Plot write-up

[DanielH]

Game makers... I've got an Idea for my plot, but I want to write it up neat and tidy, so I can keep track of it. How did you (if at all) write the plot? Is there a technique which works best for you or did you just jot it down as it came to you?

[Alarconte]

Well, I first let my brain to think and rethink in the plot, creating characters and all. Later I got to ways of action, depending the inspiration:

1) Write a very simplistic Time-line of Story Situations.

                            OR

2) Draw sketches of principal characters and take notes.

At last you need to have the two things, the story without characters is nothing, and the reverse.

One time I have this, I let my imagination fly. If i thing a very good dialog, I write it in a piece of paper,  If I got inspiration to write the introduction, I write it.

At last you have a lot of Situations, maybe Inconected. This is time to get the brain work hard and make all have sense.
This is the time of write the plot "neat and tidy".

I recommend to you do as the movies writers; Use a two-or-more color notebook. One color for the plot, another color to important conversations, another color to describe the rooms and special effects.

[Radiant]

What I do is create a series of sections, each of which is either for one character, one event, or one location. I start with just the name (which can be a stand-in name, even). Then under that, I write down things related to that location or character. With question marks if I'm not sure yet.

[Play_Pretend]

I always make sure I've got the ending locked down first.  A lot of people come up with a great plot idea, then throw in all their brainstorms, and don't figure out the ending until later.  Figuring it out first means you can tailor everything else towards it so you don't run into problems halfway through.  I know it sounds simple and obvious, but you can tell a lot of adventure game makers didn't decide on the ending first, or wrote a really weak ending just so their middle could exist.

The rest for me is just a mountain of post-it notes and torn paper towels with ideas and jokes and dialogues that came to me at work, or in the bathroom, or while I was trying to fall asleep.   Most of my plot exists on post-its, then in e-mails to my co-creators if I have any, then just slowly gets entered into AGS.  If I don't have any teammates, it'll most likely never get written down in its entirety until the game's finished, because I've got it in my head.  But that's just the way I work.

[Jeopardy]

I just sat down and started writing, as everything flowed it became sort of a stream of conciousness thing, and when it was all done, I seperate the major parts into bullet points.

[skuttleman]

I like to write up character bios and make up backgrounds for everyone. That way, as the plot is coming out I can make sense of how the character(s) will deal with the progressing story.

[rock_chick]

It varies with me, for my big game in progress I just had a general theme to begin with, then worked out a vague plot that worked for the first few rooms but could easily be changed if I changed the plot. I did do such a thing and needed only to adjust my backgrounds slightly if at all, mainly it required a bit of game writing(including coding) changes.

However for my second and much smaller work in progress I had most of the plot figured out really early on but to me a plot is the bare bones of a story, enough to establish the beginning, middle and end of a game but not enough to need to know all the characters nor locations, however of course certain ones of each are needed for a working plot. The reality as I see it is different people have different approaches to how they form a plot, advice from others is great but you should consider trying various methods and if you feel you have a style that works for you even if others think it's not the correct way consider at least trying it. Unlike maths, writing is not clear cut and dry and can involves trial and error to find out your way of doing it sometimes.