I feel that through this module I
have not only broadened my writing skills for a whole new area e.g. a Choose
Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book but, I have also discovered numerous aspects
within narrative and storytelling that will help me with my own writing in the
future.
My understanding of characterisation
and narrative structure has been greatly improved thanks to the research covered
during the beginning of the academic year. This helped me to make my characters
three dimensional by giving them unique personalities, opinions and
ethnicities, in other words, not just making them ‘black’ or ‘white’.
For example, in my CYOA book I was able
to include a hero (player), helpers (Jenkins, Daniels, old man Bean),
dispatcher (Mayor Taro) and so on. I also feel that the choices I added to the
book are fair, well explained and make sense in terms of what the player can
do. Unlike my last CYOA book ‘Gold Lord’, which I wrote when I was in my early
teens, which was full of cheap deaths and no win situations.
From choosing to do a CYOA book,
instead of a text based adventure game, I was able to do exactly what I originally
hoped to do. In other words, control the narrative more easily and thus provide
the player with more information relevant to the story whereas a text based
adventure would have been command input heavy and would contain few
descriptions. As a result of writing a
CYOA I believe I was able to make the choices more impressive, impactful and
descriptive.
Another advantage to writing a CYOA,
instead of a text adventure was that I didn’t have to worry about over
complicated programing. Instead I just had to write and explain even more when
it came to descriptions. I was more than happy to do this as I love to write
and therefore being able to develop even the first act of a CYOA was a
fantastic task and one I enjoyed immensely.
Using mind maps, my research on three
act structures and reading other CYOA books I was able to figure out a perfect
flow for the story I was writing that would make it exciting and tense, but
would also slow it down when necessary. I think like other mediums getting the
pace of the action right helps to prevent things from becoming stale. For
example, one of my play testers loved the juxtaposition between a fast paced
chase at the start of the book and the slowed down, yet engaging conversation
with the woman in red.
I also heard that the game play felt
exciting and fresh, therefore knowing that I was able to make a fun to play
game within my CYOA using mind maps is a great feeling that I only hope I can
improve on in the future.
However, if I could do this task
again then I would look into the printing procedure earlier as I wanted to make
the book look professional, not just the simple (yet still effective) binder I
ended up with. Therefore, despite me being happy with my overall physical accomplishment,
I will try and plan my schedule better as leaving it to February (the deadline)
was a mistake I should have foreseen. Saying this, I have a student budget
which wouldn’t have run to an expensive print job involving more than one copy.
Another thing I would do is draw the
artwork for the book alongside writing it as I did want to include large page
spreads and sketches, but sadly ran out of time as I needed to get the document
to the printers. Looking back, it wasn’t all that bad since I was still able to
do a fantastic front cover which is meant to capture a potential reader’s
interest anyway. Although, I wish I had described the eye as a different colour
as I fear readers will compare it to the eye of Sauron from ‘The Lord of the
Rings’ movies which was a genuine mistake. However, it is always said that
writers take inspiration from other things even though they (the writers)
appear unaware at the time. Perhaps, it is an inbuilt inter-textual link which
isn’t always apparent until someone else points it out.
However, I must admit that drawing
(especially with upcoming deadline) isn’t my fondest activity. Therefore, I am
glad I resorted to using Photoshop instead as I feel it looks better than what
I had planned, due to my lack of perspective and ability to draw buildings
effectively. However, I recognise the importance of imagery and therefore am
glad I included a cover, even though it differs from what I originally
intended.
Overall, I am incredibly pleased with
my writing on ‘Home Base 2-7-1’ and my blogs and hope to transfer the skills
and lessons I have learnt from this module into my future writing.
As for goals, I only hope that I am
able to continue to improve my skills and maybe if I ever write another CYOA
book I will try and create a game mechanic (e.g. dice) of some sort so as to
push my creativity even further, even though I am still glad I didn’t for this assignment
as I feel it would have slowed it down.
If I could I would have also liked to
have included a page before each death since during my research stage I found
that by including a page before the actual death you avoided players cheating
by turning back to where they were and making another choice. However, I
already forced myself to cut 2000 words from the original story and therefore, unless
I could think of something interesting to happen before each death it would
have only have come across as padding and left more empty pages.
As for images that I feel are
important to include for a visual reference, I would probably in future
commission a friend of mine to do the task for me as I would want quality art
to match the amount of hard work and energy I put into my writing.
Finally, I am very keen to finish ‘Home
Base 2-7-1’ in the near future as I spent so long working out the details and
where it would go that I wished I could have written the whole thing.
(1056 words)
