Preferences on writing methods

[Labradorain]

Hi there!
Well, this is not an important question, but I'm quite curious about it. I hear that usually writers would start outlining plots and characters first, then begin writing the manuscript for their fictions/novels. But when it comes to visual novels, with different routes and multiple endings, how should the writing method be in your opinion? I mean... You would outline everything (including all routes and endings) from the start, then writing, scripting,...v.v or you would work for each routes/endings first, or maybe a another way?
Thank you for reading.

[SundownKid]

IMO, everything should be outlined from the start. It's the best way to make sure it's cohesive.

[Kuiper]

I hear that usually writers would start outlining plots and characters first, then begin writing the manuscript for their fictions/novels.

This is common (especially for larger speculative works, like science fiction and fantasy), but not universal. Stephen King is famous for never writing off an outline. Some people meticulously outline and plan every scene of their story before they write a single line of prose (like Orson Scott Card, who spends more time planning and outlining his books than he does actually writing them), others simply outline the broad strokes of the main plot in a 1-2 page outline and figure out the details as they go.

If you take a "story first" approach (where the needs of the story as defined by the writer dictate the technical scope of the project), then you'll have some dependencies to worry about, including:

• The character designer wants to know how many characters the story will contain, and will need enough information about the role that those characters play in the story
• The sprite artist needs the character designs from the character designer, and needs a list of poses that are required for each character
• The background artists wants a list of locations the story will take place in, and enough information about those environments to begin illustrating them.
• Your CG artist wants a list of events to illustrate
• Your music person (be they an original composer or someone looking through existing royalty-free music libraries) wants to know how many different tracks will be required, and the period/tone/setting for each of those tracks.
• Your sound effects person (be they a producer or someone combing through a SFX library) wants to know what sound effects will be required in the story, which will in part be determined by the director.
• Your coder probably wants a good understanding of how interactive the game will be and any "gameplay" systems that will be present in the story, as well as any interesting visual direction that would amplify the impact of the story
• All of this also matters to the project manager, who wants to know the scope of the project so that they can ensure that the team is keeping pace to meet their ship date

(The more you can compress these roles and limit the size of your team, the easier this becomes. For example, in a lot of projects, the sprite artist is also the character designer, which means one less layer of communication and dependence. It's also fairly common for the director/coder to assume the role of sound engineer, figuring out where sound effects should be inserted, and where cues for different audio stingers should go.)

However, this "story first" approach is actually less common than you might think. It's not uncommon for teams to come up with complete casts of characters, detailed settings, and plans for gameplay systems before the team even has a writer. That's a perfectly acceptable approach, especially for projects that lean more heavily on interactive elements, and there are plenty of people who want to work in such a way that the story works in service of the visuals rather than the other way around. (There are many people, creators and consumers alike, who believe that visual novels are visual first, and novels second.)

As a writer myself, my personal preference is to take a mixed approach, where the team collectively decides what elements they want to have present in the story (like, "I want one of the scenes to take place in a snowy tundra," or "I want one of the characters to be female elf assassin"), and the writer takes those constraints and spins a narrative that contains all of those elements, possibly adding new characters and settings of their own as needed, with some technical limitations (like "we are limiting the game to 20 different backgrounds" or "we can only have 12 characters with up to 5 different poses each." I like this approach because it allows everyone on the team to begin working on assets more-or-less immediately, but it gives the writer a lot of creative freedom in how the narrative unfolds. The writer frequently works with very lose constraints like characters' appearance, race, age, occupation, and maybe a few personality quirks, but is often given free reign over things like character voice, character motivations and backstory, and how the individual scenes unfold.

If you're a writer outlining the story for your visual novel, the most important parts of the outline are those that define tasks for other people, so I recommend getting those done as quickly as possible so that you're not bottlenecking the project (your teammates will probably not appreciate it if the scope of their tasks and responsibility is constantly increasing over the course of the project). Everything else can be as rigidly or loosely defined as you like. My personal approach is to plan the details of the setting and the events of the plot, but figure out the characters' personalities as I go. (Sometimes, chemistry between characters doesn't really become evident until after I actually begin writing a scene.)

