Advice Blog: IF Seal
I've been a great fan of advice blogs over the years, and found niches colliding when Story Hospital and, later, IF Confessions started. Neither are running anymore, but I wondered if I could go some way to filling a gap. Full of hubris and inspired by the now-ancient Calming Manatee, I decided to start IF Seal in 2023, planning to post daily, and unfortunately quickly ran out of steam.
In 2025 I resurrected the blog! It now posts weekly and has been far more successful. Here's an archive of posts to peruse.
The advice comes from a ton of accrued knowledge and experience of writing game narrative, but of course should not be taken as gospel. Many of the questions are from the context of long branching narratives with customisable protagonists, either in or inspired by the Choice of Games style,, but perhaps some of the advice can be applied to broader narrative design choices as well, or even other kinds of writing and creative work.
I always try to write compassionately and encouragingly in my responses. If you've asked a question and would like to send a follow-up message to my reply, I'm very happy to make further posts on the subject!
If you want to send in a question, you can via the Tumblr blog or this anonymous form.
If you have questions like...
- I'm stuck on a branching scene that's turned huge and can't figure a way of getting through it.
- I'm worried about players wanting to take actions in my IF that I don't want to include.
- I've fallen in love with an IF and want to give critical feedback but don't want to offend the author.
- I've made some characters that I LOVE but once I start the story I just don't know what to do with them.
- Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account and I want to change that
- Readers are saying my game doesn't take their choices into account... and how much does that really matter?
...or anything else, I am here to help out! I hang out in @hpowellsmith's bathtub from which I dictate my many and varied thoughts. I post an answer each Monday. Please send in your questions and I will share my sealy knowledge and experience!
A few notes:
- If you're talking about a particular game in a negative fashion, please anonymise it. If you don't, I will assign it a comedically anonymous title
- I am not much of a Tech Seal and it is unlikely that I can answer detailed technical questions, but I will try to point you in the right direction
- I am not interested in answering "which scripting tool is the objective best" because unanswerable questions are beyond my sealy ken but I will have much more to say about "which scripting tool might suit this project best for which reasons"
- If you send a non-anonymous ask, I will check that you're happy to have your name on it before I post an answer
Enjoy!