Devlog #17 - An Entire Year!? (Patreon)

AN ENTIRE YEAR! God, it's so bizarre to think that this game that's 4 years old is now 1 years old. When the first build of Joker's Trip released, I was unemployed and on the edge of my sanity with job hunts. The game was the only tether I had to a regular everyday life, because I treated it like my 9-5 when I had one. Now that I have a job, it hits different, it's the fun thing I get to do On Top of my job. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for making this project possible!

Anyway, some progress. It's coming along great! We wrote a majority of the bar conversations, with the only ones left being the ones related to the fabled "progression" of the game. TT and I had long talks, that turned into arguing, that turned into agreement, about how we should go about them, and now have a direction and a goal. So we just gotta get through those and the writing will be more or less done. Other than the editing. Of course. And deciding which convos get what drinks. And etc.

So how many are there? Well, when we started the update I wrote down on a dry erase board "5 intros, 15 miscellaneous, and 5 story" for a total of 25.

We then both misremembered what I wrote down and instead wrote 25 miscellaneous. Add the 10 others, and the total is now 35 bar conversations to unlock, lol. It turns out it's fun to write about characters with lives and goals! And with that being said, time for: Writing about writing.

As a general rule of thumb, I hate unsolicited writing advice that crosses my dashboard. Writing is one of those crafts where absolutism is your biggest enemy, but every writing tip starts with the words "never" and "always". Like a lot of craft, "advice" has little value compared to starting with the fundamentals, engrossing yourself in a variety of works considered classics, and having topics that interest you. So don't take what I'm about to say as gospel about how you should Always do character dialog, and instead consider it an analysis of what I value in video game character writing.

Instead of talking about what I love, like a classic cynical jackass on the internet, it's a lot easier to talk about what I hate. And there's two big ones when it comes to character dialog.

Repetition

Gerry is a swordsman from the Glistening Woods. You recruit him to help you with the war against Dark Wilbert. One of the key defining things about Gerry is he fucking loves pasta. Whenever you talk to Gerry, he talks about his insatiable lust for pasta. He can't get enough of it. But wait. It's the only thing he talks about. What are his opinions on the war? On the Glistening Woods? On YOU? "Gerry needs his pasta bad." That's all you get. There's so much you can talk about, but the writer chose to talk about Gerry's pasta fascination instead. 

Gerry's my least favorite kind of character, a one-note character.

There can be a bunch of reasons for having a one-note character, but most of them are bad. One is the writer's boss told them not to give opinions to Gerry, because opinions means getting an OK from a panel of middle managers that don't have a creative bone in their body. Another is that it's just easier. Insert Joke Here. Insert Reaction Here. Insert Response Here. However, specificity will get you much further. "In English, Einstein!" is stock. "I didn't pass 8th grade math, man. Simplify," is specific. Now you now know One more thing about this character. They didn’t pass 8th grade math!

That's how I feel about one-note character writing. It's just a list of placeholder lines that you throw out because you have a quota and it's easier to repeat the same conversation five times than it is to write a script where every interaction is different.

So naturally, that was my goal with writing characters in Joker's Trip: to avoid one-note characters. Yes, they're all very strongly characterized (Syd is a punk, Prill is a loser, etc) but I want to believe that anybody that's played the game can tell me five things about them outside of the character trope they inhabit. Syd loves horror movies, enjoys music, is passionate about union labor, is in love with her girlfriend, is sentimental, is a kind person to people that aren't pricks, is a huge horndog, doesn't have a college diploma, is broke, and thrifts. 

Gerry likes pasta. He's a swordsman from the Glistening Forest and somehow, all we know is he likes pasta. If the game didn't tell us he was a swordsman from the Glistening Forest, we wouldn't know because he only talks about pasta. And there is a difference between a character telling you about themself and the game telling you about the character.

Inconsistency

Remember TV Tropes? Remember 'rule of cool' or 'rule of funny'? Those did irreparable damage to so many people's ability to write characters. The idea is you can throw away any established rule or consistency if it'd be cool or funny enough. Think when a character would say something they'd normally never say because it makes for a funny punchline in the moment, or a geriatric character is doing ninja backflips they'd normally never be able to do because it's 'cool' and 'badass'.

There’ve been many times where I had a funny joke said by a character where it wouldn't Really make sense for them to say it. Rosalie being really mean, Syd being really nice, Prill being the most normal and well-adjusted person in the room. These aren't moments of character development, just a one-off Haha. You know I call that? A rewrite. Oops, I messed up! Made the character say the wrong thing. It's kind of my job as a writer to make them say the thing that they'd 'actually' say. (the definition of actually here is its own philosophical essay)

One of the worst things a writer can do imo (in my opinion) is be married to any snippet of prose. Until the final draft, everything is subject to editing or even a total rewrite. This is where a lot of character inconsistency can stem from. That joke was just so fucking choice, man. The punchline made me and my friends laugh! Sure, that particular character would never, ever say that, but it was funny, right? Sure, but I don't think it was worth it if it's going to make for an inconsistent character.

So yeah that's what I value in writing dialog, and I hope that's reflected in the bar convos! I really wanted to avoid repetition, and actually show you something new about the characters each time you unlock a new scene, while staying true to who they are. That way when they eventually grow (or double down), it feels all that more rewarding :)

—LG