a peek at something i've been working on

I didn’t write anything last week and this week Zach’s on spring break so I’m hanging out with him at my parents’ bay house and really just being a total vegetable. The place is nice but it’s located in a literal ghost town that’s slowly regaining a population of don’t-tred-on-me-truthers and maga-country-RVers.

It’s weird to be here and see that change because I did spend like most of my summers here as a child. When I was young it was just endless marshes (estuaries?), mud pits, and overgrown grass. Mostly we’d play video games or go crabbing or race go-karts through dirt paths that disappeared when a heavy rain came in. I feel connected to this place, and comfortable here, but still feel like an outcast walking around with my mullet, bear boyfriend, and our little pug. Which is funny because I have been here longer than most of these people on our street. I lived in (and helped literally paint and put on siding) of the house across the street from us. I knew the person who originally lived in the house next to that one and the people who bought it from him after he died. Across from our old house, a bunch of youngish people live there now and I sometimes want to just scream “Hey I’ve been in that house before, it actually belonged to my uncle before it was yours!” But that’s not something you can do. The point being that I have seniority here. But having seniority in a place doesn’t always give you unilateral decision-making power over it.

I also didn’t write anything last week because I’ve been hyper-focusing on a new dumb project. Zach reminded me of Twine, a platform I tried forever ago to make text-based games/narrative-driven games. I’ve had an idea for a text-based game for a bit now, sort of an extension of a short story I’m already working on, so I’ve been dabbling a bit in Twine just to see what I can build.

I’m writing something called Closure, which, based on the title you can probably already guess what it’s about. Right now my special-writing-interest seems to be about dumb melodramatic relationships, so feel like this fits right in.

I want to actually release it and let people play through it once it’s done. So I’m not going to go over the whole narrative structure of it. But, I’ve done like 52 passages, and am still not even a third through the story-story.

I’ve learned that making a logically structured narrative game that gives you choices is really hard! As you can see from the above image where multiple branching paths are needed for just one conversation. I’ve also learned that you should probably go into something like this with a strong naming convention because you realize quickly that naming things “ending or whatever” is just confusing.

When I tried this before I didn’t really get some of the coding options but now I’m making more progress with that. I’m trying to commit myself to finishing this and releasing it, even if that means a V1 then a V2 and a V3 as I learn more about the program. I’m also trying to allow myself to not go overboard and get burnt out with the process because I am enjoying this right now and your hobbies should ultimately satisfy you not contribute to burnout.

Anyway, this has deviated a bit from my normal “here’s what I’m consuming” and bad-fiction-writing M.O. but, honestly maybe this is the thing consuming me, so call that your throughline.

If you’ve worked with Twine before and have any other great resources, let me know.