Spell Checking (7/1/2014 - 19/1/2014)

* After some time spell checking, I decided to make improvements on multiple aspects of my CYOA.
You can read about these changes below...

• Realising I had done the fatal flaw of not choosing a target audience, I was relived to see that I had writing it subconsciously for young adults and beyond. Therefore, I made sure to go over certain words and change them as appropriate. One word that I especially felt I needed to change was 'wish' when the player was asked what they wanted to do. I felt that it was too old fashioned or better for a children's story or fantasy book. I ended up replacing it with 'want' as its asking the player directly and sounds more snappy.  
• Changed 'story book' to 'novel' as the latter is more appropriate for older audiences.
• Decided to keep contractions (won't / isn't) so as to have a more casual style and make everything fit on a single page. 
• Removed a lot of X says Y in dialogue replacing them with things that would be more exciting. Such as describing what they do instead of making it obvious who said the line.
• Changed a regretful character's perspective of a half full wine glass to a half empty one as this is a subtle way of showing their pessimism rather than optimism. 
• Shortened the sentences used during the chase so as to make it more punchy and exiting. Therefore, reflecting the speed of a chase.  

Further research and spelling (13/1/2014)

* As I'm still spell checking my story, I decided to double check it so far in order to make sure it was up to the standards that I want it to be. I did this mainly because I read a recent article entitled 'The Future of Video Game Storytelling' that had four video game writers talk about their opinions of narrative in video games.

One of the writers, Neil Druckmann who wrote 'The Last of Us' (one of my favourite games from last year) said something that caught my attention. "In games we tend to say too much. We over explain things and use too much dialogue. We don’t leave enough to the imagination of the player as far as storytelling, about who this character is and what happened in this world,". Totally agreeing with this statement as actions can convey far more than words, I decided to go back and see what I could cut down on within my CYOA. I also made sure to work more on my dramatic pauses and sentence structure as people are not robots. They are human beings that can say the wrong things or mess up their words.

Overall, I  found this to be more difficult than I thought as I love banter between characters and trying to reduce it was hard for myself, despite me knowing it was for the best. Plus, trying to convey emotion or story within a written book rather than something visual is a lot more difficult. 

Harvard Referencing:

• O'Brien, L (2014) The Future of Video Game Story Telling. Available at: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/01/13/the-future-of-video-game-storytelling (Accessed: 13/1/2014). 

Titles and Mind Maps (6/1/2013)

* Asked to continue working on our CYOA's, I was able to finish my writing today. Therefore, I plan to spell check it at home before sending it off for play testing.

* Having finished my CYOA, I decided to think about the possible layout and detail for the actual book that I plan to present it as. The lecturer recommended that I make it look as close to a professional standard as I can in this case which is why I am pleased that I am only making a demo book since it will end by thanking the player for participating and that the book will be released soon in all good book stores. This also allows me to do a good bit of writing without feeling that I have to condense it to a completed stage that is too short and unsatisfying. 

* Thankfully my friends helped me with ideas for the title. After coming up with some silly ones and generally having some fun I decided to brain storm some titles so I came up with the following which includes some of my friends more sensible suggestions...

• Tales of the Depths
• Home Base 2-7-1
• Submerged Corruption
• Water, Death and Corruption
• Below the Waves
• Deep Dark Depths
• Oceanic Peril
• 2-7-1 Below
• Echo's from the Deep

Not wanting to pick a title that would give away the events in the book (especially with the word corruption), I decided to go with 'Home Base 2-7-1' as its vague enough to be interesting, and still relevant to the story despite the plot occurring in numerous locations beyond the Home Base.

* I then went back to thinking about what illustrations I would like to include in my work if I choose to do so. When thinking about the images to include, I decided to limit myself to 4-5 maximum so as not to over stretch myself, and to make sure each one was for a big exiting set piece. Also, there is a strong argument in favor of limiting illustrations to allow the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps.
I intend to draw my protagonist with long dark hair as seen in the 'Star Wars' CYOA books I have been reading and using as inspiration for my book. After all, a character of this description works as their long hair and restrictive clothing helps to make them come across as genderless, thus avoiding alienating any female readers who want to imagine themselves as the protagonist.
These main illustrations could include...

• The sub surveying Old Metropolis. 
• The Chimera Devil fish chase or seeing it's eye inside the building. 
• The destruction after the explosion and watching both the lady in red and man get away.
• The stand off with the mutant.
• Drinking with the lady in red or being with her in her sub. 
• The reveal or exit of the 'Hammerhead' sub.

I may also try and include smaller drawings on the pages that have less text so as to help further break up the writing and fill the blankness.
These smaller things may include...

• Sea life.
• Subs.
• Weapons.
• Symbols.
• Equipment.

* I also made sure to tell my lecturer that my CYOA is 13,000 words after deleting 2000 so as to make sure this would be ok to hand in. Thankfully, he said this would be fine.

* Realising that I had changed so much of my original CYOA's progression I decided to create another mind map.

* Apart from helping others with their openings, I was also asked by my good friend Jon if I would like to do some voice acting for his piece. I jumped at the chance as doing as much voice acting as I can will provide me with even more experience, especially since I am very interested in doing it professionally.

