How much writing is too little imagining?

[Meinos Kaen]

Browsing through the topics, I noticed people having diverging opinions on writing style, use of long lists of adjectives and so on. What I would like to have an opinion on is, how much writing is too much for you?

Visual Novels have their strength in good writing but I think that a good writer shouldn't just describe every single little detail and aspect of a situation but just the right amount, to stimulate the reader's mind so to leave the rest to it. The point is, just how much should a writer include in game and how much should be left to the player's imagination?

Meinos Kaen out!

P.S.: Also, how the hell do I create a signature? I can't seem to find the option in my control panel.

[Wyldstrife]

I'll just grab a quote from Taleweaver, from his review of Katawa Shoujo. I believe that he hit the nail on the head with this.

The most glaring flaw is the blatant overexposition that happens literally everywhere during the introduction of a new character or scene. You see really beautiful graphics of a room and a character in the room, and then the text spends ten goddamn lines just describing what you see. It's the same mistake inexperienced theater directors sometimes make with Shakespeare: Many Shakespearean plays have the actors describe in detail a scenery they are standing in - because on Shakespeare's stage in the 16th and 17th century, there wasn't much of a stage setting. The actors had to describe where they were, or the audience wouldn't have known. Inexperienced theater directors will, in great detail, recreate the setting the text is describing but then still have the text unchanged. Katawa Shoujo does this all the time.

It is a visual novel; a novel in visual form, at least to a certain extent, and should play/read as such.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Browsing through the topics, I noticed people having diverging opinions on writing style, use of long lists of adjectives and so on. What I would like to have an opinion on is, how much writing is too much for you?

Visual Novels have their strength in good writing but I think that a good writer shouldn't just describe every single little detail and aspect of a situation but just the right amount, to stimulate the reader's mind so to leave the rest to it. The point is, just how much should a writer include in game and how much should be left to the player's imagination?

My grandmother gave me this advice on writing length and I've used it ever since:

"What you write should be like a woman's skirt - long enough to cover the topic, but short enough to keep things interesting."

(Yes, my grandmother is awesome.) To elaborate more, a lot of "purple prose" and adjective filled scenes are going to make something like a VN drag. I'm sure we've all played a VN where we get exasperated with the protagonist's monologues that just seem to go on forever. But length isn't really the reason a piece of writing will seem to drag - instead, it is a lack of suspense and drama that causes such writing to drag. We are learning nothing we don't already know, or there is nothing at stake in what we are reading.

Alfred Hitchcock gave this example about creating suspenseful and exciting movies, but it is just as useful in writing:

There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

A further consideration later added to this example:

Once again, imagine a restaurant where there’s is a ticking bomb under the table, and we in the audience know it’s going to go off in fifteen minutes. Now imagine one of the characters knows it as well, but can’t reveal it. With this, the suspense ratchets to another level. Not only are we aware of the impending explosion, we share in the character’s anxiety to get away and the excruciating effort of acting totally unconcerned even as the bomb ticks down. The emotional connection we have to a character for whom this situation is a matter of life or death makes the suspense we feel that much greater.

Quentin Tarantino is a master of this technique. In movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and especially Inglourious Basterds, he has numerous scenes of people just sitting and talking to each other - that are incredibly suspenseful and riveting to watch. We as the audience know there is something at stake in these conversations - the Bride wants to kill Bill and both of them know it, we know a Jew is hiding right under the feet of a German officer and so does the man hiding her, etc.

The way to use this in your own writing for VN or any other medium is to always make sure something is at stake, and everything you are writing is moving the plot forward or developing a character. When readers, players, or viewers complain that something is "too long" what they are really complaining about is "nothing is happening" or "none of this matters". Those things in turn lead to boredom. As human beings nearly all our interest in something is created by curiosity or caring. We want to know what is going on or is going to happen, or we care deeply about a character and whether or not they will be okay or happy.

In everything you write, you must consider this overarching question - "Why should the reader care?" Readers must have an emotional stake in the story for it to be compelling to them, and part of that is being able to see and understand the emotional stakes for the characters in the story.

