Hey all! Hamadyne here. Today, I'm here to talk to you about what I do on the team - writing.





The act of writing is an arduous process, with countless hours of preparation resulting in just a few pages of text. It's frustrating, annoying, and often gives me a headache.





That being said, I wouldn't trade this for the world.





Writing for a character is meant to be a challenge. Often when writing a scene, I'll have to write for two, maybe three people at a time. Differing mindsets, beliefs, and intentions drive much of the dialogue between characters, as well as driving the story forward as a whole. It wouldn't be in good form to make two identical, bland characters that only spoke about aircraft and popcorn. No one would like it, and the story wouldn't move unless something completely inconsistent to the scene occurred.





This of course leads to more writers blocks than a brick factory. It's tiring to try to slog through a scene, especially when I'm trying to write a first draft, and especially when I'm trying to write an emotional scene. It's mentally draining, as you're basically trying to take these characters and make them do the things you want them to do, like smashing a lemon and an orange together. Even when I think I'm done, I have to keep going back and tweaking things, because I'll probably find a word or sentence that looks awkward. It's a cycle of writing, smashing, and tweaking that will drive one insane.





Then, you add in mental disabilities to the mix. That's akin to trying to make a C++ program work in PERL. You could do it, but it'll take a lot of know-how to make it work right. I have to know Jeanne's character inside and out, and that includes her [classified information]. Her [classified information] is, of course, a huge block in trying to make a character seem real. I can't just go to Wikipedia, look up a condition, and slap it on her in the hopes it will stick. You have to be sure the disability is a key part of the character.





Actually, scratch that; reverse it.





You can't just make a character out of a disability. Jeanne is Jeanne, [classified information] or no. Who she is, and what you, the player, will see, is a girl who just happens to have a disability. That's it. While the main focus of this particular VN is about how mental disabilities affect (and effect) us and the people around them, these aren't the defining characteristics of our girls. Obviously, I can't go into too much detail as of now, but that's what I'd like everyone to understand.





Well, I hope you learned a little bit about how annoying writing is. It's one of the most difficult jobs I've ever taken, but it's still pretty dang cool.