Writing Tips for my first story

Creator's Corner
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GENERAL TIPS

  • Write your story so that you enjoy it, because if you keep bending to the demands of everyone else, you will begin to lose your passion and that will seep through your work.

  • Remember that if you really want your story to be successful in terms of retention, you must update regularly. Not to the point of neglecting yourself and those around you, but it will always help to have things more planned out or schedule to benefit yourself as well as your story.

  • Don’t be afraid to add gem choices! I know a lot of readers dislike them, but the results show that a lot of readers do in fact select gem choices.

  • I know it is difficult and sometimes you can’t help but compare yourself and/or your story to a more successful story/author, but remember, they were in your position once.

  • Find out what tutorials suit you best! If you’re a visual learner, I highly recommend Joseph Evans’ YouTube tutorials and Tal Gordin’s “Coding 101” on the app itself. If you’re more of a textbook learner, the guides are a good way to start, there is also Dara Amarie’s website with loads of guides and templates.

  • It’s always good to have a look at threads that mention things that readers like and that way you can adjust your directing and story (with yourself still in mind of course) and you may even learn something new!

  • Don’t overwhelm yourself with multiple points systems, branches, flags, gains, mini-games etc with your first story unless you are absolutely confident that you can pull it off. Stories without such things can gain just as much success and sometimes more.

  • Make sure you read the guidelines before writing! You don’t want to invest all of your time writing something that could be taken down.

  • It’s mostly beneficial to have some form of social media where you can interact with your readers. It can lift your spirits to see messages and comments of support and it gives readers an opportunity to ask you questions. The downside is, follower drops can impact your mental health and there is always the possibility of haters and trolls.

  • Make sure you use a variety of different backgrounds, outfits, animations and features for your characters because it is very noticeable when characters all look similar, don’t change their clothes or many scenes take place in the one space.

  • Have your story proofread and if it contains sensitive topics, have some sensitivity readers test out your story before you publish. This can help you improve your story from someone else’s POV.

  • Make use of free image websites and community content creators. Using copyrighted images could potentially land you in legal trouble if the original creator(s) discover you using their content without their permission and they decide to take action. Free images are public domain and a lot of community creators allow people to use their backgrounds in exchange for credit. Some free image websites include: Pixababy, Pexels, Unsplash, CleanPNG, PNGtree, ClipArt.

CODING TIPS

@pause for 1

is the same as:

@pause for a beat

so, the first way of writing it is a bit more efficient.

AND

and

Both of these are exactly the same. Either will work in your script, it is simply a matter of what YOU prefer to use. Same thing with “THEN” and “then.”

@CHAR walks to spot s x y in zone # in # AND CHAR does it while animation THEN CHAR starts animation

If you’ve noticed an awkward display of the idle animation sometimes in peoples’ stories, it’s because they didn’t use the “ starts ” command. The “ starts ” command makes one animation after the other more immediate and eliminates the awkward display of idling.

is

Is used to display an animation in full.

starts

is used to display an animation in quick succession. E.g:

@CHAR starts animation
@pause for 0.5
@CHAR starts animation
@pause for 0.5

The starts allows each animation to only be displayed for 0.5 seconds, whereas “ is ” would have the whole animation displayed and then a pause for 0.5 and then a full display of the second animation and so on.

To prevent characters from popping up one at a time:

INT. BACKGROUND
&zoom reset
&cut to zone # AND CHAR1 spot s x y in zone # at layer # AND CHAR1 faces left/right AND CHAR1 is animation AND CHAR2 spot s x y in zone # at layer # AND CHAR2 faces left/right AND CHAR2 is animation
@transition fade in 1

You use the & command.

You can flip/invert overlays 3 ways:

@overlay OVERLAY scales to 1.000 -1.000 in #

@overlay OVERLAY scales to -1.000 1.000 in #

&overlay OVERLAY scales to 1.000 -1.000 in #
@overlay OVERLAY rotates 180 anchor point 0 0 in #

There’d be more but that’s all I can think of at the top of my head. :sweat_smile:

That was a copied and pasted response I’ve sent to a few people who’ve asked me for tips btw. I hope it’s useful! (:

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