Asking "why should the reader care?" is a good way to cut-out fluff in a VN. Do we care what the protagonist had for breakfast? Does it tell us anything? Advance the plot? Maybe if everyone else eats sugary cereal and our protagonist eats bland oat flakes it might tell else something about them, but there are much more exciting and meaningful ways to impart that same information. Additionally, I find a lot of VN feel a compulsion to give a "blow-by-blow" sequences of events in their writing:
"Morning already? I crawl out of bed slowly. I don't want to go to school again today. I brush my teeth and hurry downstairs to grab breakfast. I eat quickly then yell goodbye to Mom as I run out the door. The whole time I am walking to school I wonder whether or not Sally Sue will still be mad at me. I reach school but she isn't around, so I head to class, hoping I'll run into her."
You know what that was? BORING. So much extra information we don't need as a reader, and time just seems to drag by. A classic case of "too little imagining" as you put it. Now this instead:
"The next morning I find myself back in class, staring at the door in anxious anticipation of Sally Sue's arrival. I hope she isn't still mad at me."
Still not riveting, but at least we aren't forced to follow the protagonist through every boring moment of their day, and the same information is given.

"Show, don't tell" applies in writing just as much as comics or movies. Take the following:
John had a problem with authority, and he always made sure they knew it.
That gets the information across, but it is dry and boring.
"John, did you do that paperwork?"
John slowly raised his eyes to meet his supervisor's. "Absolutely . . . sir."
The same information is delivered, but in a much more dynamic way - and we've probably advanced the plot at the same time.

Another final problem I'll discuss with VN writing is conversations that just waste space or don't go anywhere. I've seen this example given before:
"I used to love that old teddy bear when I was a kid. He always made me feel so safe."
Unless the speaker is going to feel frightened later and hold onto that teddy bear for dear life, this is a wasted dialogue. Nothing should be incidental to your plot or story. If you mention or show something that appears incidental, it better be important later on, like a Chekov's Gun. "If you show a gun above the mantle in every act, before the end of the play, somebody had better use that gun!"

And that Taleweaver quote is right on target.

[Chushiki Maho]

You need at least 5 posts, I believe, to create a signature.

Moving on, I think that with writing, you should describe things, but not using over 5 sentences. Using too many big words isn't much of a help either. It's good to use enhanced vocab, but tone it down a bit if your sentences are becoming a huge jumble of words with 10 adjectives per noun.

[Meinos Kaen]

Great Post

Really appreciated your post full of movie-given examples and your grandma's wisdom. What about literary examples? Got any?

In my humble opinion, the author that really got this the best (also the author of my favourite book) was Oscar Wilde. His writing style in The Portrait of Dorian Grey is what I strive to reach (at least the edition I have. Don't know if maybe I'm aspiring to be like an editor. lol).

Also, do you have any examples of Visual Novels that REALLY didn't get that, apart from the adult scenes in Tsukihime and F/S Night?

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Great Post

What about literary examples? Got any?

Robert Heinlein does it very well, I think. One of my favorite books is Starship Troopers (nothing like the movie - though I still like the movie in a perverse way). It is narrated in first-person by Juan Rico, the protagonist, much like a visual novel is, and I think Heinlein really nails that narration.

I always get the shakes before a drop. I've had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can't really be afraid. The ship's psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn't fear, it isn't anything important -- it's just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate. I couldn't say about that; I've never been a race horse. But the fact is: I'm scared silly, every time.

That's the opening paragraph of the book, and it tells us so many things. It tells us about the technology level of this world, that the protagonist lives on a ship, we know the protagonist is about to do something dangerous, and that he has done it before. We also get a hint at the level of propaganda and conditioning that goes on in this world, and a hint that our protagonist hasn't fully bought into it. All that in five short sentences. Nothing is wasted.

Heinlein also doesn't start us out with Rico waking up that morning or getting ready. He does what all good writers should do - start the story as close to the end as you possibly can. The reader's attention is immediately compelled - what is a drop? Who is this guy? Why is he scared every time? We are engaged in the story and narrative right out of the gate.

Lolita by Nabokov is another example, this time of an unreliable narrator, and how the very phrasing of information can imply layers of information beneath it.

Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off — a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth — these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had.

Here we see that the narrator, our protagonist isn't really in love with Lolita, but the idea of her. He makes all the conventions of being a child seem like a sin and a flaw. We see the narrator as monstrously disconnected with reality and the relationship, but he will not admit it to himself.

Unreliable narrators are most interesting when we as the audience can see the disparity between what the narrator is describing as happening and what it means, and what we can see happening and believe what it means. The tension and conflict in the story is enhanced because we believe the narrator is lying to us. They may be, or maybe not. We can never be entirely sure, but our whole perception of the narrative world is seen through the lens of their views.

Also, do you have any examples of Visual Novels that REALLY didn't get that, apart from the adult scenes in Tsukihime and F/S Night?

It is a lot harder to point out BAD examples in VN, because firstly - I tend not to play them. Second, I tend to forget bad VNs writing fairly quickly. Third, I don't really like to single anyone out even if I DO remember some examples from OELVN.

