*Camera fades in inside a room. It pans over a series of framed newspaper articles hung on the wall, the photos and headlines of which briefly outline Josiah's career as a writer. The last one contains a photograph of Josiah and Deke at a writers' conference. The camera passes over a final article, laying on nearby table, which announces the sudden cancelation of his latest novel. A calendar sits nearby, showing that the article is dated two years prior.*

*The camera pans to show Josiah, sitting a desk staring despondently at his computer. The screen shows a a half finished page of his new novel. Josiah is brought out of his daze by an odd sound. Rising slowly, he turns as a hooded figure enters the room. The figure seems shocked to see Josiah and reflexively grabs a bottle off the table. He pauses for a moment then lunges at Josiah. The two of them struggle for a few seconds then crash into a massive bookshelf which falls on top of the two of them. The mysterious attack vanishes in a deluge of books. Josiah dives out of the way but is clipped by the shelf and knocked violently into the desk, hitting his head in the process. He crumples and falls to the floor, knocking an bunch of random items off the desk in the process. One of those items is a fancy old fashioned ink bottle, which shatters as it hits the floor.*

*As Josiah and the room fade to white, the ink remains, oozing out from the remains of the bottle to form the game's logo, eventually resulting in a black on white title screen. After remaining on the screen for several seconds, everything fades to black.*

Designer's Comments (7/13/2009):
When writing a story, the opening scene is usually one of the first things I come up with (along with the ending). I actually begin playing through this scene in my head that same day at the Renaissance Festival when I first came up with the idea for Ink, though some of the finer details came later one. Of course, this is only the first part of the game's opening. It's also one of the few scenes that takes place in the real world. The key elements are the use of the newspapers to quickly establish the basics of Josiah's backstory as a once famous, now troubled, writer. Deke is also given a brief cameo, though it won't be till much later that players find out who he is or what roll he plays in Josiah's history. For that matter, it might be a while before I decide to share that information with you...
Anyway, if you know anything about filming and cinematography, you know that planning a scene is a very complex process. I could just say, "Josiah is sitting at his computer when someone walks in and attacks him. They fight, Josiah is knocked out.". But that doesn't really tell you much about the scene. Even my detailed description above only does so much to describe how things play out. To continue the process, my detailed description would be given over to an artist who would then create storyboards of the entire scene, showing every key action and cut. The storyboards would then be reviewed by the lead artist, designer, etc. Once everyone was happy with the contents then, and only then, would work begin on the actual animation.
I might revisit this, and other Ink scenes, later on and make some storyboards myself, just to better show you the process but, as my drawings tend to fall into either the "good looking but extremely time consuming" or "quick and absolutely horrible looking" categories, it's not a very high priority at this point.

*The camera slowly fades in as Josiah regains consciousness. He's lying against the wall in the common room of a busy fantasy world type inn. There's lots of people sitting at tables talking, drinking, and dicing, while serving girls run about filling their orders. The camera pans briefly around the room then locks into its normal gameplay position as the player gains control of Josiah.*

At this point, the player can guide Josiah around the room and talk to the inn's staff and patrons. He's rather dazed and confused, something that shows in his speech and movements. Because of this, most of the people assume that he's drunk. Some also comment on his strange clothing. Full dialogue can be found in the game script. When the player leaves the inn, he loses control of Josiah as another cut-scene begins.

*Josiah staggers outside into a moderate sized street in a medieval city. The buildings are made of wood and stone and the road is covered with paving stones. There's a lot of people going about various business. The camera does a brief fly-over of the area then returns to Josiah. He seems to have recovered from the initial shock of his situation and is looking around, both curious and confused. Looking up, he notices the inn's sign.
"The Pen & Sword?" he mutters, a hint of recognition in his voice.
A commotion of some sort can be heard from down the street. Looking that way, Josiah sees two people hurriedly forcing their way through the crowd. As they draw closer, their faces come into view...
"Jessie?!? Ralin?!?" Josiah gasps, eyes wide.

Designer's Comments (7/20/2009)
In my notes this and the next couples of parts are all one big scene, but it'd be too much for one news post so I'm breaking it up, as you can see. Though, when you're taking something that originally meant to be one continuous piece, it can be rather hard to figure out exactly where to divide it.
Anyway, this section covers Josiah's appearance in the world of his novel (where most of the game takes place) to his first glimpse of Jessie and Ralin, the "fictional" twins who serve as the heroes of his story. He starts out rather dazed, both from suddenly waking up in a new world, and the head injury he took back in his study. While he shakes off the injury quickly enough, it'll take a while for him to really get a handle on his new surroundings. Not that he's going to have much time to adjust in the near future...
You'll notice that, in the section in the common room where the player can walk around and talk to the people in the area, I mention that full dialogue can be found in the game script. In a game with a lot of text, such as an RPG or MMO, the main script for the story, NPC conversations, and the like, can potentially reach hundreds of pages. In those types of situations, it makes more sense to give the script its own separate document, instead of putting it inside the main design doc. Not only does it keep the design doc to a more reasonable size, but it also separates out material that many members of the project team don't need often, if at all. Artists and programers, for example, rarely need to see the script while animators and level designers may find themselves referring to it quite often. Meanwhile, the design doc itself will likely be limited to a basic outline or summary of the story. However, this all varies both by the amount of text in the game (if it's small, there's no real need for a separate script) and the preferences of the designer.
Ink itself doesn't have a script document at this point. Though, if/when I make one, that's' where all the unimportant NPC lines will go. For this "design doc" I'll probably be doing a mixture of plot summaries and detailed descriptions of key scenes (such as this one). Though, if I was doing in a more formal manner (like if I was actually leading a team to make the game), I'd probably keep things like this in the script as well.

