How long a line takes
How long does it take to write a line of dialogue? Anywhere from four seconds to a day. On Thursday it was a day.
The line belongs to an old woman in a quest I can't describe. Earlier in the quest the player can fail her, in a way that costs her someone. Most players won't. Some will, by accident or on purpose, and then, if they go on with the quest, they have to walk back into her house and face her. The scene was written, her lines were written, all but one: the first thing she says when the player comes through the door.
Here's roughly how the day went.
At nine I wrote twelve versions, fast, without stopping to judge them. Some of them were angry. Some were cold. One was a speech, a whole paragraph about what she'd lost, which I deleted as soon as I'd read it, because grieving people don't make speeches to the person they blame. They don't have the breath.
At eleven I read the remaining ones aloud in a meeting room with the door shut, which is the only way I've ever been able to tell what's true. Most of them sounded like a writer. Two sounded like her.
At one I took a walk around the building, twice, and tried to work out what she would actually want in that moment. Not to punish the player. She's too tired for that. I think she wants them to know she saw them come in. That she isn't pretending they're a stranger.
By four I'd cut it down to six words. By five I had five. I won't quote it, because it isn't mine to quote, and because out of the scene it would look like nothing. Five ordinary words a person might say to someone who's come back. That's what took the day.
I used to feel embarrassed by days like that, as if a professional should be faster. I'm not anymore. A line a player hears once, at the worst moment of a story they chose, deserves a day. Most of my days go to lines nobody will remember, and that's fine too. It's the work. But every few months there's one that has to be exactly right, and the only way I know to make it right is to stay in the room with it until it stops moving.
Is there something you've spent a whole day on that came out looking like nothing?