Written

Managed to do all the writing for the first half of the game. So this is script for the narrator during the intro and in the area where narration is the main medium of telling a story in-game.  

It was much easier writing it today because everything else got sorted yesterday and I'm now clear with what I'm actually writing about. Of course, this is a draft, and it needs to be edited several times over to get the best version. At the moment I think the writing is hollow, in that it doesn't have a distinct personality to it. The descriptions aren't very fresh and they sound and feel too awkward. I want to change it to sound more natural. Something that rolls off your tongue. I think maybe it has something to do with the rhythm of the words while you read it. For example, some of my sentences are way too long, "On a cold, cold night, tucked away in his cozy bed, his parents gently kissed him on the cheek." It doesn't feel very natural either. I think in the intro it might be better to include a snippet to show you what the relationship between the parents and the child is like. At the moment the parents seem too impersonal and separate from the boy.

I've re-read it again just now, the imagery is a bit choppy at times. The sentence, "His mother sang him a little song, and the moon shone ever so brightly." is an example of this. You've got this image of his mother singing and then the image chops to the moon. I think I need to re-write this so that there's a smoother transition.

Some imagery also doesn't fit the mood. In one part where the boy has fallen into the winter world he's seeing some mildly creepy things. If you were the boy you wouldn't stop to admire the beauty of the falling snow. You wouldn't perceive the snow as dancing "through the crisp, cold night."

When you write, you never get the whole thing right the first time. I've talked to many writers and a creative writing teacher I've met says that the secret to writing a good story is to just write it all out. It wouldn't be amazing on the first go but to turn it into a story you're proud of, that comes in the process of re-writing what you've got over and over again. You work out a lot of the things you don't want, add a bit of detail, build up some atmosphere and personality, and so on. I'm in this process at the moment. Some choices of words I need to change, a bit of rewording, changing the feeling of the words to match the scene.