Cyberpunk 2077 Forum Short Story Competition - Discussion

+
Also am at work again, is slow so I wrote this…
Thanks for sharing. I would definitely play along if I could write one of the short stories to submit. We had a community written story that several of us wrote as a group a while back. It was pretty fun but we ran out of steam after a bit. As @4meg suggested above, it would be cool to go back and finish it since we only got like 1/4 into the overarching plot.

If you wanna give it a read, check - Community Written Story - The Zetatech Job
 
What was your writing process like?

Things I would like to know about your short story submission.

1: Formulation of concept ideas.

2: Length of time it took to write a short story.

3: Writing process/ (was there any trouble you came across when writing your short story)

4: Final feeling regarding your submissions

Reason for submission of short story.
I work in a high end hotel and duo to cov-19 it's been very slow lately, sometimes we have stretches of 5 hours of inactivity so naturally you start to look for things to do to avoid boredom.

I chose to kill time by reading random things on "cyberpunk 2077 forum" one of the first things that pops up when you enter the forum is the "short story competition" but there was nothing submitted yet so I though "ah hell why not"

Work with what you have.
I am in no way shape or form a writer, I have never attempted to write a short story or any story for that matter other than a few shit ones I wrote in high school. This became very apparent to me as I stared to write.

Initially my story was going to be longer but the more I wrote the more I realized things didn't make any sense. It took me about an hour to formulate a concept idea but putting it into words in a way that made sense and was enjoyable to read was going to be difficult.

What I wanted to write vs what I wrote.
Originally my story was going to be about a character having to deal with his 60lb/27kg cybernetic leg not working in a middle of a get a way and what he had to do to in order to buy time until trauma team arrived.

Final feelings.
All in all it was a good time, learned a few things, Killed some time at work which was my original goal and found a new hobby/ interest "short stories" am happy with how my story turned out given I had never written a story before.

Side notes.
Am enjoying reading other contestants stories as well as learning from them so thumbs up to you guys!

Also am at work again, is slow so I wrote this…
I like this. :ok:
  1. My favorite movie being Blade Runner (along with Dune), i had to write something about a detective, so i started looking up stuff about NCPD on the wiki, most of the other details came up as i wrote the story, especially the plot twist at the end.
  2. I was away from home so i only had access to my laptop, not having much to play on my downtime i started writing (i always did like to write stories as an hobby), it took me probably something around 3 to 5 hours between conceptualization/writing/looking up stuff/finalizing.
  3. There were definitely many problems i encountered while writing, first and foremost the language barrier: i realized i know way less adjectives and synonyms in english than my first language (obviously). this website came to the rescue.
  4. I am NEVER 100% satisfied when i write something, my curse is being a perfectionist in most of the things i do, therefore once i write something i never go back to it otherwise i'd be fixing every small detail about it and change stuff i might not have to, but i'm happy with my overall story/concept. The only thing i really changed was the spacing to make it easier to read.
One thing i want to add is about style choice: I prefer writing in third person as i am more used to it and i feel it gives me greater freedom of expression. I also like to pace my stories more towards action/dialogue instead of descriptions, sometime i might find myself wanting to describe the action a character is performing down to the finer details but i just gave up on that kind of writing process because either it results on me not being able to conceptualize what i want to convey or it results in something so convoluted it becomes thedious to read. I think this way of writing keeps the reader more engaged and gives them a broader chance to imagine the details of the setting, personally i also find this kind of writing "easier to read" but that's just my opinion.
 
@ITheBonless

1: Awhile back there was some mention of what brought your character to Night City. As a Nomad this was my idea.

2: About 45 mins

3: My character will be a Nomad and I enjoyed looking up the lore for Nomad culture and names, a name for my drone and the state of the highways.

4: I'm happy with it. I was going to go a little longer but I decided to leave it up to the imagination.
 
@ITheBonless

1 I spend half of my work day alone , i thought of ideas in this time.

2 A couple of hours .

3 The whole thing was done for a bit of fun for me . I just crossed my fingers the story didn`t suck :ROFLMAO:

4 The end might have been a little short but i am happy with the story .
 
Last edited:
I'm just curious here, is there any particular reason why most people seem to prefer writing their story in first person rather than third person? (at least so far)

My guess is that it's much easier to keep the story straight-to-the-point in 1st person. It might also be more favorable when there is a 25K char limit ---- meaning almost every sentence needs to advance the plot.

