Writing in a journal-like style?

[sonorousgem]

I understand that some people find some styles of writing to be "better" than others, and that some work "better" in VNs than others. I have not seen many good VNs written in a journal-like style, but I'm curious to see what other people think of this style and how well it would work in a VN.
That said, I don't intend for the following to be in a VN (sidenote: This is the beginning of a not very short story I wrote in experimenting with this word vomit journal-ish style), but I'm open to constructive critique and/or opinions. Thanks!

Sometimes thinking about my life makes me sad. Like the fact that I can’t write like anyone else. My writing just becomes a puddle of feelings that just drip out erratically. My writing aside, I can’t talk properly. If my words were a puddle, they would drip out even slower than my writing would. All my good friends are very talkative. My favorite conversations are when they spill out their entire life story and I just listen to them. It makes me happy inside.

I could go on and on about my shortcomings. And I think I will because there’s no one to tell me I can’t. But only for a little longer. In case you were wondering. Although I really hope no one will read this because it’ll embarrass me a lot. A lot. Okay enough with that. No one’s going to read this. I’ll just tell myself that over and over until I believe it.

Anyway, my shortcomings. There are too many. I can’t cook. People think because I’m so quiet I can cook. No offense to them, but that is a ridiculous assumption. Also I can’t get A’s. I am just incapable of getting any grade above a B+. It’s really sad. Another thing: I can’t sing. I am in choir at school, my one extracurricular activity that motivates me to go to school each day. I honestly have no idea how I got in. They must have been desperate.

When I sing, I sound like… well that’s just it. I don’t sound like anything. I make no sound. My voice doesn’t work. Not that it works at all. No one has any proof that it does. In fact, I don’t remember what my voice sounds like myself. Now I think you can see that my life is really sad. Wait why am I talking to myself? This is really sad. I want to cry. I need to write about something that isn’t going to make me cry.

“Hey, Ann! Your father and I are going to the market, okay?” my mom calls.

I don’t have any faith in my yelling, so I go down and nod at her.

Ann is my name. I think it’s really boring, but I respect my parents so much that I don’t mind that they decided to name me Ann. Although I wish our last name wasn’t Smith. Ann Smith. I feel like the most boring person in the world. Maybe because I am.

I look out all the windows. Yes! Nobody here. I turn up my favorite song, Flightless Bird. Flightless Bird, American Mouth (full title) is a song they play in the movie Twilight, so I try not to affiliate myself with it too much because my friends don’t like that movie. But I’m in love with the song; I can’t help myself. The singer’s voice is so calm, and… well, I’m afraid to admit it, but knowing no one will read this I guess I’ll say it. Initiate flashback mode.

One day when I went to buy groceries for my parents, I saw a guy I knew from school. He was always quiet (but not half as quiet as I am), but he was there in the corner of the park, strumming on his guitar. And he was singing. It was the loveliest thing I’ve ever heard. I won’t ever tell anyone, but now I have the hugest crush on him. Even though we don’t talk and I don’t think he even knows I exist.

Ending flashback mode. Even though Flightless Bird is supposed to make me happy, I still feel like crying. Anyway, he was singing Flightless Bird, if that clears up anything. His voice is so calm and sweet, and… okay. I’m going to be sick if I ever decide to read this again. I’m sorry, future self. URGH I’m so weird!!!

I sit at the computer, sighing. ← This is an accurate statement of my life.

Wait… there’s an instrumental version of Flightless Bird?!??! Why haven’t I stumbled upon this before?!?! Darn you, YouTube suggestions! Why am I blaming an inanimate object on my computer screen? I don’t know.

I click it, and sure enough, it starts playing it. YESSSSS… I clear my throat. “♪HAVE I FOUND YOOUUUUUUUU~ FLIIIGHTLESSSS BI-IRD….♪”

Soon the song is over, and I’m speechless. Did I really… just… sing that? I really belted that at the top of my lungs?!?! In a panic, I rush over to the windows and sink to the floor, relieved that my neighbors aren’t telling me to shut up. I put my hands over my throat, amazed. I… I have a voice… oh my gosh… I have a voice… I run to the mirror to make sure it’s me and not some other person whose body I’ve taken over. No, same frizzy brown hair, same dull brown eyes. It’s me. And I just sung. This is amazing.

