Feels odd. Now that I pretty much have an idea for what I want to do for my first arc, it's so tough to log in and get started on the actual process of writing it.
Part of the problem is not knowing where to start first. There are so many blank spaces, which do I fill up first? Should I scribble them as a rough draft, or go for a polished finished product from the start? What if I run out of space and have to trim? Maybe I should be terse from the very beginning (and then it starts to feel like an old English comprehension 'summary' exercise: Reduce this paragraph to 100 words or less.)
I mean, I know intellectually that this is going to go through a number of drafts to firm up. Getting Draft #0 (I like to call it that because Draft #1 implies too much pressure for my liking) out shouldn't be such an effort.
Composing on the UI is a bit of pain. So why not compose outside of it? I try downloading a template to use in Word, but I find the template too broad when you're not familiar with mission structure in the first place. I try the offline Mission Arc Planner, which looks pretty neat, but runs into areas where it feels kinda crippling to not have the popup helptext and automatic access to the boss types to scan through.
It feels weird to compose in-game though. Shouldn't I be...playing? Rather than writing?
I could play. But I also kinda want this arc done before anyone else gets a similar idea.
Is it worth it to end up spending 8 hours or more of one's precious recreation time creating content though?
I mean, MA is so powerful there's already so much damned content that it doesn't really matter if one more or less person writes one more arc. But it's an arc that -I- kinda wanted to get done. For myself, if no one else. Except that if I'm going to put in the effort to write something, I may as well write it to a quality that other people will like too. Or hope that they will like.
Then I look at the amount of work that polishing every single mission in this damn arc entails, and I go, rrrrrargh, what did I put myself in for?
2 comments:
No plan survives contact with the enemy, I see. My scheming to include neat little collectible clues has been foiled by the fact that no collection goals are allowed in the map I'm using.
Damn!
Now I have to think of something clever, or go without. :/
Try using Leandro's offline editor.
Try using destructible objects then, Rod-style? =P Might be a bit weird to blow up a computer though...
What I did is what I find works for me when creating. A rough draft with all the "big points" I have in my head. Then go over it again and again, filling in details that come up. Sorta like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Post a Comment