Drafting ideas: Common Conventions?

News & General Discussion
1

I’m having a little trouble drafting out the ideas for my projects in an organized, feasible way. It just turns out to be a progressive mess, and ‘compiling’ all of the keeper ideas and ‘archiving’ all of the throw-aways seems to take a whole lot of wasted, repeat writing; in which time I end up coming up with new ideas (…which I actually like. It helps the brain-juices ‘flow’, even though there’s a lot of rewriting, and it helps me ‘revise’ and reorganize in a way that makes more sense).

So my process turns into a progression of ‘versions’ of the ideas, where I rewrite the desired changes into it, keep the ‘archived’ pages for reference (I always have to go back sometime to look at it) as well as the kept, unchanged ones (I usually cross out ideas I’m not using anymore so I don’t get confused), and then I can look back at it.

I generally have two problems with this:

  • from the beginning, I usually don’t have a very good ‘short-hand’ method, and it always changes as I go throughout the idea’s development. (It’s actually kind of funny, in a wierd sociological way, to look back and see how it progresses. That is, it would be if it wasn’t so confusing.)

  • I’ve never found a good way to make it easily reference-able, as it’s in essay format (don’t do well with mind-maps, they tend to get jumbled and I fuss over the organization too much) and I don’t have a good way of ‘summarizing’ what the game ‘is’ so far, even for little check-points.

Oh, side note, I don’t like using computers, as writing is generally easier, (to write, reference, mark, etc.) and it helps me organize it physically; it also is easier to take with me, and work on the go.

Are there any suggestions a more experienced designer might have, that might help me out? Also: Are there any conventions that help with the actual production and with collaboration I can use?

Thanks!

EDIT: Erm so as you can see I have a pretty established method that works ok, but there’s a couple of issues I run into with it; as such I probably won’t change my whole method, this works pretty well for me; but I am looking for tweaks; or a better system if it fits my style.

2

I go about things highly unorganized, I have probably a books worth of notes scattered between a few dozen word documents, about 100+ written pages and uncountable scraps for my current project. I do most of my game design in my head because of this. I figure if its a good idea, I will remember it. It also helps weed out the weak ideas, as if I didn’t find it that compelling to remember, then it won’t be good enough to take time to produce.

For paper referance I would use a notebook and divide it up into sections. One for story, other for characers, other for weapons, other for levels. Then fill in each when you get an idea. Number the pages if you want to referance them later on in other pages. Most importantly, NEVER EVER THROW ANYTHING OUT! That idea might seem dumb for now, but a few months out you might rethink it again and want those old details.

Again for paper writing design, I would probably go for a three ring binder so you can shuffle pages around, maybe get some divers to chunk up the bulk of it into the sections mentioned above. That should do rather well.

3

Set up your nodes for your gameplay, link them, create notes, describe the lines of relationship to each other. I am using it currently for devising a huge state machine that simulates a Political State Machine. It makes it easier for others on my team to see WTF I am up to my convoluted thinking processes and allows me to set up the logic flows prior to scripting.

HTH
BTH