Introduction 

As I mentioned, this thing was too long and I thought it might be easier to read if it was broken it into two parts. This part is 99.95848% about writing.

Specifically writing a 1,037,000 word project in four years and staying on track.

I do think it's important to pause and point out that while long games are really cool and all, it's not like long games are inherently better or more valuable than shorter games.

Length is just one aspect of a game. 

The fact that I make long games has nothing to do with thinking it's superior. It's just how I write.  Every player's library has space for games of all lengths. This is not a suggestion that all games should be "long" but an explanation of how I write without losing focus and a little bit about why I write the way I do.

How Did I Decide How Long To Make GS?

aka why do you write so much, Esh?

There are so many ways to quantify content in a VN. You can look at the total amount of playtime (the time it takes to 100% the content), the linear playtime (the time it takes to traverse the story 1 time), the total word count of a project, the total word count of a route or the linear word count of a route.

And there are numerous ways to mix and match that.

A lot of times if you ask an experienced developer how long a VN should be, you'll get an answer like "As many words as it takes to tell the story" - and on one hand this is true. But on the other, it's not as if word counts are unimportant. 

Even in the literary industry different types of books have word count ranges that are expected for that type of book. Deviating from that too far (at least for new authors) can make it hard to get your book published. So I do think it's valid for some types of writers to consider what word count to aim for based on what kind of experience they may want to create.

In my case, I want the routes to feel similar, length-wise to reading a novel. Which means that I want the *linear* word count of a single route + the common route (in other words, the word count *without* choices) to fit within a certain word count range.

I also like to keep my branching around 30-35% (meaning that about that much of the total content is locked behind choices, conditional statements, and endings).

If you start at Common Chapter 1 and read through to the "best" ending of one LI route, you get about 95,000 words of *linear* content. There's about 135,000 words (a little more, due to high branching in the common route) *available* but the player never sees a good chunk of that. What the player sees is a story that is about 90k - 95k in length. About the size of a YA science fiction or fantasy novel.

Note: this number can range from 75,000 - 110,000 words depending on the site you're looking at tbh. Novel word counts are weird. But that is the gist of how I think of my in-game routes.

 It was just about an experience I was trying to create so I gave myself a general word count range to aim for.

GS is so long because it has 9 LIs. It's like having a game that has 9 novels worth of content in it + the branching.

When planning, I didn't think about the overall word count as much as I thought about the individual route word counts and what that experience would be like.

Length can be a benefit or a drawback. Some people prefer short games and some people prefer long games. Neither short nor long nor medium length games are superior! They just *are*.

Starting a 1,000,000 word game feels like making a long term relationship commitment.

👰 "I, Player #4604, do take this game to be my lawfully wedded...wait...

No." 😒

There's a reason I chose to leave the final word count off the main game page. Instead, I advertise the word count by route because it's less intimidating.

Long games can get a lot of wows and also take a lot of flack and that is just how it is.

So then, how did I write so much?

This is another subject where I could write an entire post on my writing process. But I'll try to condense to what I learned during Changeling and GS.

Most of what I talk about here, I learned during *CHANGELING* and just applied more effectively during Gilded Shadows. Because I will share a secret.

Come closer.

<.<

Closer.

*whispers*

I don't think I write that fast.

Whaaaat??（⊙ｏ⊙）

Okay seriously though.  I do get asked a fair amount how I write so fast. And the thing is - what I think I am able to do well is write a specific amount *consistently.*

And I personally think that's way more important. Think about it. If I write 1000 words in 3 hours. 1000 words/180 minutes = 5 words a minute.

Is that fast?? It's really not. But 5 words a minute still adds up if you do it consistently. 

If I write 1000 words a day during the work week, that's 5000 words a week.  That's 20,000 words a month. That's a 100,000 word route fully drafted in 5 months.

So it's consistency.

I also know myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, what works, and what hinders me *very well* at this point. And I've learned to be honest with myself on that subject.

Here are some of the skills and strategies I've learned through writing Changeling and GS:

1. I scope my writing length according to time and ability

2. I don't crowd fund until a substantial amount of content is written

3. I have learned to 'fast draft'

4. I know myself really well. And I've ditched strategies that don't work for me.

1. Scope according to time and ability

I try to not scope my writing length based on an assumption of what I think I can do but on a proven track record of how quickly I can draft.

