So, I just did a small novel (40k words) game design project and in the process I designed a workflow and automation for myself. Folks have asked me if I'd share, so here it is.

Well, almost. First, disclaimers!

everything I am going to do is what fits my brain. It might not fit yours, and that is cool!

Also, I will reference tools, but use what's comfortable to you. I think the process is more important than what tools you use for the process.

Not going to spend time arguing x vs y.

OK!

So, I used to have varying thoughts on outlining. Do I need it, do I not need? Maybe I'll do it. Nah, I'll skip.

There is just no way I see of doing a large body of work without an outline, and even shorter work benefits.

outline.

the format of your outline doesn't matter at all, only the fact that you have an overview and playbook of what you are going to do. The time you spend on it is going to get repaid a million times.

after I outline, I break down the different parts and elements into a trello board (pick your project board of choice). This is a good format for tracking how the progress on the different elements is going.

Again, fancy is great, but having a to-do/WIP/done set up works fine.

So now...writing. I spent a lot of time trying to "just write" and I was mostly unsuccessful at that! You can power through short projects like that, but longer projects IME demand more structure in how you approach the writing.

The most difficult part about game writing is that it can oscillate from free "creative" text to precise keywords and formatting to heavy number crunching, like...all in the same sentence.

You kill a writing flow dead when you stop to reference system material.

time after time I'd be writing and realize I needed to create a custom monster or game system, then detour into the system stuff and spend 3 hours what amounted to 100 words of text and *then* be exhausted for the night.

YMMV, but I decided I wasn't going to do that anymore.

so, after trial and error, I came on a system that looks like:
brainstorm (usually in miro)
Write, add placeholders for system
Build system material and add it later

Basically I write in layers and I separate out system stuff so I can write instructional/descriptive text first.

So rather than try to remember or to look up proper skill DCs forex, I just write '['easy]', '[moderate]', '[hard]'. Later, when I am done, I do a find/replace substituting the numbers.

When I have a bigger system I need to build, I tag it '<TODO description>' and come back.

I started keeping two small sessions each day: One was for writing and the other was for design/system stuff. I could design systems easiest in the morning before my day job used that circuit up, and write easiest in the evenings.

the other key thing is automation.
First: automation is tricky, because you have to understand a process and it's actual friction before you can automate successfully.

Automation without process knowledge is procrastination with technology.

Having said that, after ~10,000 words or so I understood what phrases I was repeating, and what elements I was needing to type over and over. Identifying those things, I could reduce keystrokes greatly using text expansion (Alfred is my tool).

I could turn 'read or paraphrase the following:' into ':rop', which is lightning fast to type and saved so much time. I also did text expansion on skill names for checks.
'Diplomacy check' -> ':diplo'
'Intimidation check' -> ':int'
did this for all skills, save a lot of time!

part of the reason this works is that I plan to write more material for this particular system, so the 20 minutes I spent on this is going to be worth it over and over. But even for one big project, this saves time.

OK, I realized that I have a lot more to say about this than I thought and I need to get to work.

If there is interest, I'll do a part 2?