[OokamiKasumi]

This is also known as an Interior Monologue.
-- It's extremely effective writing when you're going for a story with loads of Feelings and you want to immerse the reader in said feelings. However...

Stories aren't just about Feelings and/or Conversations (dialogue), stories are about things that happen.

This is a Story:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anna met Rob.
They interacted.
What happened after.

This is a Story with Interior Monologue:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anna met Rob, (and she felt this way about it.)
They interacted, (and she felt this way about it.)
What happened after, (and she felt this way about it.)

In other words, this type of writing style works extremely well as long as you have Actions going on while the characters are expressing their internal monologues.

Piece of advice:
-- If you're going to use a lot of First Person POV (point of view) interior monologues, use only ONE point of view for the WHOLE story. Using more than one POV not only turns it into head-hopping, it spoils the surprise for the reader who will be trying to Guess what the other characters are feeling. (Guessing what the other characters are feeling in reaction to the main character is more than half the fun of reading such stories.)

Here is an example of the first 2 pages to an interior monologue fan-fic I wrote:

My name is Takashi Natsume, and ever since I was little, I'd sometimes see strange things. Things that wore long robes and masks from centuries ago, but weren't quite people. Things with feathers, fur, or scales, but weren't quite animals. Dark, shapeless, things that stank horribly and floated through ceilings and walls, but weren't quite...anything in particular. Things...that no one else could see.

I guess you could call them...spirits.

Just this afternoon during lunch, right outside the window, I saw a grotesque skeletal head with long greasy hair sticking sideways out of a tree. The amazingly hideous view surprised me so much I spat my drink all over my desk -- and one of the two guys standing by the window.

The one I spat on shouted in surprise.

The other whipped around to frown at me. "Something wrong, Natsume?"

I hastily grabbed my napkin to wipe my face, and the spill all over my desk. "Nothing! Nothing's wrong!" I smiled as cheerfully as I could. "Sorry about that."

The first guy, the one I spat on, grabbed for a napkin to wipe down his wet shoulder and curled his lip in disgust. "Gross, Natsume...!"

I threw up my hands. "I'm sorry! Really!"

Outside in the tree, the head slipped back into the branches, laughing.

Unfortunately, things like that happen all the time. My days are always full of surprises.

My deceased grandmother Reiko could see spirits too, so apparently it ran in the family. From what I understand, people thought she was more than a little strange for talking to things they couldn't see, so they avoided her. Eventually, the spirits became her only company. However, I wouldn't actually say she'd been on sociable terms with them.

Reiko had a habit of challenging the spirits to games and then beating them up, or just plain whacking them with a baseball bat plastered with sutras. She then demanded that the defeated spirit ink their name on paper and give it to her. Every single name was bound between two wooden covers and tied with a ribbon, a collection that she called the 'Book of Friends'.

Late in the spring of my sixteenth year, I inherited Grandma Reiko's belongings -- and her book.

Only a month or so later, that following summer, I came to live with the Fujiwaras in a quiet little farming town at the foot of the mountains on the far edge of nowhere. It was then that I discovered that Grandma Reiko had been very busy in the area, and that I looked an awful lot like her. Evidently, my unusual sandy-blond hair and pale brown eyes were yet another inheritance from my grandmother.

Because of my close resemblance, I was constantly pursued by spirits who seemed to think that I was my grandmother. Apparently, spirits don't make a distinction between genders -- most likely because they change their gender almost as often as they change their forms.

Many of the spirits that sought me merely wished to have their names returned. Unfortunately, there were more than a few extremely dangerous spirits who pursued me for the power the book represented. You see, anyone in possession of the book could command any spirit whose name was in it.

One of those looking to take possession of the Book of Friends is my self-styled bodyguard and instructor in the matter of spirits. He's a monstrous, white dog spirit that wears the shape of a rotund, calico-marked ceramic 'good-luck' cat. I freed him from a binding seal by accident.

After a brief fight involving my fist and his nose, he kindly agreed to wait upon my death to gain the book. Yes, that was sarcasm, and no, I am not joking.