I do think 3rd person has some advantages:
(1) Maintains objectivity: It helps preventing the writer from injecting too much of him/herself into the protagonist to mess up the pacing. This helps when the plot becomes emotionally heavy.

(2) Provides flexibility: 3rd person allows asymmetric information scenarios, where you the reader knows that A knows something that B does not know, but B knows C knows D knows A knows something. Okay, I'm babbling, but you see how fun writing and reading can both be, if the writer knows how to utilize this. I myself am still learning about this part.

(3) Opens the story to a wider audience: A female reader could subconsciously find it hard to relate if the "I" in the story was straight up male, and vice versa. I'm confident you can infer what other examples might be.
 
My guess is that it's much easier to keep the story straight-to-the-point in 1st person. It might also be more favorable when there is a 25K char limit ---- meaning almost every sentence needs to advance the plot.

I do think 3rd person has some advantages:
(1) Maintains objectivity: It helps preventing the writer from injecting too much of him/herself into the protagonist to mess up the pacing. This helps when the plot becomes emotionally heavy.

(2) Provides flexibility: 3rd person allows asymmetric information scenarios, where you the reader knows that A knows something that B does not know, but B knows C knows D knows A knows something. Okay, I'm babbling, but you see how fun writing and reading can both be, if the writer knows how to utilize this. I myself am still learning about this part.

(3) Opens the story to a wider audience: A female reader could subconsciously find it hard to relate if the "I" in the story was straight up male, and vice versa. I'm confident you can infer what other examples might be.
Writing first person is one the most difficult ways to do the thing, in my opinion. You really want the character to be special, interesting, attracting on many different levels if you want to make a first-person story good.

First of all, not every character would make a good narrator or storyteller, whilst the auther may be tempted to throw in a couple of juicy words and constructions to flex on. I don't think that a contrast like this leaves readers with a good impression.

Second, the information available to this character regarding other people, events, places, whatever is limited, and when it's not as limited, it may get way to close to Mary or Martin Sue territory. Doesn't do your story any good either.

Lastly, if done right, first person narrative can be incorporated into a third-person narrative quite well if done right. Strugatskie (russian/Soviet sci-fi authors) did a good job on this in their The Doomed City: the narration was third-person for the most part, although there were multiple sections where one of the characters had an internal monologue that was NOT separated from the narrator's text with quotes or anything. Surprisingly enough, that felt fluid because the emotions of the narrator felt similar to the character's closer to the monologue. They sort of collaborated, which really facilitated readers' understanding of the thought process and emotional state of the character. Another example is a wild one, but it comes from the same authors: The Ugly Swans is a story that is kinda written by a character (an author) in another book of theirs, Limping Fate, yet both are real tangible stories written by Strugtskie (I had a book with both stories, Limping Fate was told in odd chapters, The Ugly Swans was told in even chapters, that was pretty neat).

However, first-person is actually great for short stories that you don't want or plan to invest a lot into. It allows you to tell a story without that feeling that you're doing something wrong with all the repeating pronouns and names and euphemisms for the same character, you're allowed to drop some details due to the character's limited knowledge, and the story isn't likely to feel naked and lacking details because of that. Still, 25k characters should be enough for a third-person story to unfold sufficiently if you don't give it too many elements to cover, though.
 
Regarding first vs. third person and Beholder. I purposefully wrote in first person perspective for the same reason that I don't directly describe gender or human characteristics (other than cybernetics) until later in the story; I want to create a bit of a merger of self between the reader and the character. Not going to spoil the story, but it also plays into the main premise of self, humanity, identity, and the tugging of the reader liking and disliking the character. Wanted to play with all it means to be a cybernetically implanted "human" and bring the reader into that.
 
What was your writing process like?

1: Formulation of concept ideas.
I've been analyzing the Afterlife scene in the 20 minutes gameplay trailer for the past few days relentlessly and since I've been especially fixating on how Claire makes the two Johnny Silverhand cocktails, so I've had bartending on the brain. I projected some of my bartending experience in Seattle into a Night City setting, decided to follow a basic Oedipus story arch, and let my imagination rip, starting with a pair of corpos coming into a bar they're not welcome in.

