Now that I have a base outline of all the events and basic twists and turns for the thing I'm working on, I noticed some of the glaring things missing; which characters should have more showtime or motivations or be cut entirely for not supplying anything. Who could be stronger, who has too much focus, how to balance it out so everyone looks like a suspect.
I figured if I was making it take place in a real city, today I would constructively look at maps of the place, tourist things, walk around in google maps, that kinda stuff. I found some choice locations and much better things to flesh out the world than just the simple ideas I had down. And after I wrote a bunch of stuff down.... forgot that if the world got wrecked in 2002-4ish, a lot of these modern buildings wouldn't be here. And there's a lot more locations than can make the setpieces for some events, making my ending go from the end of a TV episode to more the end of a book or something.
Normally I have a lot of trouble coming up with new ideas as a jumping off point, I always felt if I had someone to bounce ideas back and forth with I'd get something to work with. But obviously if you've read my whines that's not something I got often either. So I took an old vague concept I workshopped and shelved in 2022 and decided to make some quick sentences of something front to back and did not care about planting evidence or making all the plot points link up.
From there I started making chapter pages and each one had a small info writeup or maybe a couple sentences/excerpts/quotes I had in mind. Essentially rewriting it but a little longer went a lot smoother than starting full blown novel-ass writing. But since it's "done" it's easier to criticize it and see where it needs punching up. Now I'm doing some research to not burn out on thinking too much about words, and if it gives me ideas I can jot them down in their appropriate chapter or in the general change notes.
I don't know what format I want this to be, interactive or just words. I don't have any end goal here, so at the bare minimum it can be words. That's the thing about game dev tools, it's really hard for them to be able to make what's in my head. Not to mention I can't make what's in my head either, but maybe I can work on that too one day :-/