It was he that taught me to summon and command the spirits named in the book. However, I really don't like doing that. I honestly don't feel its right to make anyone do anything against their will. Strangely enough, he also taught me the ritual to return the names to the spirits who came to claim them. As a result, the book he plans to collect upon my death has been getting thinner as each day passes.

Sometimes, I really wonder what's going on in that creature's mind.

Another odd thing is that the creature's luck-cat form is perfectly visible. Because of the way he constantly followed me around, everyone assumed he was my pet cat. Rather than try to explain the unexplainable, I merely nodded and smiled. For convenience sake, I called him Nyanko, Cat, or when he was being sensible Nyanko-sensei, Master Cat -- which wasn't often. He has a real name; Madara, I just don't like using it. As the Book of Friends so clearly illustrates, names have power.

When I first introduced Nyanko-sensei to Mr. and Mrs. Fujiwara, the older couple I lived with, they thought he was a little odd-looking, but other than that, they though it was nice that I'd acquired a pet. They saw it as a sign of me "settling in" to my new home.

Sometimes, I really wonder what's going on in their minds too.

Seriously though, the Fujiwaras were the kindest people I'd ever stayed with -- and I've lived with a great many people. My parents died when I was very young so I got passed around a lot. No one wanted to keep a strange boy who told scary stories about invisible things, so I was forever being shunted from relative to relative, each more distant than the last.

I did not mention that I saw strange things to the Fujiwaras. I had absolutely no desire to alarm them or burden them in any way. Instead, I kept a smile on my face, stayed quiet, and did as I was told without question. When I had spirit situation to deal with, I left the house -- usually by my bedroom window.

Anyway... For the longest time I was convinced that no one else could see the spirits the way I did. The autumn following the summer that marked my first whole year spent in one place, shortly after my seventeenth birthday, I discovered that I was wrong.

[sonorousgem]

Alrighty, thanks for naming it for me!
And thank you for the advice! I'm sure it's a lot more interesting when stuff is actually happening while characters are feeling things. Additionally, I've made sure to only have one character's POV the entire time.
Also, I enjoyed your fanfic excerpt. I found it very charming and entertaining (even though I didn't figure out that Takashi was a guy until the part about the genders...).

[OokamiKasumi]

Alrighty, thanks for naming it for me!
And thank you for the advice! I'm sure it's a lot more interesting when stuff is actually happening while characters are feeling things.

I'm glad I could help.

Additionally, I've made sure to only have one character's POV the entire time.

Excellent!

Also, I enjoyed your fanfic excerpt. I found it very charming and entertaining (even though I didn't figure out that Takashi was a guy until the part about the genders...).

I'm glad you liked it. It's a fan-fic of an anime/manga series that's not very well known: "Natsume's Book of Friends". Fair warning: I would Not try to find this particular fic unless you're over 18 and into hard-core BL. 'Kay?

[Vin Howard]

I can think of two stories (neither VN though) that have used this style of writing (and to great effect): the novel-turned-anime "The Tatami Galaxy" and the light novel-turned-anime "My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong As I Expected." I absolutely love this style, though I have never actually liked writing it (the only attempt that succeed is my My Youth ect. fanfic).

I see no reason why this style couldn't work, although I can understand why you don't see this style succeed very well (you need a really good mc)

To give you an example of what this style can accomplish, an excerpt from a fan-translation of My Youth ect. (source: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index ... _Chapter_1)

“Hikigaya. How many years has it been since you last talked to a girl?”

As sudden as it was irrelevant, her question seemingly struck a nerve in me. Seriously, what a sass.
I’m pretty confident in my own memory. I can even recall trivial small talk that others would most likely forget, such that I could easily pass for a stalker amongst the girls in our class. And according to my brilliant hippocampus, the very last time I ever spoke to a girl was two years ago in June.

Girl: It’s, like, really hot in here, don’t you think?
Me: Like, steaming hot, right?
Girl: Huh?… Uh, sure. If you say so…
Fin.

Something like that. Only she wasn’t talking to me; rather, the girl seated diagonally behind me. Human beings tend to recall the unpleasant things. Up until now, I get the urge to bury myself under my futon and scream my head off whenever that memory comes back to me in the dead of night.