State of the Justin
Feb. 7th, 2007 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurHaven't done any diary entries recently. This is because diary entries are mainly about one's life, and I haven't really *had* one of those for the past month.
Suffice it to say, anyone who tells you that adaptation games are easy, because the creative stuff is already done, are totally full of it. Writing this game has really given me a new appreciation for how much is *not* in a typical story. For most of the characters in Girl Genius, interesting though they are, we really know remarkably little about their backgrounds. So I'm winding up writing quite a bit of biography -- typically 1-2 pages of largely invented background per character.
Anyway, the state of my life can be summed up as "13 characters written, 14 to go". Progress, but definitely not as fast as I'd like. So I'm going to be mainly cocooned with a keyboard for the remainder of February, trying not to give myself permanent RSI as I go. Someday, I really must learn to write shorter character sheets.
BTW, may I just say how pleased I am that this particular experiment seems to be succeeding? The dark secret of Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Perfect Construct is that it was written backwards. That is, I first agreed to run the game; then I came up with the title; then I wrote the game blurb; then I wrote the shameless plug for Intercon F. Note that nowhere in this chain of events had I even remotely figured out what the game was about -- I was simply making stuff up off the top of my head. I didn't figure out what the title of the game *meant* until a good four months later. So I am quite pleased that I seem to have taken at least most of those random statements I had been making, and pulled them together into what's looking to be a pretty good game. Nice to know that I can do that, although it's probably not an experiment to be repeated...
Suffice it to say, anyone who tells you that adaptation games are easy, because the creative stuff is already done, are totally full of it. Writing this game has really given me a new appreciation for how much is *not* in a typical story. For most of the characters in Girl Genius, interesting though they are, we really know remarkably little about their backgrounds. So I'm winding up writing quite a bit of biography -- typically 1-2 pages of largely invented background per character.
Anyway, the state of my life can be summed up as "13 characters written, 14 to go". Progress, but definitely not as fast as I'd like. So I'm going to be mainly cocooned with a keyboard for the remainder of February, trying not to give myself permanent RSI as I go. Someday, I really must learn to write shorter character sheets.
BTW, may I just say how pleased I am that this particular experiment seems to be succeeding? The dark secret of Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Perfect Construct is that it was written backwards. That is, I first agreed to run the game; then I came up with the title; then I wrote the game blurb; then I wrote the shameless plug for Intercon F. Note that nowhere in this chain of events had I even remotely figured out what the game was about -- I was simply making stuff up off the top of my head. I didn't figure out what the title of the game *meant* until a good four months later. So I am quite pleased that I seem to have taken at least most of those random statements I had been making, and pulled them together into what's looking to be a pretty good game. Nice to know that I can do that, although it's probably not an experiment to be repeated...
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Date: 2007-02-08 03:11 am (UTC)