Ramble:

(The ramble is a little different. — I’ve combined the ramble and progress sections because they’re so closely related.)

I’ve never really made New Year’s resolutions (who feels ready to make major life changes in January?) but I do normally set goals for the summer. Because I’m a student, it’s a stretch of time with much less stress and responsibility, so I can properly dedicate myself to projects. Some summers have been.. less successful than others, but this summer I’ve been quite proud of the progress I’m making.

The most important one in terms of writing is the changes I’ve made to the Seventh Season. This week, I’m (finally) finishing up the plan for the next draft. This has taken me a long time partly because I’m a slow writer, partly because I’ve been very busy up until the summer, but mostly because I’ve worked out the story I want to tell. This sounds a bit silly, given I’ve already written a version of it, but to me, the first draft of a story is essentially a longform brainstorm. First drafts are a chance to play with language and ideas. Now, I can take the parts I love and build everything else to reflect them. I’m really looking forward to writing it again, and being able to share more on it. Look out for a new project log soon! If you haven’t seen the first one, you can find it in ‘projects’.

I’ve also been working on some other writing projects. Flytrap City is still on the backburner, and I plan to release the zine I’ve been working on for it soon. I changed my mind in regards to just digitising the one I made for my friend and instead I’m making a parallel but different version. It’s taking me a while considering the size, but I’ve been working on larger things connected to it at the same time, so I’d rather get it out when I have some other bits and pieces to go along with it. Some of its drawings have made their way onto the main website, which I’ll talk about shortly.

First though, there’s another writing project that’s going to be around even sooner than the zine: the museum. This is going to be a virtual space with intractable ‘displays’, which will come in the form of descriptive microtext and possibly an image or two centering fictional. objects, art and oddities. These will be housed in different themed ‘rooms’, with some hidden or requiring a puzzle to unlock. From a pragmatic standpoint, I want to start advertising my writing more — if you follow my Instagram, you might’ve seen my uber-professional business cards — and I want there to be some example of my writing available before I do that to get people interested. But also, I think it’ll be a fun project that I can add to as a when I like and hopefully build into something quite cool.

Probably the most obvious bit of progress I’ve made is changing the website. This was mostly out of necessity — the background I used was making the loading times very delayed, even though it was well below the resolution capacity. I like Universe (the website host) but I do plan on moving eventually, once I’ve gotten a bit more coding knowledge under my belt. Another change I decided to make was to use my original art, rather than free-to-use art. It’s very rough around the edges — more than just around the edges, really — and was made by tracing my traditional art with my finger on my phone, but I like that it feels more ‘me’ now. The hare on the homepage is an iteration of the tattoo design I talked about in June’s blog.

The website’s secret still works the same. If you haven’t found it, try looking for the window that makes eight.

Finally, I’ve also been getting into some new crafts, namely sewing and jewellery making. Obviously, this is mostly a platform for writing, but I might share my progress on my poor neglected Instagram, @scraps_of_worlds, and possibly any platform I decide to advertise on too (Instagram isn’t really a suitable place to get engagement on writing beyond the aesthetics, which aren’t really my jam, so my page there will always be more of an archive). I’d also like to revive my interest in notebook-making, so hopefully my first drafts will have pretty homes.

Writer’s desk:

This month is partly a continuation from the last writer’s desk. This time, I’m going to be discussing flavour text. Usually, flavour text refers to written descriptions in games that don’t advance the plot, instead adding ‘flavour’ to the world. These are often in the form of item descriptions, loading screens, or in the case of my favourite non-indie game, hundreds of few-page books scattered about the world.

I think there’s a lot that can be learnt from flavour text. They have different freedoms and limitations when compared to traditional narrative — on the former side, they don’t have to concern themselves with pacing beyond having a readable cadence; on the latter side, they have very little space to get their point across (nobody wants to squint at pages of text about a sword before deciding if it’d be a good choice to mow down skeletons) and their lore has to be consistent with potentially thousands of other descriptions. This last point is particularly difficult if you’re part of a team of writers, each having to maintain not only the same worldbuilding, but the same narrative style. Luckily, I’m not a multi-million dollar company that can hire a team of writers which, naturally, makes it much easier than me.

Now, I don’t write games, and if I ever do, it’ll be some little text-based browser-run thing where it would be a bit arbitrary to divide the writing into flavour text and meaty story bits. However, I think flavour text is a good way to hone skills that can be overlooked in writing practice, but are still important in all stories. I’m sure everyone can think of something they read where the descriptions dragged on and on… And besides any practice, it’s fun to think about the little backstories of places and artefacts in whatever world you’re writing in. Often when I’m struggling to progress with whatever project I’m working on, writing little few-sentence descriptions of things from that project really helps me get back into it — and can end up being useful material. Even if you have no interest in writing games, it’s something I’d recommend trying.

Media highlight:

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny is, above all else, a really fun book. The protagonist — a dog owned by a certain historical figure — navigating ‘the great game’, in which archetypal gothic characters either try to ward off or usher in the great old ones. Nobody knows who is on whose side until the night of the ritual. This plot summary sounds a little mad, and the book really embraces that madness, letting characters be over-the-top and leaning into tropes without ever compromising the story. There are some genuinely sweet moments, as well as gleeful chunks of horror that are less existential dread and more campfire stories. It’s very much a comfort book to me, which might seem strange given that one of the ‘good’ characters is a serial killer, but it’s all told in such a warm way that you can’t help finishing it smiling.