Our Reality (Doki Doki Literature Club!)

Afterword #3

So... Last afterword I mentioned how fast time flew by when the 1st year anniversary arrived. This time I'll express my disbelief on how I've spent 2 years writing this story. I can believe 1 year, but 2 is a little out there. It's really incredible to me because this fanfiction came about at a time where I was feeling really low as a writer. I made a bunch of crossover Nickelodeon fanfictions, but at some point I was just getting lazy. My writing wasn't the best but those were better than my first fanfictions where I was a total beginner and wrote in script and got so many harsh reviews it's a wonder how my rookie spirit wasn't crushed. I'm so grateful to the people who did like the story despite the script writing and out there plot and to the people who actually critiqued and gave advice. It really did help in the long run. As for the people who gave me such harsh reviews... I can't really blame them; the story really did suck. It had potential, but it couldn't be saved. Even now that I feel more confident than I ever had and looked back on it, it couldn't be saved. I had to do a hard reset. But that's another documentary length story I'll possibly save for a possible afterword for that story (Seriously the history behind it has a high chance of being much, much longer than the history for this one).

So after 50 plus chapters of my original run of Adventures of the NGS Trio, I decided that I wanted to try and tell a 1st-person Metal Gear fanfic starring Venom Snake. It was okay. I was a little lazy on that one too, but in my defense, I had no experience with telling a story with really deep depth. Maybe that's why I could get away with my Nickelodeon crossovers, but even then I got pretty lazy regarding those at some point. Thinking back, I believe I was giving more style than substance. I would just have something I thought was cool or funny without the appropriate build-up which meant the impact was poor. And eventually, I just couldn't think of anything to write. I mean I had ideas, but none that I could fully realize. Some I even started but never finished and eventually I was losing the confidence I was building up.

And then I got the idea to write this story. This one probably would have been a make-it or break-it for me. I wouldn't have quit as a writer, but I probably would have been in for a long hiatus. But, I was determined for this one and did something I didn't do for my others stories even after I got out of script writing. I read my old chapter books to learn about sentence and paragraph structure. I studied how dialogue worked, other words to use instead of just said and how to establish characteristics and appearances with character actions.

Going a bit off subject but it was actually during that time that I realized that I could still include a lot of dialogue in writing. One of my favorite parts of writing is the dialogue. I can't explain why at the moment, but I love writing character dialogue. It was actually one of the reasons I choose script over novel writing. I used to think I wouldn't be able to include that much dialogue unless I wrote in script. Well, considering all the dialogue I put in this story, in hindsight this is just hilarious trivia. Another piece of un-important trivia is that when I do the dialogue in this story, I sometimes just write without stopping because the character's replies to each other would just come to me.

Back on track, I was ready to put the results of education to work. I got to work that night, went to sleep, woke in the morning, got back to work and by 1:10 p.m. I realized something. I was retreading the beginning of the game. I thought I could just insert Shujinkou and alter some dialogue then get to the real meat of the story, but fortunately I remembered first impressions were vital. Hardly anyone was going to read because they did not come for a retread and Shujinkou was not interesting enough to hook readers in. Plus, this was a fanfic; anyone reading this was already a fan and knew the universe. Those revelations made me realized that I just needed to work on Shujinkou, establish his place in the story and his relationship with the girls.