* We were once again reminded that our blogs will also be assessed for our overall grade and therefore I should remember to include my work process throughout them. As for our 500 word evaluation, that will be the last thing featured in our blogs, thus we shouldn't worry about that too much right now.

Writing over the holidays (30/12/2013)

* Having had a good long break during the Christmas holidays, I decided to do some more of my CYOA book today. My main focuses being the characters and what connects each event, especially the introductions for each class that I wanted to look at again.

* Having explained my decisions for the Security Officer's and Mechanic's introduction in a previous post, I decided today to go back to my Scientists one in order to finally work it out. In the end I decided to go back to the one where the player would be dealing with a pregnant women before talking to the mayor as this would not only show a human element to my story and that life is still going in such a dire situation, but this also tells the reader of your accomplishments as the mayor praises your recent paper, thus showing your importance and intelligence.

* During the above I was also able to finally work out the mayor's personality and appearance. I decided that I didn't want him to be white as I already had an old white man and wanted more diversity for a underwater home base which is inhabited by numerous ethnic groups. Therefore, I decided to make him Asian as I have already included white, black and dark toned individuals.

* I also decided to introduce another major character named Glaslo Briggs earlier in the book, as by doing so I was able to get his description out of the way. This also helped to make his end speech more natural and less forced which wouldn't work had it not been for an earlier introduction. I also included him in the scene where as a scientist you can patch up the injured after an explosion. I choose to have him be the one you patch up instead of a random person as Glaslo is a established side character and this would add to the reasoning behind his speech at the end of the CYOA.

* From further writing, I found that I hadn't made the man you end up chasing nearly as big a threat as I hoped, therefore I decided to give the players a choice when they ambush him. Namely threaten him from afar or try and jump him, one of which would continue the story and the other would lead to death.
I also made sure that only death discontinued the story. After all, I wanted the different work stations the player chose between to alter their available paths, but never stop their progression. That way allowing players to keep playing and see the story happen from numerous angles.

* In general I was also able to write far more of the story itself and overall feel proud of myself. I think it should be completed soon, so I can start to focus on play testing it and perhaps figuring out the page layout and maybe even doing some illustrations.

Presenting our narative power points (9/12/2013)

* Today we presented our narrative ideas for each of our CYOA books through presentations.

Overall, everyone really seemed to like my idea, although I kept most of the story vague so as to not spoil the whole thing for them. They also felt that I covered everything and explained well why I decided to not include a combat system as I felt it would get in the way of my narrative driven CYOA.

* Whilst working on my CYOA adventure today I worked on making the descriptions more detailed and making the characters more human thanks to editing their dialogue and giving them more personality.
I also made sure to focus on the ending paths to Act 1 that the reader would choose as so far I know what I want, but not how to go about them.

* Having done some writing for the endings I then came up with an introduction for the start of the book to explain to the reader who they are and how to play a CYOA as this may well be their first ever CYOA.

Decisions relating to my CYOA (2/12/2014)

* As next week will be our five minute presentations, I decided to further work on mine today, making sure to list my ideas, why I chose the one I did, a mood board for reference and a story board and game play to show how the game would play .

Even though other colleagues of mine were writing down the whole story board with multiple quick/simple choices, I decided to focus on just the first act with bigger more detailed decisions so as to make sure it was clearer than an overly cramped one. Therefore, I plan to write the second and third acts separately as each one will take the player to completely different areas depending on their previous choices.

Coming up with the first act, I decided to ease the player into the game and the amount of choices they can make at one time so as to not throw too much at them e.g. from my experience with nearly every open world game I find that the player is thrown into the world too soon. Therefore, the first three pages are linear until a decision has to be made. These decisions then link back to one another and lead to another linear path for narrative purposes before giving the player a two choice decision followed by a three choice decision that will determine the rest of the player's journey.

* Since I still don't think that 4000 words is enough to even complete my first act, I asked my lecturer if I could write as much as I felt I needed to for my first act and then show him what I had done. That way he could look over the rough demo version of my game and decide if it is too much or not. Overall, I'm aiming for roughly 8000.

* Although I love the story I have chosen e.g. the underwater setting, I felt today that my CYOA book would seem too simple as all you do is turn pages and make choices. Granted I wanted this as it works really well in the 'Star Wars' adventure books that I am currently reading since they are also cinematic in their description. However, although the story didn't grab me the actual starting choice of class that determined your abilities and equipment from my Call of Cthullu esk CYOA book did. Thus, I decided to include classes in my current CYOA book so as to make it more varied.
These classes include...

• A security officer who is tough, streetwise and has a gun.
• A mechanic who can repair things and is tech smart. 
• And finally a scientist who can treat injuries and is environmentally smart e.g. knows about underwater life and its inhabitants.

Working in general (25/11/2013)

* Today we were asked to continue writing our stories which I was more than happy to do, as I am really interested in my idea.

* It was advised that we plan our narratives as that way, whatever the player does can affect the game later on. Thus I started to map out a story board.

*As we will need to create and deliver a presentation based on our ideas for the week after next I decided to make a start on it today. I will need to talk about the synopsis of the story and then how it will play out as a game.