Storywriting Roadmap
This is a detailed roadmap and process breakdown of how I’m currently working on the script and story for Rune.Academy, as well as what I’m planning in the future. This page will be periodically updated as the work on the main script progresses.
Spend years upon years upon years reading endless books, frequenting lectures, and supporting the online schools of others. Write your notes and your own thoughts on everything. Figure out what the most important lessons learned from all of those should be and what strange ideas should be included and explored.
Create an outline of the general plot-line and the main events. Make sure to account for the research and the lessons that must be learned throughout the course of the story. Use easy to edit and understand “at-a-glance” methods/software for mapping everything out.
Repurpose and allocate all research previously amassed for the purposes of creating the online school to now fit nicely into the virtual world and the plot’s quest-line model. Unfortunately, most items are being scrapped as the world lore is being developed. Not everything fits, and we’re not about to start forcing anything.
Create a master list in a highly editable and search-friendly format of all named characters. Keep it as a wiki of sorts to reference back to as the plot is being written and quests are being allocated. Include more than just their names for the sake of search-ability and organization.
Make a random dialogue list for all characters to have to call from. This will be particularly useful once everything is recorded and last minute plot changes need to be made or extra quests need to be added with the character’s involvement. Also, good for scripting random reactions to environmental stimuli.
This step is already basically done. A few trial characters have already been fully recorded for testing purposes. Any additional dialogue added to this list at this point is just padding/overkill but still appreciated.
The goal here is to create item and location specific comments characters can make while being around specific objects. These are more unique reactions than those in the previous point and can only be done after all individual unique locations, items, and characters and their dispositions are fully figured out. The purpose of this is to create more immersion and make the world feel more lived in. A fun example of this might be funny comments made by characters about particular scandalous books an individual may have on their person. Or just general interactions amongst one another.
As the title hints, there are a few different master files currently of various plots that are all very hard to navigate and find things in quickly. Here, we have to create and organize a large master scipt file that can be added to by multiple people working at once. This means it’ll be hosted on a cloud. And it must be organized in such a way, that one can effortlessly jump from plot-point to plot-point in the script without getting lost or spending too much time looking for something.
After the master script file mentioned in the above point is set up, we start the tedious process of adding actual content lines to the script as well as action direction for later character placement within the world. This will take the longest time of all of the items on this roadmap. It’s like actually writing a screenplay or book. Fun stuff. So to make it less intimidating and easier to tackle, we break everything up into more manageable pieces – by chapter (or category), so to speak.
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Organizing all historical lore for the world simply entails plotting out major historical events and the general timeline for everything. From literally the inception of the world to the present day. This is done in yet another mind-map/timeline chart app to create a rough outline. This outline can then be used to create books and found notes for the world to give it a more lived-in look and feel. All books will be of varying lengths. Some, the lengths of short articles, and some, much longer. All appropriate for a virtual format – we’re definitely not writing 300 page novels here. All progress on books and the like are marked in the categories below:
This category is the “World Lore Books” category, in which you’ll be able to find books regarding the lore of the world. This includes its histories, folklore, deities, creatures, and conflicts.
The current goal is 100 for each category in order to cover the full scope of the story being told. The above completion percentage directly correlates to the number of books that have been completed to date out of 100.
“Completed” means the number of books that have been written and have already passed the proofreading and finalization stages. No works-in-progress will be noted here. Nothing completed and later deemed off-topic enough to be booted from the project will also be accounted for here.
Any bonus books written for this category will be included in the above percentage.
This category is the “Practical Knowledge Books” category, in which you’ll be able to find books regarding informative topics that can be helpful in real life but still fit the lore of the world. All written in a silly and engaging manner that approach the topics from a slightly different angle than usual.
The current goal is 100 for each category in order to cover the full scope of the story being told. The above completion percentage directly correlates to the number of books that have been completed to date out of 100.
“Completed” means the number of books that have been written and have already passed the proofreading and finalization stages. No works-in-progress will be noted here. Nothing completed and later deemed off-topic enough to be booted from the project will also be accounted for here.
Any bonus books written for this category will be included in the above percentage.
This category is the “Artistic Books” category, which is the most interesting category to date and will likely be completed or even looked into last. It’s a question as to whether or not this idea should still be attempted. So if you check back later, and see it gone, don’t be surprised.
The current goal is 100 for each category in order to cover the full scope of the story being told. The above completion percentage directly correlates to the number of books that have been completed to date out of 100.
“Completed” means the number of books that have been written and have already passed the proofreading and finalization stages. No works-in-progress will be noted here. Nothing completed and later deemed off-topic enough to be booted from the project will also be accounted for here.
Any bonus books written for this category will be included in the above percentage.
This category is the “Skill Books” category, in which you’ll be able to find books regarding actual usable skills that will be both beneficial to know in the virtual as well as in the real world. They’ll also be able to affect the player character in different ways.
The current goal is 100 for each category in order to cover the full scope of the story being told. The above completion percentage directly correlates to the number of books that have been completed to date out of 100.
“Completed” means the number of books that have been written and have already passed the proofreading and finalization stages. No works-in-progress will be noted here. Nothing completed and later deemed off-topic enough to be booted from the project will also be accounted for here.
Any bonus books written for this category will be included in the above percentage.
This category is the “One-of-a-Kind Diary/Journal Books” category, in which you’ll be able to find books regarding events that happened within the virtual world written by the virtual characters themselves. These will be written much later, as the entire plot has to be mapped out first in order to fill these in in a way that makes sense.
The current goal is 100 for each category in order to cover the full scope of the story being told. The above completion percentage directly correlates to the number of books that have been completed to date out of 100.
“Completed” means the number of books that have been written and have already passed the proofreading and finalization stages. No works-in-progress will be noted here. Nothing completed and later deemed off-topic enough to be booted from the project will also be accounted for here.
Any bonus books written for this category will be included in the above percentage.
Info Snippets are much shorter, more concise bits of text that must be written about all individual items and features that can be found within the virtual world. They must be written as everything is created, because doing it all at once in the end will be a massive headache and some things are bound to be forgotten last minute. The list for this is massive. Seriously.
Basically, take everything written for “Info Snippets” above and lengthen the text slightly.
Menu and Item Databases have to be created to organize all of the artwork and dialog around. Also for the sake of actual game-play. Mind-maps are only a small part of this. Everything else is spreadsheets.
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These will have to be made in the script editing and finalizing stages of everything else. And there will have to be a few categories for these as well, based off of the different aspects of the world that will be explored in everything. There is a full internal list currently being worked on, but some current category examples currently include: creature and deity facts, as well as lore and current events facts.
The loading screen messages will eventually be displayed alongside artwork of the world, which is something found at the end of the Concept Art Roadmap. This is because, just like here, it’s just a “cherry on top” type of task to be done in the finalizing and polishing stages. All the more important tasks must be done first.