Regular Spelling
Thoughts on language and more

Something From Nothing

It's been a while since I last updated Skewed. While this should come as no surprise given my promptness on this so far, there have been some factors that have actually contributed to this more than just sheer abject laziness. One has been my acquisition of a XBOX 360 and playing of Dead Rising and unlocking achievements I had been wanting to play on it for some time, in addition to my preparing an XNA project and beginning to write the storyline for it. Another reason, accounting for this week, was of course the Brawl release and my rushing to completely unlock everything for it as soon as possible. The main reason is more my laziness choice, though, because the next section I have to write, while necessary to move the story along and needed for later in this chapter, it in and of itself is an incredibly weak peice of storyline and I haven't really wanted to dredge through it, probably ending up with something similar to the part I've hated the writing on the most, the degeneration monologue filler.

However, there is another, far more pressing issue, that's been sitting at the back of my mind through all of this. At the moment, in StoryLines, I have about 36 cards from the beginning of this current chapter to the end of the Storm arc of the story, and about ten less than that unfiled cards for the third arc. (For reference in the picture in that previous blog entry, I have rearranged that a little since that picture, but at the moment I'm working on the second teal card, sitting in slot five). The problem, though, is that those unfiled cards are just that - unfiled and unplaced. I haven't really had any idea what I want the overall goal to be in this last arc, other than a few things I want to have happen, the ending, and a few flashback scenes to finish up the now-probably-will-never-be-finished Project L that this story spun off from and how several of the Immortals got to be that way. They will be interesting, but without any other real sort of goal it would make for an incredibly weak final arc, with my planned ending likely not lending enough weight to push back in the favor against what the rest of that arc would turn in to.

As I've mentioned before, much of my planning of stories takes place as conversations, because my thought process for storytelling is for a more visual media then straight writing (why I'm a game developer, primarily). Often I'll just have throwaway conversations in my head between characters, dialogues that are merely for my humor and are quickly thrown away later and forgotten. However, occasionally something sparks from these, and I end up with something useful. And, on even fewer occasions, I have a real gem that ends up becoming exactly what was needed. This is what I think I have here, based on just some joking around in a conversation about the Kai season of Higurashi (since I plan on touching back on Hinamizawa once more to retcon the incorrect guesses I had made before Kai aired revealing the rest of the story), and as I just thought more into one of the things said the other fragments I had cards for just fell right into place with it, and it all makes sense.

So, I don't have it all planned out yet, but I do now have an idea of where I'm going. So now I can move forward with confidence, and really rock the ending of the story.

P.S. Can anyone tell me why the Google Toolbar doesn't recognize 'dialogue' and several other words? Or toolbar, for that matter.

EDIT: Actually, looking at it now, I think I had skipped that teal card completely. I am on the Black card in slot 9 now (slot 8 on my current version of the map with some of the other cards moved around).


Date posted: 11 March, 2008
Tags: personal skewed software video_games writing
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