I knew I wanted to make a long game with Changeling, and I knew what I wanted the scope to be. But I didn't solidify that scope until I had written enough of the project to understand what I was capable of.

My original goal was quite a bit smaller because I wasn't sure I could make as big a project as I wanted to make. The goal solidified when I realised that, yes, I was capable of writing multiple routes that long and that, indeed, the length of the routes was going to put the word count that high. And I proved that to myself after actually finishing a couple of routes.

I know how much time I have daily to work on writing - when I'm in the writing phase - and I know how much I'm able to write in that time period. And I know how much I *will* do consistently.

I'm able to write 5000 words a day (or more) but my track record proves I will not do that consistently. I scope and plan around what I know I will do, not what I think I can do - and not even what I know I'm able to do (but also I know I probably won't do consistently).

Having the physical ability or the theoretical ability to do something is very different than having the discipline to do it. And I have learned to be honest with myself about where my limits are and how much discipline I have, so that I can create achievable goals for myself based on reality.

And reality, sometimes, is brutal. But that's how it is.

There is no universal right or wrong scope. It's just about whether a specific scope is going to be right for you.

2. Crowdfunding Appropriately

One of the reasons I was able to release the base game for Gilded Shadows comparatively soon after the Kickstarter compared to the size of the project is based on *when* I crowdfunded.

I didn't crowdfund when the game was 5% written. It was much further along writing-wise before I took people's money.

When I crowdfunded Changeling, I was in the middle of writing Marc's route. But Corvin, Danny, and the common route were complete. During and around the end of the campaign, the writing was about 60-65% complete based on our initial word count estimate. The project was *quite* far along writing-wise before we crowdfunded.

I was hoping this would reassure backers that the project was sufficiently far along to ensure its eventual completion.

But this strategy also really benefited me as a writer. When delays and frustrations piled up later due to health and a move abroad, it wasn't that overwhelming since so much of the game was written already. I took that lesson to heart with Gilded Shadows.

Now, I did crowdfund Gilded Shadows earlier in the process. It was 30% of the original scoped size when it was crowdfunded (so I think had around 250k - 275k words written at the time of crowdfunding).

I crowdfunded in February of 2020 and I wrote another 250,000 words by December of 2020 (in addition to updating the demo twice and drawing additional CGs and sprites, managing 6 freelancers, and doing 'real life', etc, etc).  My December 2020 Kickstarter post says the project was at 525,000 words by then. And part of the reason it was so far along at that point was because it so far along when we crowdfunded.

This was really beneficial because...2021 was awful. 

And my writing really slowed down due to the pandemic, lock downs, and tragedy after tragedy, endless stress, and real life falling hard on everything. But by that point, the draft for the initial release was already nearly 3/4 of the way complete. Even when things slowed down, the project was so far along that it didn't stress me out too much. Even with a slow down and inevitable release delays, it didn't feel like the situation was out of control.

The writing is such a huge amount of the work and is honestly the most tedious part - it's where so many projects fail or get stalled. Getting a sizeable portion of it out of the way *before* I dealt with the burden of expectations from a Kickstarter and the tedium and motivation drain of a long, long project was really helpful.

3. Fast Drafting

Fast drafting is a style of writing where you get your initial draft out as quickly as possible, then spend more time refining and revising after this initial draft is complete. This was probably the most important skill I learned during Changeling and is a skill I refined during Gilded Shadows.

VNs are *so* massive that I feel we can't really afford to write slowly. I know I can't. There are posts and memes that go around about famous novelists claiming they wrote their novel 100 words at a time. Which is great. But I'm not writing a 50k linear story.

If I wrote GS at that pace, I'd be working for 28 years.

Not every project is massive so not every dev has to write more than 100 words a day. But my projects are big, so I definitely have to be a little more productive than that.

So much of the visual novel development process is *writing* that I feel it is my Achilles heel as much as it is my place to shine.

Fast drafting was not my preferred method or "how I worked best" when I started out. It's a skill I learned because I had to, and it remains one of the things I'm most grateful Changeling taught me to do. And really, it's about planning well, yes. But mostly about accepting that my first draft is going to be imperfect and that's okay. It's okay to revise and even revise again if I have to.

