Billions of stars, thousands of words
July 5, 2016, by Alayna
I have had a chance to dedicate a few days to working on the Constellations script and I have the first two days on board the Life Raft written and ready to go, totalling just under 9,000 words. Even better, the first day has been added to the prototype and is now perfectly playable, including systems like map navigation, notes access, and an inventory.
While Pontus is working on adding the second day (Day 174), which includes creating a stats system (which I so kindly thrust upon him), I've started day three (Day 175) and I wanted to talk a little about my writing process.
While I have some understanding of where an interactive narrative is going to go when I begin, I am often a lot 'freer' in my approach to planning non-linear narratives than I am when writing a linear story. I enjoy 'playing' interactive narratives as I write them, and letting characters develop as their story is revealed. I like considering the multiple ways I can address a character and considering how they might respond to all of those conversation starters. Writing an interactive narrative is the ultimate experience; I am not limited by the choices available and I can say whatever I like.
At the beginning of writing each day of the script, I—at the very least—have an idea of the key information the player needs to uncover on that day. I write headings for all of the settings they can visit and one or two sentences about what they will find out while they are there. Sometimes that leads to particularly hilarious summaries, which may feature as 'bonus content' with the final release of the game. My summaries for Day 175 look like this:
The order that I write each of these scenes usually depends on just how influenced they are by the events of the previous day, or by each other, but it is usually quite a flexible process. I often jump between scenes as I go, writing parts of each to ensure alignment between them. With the player often able to access the conversations in any order, I need to ensure that they can be understood no matter which discussion is had first, which means I need to adopt a loose approach.
As you can see, there are six characters in Constellations besides the protagonist: Malia, Tau, Riven, Saanvi, Anika, and Chris. Each has an area of expertise and an area of the ship that they generally inhabit. They also have some varied and interesting personalities. I find their varied personalities so interesting that I recently mapped them on a tool that was created for another game development project I am involved in, called theystory. This is an example of one character mapped using this system:
This map shows Riven's personality and some character traits that can be associated with them. The map shows Riven as quite extroverted (top line), very competitive (yellow line), quite adventurous (black line), and quite academic (blue line). As the pilot of the ship, their intellect and sense of adventure are the keys to their success.
Becoming familiar with my characters throughout the process of writing the script and through activities like mapping each of their personalities using this tool has been a joy. I love each of them and I look forward to you meeting them all.