Narrating in a Visual Novel?

[Allegra Hughes]

Hello,
I'm very interested in suggestions and help on how to narrate the story. I'm used to writing radio plays, so just characters saying dialogue.
I've played a few VN to get a sense, but any other suggestions would be most helpful!

I'll be writing this in first person, present tense.

What sort of things should be narrated, what's unnecessary?

So I guess i'm asking more like...
How much description of location is needed?
vs.
description of appearance?
vs.
description of an action?
vs.
narration of who you are and what you're feeling?

[MaiMai]

Honestly, this question is a bit too vague. How you narrate is entirely up to you and there's other factors to think about; genre, tone, length, etc.

If you've played some VNs, you'll see that most have a split between character dialogue and description. I guess one thing I'd avoid is overly flowery prose that focus too much on visual description; unless you have minimal images, since it's a VISUAL novel, the last thing I need is a huge paragraph about how a character looks when they're right on the screen.

[Allegra Hughes]

So I guess i'm asking more like...
How much description of location is needed?
vs.
description of appearance?
vs.
description of an action?
vs.
narration of who you are and what you're feeling?

[Ophelia]

I'm used to mainly writing dialogue, too, so I'm writing as few narration as necessary. There isn't really a need to describe characters or locations that thoroughly, only that what can't be properly conveyed with the dialogue, the sprites and backgrounds.

[MaiMai]

I don't think there's a quantitative answer as to how much you need of each. Again, this is up to the content of the VN itself and that content will vary as will those aspects. But Ophelia is right, if not more succinct than I am.

[Rousseau]

So long as you're not writing like Voctor Hugo, more is better, so long as your quality isn't suffering. You need both the text and the images to bring the world to life. Here we have a captive audiance who are willing to read pages and pages of text, instead of maybe a single page of text combined for other games. The players are here for a story, so use everything in your tool box.

[OokamiKasumi]

Hello,
I'm very interested in suggestions and help on how to narrate the story. I'm used to writing radio plays, so just characters saying dialogue. I've played a few VN to get a sense, but any other suggestions would be most helpful!

VNs tend to be almost solid dialogue with Narration generally consisting of the character's unspoken thoughts.

I'll be writing this in first person, present tense.

Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --in English-- is written in PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book -- any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.

What sort of things should be narrated, what's unnecessary?

You only need to narrate what the Player cannot see from your images, and what the characters do not mention through dialogue.

• How much time has passed since the last scene. (Ex. Two nights later...)
• The Date (Ex. Tuesday, at Midnight.)
• Location Names (At the Abandoned School...)
• Internal (unspoken) Thoughts (Ex. I really hated those gargoyles.)
• Sensations, Emotions, and Feelings (Ex. The hair on my neck lifted, and my skin started to crawl from the sheer creepiness. My heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of my chest.)
• Aromas (Ex. The whole room stank of rotted dead thing.)

That's all you need.

[fleet]

I suggest watching a silent movie (a movie made before 1929). Those films show a balance of dialog and narration.

[Tempus]

I'll be writing this in first person, present tense.

Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --in English-- is written in PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book -- any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.

First-person and third-person narration can both be either past or present tense. I did open a fiction book -- Rabbit, Run by John Updike -- and the first sentence reads, "Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it." The entire novel is in present tense. While the story isn't told in first-person, it could easily be and that would still be okay.

[Allegra Hughes]

Feel free to keep posting for others to view or if you have thoughts! But thanks so much for the answers! It really helps

[Kiki]

Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --in English-- is written in PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book -- any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.

Not only are some fiction books written that way, as was pointed out, but it can be a useful way of writing for some genres. In particular, it works well for suspense in horror or mystery narratives. It's a hard way to write, for sure, and you really have to be careful to pull it off well, but it's valid and can be done.

[Applegate]

I'll be writing this in first person, present tense.

Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --in English-- is written in PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book -- any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.

Are you sure about that? Notably, the Hunger Games are in present tense, and they are definitely not non-fiction!

Some Light Novels are also written in present tense, and some just disregard tenses. That popular Suzumiya Haruhi Light Novel series? Written in a mix of present and past tense. The medium is fully capable of standing on itself in present tense.

Write your stories the way that seems most natural to you─and don't let things like convention stop you from thinking outside the box. Creativity isn't about adhering to the rules that everyone's always been sticking to.

[OokamiKasumi]

...first person, present tense.

Dialogue should indeed be written this way, but Narration --in English-- is written in PAST TENSE. Open a fiction book -- any fiction book. Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue.

...I did open a fiction book -- Rabbit, Run by John Updike -- and the first sentence reads, "Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it." The entire novel is in present tense. While the story isn't told in first-person, it could easily be and that would still be okay.

Are you sure about that? Notably, the Hunger Games are in present tense, and they are definitely not non-fiction!

YES, I am sure.
-- To put things in proper perspective, that list contains only 249 books -- many of which were originally written in Other Languages, such as All Quiet on the Western Front. German is written in Present tense. That this book is STILL in Present tense only proves that the English translator did NOT do their job properly.

