Inside Choices: Do No Harm 2

Get ready to dive deeper into the dangerous allure of forbidden love as we welcome you to an exclusive Q&A session for Do No Harm🩺 season 2. We’re pulling back the curtain to give you an insider's look at how our writers and artists create the detailed worlds you fall in love with. From pilots and seasons to creating memorable characters, we’re bringing the meat,🥩 so lets jump right in…

This was an interesting series because you wrote the initial outline, but someone else stepped in to write the pilot while you finished your last project. How did it feel having to wait to see results for “your” story, but that was written by someone else?

Bre: It’s always a little nerve-wracking to see what people think, but I think this was even more so, because, while I had a hand in the initial product, I didn’t see the chapters until long after they’d been released. I’m lucky to work on an amazing team of writers who are all more than capable of executing, and when I did get to take a look, it was really cool to see the book brought to life in ways I hadn’t imagined, but that ended up making complete sense. 

Similarly, tell me more about how the season process felt as a writer? Was it stressful waiting to see the results between seasons to see if you could complete the original story as you had intended?

Bre: It was an interesting process, in that I’m used to powering through and banging out sixteen chapters, and just having a book be whatever it’s going to be, but the break was a really nice refresh. I spent a little time dreaming up a new book, and the change in gears made it a lot easier to step back into the world of Do No Harm with fresh eyes. By that same token, being fresh means it took me a little longer to hit my groove. I spent a lot of time thinking, “Is this right? Would Dom say that? Would MC take that?” It took me really examining what MC and Dom’s dynamic was, how it would shift based on the circumstances, and understanding them as characters before everything started to flow again.

Did you have any goals with this book from an art perspective? 

Heather: I hope we’ve created a world you can fall in love with. Something exciting and mysterious, a love that pulls people into paths they would otherwise never see. Truthfully, this is all Bre and the amazing writing, but from the art side, I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in that world, while creating the art to support it.

And you did an amazing job! Could you say a bit more about how you approached Do No Harm and anything that might be unique to this book? 

Heather: With the art for Do No Harm, I wanted to create a color theme for the main character and their world, and a contrasting color theme for Dom and that darker more violent world.

The main character's world is a world of blues and greens and teals. They live in a world of hospital rooms and emergency room decisions.

Dom’s world is darker, warmer, blacks and oranges, sexier and more exciting. As they interact, hopefully, you see the colors of their worlds start to bleed into one another.

What’s the most fun part of writing a book/series? Brainstorming, outlining, when you’re in the midst of the chapters, putting on the finishing polish, seeing it all come together, or something else?

Bre: I love brainstorming. There’s a moment in every meeting where we’re all stuck on an idea, and someone’ll say, “Okay, this is a bad idea, but what if…” and that sparks someone else to be like, “Oh, yeah! And what if…” By the time we’re all done puzzling it out, everyone’s excited and sold on the direction, and there’s no feeling like it… Except when I’m particularly in my bag, and I nail the dialogue in a scene. Finalizing Dom’s “I’m not the guy/girl you bring home to mom” line had me feeling like I could walk through walls.

Which character do you have the most fun writing?

Bre: MC and Dom’s dynamic is always fun, because they’re a constant push-pull. Even when they’re getting along, they’re seconds away from a fight that’s not really a fight that is actually just foreplay… Surprise!
Aside from them, there’s actually a villain this season that I had a lot of fun writing, just because of how unpredictable they were. I pulled a little inspiration from The Penguin and just thought, ‘If I were in Arkham, how would I fair?” The experiment was interesting to say the least, and I hope that translates when that character makes themself known.

And which character was the most fun to create on the art side? 

Heather: I loved the female version of Dom. I half fell in love with her myself. I also loved the frazzled mother of the young patient. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in her situation, and what it would be like, from the point of view of the main character.

I was re-reading through the outline for this book recently and it got very specific about what lines we would cross and which were… over the line. Was that a hard balance to strike, between being “sexy” but not being too much? Or was the line very clear as you were writing?

Bre: With mature books, there are plenty of sexy scenes, so there’s this sense of needing to keep upping the ante, and that can lead into territory that goes too far. Setting out clear boundaries in the beginning, especially with a book that toes the line of being a dark romance, becomes important, and funnily enough, once I know the restrictions, striking the right balance between sexy and over the top becomes that much easier. Now, instead of wondering whether I’ve gone too far physically, I know I’m right in the pocket and can focus on the nuances of the romance and striking the chords I need to hit emotionally.

How did you initially react to hearing we would extend the series for a season 2?

Bre: I’m always excited to hear that my work is resonating with people, and if I’m honest, season 2 is where Dom and MC really hit their stride. MC is battling with the idea of embracing the violence of the mob world, while Dom is dealing with softer, more personal issues, and they each need the other to balance out. I can’t wait for that to be released, and for everyone to see that evolution unfold. 

Heather: I was surprised but really happy. I love our long form books, but I’m excited about the idea of pilots and seasons. There are so many things we would like to try, that might be too risky for an entire book. If a pilot doesn’t do well, at least we have some ideas that we can then apply to the next book. BUT, if a Pilot DOES do well, and enough people were willing to take a chance on it, it’s really exciting because it means that experiment worked, and now we can tell a longer story.