Hearing their names, Jessie and Ralin freeze, looking scared. Spotting Josiah, they turn towards him.
"How do you know our names?!?" Jessie grabs Josiah's shirt, her voice a mixture of anger, nerves, and fear. "Who are you?!?"
Meanwhile, a group of soldiers (some on foot, some on horseback) enter the far end of the street and begin moving slowly through the crowd. They appear to be searching for something...
"Jessie..." Ralin casts a nervous glance towards the soldiers. "We don't have time for this."
She looks back, swears, then tightens her grip on Josiah's shirt and pulls Josiah into the nearest ally. Ralin follows and they duck behind a group of barrels.
"Keep quiet." Jessie hisses at Josiah then turns her attention back to the soldiers, who are continuing to search the street.
Shifting uncomfortably, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a leather bound book and an old fashioned pen. He frowns, not recognizing it, and begins to flips through the pages. A moment later, his eyes widen as realization dawns. "This is my story..."
"Shh!" Jessie glares at him.
"Don't worry, they won't find us." Josiah grins and points to the open page of the book. "They'll be moving on to the next street any minute now."
*The camera zooms in on the book to show the relevant text.*
The book says, "Jessie and Ralin crouched in the alley, barely daring to breath. The soldiers combed the square with an unhurried and uninterested air, almost as if they regarded the entire search as a waste of time. After several tense minutes, then turned away and headed down the opposite street, never noticing that their quarry was hiding only a short distance away."
The sibling ignore him and remain silent, stealing nervous glances at the soldiers who, contrary to the book, appear to be very alert and focused on their task. A few of them draw closer to the alley, leading Jessie and Ralin to shrink back, looking scared. Josiah remains where he is, both calm and confident in the outcome he wrote for this scene.
One of the soldiers pauses and stares intently into the alley. "Hey, you there!" he calls. "Come out!"
Ralin's face pales and Jessie swears. "Run for it!" she yells.

Designer's Comments (8/24/2009)
In this scene Josiah discovers his book and pen, two items which mysteriously appeared in his pocket when he awoke in the world of Ink and are central to both the plot and his special powers (which will be discussed in detail later on). As you can probably tell from this scene, the book starts out containing Josiah's story...or at least what his story was supposed to be. For some reason (which I'm not going to discuss yet since it's a major plot point) the story is changing, leaving even its author unsure of what will happen next. Naturally there's much more to the book and pen than that, and you'll be finding out a bit more about their powers in the next scene.
Aside from introducing the book and pen, this scene also severs to introduce several other important elements of the plot. This scene shows that Josiah is in the world of his story. It also introduces Jessie and Ralin as important characters, makes it clear that they're on the run, and begins to establish their personalities. The goal is to bring the player into the scene as quickly as possible and with a limited amount of dialogue. Naturally there's a lot of details missing but there's no reason to throw them all at the player from the get go. You don't want to overwhelm someone with details early in the story. Once they know the basic setting, they can fill in the rest as the story progresses and more details are revealed.

Jessie yanks a startled Josiah to his feet and takes off running down the ally, with Ralin following closely behind.
"But, this isn't supposed to happen..." Josiah pulls his hand free and tries to flip back to the correct page in his book while running.
"Idiot!" Jessie glances back at him. "If they catch you you'll never be able to read again! Just run!!!"
Josiah ignores her. "This isn't right at all... I didn't write it this way." he finds the page. "See, it-" he drops silent as the words on the page vanish and are replaced with a new passage that reflects their current situation.
"They're gaining..." Ralin's voice is strained.
Jessie takes a quick look behind her. "Burn it! If only we had weapons or something we could use to hold them off...":
"Weapons..." Josiah mutters thoughtfully. "It couldn't...could it?" Slowing down a bit, he raises his pen and begins to write the following.
"As the rounded the corner, the twins found themselves staring at a weapons sitting abandoned in the middle of the road."
As Josiah finishes writing, the words begin to glow and the world briefly blurs around him. Josiah is left a little disoriented but the others don't seem to notice the "shift". A moment later they round a corner and nearly run into a large crate of weapons.
"Well, that's eerily convenient..." Jessie gives the crate a suspicious look. "But, this isn't the time to complain." she yanks out a sword and turns back in the direction of the approaching soldiers.
Ralin grabs a spear and stands next to her. Josiah is behind the two, his attention divided between the twins and his book. Both of the twins have a look of determination but hold their weapons awkwardly, as if they're not quite sure how to use them. A moment later, a pair of soldiers approach and the battle tutorial begins.

Designer's Comments (8/31/2009):
This scene continues to introduce some key plot elements and set the stage for the rest of the story. First, is Josiah's discovery that his story is changing; though it'll be quite some time before he discovers exactly why it's happening. However, the changing story makes him think about the purpose of the pen and the book, allowing him to create a workable, if rather contrived, solution to their current predicament.
In my first version of the opening, Josiah actually showed Jessie the book in the previous scene, as proof that they had nothing to worry about from the soldiers. But I decided that it would be better for him not to reveal his identity to the main characters just yet. They'll find out soon enough, but it will be more interesting to have them start to figure it out by observing Josiah's actions, rather than just having it spelled out for them from the beginning.