I like game mechanics too, but for this idea i have it doesn't really fit and space wasted explaining. How did you adjust line spacing?, word processors is a bit of dark art alot of the time. I want to remove double spacing, i think, when doing dialogue i want to sometimes go down a line but it inserts a space and pressing backspace causes the cursor to go back up to the last line of text. I would like to remove space between section number and text beneath it too, if that is allowed?
The mechanics and another indulgence combined with them have used up over a page and a half for me!
I find dialogue hugely expensive on word count and presumably space as well so have mostly avoided it this time but with some ideas that is not an option. I would love to try the challenge of doing a 4 page gamebook with lots of dialogue in though. I would want dice mechanics as well though.
In the home menu in microsoft word there is a submenu for line and paragraph spacing. It includes the option of removing the space above a paragraph or below it or both. I suspect that will cut down on lots of wasted space for you.
Simon's comment was that we cannot go below font size 10 simply because it would become hard to read otherwise. He, himself looks to have used tricks to reduce the spacing in the adventures of his in issue 1 of the Gamebook Zine.
Yes, there is an absolutely huge amount of space going to waste between the numbered sections.
I reckon you can seriously get away with reducing the space between them. I've used both the "remove space after paragraph" function" and I have also formatted the hard returns between the numbered sections by reducing the "font size" of the hard returns there.
Doing this has not in the slightest had any negative impact on how clear the adventure is to read and I am on 2,372 words and still have wiggle room as a result. My gaps between the numbered sections are now 7mm wide, compared to the full 1cm they were previously!
I have actually been fairly indulgent with my spacing in some places. Where I instruct the player to make a stat roll, I have the which section to turn to according to the result they rolled, after a small space, which I could have deleted. It just looks nicer. If I have a big idea which requires a lot more room, I will delete those spaces if I feel it is worth it.
I full agree that knowing how to use formatting to make the best use of the space is a huge advantage.
Best of luck with it all and I hope you are having fun.
Yeah having lots of fun with this story, very much seat of my pants writing method. Nearing completion of draft 1. I figured out by trial and error how to adjust spacing in Open Office, for those who are also using this program; to the right side of screen in OO in the properties panel there is a Spacing: with two icons tool tips tell you increase or decrease spacing after paragraphs. Before that i was highlighting paragraphs and clicking on single spacing trying to see if that was the way to do it, but that did make it look tighter, i then tried spacing 1.5 and that was too wide. So I am not sure if the original spacing between lines was how it is suppose to be much like this text in this message or can you can get away with squashing them together a little with single line spacing in a paragraph? I don't know how to get it back to what it was. But at least if figured out how to adjust spacing after paragraphs. Anyway one thing i am finding with this comp is, it is teaching me to write more efficiently and make lines shorter. Something I think helps bigger works too.
I'm glad you are having fun and getting there. I have another adventure I started last month, currently on hold, which feels very much by the seat of my pants, as I am not sure where I am going with it.
Some of the formatting I have done to make better use of the space has been very time consuming. I have kept my original spacing between the lines within the paragraphs and yes, it is pretty much similar to the spacing we have in these messages. I really would not want to shrink that and am not sure how much it would be possible to do so before it made the text less easy to read.
I agree the spacing could be useful for bigger works. I am use to the size limit being determined by word count, with the publisher doing the formatting but with the Gamebook Zine it is by number of pages and I would like to try submitting a longer adventure to it outside of this competition.