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When it comes to creating a large story, a lot of groundwork needs to be laid to keep the vision on track, especially knowing what the end goal is supposed to be. So how much of TaH was planned from the beginning and how much has changed?
We can start with some easy points first. I knew what the timeline would be: April through August. I knew what the major conflict would be: the development with Kayla. And I knew some major events that would guide the story direction: the house fire & Sierra situation being the initial catalyst.
Since I was planning for 10 episodes, I wanted each one to have a major event tied into it. These events were a way to give the episode something that was self-contained, but still moved whole plot forward.
I also initially created a lot of characters, how & where they'd be introduced, and what their purpose or impact would be for the entire story.
While I currently have about 70 pages of notes for the story to unfold, it's almost entirely small dialogue clips roughly organized where I think they'll be used in episodes. Nearly all descriptions of scenes, locations, emotions, conflicts, and order of events are kept in my head instead.
But at what point do I need to scrap what I have, or find something better I can do? The answer to that has been surprisingly often, although it has not changed any of my core outlines yet.
Here's an example. Early on it was revealed Mark had a girlfriend, but we never saw her and I had no concrete plans whether that would happen or not. I figured it wasn't very important to telling the story. It wasn't until a friend asked "Does Mark
really have a girlfriend, or is he making it up?" that I began the process of creating Jess. Since then her role and backstory grew quite a bit to where she's fairly significant.
Monika was another character that was written in after the first beta. Originally it was to help add another game choice early on with a little bit of provocative content, but she quickly grew a distinct personality from others that made her more prominent.
Bree was made later to bring balance to Mark. And there's even more characters that were created to fill expanded arcs.
But beyond characters, most changes occur when I'm posing scenes for renders and something causes me to see things in a new light. This results in conjuring up new dialogue or functionally changing what I was doing.
A great example of this is Jess's dance dress. It included some see-thru patterns that opened up new dialogue with the MC about it. Or when you first talk to Vicky in Ep2, the shirt Monika was wearing created the extra distraction for the MC. These sort of things happen all the time and are the reason why the size of the episodes grow significantly larger than the first draft.
Other times I don't have access to assets to create my vision, such as the spring carnival. I was severely limited with what I wanted vs the sort of assets available, so I needed to get creative. I made the most of what I could, but there's still a lot I wish I had the chance to do better.
And then there are things I intentionally leave loosely planned to give myself more agency in the future to tie things together.
MINOR SPOILER: One example was not planning all the details of the major MC/Kayla fallout. When the time came in Ep3 I was able to link together the fight with Casey and one reason why Kayla assumes MC's solution to things is violence (Ep2).
For me as a reader, I love seeing how plot arcs connect. It's a bit exciting knowing that there are reasons for events happening that have impacts elsewhere. And I usually wonder if the author planned all of that out from the beginning, or if there was a bit of luck along the way where the opportunity presented itself. With TaH both of these happen, but a majority of it was thought out early on. I'd estimate about 40-50% of each completed episode is what I originally had in mind, with the rest being changed on-the-fly.
So how much do I let feedback affect TaH? Early on in the project it was probably more than I should have let it. But it was also much more negative back then, and deservedly so. There were many things that needed attention from the beta and I addressed them as much as I felt comfortable doing, which was mostly related to the MC and Mark in the early scenes.
More recently any negative comments are largely due to trolls who haven't played, or from people's personal preferences. Sometimes there's a legit piece of criticism that I make note of to improve upon. A couple examples... MC's hair color. I agreed it didn't look natural enough like I intended, and it was fixed in Ep3 (now that I knew more about customizing textures). I also was told I should have more background music. After considering it, I agreed, so Ep3 saw a substantial increase in this.
And what about positive requests? These are more troublesome for me. When I hear people say "I love X, I want to see more of them!" or "I hope Y happens!" I want to give them what they ask for but need to reign myself in a bit because it's impossible to do. As much as I'd like to, I can't change the story to fit everyone's dream.
I still want to hear this feedback, however. It means I'm doing something right with that character/arc and even if I can't give them everything they desire, it's still likely they'll enjoy what I have in store.