Hi everyone, Nick here again. With The Ghost of Alcantra releasing tomorrow, we have something different planned for this post. We have talked about sprites, backgrounds, and music, but we haven't talked about the most important part of any visual novel, the writing. And who better to talk about the writing of The Ghost of Alcantra then the author? Below is Colin's experience writing The Ghost of Alcantra:


I’ve always wanted to write a visual novel. More specifically, I wanted to leave something behind that expressed a me that would otherwise never be known, and I figured that making a visual novel was the best way to do that. After having the story in my head for years and procrastinating on actually making it, I finally began formally outlining the story in the May of 2023, and then began actually writing it on July 8th. I finished the first draft of the story, which was around 202k words, on October 22nd of that year. Writing something this long for a first work probably isn’t advisable, but I didn’t just want to write The Ghost of Alcantra, I needed to. I don’t know if souls can be expressed, but if they can, mine is in The Ghost of Alcantra.

I wouldn’t call writing The Ghost of Alcantra turbulent, but it was certainly time consuming and challenging. I wrote it part time while helping with my mom’s garden center in the summer and writing my dissertation in the fall. Because of this, The Ghost of Alcantra was fueled by lots of Mountain Dew while I wrote during the late hours of the evening (I’m a night owl, so I liked being up late anyway). There is a tendency to romanticize the creative process; in reality, writing a story is a lot of staring at a Google Doc. Even so, I came to love writing. Enough so that I’ve already written another work.

The real challenges came while I was finishing the first draft of the story. My dissertation advisor died two weeks before I finished the story, which made juggling the editing of the story and finishing my dissertation extremely time consuming. Given this is a passion project made by a very small group of people, I ended up editing most of the story myself. The story got close to 220k words after adding some scenes suggested by my sister and Nick, and then I cut out nearly 50k words to end up with The Ghost of Alcantra that will be released tomorrow.

A significant chapter of my life finishes tomorrow. I defend my dissertation the same day The Ghost of Alcantra gets released. A huge thanks to Nick, for giving me hundreds of hours doing all the technical stuff I can’t do, and to YuukiPudding for doing the large amounts of art this project required. I can’t thank them enough. And thank you to everyone who plays through The Ghost of Alcantra. I hope you enjoy the culmination of the last couple years of my life.

Until next time,

Nick and Colin

Hello, Nick here. Two days remain. Today, I am going to talk a little bit about music.

Music in The Ghost of Alcantra is entirely composed of classical pieces. This was done not only for the obvious budgetary reasons, but for aesthetic reasons as well. For one, classical music generally fits the aesthetic of The Ghost of Alcantra, given its slow, subtle presentation. Classical music has a large range of emotions it can invoke. Anywhere from romantic swells to dramatic, tension building pieces. In addition to this, several scenes were written with specific classical pieces in mind.

Our work flow worked like this: Colin would pick out music for us to use in every scene (he has an in depth knowledge of classical music stemming from his being taught piano as a child). I would clean up the recording and/or cut the track as needed. Then after review, the track would eventually be put in engine.

The composers used ranged anywhere from Bach to Rachmaninoff, but the most commonly used composer was Chopin, at 21 of the 75 tracks used (he is Colin's favorite).

Until next time,

Nick