Writing "Stroke"

Once the dust settled on the Jam, I had an opportunity to talk with droqen about the games we made for the Jam. [Check out droqen's Jam game here]

As part of our conversation, droqen asked me about about my process for writing the dialogue for Stroke. I figured I would try to recount most of what we discussed in case others might find it useful.

First and foremost, it helps to keep in mind that oft-quoted adage; write what you know. The story of Stroke is based on several experiences throughout my life, woven together, and with some added dialogue choices. To be clear, the choices in Stroke don't impact the ending or anything like that; they simply present unique dialogue based. The choices also don't hinge on each other, which is why you can see everything if you play through twice.

Most importantly, the GMTK Jam supplied the theme of the story; "out of control". I mentioned in my previous post how I interpreted this as an experience in a hospital where "all you can do is wait". Having the theme in mind before I began writing was critical to keeping the narrative cohesive.

Once that was done, I wrote down a list of characters involved in the narrative. Again, this was pretty easy because it was based on real events. I added the character of Wayne and Madeline, and had two others planned out which didn't make it into the initial release. Alongside each character, I included a single line of text summarizing what their conversation would be about.

That was it for Friday. The next morning, I spent around 3 hours writing all the text in the game. After that, I intentionally took some time away from the writing to get some of the game systems working. After 1.5 hours, I came back to it and made a quick pass to make small corrections, then I had some external editing help from Sydney McFadden. After 45 minutes of editing, I moved on to implementation. Actually putting the text in the game and reading it in context helped me make a few final changes.

TLDR;

• Write what you know
• Start with a Theme, then create characters
• For a dialogue based game like this, create a quick plan of what every conversation will be about, what the choices are (if any) and what the result of those choices will be
• Take a break, then do a second pass, THEN get someone else to look over your writing
• Be open to making small corrections when you see text in context.

I've mentioned that this game was an experiment since I don't usually make narrative-based games. Looking ahead, I've identified a few more challenges;

• This game was directly based on real experiences, where I kept the setting the same as the real-world events; can I take other experiences of mine and transpose them into a new setting?
• Can I make people care about a less "intense" subject?
• Can I find a good mix of Narrative and Gameplay instead of focusing so heavily on one or the other?

I hope you look forward to finding out together with me!