And then there is this. Every book I work on, I fall a little bit in love with the characters and places. There is always at least one thing I wish I could redo, or that I think, “I can do that better next time” but ALSO, there's that falling in love thing. With a season 2, I get to come back and spend a little more time in this world, and hopefully get to flesh it out a little more.

With the extension to a season, is there anything you changed or wanted to change between the pilot and the full series? In TV shows, occasionally a cast member will get replaced cough Game of Thrones.. Is there anyone you wanted to change with more time?

Heather: Pilots are a new concept for Choices and for our team.. They are intended to give our players a taste of a story before we invest months of work making the full book. As part of that, we want the production on a pilot to be as tight as possible. But on the art side, those first two chapters are some of our busiest times. That’s where we are really creating the vision for the overall world. That’s where we’re creating our main characters and love interests that hopefully make you fall in love. So that doesn't leave as much time to fine tune things like secondary characters.. 

For Do No Harm, I really wanted to push the envelope to see how much world building I could accomplish on an ultra tight deadline.. On the one hand, it was a thrill that people loved playing DNH so we were able to make a second season.. But on the other hand, there are definitely small tweaks I would make going back. I actually tried to update Neil, Dom’s brother, because I felt I didn’t give that character as much love as I wanted. I even went so far as creating a new version, but it was already in QA and you all had already seen the character in the pilot.. So we decided to keep the original look rather than confuse players that had already played through part of the story. Sometimes it’s like that. We try as hard as we can, within the time we have, but there’s always something we wish we could have done better.

Do you read the reaction online once a book launches? Why or why not?

Bre: I used to because I’m just as excited for players to read Choices chapters as they are! I love seeing people dissect the thing I’ve put so much time into and for them to come up with theories and post about their favorite lines and characters, but recently, I’ve had to stop because it just wasn’t great for my mental health. I’d have days where I was flying high because of praise and others where I was absolutely destroyed because of critiques. It’s entirely fair for people to have criticism, but when you internalize it as much as I do, it can be paralyzing. I can’t do my job if I’m worried about what everyone’s going to think of the final product or whether they’re going to assume something I wrote is AI, so now I keep an ear out for the general consensus, but leave the specifics alone. 

Heather: Every artist in the art department has a different approach to reading player reactions. We have some artists that look at reddit, or ask our community team for feedback. I sometimes look at what players are saying on instagram. I tend to look for trends… if you hated something, why did you hate it, and do I agree.

We tried something new with skin tones awhile back, for example, that ended up being a total disaster. What we were hoping for, was a wider range of skin tones in warm and cool tones. What we got though, was that on some phones, we had characters that looked green, or purple, or sort of zombie grey. If we make zombies, we really really want them to be on purpose. 😬

I think initially, some players complained about some of the smiles looking weird. I took that to heart because I think they were right and that gave me something to work on for the next book. I hope players are liking the smiles more, we are genuinely working really hard on improving those.

When I hear that players specifically loved a character, or a location, or an outfit, that makes me really happy. We work so hard on trying to make the characters and locations come alive, it’s so gratifying when something resonates.

What are you most proud of with this series?

Bre: A lot of what I write is based, even tangentially, on my life experiences, but Do No Harm really tested my imagination. I’ve never been to Philadelphia, I’ve never consorted with the mob (thank goodness), and I was pre-med for approximately four months before realizing medicine wasn’t my calling. I really struggled with even putting the idea together, and somehow, I’ve managed to get chapters done, and the team got them released, and people are enjoying them. And after staring at a blank document into the wee hours of the night, that feels like plenty to be proud of.

Heather: I love that the players love this world. I always love that. I’m going to push it back to the writing. At the end of the day, the writers give us these wonderful characters and worlds and we get to do the best we possibly can, to try to bring them to life. That’s my favorite part of the job.

Do you want there to be a season 3? Do you think there is enough meat for the series to continue or had you always envisioned it as a 16 chapter storyline?

Bre: It’s a privilege to put finger to keyboard and make the voices in my head earn their keep, so I’m down to do as many seasons as there’s interest in, but I have to be honest. When I first dreamed up Do No Harm, I always intended for it to be a multi-book series, but as they say, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” The team started putting things together, and suddenly the initial idea transformed into something completely different, and the dramatic ending I had planned that would be the start of the next sixteen chapters no longer made sense… and that’s writing. The pieces fall apart just as quickly as they come together, and you’ve got to be willing to toss out what no longer works and find what does. I do think there’s room in Dom and MC’s story for the series to continue, and we might even be able to loop back around to some of the original ideas, but if it does end here, I’m proud of the story we told, and I can move on to the next one knowing I did my best. 

And from the art side, where would you want DNH to go in a 3rd season? 

Heather: If DNH came back... wouldn't it be fun if they traveled to Europe for a much needed vacation in Italy, and ended up getting involved in a situation that required the main character's medical background to save the life of someone that had been sent to kill them? I would love to work on all their outfits, the locations, and what it looks like to go under cover. If we could somehow work in stolen art and an art smuggling ring, I mean...

Chapter 2 of Do No Harm 2 drops to VIP players tomorrow.. Don’t wait to see what happens next… 👀❤️‍🔥