Writing tips

After reading a few things (including my own) and speaking with one of my professors who has been doing RPG's for many years I think writing in second person would be much better.
The "I" never quite did it.

So I am reading again David Freeman's "Creating emotion in games" to get some good tips for creating the story, situations and characters.

I also found the following site with some neat tips on writing fiction:
http://www.pgtc.com/~slmiller/index.htm

Thesis workshop: afterthoughts

Last class we had two professors as guests to take a loot at all the projects.
Now here are the afterthoughts:

A change is required. After looking at my thesis proposal, I was advised to find focus for my project. Right now my thesis is trying hard to be too many things but is nothing in particular. Having planned on having an interactive story, character growth and the dynamic backgrounds I was advised to concentrate only on one of them. And since the story and the backgrounds have been done before, creating character growth is the challenge to be tackled.

The question "How is what you are doing different from things that have been done?" still bugs me. Everything is different than anything that has been done before. This brings us to the statement of Heraclitus that a man can not step in the same river twice since he's not the same man and it's not the same river. People from the painting department don't have to invent new ways to stretch the canvas - everyone is using their own techniques and their creativity shows in that.

But I'll have to play ball..

I am still doing everything I said I'll do, but I'll focus on the character development and the mechanics to pull it through (which will in fact still change the story) and I'll still have the backgrounds. The only difference is that I'll concentrate on one thing instead of three.I wasn't aware how important the wording was for the thesis.

Now I am looking for different ways to introduce the user interaction. The good old "click here to go there" or "choose from the following list of actions" wasn't received too well. It had to be more "abstract."

One possibility which I found quite intriguing is to give a glips inside the protagonist head by using a space populated with words relevant to the scene. An example can be found at the following address:http://levitated.net/daily/levTextSpace.html

Another option is to provide images in a separate menu when the occasion arises that will represent different emotional states. So the user doesn't choose a pre-written explanation of what he want the protagonist to do but rather chooses the emotional response he would like. For example, clickin on an angry avatar face will make the protagonist deal with the current situation in an aggressive way.

I am open to suggestions - the wackier the better. To sum up, the character was summoned from who knows where (he is the Idea of destruction to bring about the end of an epoch. Not in a evil way, but in a "necessary evil" way - like a forest wildfire is good now and then.) The character feel guilt but doesn't know why (he fell in love his previous incarnation and still brought destruction in the end.) The character is hearing a voice in his head and is going crazy (the voice is a remnant of his previous ego.) So along these lines, any suggestions for interaction goes.

I'd personally love to tie in the crazy voice in the head with the user-choices.
So much for now.