But in general:
1. Info dumps are awful in a lot of VNs. An example that applies to a lot of VNs:
"My name is X. I am a X year student in high school, but my grades aren't that great. My father had to move to another city at the start of the year for his job, and my mother went with him, but they let me stay here in our old apartment so I could finish school."
Skip ahead.
"That's X. She's been my neighbor since we were little. Sometimes she comes over after school and we study. I never used to notice, but lately I've been finding her more attractive."
Skip ahead.
"That loser is my best friend, X. He's annoying sometimes, but we've been friends ever since Junior High, and he's pretty funny."
Make it stop! We all know examples of the scenes I'm describing. They are horrible information dumps that are telling everything and showing nothing. Here's the thing - we don't need to know any of that information at the start. We will discover it as the game goes on and the story progresses through the interactions of the characters. SHOW us that the best friend is annoying. SHOW us that he can be funny. We'll DISCOVER he's the best friend through his interactions with the protagonist.

True Love '95 did this by having the protagonist get asked for money the first time he runs into his best friend:
"There you are! Can you loan me $60, man?"
"No, 'hello'? Besides, you haven't paid me back the $20 from last month yet!"
"You know I'm good for it! Besides, Final Oxymoron IV comes out today! I'll loan it to you after I finish!"
"Alright, fine. But I'm coming over to play it this weekend!"
"Awesome! I knew you'd come through! Catch you at lunch?"
This quick exchange tells us many things: That the protagonist is familiar enough with this person for them to ask them for money out of the blue. That the protagonist has loaned them money before, and is slightly annoyed at the behavior. That the two know each others tastes in games. That the protagonist knows where this person lives and has been there before. That the two regularly have lunch together. All those things imply a close, friendly, and personal relationship between the two without anyone having to info drop "we're best friends" anywhere in the exchange.

2. The protagonists being too honest with themselves. I see this all the time in VNs, and it can be an easy trap or example of poor writing. Most of us lie to ourselves all the time, especially in our own head. The way the protagonist monologues to themselves tells us a tremendous amount about their character and personality, even hangups they might have. Too often VNs have the protagonist monologue in a straight and descriptive manner, describing events and where they are as if giving a statement to the police with an order to stick to nothing but the facts. That is boring and comes across as monotone.

It is important to remember that every first-person narrator has a REASON for telling their story and a MOTIVE. They are telling their story to someone or a large audience of people, or maybe even just a diary they suspect others might read one day. So they censor themselves or frame things in such a way as to make themselves look good or accomplish their goal or motive.

Rico in Starship Troopers wants civilians not in the military to see how necessary it is, how proud it is, and what makes it better than civilian life and why he joined and serves. Humbert, the narrator of Lolita, is confessing his sins while awaiting trial. He wants readers to understand why he acted as he did, why he came to be that way, and tries to garner sympathy when he can, trying to imply Lolita was partially at fault, that his life made the events that played out almost an inevitability. Even when he frames the descriptions of his lust as a "hell furnace" or his dreams as "pollutive", (because he knows that is how his audience is likely to see them) he is still trying to get us to see and understand how it isn't all his fault and that he desires sympathy.

Overtly, I had so-called normal relationships with a number of terrestrial women having pumpkins or pears for breasts; inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach. The human females I was allowed to wield were but palliative agents. I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine.

The important thing when writing VNs is to remember that you are not giving the blow-by-blow of a boxing match or series of events, but telling a story, and telling that story for a purpose and motive.

[Meinos Kaen]

Mentions Starship Troopers, Lolita, True Love and a headache

... I think we mostly have the same tastes in literature and VN. Did you see the movie? Loved Peter Sellers in Lolita. Loved your examples on Narrators. Although, it's hard to find good narrations in movies. They're usually relegated to few short phrases, of course, but finding those few phrases in great shape is difficult.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Mentions Starship Troopers, Lolita, True Love and a headache

... I think we mostly have the same tastes in literature and VN. Did you see the movie? Loved Peter Sellers in Lolita.

I've never watched much of the Lolita movie adaptions (some scenes here and there), mainly because I find it ridiculous that they cast older women as a 12 year old girl. I know that is a weird complaint, (and it would probably be too creepy for most people to watch if they did cast an age appropriate actress) but it undermines the meaning of the work and makes Humbert look a lot less guilty of anything, and takes away a lot of the monstrosity of his actions. Sue Lyons was 15 in the Peter Sellers version but was selected because "she was very curvy and looked older than she was".