2: Length of time it took to write a short story.
Maybe 3-4 hours in total.

3: Writing process/ (was there any trouble you came across when writing your short story)
I stumbled upon this board while doing research for the aforementioned content series that I'm working on. I saw the short story thread and saw that it was still active, dreamed up a general plot while falling asleep last night, and luckily remembered it this morning when I awoke. Started my day writing the basis of the story to warm up and took breaks from my workflow to write in little sprints, look up some lore in the wiki and edit a bit. At one point I had to decide whether I wanted to flesh out the bar scene more or add an act ii between the storytelling split. Decided that I'd keep it short and uncomplicated.

4: Final feeling regarding your submissions
Nothing is ever finished, it's only due are words I live by. I could have spent much more time on it, and refined it much more, but I ultimately decided that it's better to get it out. and focus on my other projects. I hope it was an enjoyable read for everyone, and this could be a fun little hobby to maintain, writing such "vignettes" in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe.
 
Lastly, if done right, first person narrative can be incorporated into a third-person narrative quite well if done right. Strugatskie (russian/Soviet sci-fi authors) did a good job on this in their The Doomed City: the narration was third-person for the most part, although there were multiple sections where one of the characters had an internal monologue that was NOT separated from the narrator's text with quotes or anything.

You're onto something here. While I am not familiar with The Doomed City, the I, Robot book by Isaac Asimov also has a similar structure, with two perspectives blending together: one is a 1st-person view from the reporter, another is 3rd-person (Dr. Calvin's stories).

Still, 25k characters should be enough for a third-person story to unfold sufficiently if you don't give it too many elements to cover, though.
I agree. Focusing on just enough but not too many elements, is the key.
 
You're onto something here. While I am not familiar with The Doomed City, the I, Robot book by Isaac Asimov also has a similar structure, with two perspectives blending together: one is a 1st-person view from the reporter, another is 3rd-person (Dr. Calvin's stories).
The funny thing is, all of these three are Russian. Why can't we, Ruskis, write just as everybody else does?

I agree. Focusing on just enough but not too many elements, is the key.
When I was younger, I tried to write a couple of short stories, SHORT being the key word. Turns out, it takes way more expertise to tell a story in a satisfying and clear way because you're not as free to throw in those juicy details and reveal every single piece of your idea explicitly.

In Russian school curriculum, Anton Chekhov is known as "The Master of short story". I never really enjoyed classics, but as tiny little author myself, I took a look at some of his short fiction and, well, even I tend to agree that this mad did a good job with limited amount of words. His fiction felt complete, you know, as if it had the necessities and a little extra to understand the story, the characters and the plot. I can't remember any of his works, but I think he used to imply certain things through various elements, essentially making you - the reader - do the job of understanding.

Any type of fiction has its merits, naturally, and it's all about the author's preference. I used to write a lot of short stories inspired by some digital art pieces I saw around the internet (open the pic on one side of your screen, text editor on the other, man that was fun), and needless to say, as examples of short fiction, all of that was pure garbage. They were not really stories, but rather sketches or useless, plotless outtakes of what I saw and imagined in the picture. Certainly, nobody who we may consider a good short fiction authors wrote anything as mindless and unstructured that we later considered great and exemplary.
 
The funny thing is, all of these three are Russian. Why can't we, Ruskis, write just as everybody else does?
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (depending on how his name is anglo-fied, and also Russian), is touted as the book that inspired the feverishly popular 1984 by Orville Wells. We, perhaps, is the originator of the hyper-surveliance, totalitarian, dystopian future that cyberpunk finds itself adjacent to.

When I first read the book, I was astounded by the poetry in the english translation I read, I've linked it here. Told in the first person by narration in the form of protagonist D-503's journals he has been tasked with by the State. There are also official poems written for the State that are shared in the novel, world building in a curious fashion.



Elaborating a bit more on the first-person, I find that stylized first-person lends itself to the feeling of noir, for instance, and helps build the character and her/his understanding of the world exposing it to the reader with a more judgement tinged observation rather than a non-judging one.

I wrote my story in the first-person, on account that in CP2077, we play from the perspective of V which gives the player individualistic control of the character's fate. I wanted to resemble such a progression in the eyes of the narrator looking retrospectively upon his lifepath and perhaps sharing this story with another or simply writing it down.