The reality is that having the rough draft done - even if I have to refine it - is such a massive burden off. So I always try to get in a groove where all I'm doing is writing and focusing on getting that rough draft done. It's an incredibly useful strategy for me and it's why I got GS written as quickly as I did.

4. Figuring out my writing strategies and habits

I think that the biggest favour I ever did for myself was doing an honest assessment of how I write and letting go of things that weren't working for me while learning new skills that did.

I said earlier that I'm a "pantser" - a discovery writer. I like allowing myself to be spontaneous. I hate planning. I like keeping ideas in my head. And I'm not organised. My natural state of being as a writer is pure chaos. Everything was written out of order. I would write 10 words one day, 5000 words the next. No consistency.

But that wasn't working for me.

I knew it wasn't working because I tended to not finish things or took an extremely long time to write very little content. I encountered constant problems, and writer's block at every turn.

And the only way I finished Changeling was to re-evaluate my strategies. This was something I continued to do through Gilded Shadows. It's like any other job where you learn work-related skills in order to improve your work and productivity.

1. I outlined Gilded Shadows. I hate outlining, but I did it anyway.
 I ended up creating a method for myself that involves starting with a broad overview of a route and refining it to be more and more detailed little by little (I later learned there's an outline method called "The Snowflake Method" that's similar to - but not exactly - what I do). This strategy works for me. And now it's how I plan my games.
 But FINDING "my" method was important. Not using someone else's method. Not trying a method that clearly wasn't working. Finding a method that felt right for me but *also* letting go of my 'natural' inclinations by acknowledging that hey, they're comfy...but they don't contribute positively to my productivity.

2.  Using time management techniques like the pomodoro method on difficult days.
I don't use this all the time. I don't need it all the time. But having the flexibility to pause in the middle of a difficult writing day and say "Hey, I need additional help", then resorting to a more structured strategy is an important way I keep myself on track.

3. Careful tracking of goals via spreadsheet.
Again, I am not naturally organised and I hate math. 

Numbers and I do not get along.

But it is too easy to get lost in a chaotic development process and start feeling overwhelmed by the sense of treading water without making noticeable progress. I can write 5000 words a day but pitted against a 500,000 word count, it can feel like I made no progress at all. And that sense of limbo really wears down on my motivation.

Coming up with a tiered system of daily goals that breaks the work into bite-sized pieces was just really important for keeping me on track. Again, this was a strategy that I devised for myself through trial and error. And it's what works for me.

The spreadsheet system was something I mostly came up with during Gilded Shadows because I needed help focusing. It was just a matter of admitting I was struggling to focus, then trying strategies until something worked.

Changeling was nearly 700,000 words but even so, a 1,000,000+ word game was a whole other ballgame. And I had to adapt and create new strategies.

Would I do anything different about the writing in GS or the way I approached it?

I don't know. I mean I can talk about some of the things that didn't work out as I hoped (people being annoyed at this trope or that trope, the pit falls of personality customisation, etc.)

But all of those things are so specific to my experience that I can't even honestly say "BEWARE THE TROPES!" or something

I can't caution people about adding routes via Kickstarter, for instance - I'm happy we added routes. Was it a lot of work? Sure. But I'm still not sorry I did it.

Should I stress to you that sometimes there can be too many routes?

I mean, maybe.

But I also am glad I did a route for the characters I did routes for. I doubt I'd change that.

There will always be people who say that long games are poorly paced (as if plenty of short games don't have pacing issues) or have too much filler or whatever.

But if you have long story to tell, tell it and if you have a short story to tell, tell that. (づ￣ 3￣)づ

Juggling Nine Routes

Personally I feel like the biggest reason the game had room for nine routes was just how broad the setting was. The Day Side, the Night Side, Crimson, Endgame....Nysa, The Wastes, Normal society, New Terra, the Nomos...

There are so many places to send the MC, and those places are going to have a huge impact on what she does or what happens to her. In a smaller setting, I don't think I could have sustained nine routes. For instance, in Changeling? Probably not.

