Circling back: the writing & editing process

So with the game set to exceed 100k words in this month's update, I thought I'd make a post about how I approach the writing & editing process for such a massive project. Warning: rambles ahead.

From the start, I've framed everything I do in LOTM in terms of the writing. It's the part I control the most, it's the part I have the most experience with, and it's the part that makes or breaks the game. The art is, to me, very much secondary; a reward that you get for reading the thing, but not the purpose. It's why I've not made any attempt to put art into it in lockstep with the writing, as most other VNs do. I visualise a finished product, with writing, art, CGs, music and everything else neatly fit together - but as for when each component gets added? Not as important. Rather than loading up with art and luring people in with pretty pictures that don't yet have anything behind them, I'd rather the art get added when it makes sense - when there's already a great deal of interesting reading to be enthralled by.

In that same vein, I do not by any means consider the writing in the game today to be final. Each monthly chapter receives an editing pass, but that pass can only be performed with knowledge of what already exists: all the truly exciting alterations depend on words that have yet to be written. So, while I have already revised several aspects that required going back and redoing sections, it's going to keep happening. It *must*. The creation of these characters is a feedback loop: I write some ideas down, the characters respond, and I react. Sometime the reaction is to realise that my idea for a character was wrong, such as the changing of Zef from a klipspringer to a giraffe. Other times, it's to discover a new character trait that I realise I can foreshadow with some tweaks to their introductions. The editing process is when a story truly becomes a story; everything before that is simply the writer telling a story to himself, to get a feel for it, before retelling it - bigger, better and more enjoyably - to the reader. But everything I've written so far, despite the "editing" passes I do, is still all part of that first phase. Telling the story to myself, so that I can retell it to you better.

I will circle back to the start someday, and work through it all, and give it that final fire that makes it feel *real*.

I have pages and pages of future storyline, for every character. Nothing completely final, just ideas. Things each person can do, that can interact with one another and push the story forward. I visit them almost daily, adding new ideas and tweaking others. Growing the pool of options I can ultimately draw on when bringing a character to life. I map them out in a timeline to see who can interact with whom. Or, I make characters interact and see what happens. Then I take those ideas back into the text and tweak, inject red herrings or the odd hint of a bigger picture. I always try to keep the whole world in mind and watch the characters move about like little dots on a GPS. I take ideas from past stories that never happened. I take a LOT from my own life, from memories of four decades lived. I've seen a lot happen. Met a lot of people. Done awesome and stupid shit. There is no replacement for drawing on real life when it comes to writing, and being as "old" as I am means I just have more life to draw from. And if my own is lacking, I search in others. The people who have donated the substance of who they are to be a part of this project; ancillary lives, lived at a distance, that I can make more a part of me with each word I write about them.

I don't really know how many words the game will end up as. Half a million, perhaps? More? I don't know. I don't really want to just keep working on it forever and ever. It needs to end: it's not fair to you, who have backed it to help bring an absolute playable thing into existence. But the deeper I fall into the world and the characters, the more stories I'll want to tell with them. Many may need to be left out, and told some other way. The rest...the rest will need me to circle back and add the final sparks. To take this from merely good, to something glorious. A thing in which to find meaning, emotion, and triumph.

And SO much fucking sex holy shit you guys.