I thought the first-person perspective would help embody the high cool that the character touts, to add personal style and self-awareness from explaining his thoughts and actions by constantly reminded himself to stay cool despite his body's reactions to external stimuli.
 
I wrote my story in the first-person, on account that in CP2077, we play from the perspective of V which gives the player individualistic control of the character's fate. I wanted to resemble such a progression in the eyes of the narrator looking retrospectively upon his lifepath and perhaps sharing this story with another or simply writing it down.

I thought the first-person perspective would help embody the high cool that the character touts, to add personal style and self-awareness from explaining his thoughts and actions by constantly reminded himself to stay cool despite his body's reactions to external stimuli.

I left mine genderless on purpose so it could be a man or a woman or any combination thereof.
 
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (depending on how his name is anglo-fied, and also Russian), is touted as the book that inspired the feverishly popular 1984 by Orville Wells. We, perhaps, is the originator of the hyper-surveliance, totalitarian, dystopian future that cyberpunk finds itself adjacent to.

When I first read the book, I was astounded by the poetry in the english translation I read, I've linked it here. Told in the first person by narration in the form of protagonist D-503's journals he has been tasked with by the State. There are also official poems written for the State that are shared in the novel, world building in a curious fashion.



Elaborating a bit more on the first-person, I find that stylized first-person lends itself to the feeling of noir, for instance, and helps build the character and her/his understanding of the world exposing it to the reader with a more judgement tinged observation rather than a non-judging one.

I wrote my story in the first-person, on account that in CP2077, we play from the perspective of V which gives the player individualistic control of the character's fate. I wanted to resemble such a progression in the eyes of the narrator looking retrospectively upon his lifepath and perhaps sharing this story with another or simply writing it down.

I thought the first-person perspective would help embody the high cool that the character touts, to add personal style and self-awareness from explaining his thoughts and actions by constantly reminded himself to stay cool despite his body's reactions to external stimuli.
Oh, I've actually read We! Loved the entire idea and the presentation. Journaling like that is something that I think is a good way to build a first-person narrative. It just feels way more real and tangible that way, especially in a setting that makes the character think, retrospect about the events they witnessed.

Naturally, I read it all in Russian, but I don't really remember much of the words or style of the book. I remember the ideas and the feelings I had and the general plot, but can't really comment if it was that poetic before translation. The world building was great, though, that's one thing I remember for sure - Zamyatin even had some schedules somewhere in the book, didn't he? "The Table" or whatever it was translated as.

The book makes even more sense if you give it its historical and cultural context. I may elaborate in PM or something, as I think it would really be off-topic to this thread.

About your story being a first-person one - I think it's a nice way to convey your character's attitude. I still prefer third-person because I don't really like to stick to one character for a long period of time, and giving detailed description of another character's emotions or anything really would feel... a bit pretentious, I guess. My main characters are no psychics.
 
Just posed my submission, tho I'm not sure I actually meet the conditions for the competition as an ex-moderator. Still, been meaning to try my hand at writing something and this seems like a good excuse. Hope you guys like it.
 
Less than 72 hours left to get your entries in people. I love the ones we have so far!
 
Last edited:
My main thing was that I didn't want to insult the reader by spelling things out, but instead I hinted at bits and pieces that build and only become fully clear at the end of the story. I was aiming for a very Enders Game/Fight-Club mindscrew, and also to show the machinery of an amoral money/power focused company that treats humans as commodity to use, control, adapt to the point of failure and beyond, all on a cost benefit analysis. Its shown in the character's job, their office and home environment, the home and work life, even what has been done to their body and mind, and what is done afterwards... The characters at the corporation are important right up until the point they are not, and the other individuals you get glimpses on are important but kept in their place, some even with out knowing it; and each and every one of them can thrown away and replaced. It's the ultimate materialism, the ultimate objectification, where humans are less than numbers on a spreadsheet, less than part of a manufacturing line, they are a plastic piece designed to be disposable. It got stuck in my brain, then I went to sleep thinking about it, thought about it in the middle of the night, and then had to get it down on paper to get it out of my head. Still a bit obsessed with this idea and interested to see how the cyberpsycho's and missions regarding lack of humanity in Night City's trans-human / cyberdized (is that a word?) individuals is played out in CP2077.
 
Top Bottom