Just because a book is Published and Popular does NOT mean it's good. It certainly doesn't mean that it's well-written.

Hunger Games is a prime example of published garbage; not only is the grammar poor, the plot has holes big enough to drive a truck through. 50 Shades of Gray is even worse garbage because in addition to being badly written and having poor plotting, it was also badly researched. (BDSM is Not done that way!) I don't care how many copies these books sold, Hunger Games and 50 Shades are badly written, and poorly edited. John Updike is no better. The books he puts out are so badly written; garbled grammar, confusing descriptions, and contrived plot conveniences...that after struggling through the first chapter of more than one of his books, including the book mentioned, I threw them against the wall in sheer frustration.

To reiterate; out of 319,369 novels, 1,489,740 romance books, 254,919 adult-fiction books, and 665,496 historical-fiction books listed on that site, only 249 are written in Present tense, and of them many were translated from other languages improperly; All Quiet on the Western Front, are examples of Creative Writing; Margaret Atwood, or are just plain Garbage; Updike, Hunger Games, and 50 Shades.

These books are EXCEPTIONS to the rule because their publishers ALLOWED it for marketing reasons -- NOT because it was RIGHT. My editors (I have four,) would flay me alive if I handed them crap like that. These books should never be used as examples of good writing. Seriously. In fact, they should be held up as examples of what NOT to do.

Some Light Novels are also written in present tense, and some just disregard tenses.

Japanese is written in Present tense. English should not be. That the light novel still contained Present tense someplace Other than dialogue only proves that the book was Poorly Translated.

Write your stories the way that seems most natural to you─and don't let things like convention stop you from thinking outside the box. Creativity isn't about adhering to the rules that everyone's always been sticking to.

This I do agree with. One should create a VN the way you want to, using any form of free-writing and creative grammar that you please.
-- However, once you try taking such a story to a publisher, all bets are off.

[Tempus]

How convenient that all examples contrary to your assertion are either mistranslated or garbage. No statement was made about the quality of the books -- you said "Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue" and you were definitively refuted by two examples. Furthermore, even if there were no books authored in present tense or, alternatively, all books authored in present tense were terrible, that wouldn't necessitate some fundamental flaw of present tense (outside of dialogue) in fiction. This flaw is exactly what you failed to highlight as you went on your irrelevant tirade. Essentially your argument boils down to a mixture of "it should be like this because everyone else does it" and "I don't like it therefore it shouldn't be done", both of which constitute poor reasons for maintaining the status quo.

I find it somewhat ironic that you arbitrarily capitalise words throughout your posts while lecturing on what is and is not correct English. You might want to get one of your four editors to check your post over next time before submitting.

[OokamiKasumi]

How convenient that all examples contrary to your assertion are either mistranslated or garbage. No statement was made about the quality of the books --

Does this mean you missed where I mentioned poor plotting, poor research, and poor grammar? I assure you, such things are indeed indicators of a book's quality.

...you said "Present Tense is only used in Non-Fiction and Dialogue" and you were definitively refuted by two examples. Furthermore, even if there were no books authored in present tense or, alternatively, all books authored in present tense were terrible, that wouldn't necessitate some fundamental flaw of present tense (outside of dialogue) in fiction. This flaw is exactly what you failed to highlight as you went on your irrelevant tirade.

You have a point.
-- The essential flaw in writing fiction in Present tense is that it can be very confusing to read even when it's done right. One must stop to restructure the sentences in one's head to comprehend what they meant before one can read the next. This slows reading down considerably and makes it more Work than Pleasure to read.

Example:

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he's twenty-six and six three. So tall, he seems an unlikely rabbit, but the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irises, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabs a cigarette into his mouth partially explain the nickname, which was given to him when he too was a boy. He stands there thinking, the kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up.

-- Reference note: This excerpt is from "Rabbit Run" by John Updike, originally published in 1960. This matters because what publication editors were willing to accept in a manuscript then is vastly different from what they will accept now.

Anytime one forces the reader to Work to understand something --especially in a story-- they run the risk of having the reader give up and Stop Reading, as in; close the book to go find something less work and more fun to read. This is in addition to the fact that writing in Present tense is insanely easy to mess up by accidentally switching to Past and Future tenses in the following lines.

In short, Past tense is simply easier to read and comprehend than Present tense.

Essentially your argument boils down to a mixture of "it should be like this because everyone else does it" and "I don't like it therefore it shouldn't be done", both of which constitute poor reasons for maintaining the status quo.

Essentially, what my argument boiled down to was that editors didn't like it. If one plans to publish fiction later, this is a very good reason to avoid acquiring the bad habit of writing in Present tense. If one doesn't plan to publish later, then it doesn't matter what you write, or how you write it. However, this doesn't change the fact that Past tense is easier to read because it's easier to understand than Present tense.

I find it somewhat ironic that you arbitrarily capitalise words throughout your posts while lecturing on what is and is not correct English. You might want to get one of your four editors to check your post over next time before submitting.

You are quite correct in that my editors would not approve of random capitalization if they found it in my fiction. Happily, I don't randomly capitalize in my fiction, and they don't check my forum posts.