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*TTRPGs General
Writing games - advice on motivation
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<blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 6432691" data-attributes="member: 8835"><p>I've heard somewhere that WillPower doesn't really exist, so motivation might also not exist. But either way, you're having a hang-up.</p><p></p><p>There are times in my work, that I have to write large proposals, documents, etc. Usually with short deadlines like "get this done by Monday so we can get the client to sign off on it." i just do it. Cranking out 16-20 pages or more of contracts, proposals, specifications just happens I guess.</p><p></p><p>For myself, I usually have a pretty good mental roadmap of what I need to generate. Some time between high school when I sucked at writing papers and college when I got really good at it, I figured out the 5 paragraph model for a 3 page paper. Intro, 3 supporting points, Conclusion. Put that in my table of contents, and the section headers in Word and then fill in the white-space for each section.</p><p></p><p>From that pattern, bigger papers was just the same thing in larger scale. Build the outline as the Table of Contents/Word Sections (because Word generates the ToC from the section headings), then go back and fluff it up.</p><p></p><p>The root reason this method succeeds for me is very likely the core secret to project management:</p><p>How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time. Break the problem up into smaller pieces. </p><p>How do you manage a Project? Make a list of all the small pieces you have to do and check off when they are done. </p><p></p><p>That Table of Contents/section heading strategy was me breaking the problem down into small pieces and making a list of what they are so I could see what I needed to do (in my case, fill in the text for the remaining sections).</p><p></p><p>This method seems applicable to technical or business documents, which have to be organized and typically have many sub-sections. An RPG could probably work the same way (think about the Combat chapter in D&D, how many sections it has). I am not sure if this would work as well in fiction writing. I'd probably translate my ToC/Section strategy to a story outline instead (I've written fiction before, but not this way. I'm a prolific writer by nature). I guess there's no reason you couldn't do my section strategy of the Outline in the Word document, write the novel, and then erase the section headings in the editing process as they aren't needed anymore (novels have chapters, not sub-sections <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Janx, post: 6432691, member: 8835"] I've heard somewhere that WillPower doesn't really exist, so motivation might also not exist. But either way, you're having a hang-up. There are times in my work, that I have to write large proposals, documents, etc. Usually with short deadlines like "get this done by Monday so we can get the client to sign off on it." i just do it. Cranking out 16-20 pages or more of contracts, proposals, specifications just happens I guess. For myself, I usually have a pretty good mental roadmap of what I need to generate. Some time between high school when I sucked at writing papers and college when I got really good at it, I figured out the 5 paragraph model for a 3 page paper. Intro, 3 supporting points, Conclusion. Put that in my table of contents, and the section headers in Word and then fill in the white-space for each section. From that pattern, bigger papers was just the same thing in larger scale. Build the outline as the Table of Contents/Word Sections (because Word generates the ToC from the section headings), then go back and fluff it up. The root reason this method succeeds for me is very likely the core secret to project management: How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time. Break the problem up into smaller pieces. How do you manage a Project? Make a list of all the small pieces you have to do and check off when they are done. That Table of Contents/section heading strategy was me breaking the problem down into small pieces and making a list of what they are so I could see what I needed to do (in my case, fill in the text for the remaining sections). This method seems applicable to technical or business documents, which have to be organized and typically have many sub-sections. An RPG could probably work the same way (think about the Combat chapter in D&D, how many sections it has). I am not sure if this would work as well in fiction writing. I'd probably translate my ToC/Section strategy to a story outline instead (I've written fiction before, but not this way. I'm a prolific writer by nature). I guess there's no reason you couldn't do my section strategy of the Outline in the Word document, write the novel, and then erase the section headings in the editing process as they aren't needed anymore (novels have chapters, not sub-sections :). [/QUOTE]
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