And even in GS, I think nine was the limit of interesting stories I could tell with the same main character. (Realistically I *probably* could do a couple more...I just don't want to.)

And that was something I think I learned with this game. It's not so much the love interests - it's the number of stories I can tell with the same MC.

There are multiple other characters in GS who could have made interesting love interests. But how many interesting stories could I tell with *Morgan specifically?* How long can I stay invested in Morgan and her journey as a writer?

That is really what determines the limit for me.

The thing about having a lot of routes is that, like having a huge word count, it's not inherently good or bad. It just is.

Some people love having that many LIs and, in fact, want more. A Rory route, a Locke route, a Vale route, an Edan route, a Brenin route...all released as DLC.

I get requests for all of it.

But some people see more than 5-6 routes and assume that the story telling quality decreases. Or feel it's too much and too overwhelming.

And maybe it is.

With Yuu's route I had to consider how to re-structure the story and do something interesting with it that I hadn't done in the other routes. I didn't want it to be (and didn't think I *could* have had it be) a re-hash of the other three Endgame Routes. There are plot reveals and developments in the other routes, that I think would have made the player unable to enjoy or accept certain story lines for Yuu.

Something I had to think about constantly was how the original 6 routes were going to affect player reception of the three additional routes.

The point is that I still don't think there's a right or wrong number of LIs, and I do not regret a single route in Gilded Shadows.

It worked for this project, for me. But it won't work for other projects and I may never do 9 LIs again.  As a solo dev, the artwork for 9 routes is really the main hold up, though - not so much the writing.

So...yeah.

Conclusion

The reality is that I don't know if any of this is useful for any other dev. I called this a retrospective because the term postmortem feels too spooky. 👻👻

And, besides, isn't that what you do when something is dead? (づ￣ 3￣)づ

But Gilded Shadows is alive and well and was more successful than Changeling in every aspect. So retrospective feels a bit more accurate.

And yet, all I've done is ramble a lot about how scope limits suck but exist. And toss out some writing advice for writing a ghajillion words - while, in fact, writing a ghajillion words for this post.

The idea of writing a "postmortem" feels somewhat nebulous to me.

Either I spread out my blanket, plop down, and somehow try to condense what it was like to make Gilded Shadows to something that falls somewhere under a novella in size (which means leaving out 99% of what it was like to make Gilded Shadows) -  or I set up a table and invite you all to come Learn From Me as if I have something valuable to teach with my years of wisdom and experience of making approximately two (2) games. 🧓

Some people are naturally wise and can do those things with their experiences, rolling everything into a delectable little ball we can nibble on and glean wisdom from.

I don't feel I can. All I can do is waffle on until someone takes my keyboard away from me (please *someone* take my keyboard away from me).

Half this thing isn't even about Gilded Shadows but applying to GS what I learned from Changeling.

And, maybe that's more helpful than talking about the process of one game.

My goal when I embarked on Changeling was, at its core, 'to make a very large and interesting indie game' - because at that time, at the end of 2015...there weren't any *very large* indie otome that I knew of.

Not the case any more for sure! There are tons of large projects that exist or are in development now!

I accomplished that goal with Changeling. With Gilded Shadows, I just wanted to make a fun science fiction game. That game happened to be another big game, but that wasn't necessarily my starting goal.

But I think I accomplished the goal of a fun game this time too.

In some ways, that's the hallmark of a successful project end. Did you do the thing you wanted to do?

And I did, yes.

As I make When Stars Collide, I apply what I have learned from GS and Changeling and I learn new strategies because it is a whole new thing. I have goals I want to accomplish and when I reach the end, we'll find out if I did.

Again - each game represents the moment in which I made it and the culmination of my experiences up to that point in time. Just like each of your games, all the devs reading this, will be the same.

Maybe part of your experiences is reading this and saying "I...disagree with all of that."

Which...fair. Fair enough.

But maybe part of your experiences will be reading this and taking away something useful from it. That would be my hope. But...who knows?

So there it is. Over 7000 words (it was *under* 7000 in the first draft. But here we are) of rambling.

Hopefully you found something useful or funny or interesting while reading about how I suffered, or where I could celebrate a success.

And that's all from me on The Making of Gilded Shadows (tm).

~Esh