Writing Prep with Tabby

Hello! I’m Tabby and I’m one of the writers for Enamored Risks! Specifically, I handled about half of all the outlines and determined the overall story flow and tone. I’m also writing the common route, and I’m going to be doing high level edits (as in checking for tone, flow, consistency and characterization rather than grammatical edits).

A little background on me: this isn’t my first VN, so I’ve done this before. I’ve also done game jams before, and I’ve managed all the moving pieces involved in making a visual novel before. So this is all very familiar, though my role on Enamored Risks is much more compartmentalized!

It IS however, my first time working with other writers AT ALL. Previously, writing was entirely a solo endeavor for me. In outlines I would write for myself, I would leave a lot more holes and a lot more “lol idk I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

In the case of Enamored Risks, I realized that would be KINDA BAD because:

  1. The game is bigger than any of my previously completed projects
  2. This is a game jam! The clock is ticking! 
  3. Since I wasn’t the only one writing, I didn’t want the other writers to get a “LOL IDK U CAN FIGURE IT OUT” without any guidance whatsoever. 

So I ended up writing some very detailed outlines. I wrote about 5000 words of outline myself across the common route and the three romance routes to get things set up more or less, and then the writers went in and fleshed things out. The outline currently stands at 9,300+ words! 

Event image sketch by Akua, concept by Zaina’s route writer Fran!

Which, let me just say, the outlining that the other writers did? I’m dead. It’s so good! I’m so excited to read these routes!! 

So far, 300 words of outline has translated to about 1500 words of actual story (for the common route anyway).

There’s another aspect to the detailed outlines also, and that is that we are prepared for any worst case scenarios like someone getting sick or having an emergency that means they have to drop. With these very detailed outlines in place, I’m able to pick up where another writer left off! Do I anticipate anyone dropping? No. Is it best to prepare for it anyway? Absolutely!

Aside from that, I’ve done a lot of random little things, such as writing character bios for the team, character blurbs for social media, and a writing guidelines document to make note of things such as who swears and who doesn’t, and notes about the differences between writing regular prose versus a visual novel. 

So overall this has been a WILDLY different experience from what I’ve done previously, but I’m having a ton of fun collaborating with the other writers and working with the rest of the team!

I hope you’re looking forward to this game being done, because I sure am! 

– Tabby ♡

Twitter: @TabbbyWright
Writing Portfolio: https://tabby.moe

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