I think if your adaption of a work that is a condemnation of pedophilia makes viewers go - "Hmm. He seems like a nice guy. And I'm attracted to that curvy girl too . . ." - then you've failed pretty spectacularly. As a director, you are NOT supposed to cast a sexy older actress in this kind of film to appeal to the male audience. The movie then becomes less "What a horrible person this is, and his excuse that the girl seduced him is awful" and more "Hmmm. I can totally relate to this guy!"

Mini-Rant over!

Loved your examples on Narrators. Although, it's hard to find good narrations in movies. They're usually relegated to few short phrases, of course, but finding those few phrases in great shape is difficult.

The Usual Suspects, Sin City, Dexter (TV show), etc. all occasionally have brilliant narration from the main characters, but they aren't really good examples for doing the same in writing most of the time, since the majority of their stories is told outside of narration. Often in movies, narration is a commentary on what is happening or what we, as the audience have already seen. If you were to strip out the narration and place it by itself, it wouldn't tell a complete story, so it is less useful for study as a writer. Also, on shows like Dexter, the narration is an internal monologue, the thoughts of Dexter, and so he is not telling a story to anyone and has no motive to frame things in a careful or narrative manner.

[DragoonHP]

For the most part it was really a great and informative post LateWhiteRabbit.
(I already started revising one of my script in accordance... after realising the possible disaster I was brewing...)

The only thing I find myself not agreeing to was when you said that the story should never contain anything that isn't important
You said that the story should only contain the things which help it in progressing.It almost becomes the case of too much action; at first look, this idea may sound promising, but try to think it from another perspective.
According to me (and my thinking might be flawed). a story should have random elements, just to kind of balance the story...

Of course I might have misread the whole thing and jumped to wrong conclusions...

PS: Try to make a sense of what I said... I am not good with these kind of things err... I mean posting and stuff (v_v)

[LateWhiteRabbit]

For the most part it was really a great and informative post LateWhiteRabbit.
(I already started revising one of my script in accordance... after realising the possible disaster I was brewing...)

The only thing I find myself not agreeing to was when you said that the story should never contain anything that isn't important
You said that the story should only contain the things which help it in progressing.It almost becomes the case of too much action; at first look, this idea may sound promising, but try to think it from another perspective.
According to me (and my thinking might be flawed). a story should have random elements, just to kind of balance the story...

Of course I might have misread the whole thing and jumped to wrong conclusions...

PS: Try to make a sense of what I said... I am not good with these kind of things err... I mean posting and stuff (v_v)

The definition of action we are concerned with as writers is this: The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events. In other words, the action is your story.

There are a LOT of ways to progress a story:
1. Revealing important parts of a character's personality do this. (And are a good way to sneak in scenes that don't necessarily have anything to do with the main plot.)
2. Setting up moments or clues for a reveal later. I call these "Chekov's Gun scenes". They are where you introduce something that seems incidental or unimportant, but will be vital to the story later on.
3. Revealing the relationship of character's with each other.
4. Setting up and revealing the actual plot.

Even a story with no physical action can do all those things.

There should be no "random elements" to "balance things". You've probably heard the expression "tightly woven narrative". That refers to stories where everything is important and woven carefully together to create the big picture. What you choose to have character's say and do, HOW they say and do it, WHEN, and HOW MUCH, are vital to good pacing and development.

When a story or movie is described as choppy or uneven, the critics are often talking about the random elements in the plot that contributed nothing or didn't go anywhere, and thus unbalanced and ruined the pacing of the rest of the movie.

The best authors have things in their stories that seem random at first, but later are revealed to be significant, or placed for deliberate effect. Just as a good cook would never add random ingredients to a dish, a good writer never puts random elements in his or her stories.

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

Vigorous writing is concise. ~William Strunk Jr.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English--it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. ~ Mark Twain

Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. ~ Mark Twain again

Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

And the best advice for writing concisely and meaningfully is this:
Begin as close to the end of your story as you can.

That's Kurt Vonnegut again, and I'll end this post with one more from him:
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. (Make every word you are asking them to read meaningful!)

[Sapphi]

@LateWhiteRabbit... I hope you're still around when I need an editor... ^_^

There is some good sticky-rate material in here.

[DragoonHP]

Thanks for the info and clearing my doubts... ^.^

And I second Sapphi... this post should be stickied...

[Meinos Kaen]

Aaaafter a good night of sleep I come back with more golden wisdom delivered upon us unbelievers. That is good, he came and said. So many things to learn... Hey! I propose an exercise!

Let's make it like this. Each one presents a series of five words that the next poster will have to make a brief narration piece out of. Done that, he presents the next poster with the next set. Let's see what comes out so that we can compare notes.

My words are...: Onii-chan, Awkward, Wine, Flat, Radar.

Yeah, I'm a sneaky b.