Tips for adventure making.

So you've made an adventure or two. What advice can you give that will help others who want to make one too?

NEVER END YOUR UPDATE WITHOUT A SUGGESTION PROMPT

make it a direct question if you have to! make sure it isn't just: "do you want to advance the story, yes or no?"

Don't hold yourself to a standard of artwork you don't think you can achieve consistently! Nothing kills the will to update like performance anxiety oh wow

Make sure you're adding something more to each update than just what the suggestions say.

This is particularly important when someone makes a long and detailed suggestion - if you're going with it, you don't want your update to effectively just be 'yeah, that stuff happens'; you want to leave something in there so that people who have been reading the suggestions will still be surprised.

You're the author and it's your story, so remember to leave your mark on it.

If your thread has a lot of regulars, mind that you don't gravitate towards the same people's suggestions for every update. Sometimes it's unavoidable... but when you can, let different people have a hand in directing the story! It'll keep both you and the audience on your toes. :>

I personally haven't made an adventure, but as someone who has friends who do, you can succeed without relying on art. Swamped and Vox Mentis are two incredibly well written adventures that would probably not be as good if the authors had to split time between both art and writing. Playing on your skills is important, but more importantly is on what you want to improve most.

something i've seen a couple times recently: please don't start your adventure with a few biography prompts and literally no other information. the readers don't know if it's a fantasy shebang, if it's a deiselpunk 1974 drag racing adventure, if you want it to be serious or silly, whatever, right, so it makes things hard to suggest for earnestly

As someone who often gets carried away writing and drawing... does the length of a post turn people off? I keep trying to hold back

Does a singular post make for an enjoyable contained reading experience? If yes, then the length doesn't really matter.

Like sure, an adventure that can regulate its update lengths to stylistic effect will - over the whole course of the story - be a better experience than one that flip-flops between textwalls-chock-full-of-developments and several-lines-of-dialogue-exchange, but thinking on a bigger scale like that is just going to overwhelm most authors.

A completed story with inconsistent update lengths is so much better than a story which dies midway through because someone got overambitious imo

the length of a post is absolutely a turn-off for people — never, i hasten to add for me, or for schazer, just look at lachlan — but i've heard many a soul say they don't read textwalls and there's a sharp drop in the amount of suggestions you get. the question really is, do you the author care about that ?

You will intimidate some people with lengthy posts, BUT I find that text-heavy updates are more enjoyable from adventure-makers with a concise writing voice. 300 cleanly-written words are more likely to keep the audience than 100 words that have been clunkily thrown together... But if you play to your strengths I'm sure you can make anything work.

I'd say that it's less about the exact length of an update, and more about how much happens in it - i.e. you should aim to keep the pacing of your story consistent, and how many words you use to achieve that is your personal preference. Some readers like it when you ask for their input after each action, others want to see the story advance quicker and in larger steps. Pleasing both probably won't work very well in the long run, so pick a pace you're comfortable with.

As someone who is prone to posting massive text dumps for updates, I'd agree with tronn that it's less (for me) about the length of an update and more about what the update contains. Usually I try to make at least one "event" happen, or give the reader at least one piece of new information. Sometimes that takes more words than others.

In terms of getting suggestions, I tend to think of my adventure from a Telltale Games kind of mindset. I already know what's going to happen in the story; the major plot points are going to move ahead regardless of what people suggest. However, the path to those major plot points has a lot of variables, and depending on the suggestions I get, the characters that are with you and have your back at those plot points may be different, or the information you have might be different, which can cause the way the plot point plays out to change.

That said, I know the way I do my adventure is much more structured/rigid than others, and there's probably no right or wrong way to do it. Ultimately do what is fun for you; if you're not having fun, probably nobody else is either.