say in their pained voices “But writing is haaaarrddd…” we say, “Well yeah, it damn well is! Deal with it! Work at it!”. It’s true, ideas come fast and cheap, but stories worth reading take time to develop, effort to explain, and passion to make an impression on the reader. There’s no getting around that, sorry. If you can stomach that, good on you, lets talk!

Preamble aside, let’s get to some real goodness. In this post Spook’s going to take a concept we have and write it up before your very eye as if it were part of our games, won’t that be fun? He’s going to show you one of our writing methods, the one we use mostly for Agents of Heels where he can write to the art and not the other way around as is the case with NTR. Here we go, first we look at our concept!

Oh my, ain’t she lookin’ fly? Hell yeah! So that’s our concept, our CG if you will, now let’s see what we do to turn it into a piece of a game script, shall we? The first thing Spook does is eye up the piece. We want to get the most out of every CG, get the reader to really look at the art, stare at it and drink in all the details that go into our work. We also want to really pull in the reader to the scene by appealing to the senses the art alone can’t reach: sound, smell and in the case of the lovely ladies, touch. Here’s what that looks like.

Looking over the piece we’ve a few things to work with for sure. As a whole, they all blend into subtle elements of a bigger image as a CG, but if you were in the scene yourself they would be noticeable things, now wouldn’t they? Let’s make sure they are again after we read the script of this CG, yeah? So, what and why have we marked these things?

- First and foremost, the jet fans on her back. Adding enough propulsion to keep her airborne means they are loud, grabbing our sense of sound instantly.

- Next, her leg joints (and others) are wrapped in metal casings. They again are unique sounds to listen out for, but they can also be used for touch. Are they cold compared to the hot sun and desert? Are they scalding hot? If we are describing her, are they heavy and strenuous to move or light because of servo assistance?

- Her particle cannons give off light, but what else? The boiling plasma can burn through most things. The smell of smouldering rock is an evocative and unique one for sure.

- Her face… a pretty face… it’ has a mask covering her mouth while her eyes express clear emotion. We can certainly use that! If she speaks, it has a Vader like quality to it, and she’s got something harsh to say, surely. Dialogue itself has a whole lot to it too, enough we can and likely will do a separate post on it one day rather than here and now.

Alright now, we’ve got some sweet details to work with. Time to start getting our words together. We’re going to want to make 6-8 things to say for each image, including linking it into the previous and next CGs too. Assuming this is the start of a fight with Val as out player character, it’s time to get to work! Let’s remind ourselves of the concept take a first pass shall we?

“Jumping right up into the air, the jet fans on her back whir into action and take her to the peak of a high arc. The growl of the blades is so strong even that high up in the air the dust kicks up beneath her.

Val now finds herself at disadvantage, rooted to the dusty ground as her opponent claims the sky as her unchallenged domain.

Under the hot sun Val stands still, listening for any tell tale sign or signal that can give her back the upper hand. Her trained ears can barely detect the whir of the servos inside her suit as she manoeuvres above her in the sky.

That is the tell tale give away she needed. With all that power strapped to her back, her enemy may have function, but not grace. She can barely move freely, let alone dodge. She’s reliant on keeping distance at all costs.

That’s exactly the case as Val soon finds out. The low, rapid buzz of electricity rings in her ears, and she knows the fight has begun. Dodging with a roll to her left, Val narrowly misses the splattering of hot plasma across her chest. Instead her nose tingles with the ashen smell of burning rock.

The girl in the sky screams, an almost robotic scream if not for the pure anger fuelling it, having missed with her opening volley. Val, however, keeps her cool. It’s time for her to press forward and close the distance while she can.”

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There we are, not bad for a first go over eh? We covered quite a few pieces, we had some action as the scene moved forward, and while most of the descriptions are focused on what our main character Val does, it’s always framed as coming from actions of the girl in the concept. We linked it to both the CGs bookending it, kept each point short and even got in some hints as some sexy imagery with that hot plasma (we do make porn after all!). All that’s left is to do some clean up!

As you can see, in our first pass over to get the ideas on paper, we used a fair few repeat words and phrases (‘Dust/dusty’, ‘whir’, ‘tell tale’). Multiple points start with the same word too (‘That’) and a few word choices could be switched to give us better flow through alteration/assonance or simply by being more provocative. Now, we’ll give it a second pass and see if it is any better, hrrm?

“Leaping straight up into the air, the jet turbines on her back tear into action and instantly send her to the peak of a high arc. The guttural growl of the blades is so strong even that far up in the air the dust kicks up beneath her.

Val now finds herself at disadvantage, rooted to the gritty clay ground as her opponent claims the sky as her unchallenged domain.

Under the hot sun Val stands still, listening for any tell tale sign or signal that can give her back the upper hand. Her trained ears can barely detect the whir of the servos inside her suit as she manoeuvres above her in the sky.

That is it! That’s the giveaway she needed. With all that power strapped to her back, her enemy may have function, but not grace. She can barely move freely, let alone dodge. She’s reliant on keeping distance at all costs and overwhelming her enemy.

Val soon finds out that her conclusions are true. The low, rapid buzz of electricity rings in her ears, and she knows the fight has begun. 

Dodging with a roll to her left, Val narrowly misses the splattering of hot plasma across her chest. Instead her nose tingles with the ashen smell of burning rock beneath her feet.

The girl in the sky screams, an almost robotic roar if not for the pure anger fuelling it, having missed with her opening volley. Val, however, keeps her cool. It’s time for her to press forward and close the distance while she can.”

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Alright, now we’re really cooking! We replaced the duplicate words, tightened up our phrasings and even added some nice details we missed on our first pass. Better right? We also spilt a run on paragraph so it’s more bitesize and easier to read and digest while the reader is… getting their own hands on experience...

By now we’re looking at something that’s good to go, why not? If you’re still not confident you can always take as many passes as you need until you like it, but we suggest aiming for greatness, not perfection, or you’ll drive yourself crazy. Writing is as much an art as it is a science after all, maybe even more so! Each CG can take us for 25 minutes up to an hour in some cases, so don’t feel bummed out of you find it takes a long time to crawl through a scene. If I can give one piece of advice it is not to rush. It takes a lot less time to read than to write, and if you rush, the reader will feel it. You’ll get all your action down eventually, and it’ll be all the better for it when you lead up to it in style! Just keep at it! It’s a game of attrition, effort and passion after all!

Ok guys, that’s out little taste of how we do it! As we said though, this is but one way we go about writing our good stuff, and everyone out there may have their own methods that work for them. We do hope what we have laid out here aids those that are looking for a little helping hand, eh? Do let us know if you found this interesting or advantageous, and we’ll be sure to do it again. There’s plenty more technique to be talked out, after all! Oh, and be sure to toss up your own methods too if you have any, we like to hear how you do it too it!

Now then, made it to the end eh? Good job! We’ve one last piece of news just for you then! Friday is going to be a busy day for us here, as we have a double post coming up for y’all! Firstly we’ll all find out who has won our last ever Season 1 Wallpaper vote between Frankie and Kriem… but we must remind you that the polls are still open until tomorrow night! Do swing by and vote, won’t you? That’s just the start of it all however, as Friday’s bonus post will bring a tear, or maybe a fear, to your eye. We’ve got a bonus for all in just a few days, and a special short story script for our backers too. So get all hyped up while we keep kickin’ ass of our content, cool? So until then…

Be pens up and beWilder!