[Kailoto]

My personal approach is to plan the details of the setting and the events of the plot, but figure out the characters' personalities as I go. (Sometimes, chemistry between characters doesn't really become evident until after I actually begin writing a scene.)

Ahaha, just goes to show that there's no right or wrong way of doing it... I do things almost the exact opposite way. I have to know my characters and how they interact before I start writing, and usually detail the actual events last.

If there's one unconditional thing I can suggest, it's to leave a note whenever you stop working on an outline or even your actual story. Just a small one reminding yourself what needs to happen after this. I can't even begin to tell you how much time I used to waste just figuring out where to pick up. It makes starting the day's work easier.

[Vogue]

In my experience, the best way to get started is to just write the damn story from where the story starts to where it ends. This is called your first draft, and it's going to be fucking terrible. Never show anyone your first draft. This draft will require extensive edits in terms of plot structure, style, word choice, dialogue, grammar, and typos. You'll have character personalities change, you'll cut out thousands of words that you loved writing, you'll find that your theme hasn't landed, and you'll want to tear it up because nothing is working. This is fine, and you'll fix it as you edit. After this second edit (which can take as long as it took you to write the thing in the first place) you can probably pass it around for opinions, and from there you start to polish.

This advice probably sounds useless, because what you're experiencing is most likely a huge amount of difficulty starting at a blank page. This is difficult for everyone, and whether or not you have an outline or have had the idea kicking around in your head for a year, it will be painful in the beginning. But the truth of the matter is that all writers have to commit themselves doggedly to the task if they want to put out something worthwhile. It's going to be hard, and it's going to take a very, very long time if you just sit around and wait for a jolt of inspiration.

I do not recommend that you edit as you write. It will destroy your ability to put out work in a timely manner.

I find that it's pointless to get caught up on details and minutia before you've even begun writing. Trying to micromanage your story can be paralyzing, because there will always be a thousand unimportant details you can tell yourself that you need to flesh out before you can begin. However, if you find that writing out an outline helps you organize your thoughts without keeping you from putting words on the page, you should probably do it.

[Kailoto]

I do not recommend that you edit as you write. It will destroy your ability to put out work in a timely manner.

If there's "universal truths" of writing, this is one of them. When you start writing, never look back.

First drafts are terrible, terrible things because they're the moment when a story leaves the warm comfort of your mind and is thrust onto a blank page, painstakingly dragged across the canvas until it's been fully transplanted. But it's an important step, because without a first draft you'll never be able to see any weaknesses.

I was writing my third novel, Loka, and about halfway through the first draft, I completely changed everything. Half the characters were different, one was removed completely, the tone shifted, and the subplots were changed. Instead of going back and rewriting the ~70,000 words I already had down, though, I just kept writing. As such the first draft completely switches tones halfway through. It didn't matter; what mattered was that I finished it.

Revision is nowhere near as scary as the first draft, but you'll never get there is you try to fix things as you go.

[someguy01mmb]

I start with a general outline of the story I want to write, then I construct scenes by outlining the events and points I want to hit, and I then write the scene by following my outlines. Though in the process of actually writing out scenes, I end up changing things from my outlines, they're usually minor differences, but some times I can deviate from my original plans by a large amount.

I just don't know how things will exactly play out until I do the actual writing.

[Labradorain]

Hi there, thank you very much for all your opinions! I've got some matters to take care of in the previous week and was not able to reply to your posts.
Thanks to reading your advices and responses, I get to spot out many defiency of my writing progress. The demerits of my outlining method are probably simplicity and dereliction. Usually, I just think of and write an opening then an ending for my story: how it all begins and how it all ends. Once the basic plot is half finished (no events, unfolding or anything similar done), I switch to the characters' concepts (their look, personalities, attitudes and how they reacts to certain situations), because planning the story's happenings is one of my weakness... The problem is: I always struggle thinking of the events later on and frequently runs into a troublous state, then the whole part is all in a stir and a jumble. Thus, the lack of concept development sometimes affect my characters' ideas too. That's why I was quite uncertain when it comes to outlining a visual novel, as it has multiple endings, which means a couple more events ...