The Pain of Creating

As I've been plowing through the summary for Chapter 2, I've noticed that I'm falling into a depression relapse. They say that depression is beneficial to the arts, but it's also making me ruminate on all the work putting towards making a VN.

A few hours ago, I completed another VN called The Answer. It's essentially a parody that gives advice on how to create a VN that is, at the very least, not complete shit. It's advice that I've heard before, but after reading it, I felt like I had some sort of revelation. An epiphany on my creative ability, perhaps? Even after getting back to work, that advice has been sitting at the back of my head, prying its way into my thoughts.

A lot of the slow progress on BFD comes from my lack of confidence in my skills. To be fair, I've never seriously engaged in a project of this scale before, and I'm the only person in the development team. Even so, BFD still has to be made. I don't make BFD because I want to; I make it because I must. I feel empty when I don't progress. I can only satisfy that emptiness if I keep working, even if I don't think the results are good. That feeds into my insecurity. The insecurity takes my attention away from working to brooding on what I can still do. That leads to a lack of progress, which brings in more emptiness. It's a cycle I can't seem to break yet.

Even so, I continue to work. I designed some sprite poses that look like trash, but I know I can fix them if I pull up some references. Then I wonder what else I can work on. Definitely the summary for Chapter 2, but I don't have a strong enough grasp of the protagonist. Better wait until I come up with something. Well fuck, now the entire development's pace has slowed to a crawl. Thanks, depression.

I'm not sure how long it will take for me to make more substantial progress, but until then, the next post will probably be an explanation for BFD's story.

BIG NEWS!!!!!!!

THE PLOT SUMMARY FOR ALL OF CHAPTER 1 IS FINISHED!

...I suppose this doesn't mean much without context. To clarify, the plot structure of of Breakfast for Dragons consists of a series of 5 chapters. While many people equate visual novel stories with individual character routes with their own endings, BFD restricts readers to the chapter they are on until they achieve the True End of that chapter, which unlocks the next chapter. Of course, the existence of True Ends implies Alternate Ends. When I say the summary of all of Chapter 1 is finished, I mean that all routes and endings have detailed descriptions of the plot. This might not seem like much, but a completed plot summary allows many more tasks to be worked on. Such tasks include:

• The actual script for each route
• Finalized character designs/sprites/poses
• Background art
• CGs
• Music
• The remaining chapters

 Being a visual novel, BFD is a heavily story-focused work. Its design hinges on the writing, and without enough details, the entire project could suffer and turn into an amorphous mess. The actual summary is 34 pages in Google Docs and has been worked on since December 8, 2018. For 2 months, I've been devoting my time to carefully planning the plot of Chapter 1, fixing errors and plot holes, designing an developing characters, and setting the stage for the remaining chapters. It feels like I've spent too much time, but I'm glad I gave Chapter 1 the attention it needs.

So now that that's out of the way, what next? The summary for Chapter 2 has been started recently. Hopefully, it doesn't take as long as Chapter 1 since the basic framework now exists. Other than that, I'll be writing some of the earlier parts of Chapter 1's script. It's been a while, but as of now, everything's headed in a promising direction!

Welcome

This is the development blog for Breakfast for Dragons, a (potentially) commercial visual novel by TEOL Official. The primary purpose of this blog is to keep track of BFD's development and share said development with the world. More details about BFD and the nature of the project will be expanded upon later.