Since I’m working on a project (Wightchester, back it now) it seems like a good time to give a quick summary of how I go about breaking down my writing while I’m working on it, to create a workflow that goes well with my brain issues. The way I do it I can manage a decent word count, whenever the brain worms give me even a small amount of energy to expend on a project.
Assuming you’ve already figured out what system you’re using, what your game is about and so on, it breaks down like this (but on a larger scale).
You’re basically creating a ‘skeleton’ of your whole project, and then proceeding to add the ‘meat’ to those bones until you end up with a fully formed monstrosity of a lumbering, malformed first draft.
CHAPTER
SECTION
SUBSECTION
SUBHEADER
LIST/TABLE HEADER
EMPHASIS/EXAMPLE
So I will go through the prospective book, page by page, section by section, laying out the titles of the sections and making bullet-points of the things I need to cover in each section.
The advantage here is that you can add things as you think of them, easily reference things (by heading) when you want to change them, and that you can pick and choose what bit you want to write, without having to write it out in order.
You can bounce around the text, nibbling away at the overall wordcount, avoiding writer’s block by shifting topics.
Not in the mood to finesse the system? Work on the lore, and vice versa.
Breaking it down into smaller chunks also gives you a real sense of progress as you can complete a paragraph, two, three, four and feel that you’re making headway because you’ve completed a few sections.
If you have trouble concentrating, feel like you can’t make any headway on a project or feel intimated by the size, this really can make a difference in terms of motivation and those little hits of happy brain juices you get for hitting accomplishment goals.
Postmortem Studios 