Hyba Is Writing

Interactive Fiction Projects for Game Jams and Personal Fun  Lately, I've started using Twine again to make interactive fiction games. It's not much - just a little goofy fun here and there - but it's been a nice way to write in little tidbits, which is a lot more manageable for me at the moment.  It's also a little more challenging. Interactive fiction utilizes a lot of choice-based gameplay (I'm not making the kind where you enter commands). Choices have to mean something; they have to take you down another path or change something significantly enough that it matters in the story, either immediately or later on down the line.  That's where the challenge lies: the choices - and scale. I'm working on it best as I can, but I have a default setting in my brain that makes it so that even if I try to keep a game small, I end up creating so many choices and decisions and paths that it quickly blows out of proportion.  I sat down this time around and made a web o

Here's a little exercise I decided to do today. While perusing open calls for submission and game jams, I found myself thinking, if I was in a perfect state right now, I'd go for this, and this, and this one, and this...  Well, alright then. Sure, if I was functioning at 100%, I'd do all of the cool things I found. Given my health issues and other obstacles, it's all way too much. Still, it kept nagging at my brain: In a perfect world, I could... I could...  I decided I can make a list of all the things I'm interested in going for, and just seeing how much of them I get to do. If it's none of them, then that's that. It's ambitious to even get one of them done. If I can, by some miracle, do more than one? Amazing! (But I'm not gonna hold my breath!) Go ahead and give it a try. Do this exercise: In a perfect world, if you were in perfect condition and there was nothing else getting in the way, what would you try to go for this month, or in the next few

At some point he grew up, and realized that the love he had become so accustomed to receiving from the people in his life had become measured, restricted to short hugs on celebrations and little kisses after time apart. Affection was rationed, and he'd become hungry - greedy - for it. When he became ill, there was no comforting presence in his life, no Mom to bring him hot tea and take his temperature and boost his morale with chocolates. No Dad to lean his head against while they watched cartoons. Just him, alone, in an apartment that was too small for living, but enough, he guessed, for surviving. He lay there in his bed, burning up with a fever that would, at some point, break, and wondered what might happen if he didn't call anyone. If he didn't tell them. Would anyone notice? Would there be someone to say, "Hey, we haven't heard from Luke in a while. Maybe we should check in on him..."? Probably not. It's only been a day, after all. The ceiling above

How About We Don't Fake A Death? and other fun editing questions The second third round of edits for Murder in Heliopolis is well on its way to being finished, and with it, I find myself honing in on a set of decisions that are transforming the book for the better.  (By the way - you can read the original first draft right here . Enjoy! ...Sorry about that ending. I'm fixing it!)  After months away from both the book and writing, I came back to the manuscript with a fresh pair of eyes. I tried to be brutal in my edits. I wasn't pulling any punches. At the end of the day, I want the best for my story, and that means getting over the fact that editing is hard work on a number of levels. Sure, there's the whole emotional element - I love what I wrote, but it's just not working, etc., etc. - but there's also the actual mechanics and stages of editing. When you're editing a book and you're changing up scenes, plot points, and even worldbuilding elements, th