Point of View Questions

[Nekochi]

I had a couple of questions about a game I'm working on, all pertaining to PoV. My first question is about what point of view is best for a visual novel. I'm considering writing it in third person, but I don't know if that would seem too awkward for a video game. My worry is that having things in third person and still being able to choose what decisions the character makes asks for too much suspension of disbelief. At the same time, I'd like to have the freedom to show things that the protagonist wouldn't have seen directly. For example, one of the first scenes I'm writing is when the main character, Lazarus transfers into a new class (cliched, I know, but the story isn't quite the slice of life high school days tale you might be expecting.) Here's one example of narration I use in the scene: "Lazarus moves to his desk and sits down. To his left is a tall girl with dark blue hair, purple eyes, and glasses. She nods at him and turns her gaze back out the window. The girl to his right has auburn hair in braided pigtails. She smiles broadly at him and quietly introduces herself while Miss Tanaka calls roll." What do you think, does that sound too awkward? I'm also unsure if I should put it in present tense. I know it's what's usually done in these type of games and it adds an immediacy to the writing, but I much prefer past tense. I don't know if I'd be crossing too many lines by putting it in third person and past tense or if it would actually make the writing better to be past tense if I'm going to be in third person anyway. Another reason that I like third person is that, as I said earlier, it allows me to show more than just what the character sees. For example, this particular scene starts with two girls in the class having a conversation while Lazarus is still outside the classroom.

Which brings me to my second set of questions. I want this story to have three main protagonists (its a new story based on Sailor Moon and has the three villains as the main characters who are infiltrating schools in Crystal Tokyo to try and find the Sailor Senshi), but I'm not sure what would be the best way to tell it with three different interrelated storylines like that. Should I switch between their points of view multiple times throughout the story? This has a lot of advantages because it would allow the stories to be even more interconnected and let you see how things are beginning to come together. On the other hand, I worry that doing it like that might make the game too long and/or tedious and might get confusing. The other option is to allow the player to choose their protagonist at the beginning of the game and stay on their "path" until you reach the end. This would be less confusing in some ways, but I worry that it might be more confusing in the long run if you only get word-of-mouth reports about what is going on elsewhere and it will mean you don't know all the characters as well when the various storylines start to converge. Another worry is that since I don't plan to allow you to pick the school each character goes to for the first release (only because allowing people to pick literally triples the amount of script I have to write and even though this is an ambitious project anyway, making it even bigger in the beginning might mean it would never get released) and only one of the schools has Chibi-Usa and other characters familiar to fans of the series, people might feel jipped if they choose the storyline of one of the protagonists not going to Chibi-Usa's school and end up not seeing actual Sailor Moon characters until about halfway through the game.

So I would love to know your opinion on both of these questions. Also, if you do think that I should switch between main characters during gameplay, do you have any suggestions for how I should go about that? How long do you think I should stay on one main character before switching? How do you think I should handle the (inevitable) times where events take place at the same time? I'd like to not make it seem like it's taking three times as long to do anything, if at all possible.

Please let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your thoughts on anything I've brought up. Thank you so much in advance for taking the time to consider my questions and I'm sorry this went on for so long. I really do write too much.

[papillon]

Many POVs have been done; there's not really a "right" answer any more than there's a "right" way to write a novel. If you think your story would work better in third person past tense, go for it.

As for switching protagonists - this has also been done, but if you want to avoid confusing people you'll probably want to design multiple very different GUIs so that it "feels" different when you're in a different head. If you're not in anyone's head, but writing strictly third person as an observer, then that isn't as important and clear transitions will do it.

Also, if you do think that I should switch between main characters during gameplay, do you have any suggestions for how I should go about that? How long do you think I should stay on one main character before switching? How do you think I should handle the (inevitable) times where events take place at the same time? I'd like to not make it seem like it's taking three times as long to do anything, if at all possible.

This depends on your story! If each person's individual story is interesting *in itself* then it's quite reasonable to have them as separate selectable paths. However, as you already mentioned, people are likely to feel frustrated if path choices means they chose the "wrong" path and aren't seeing any of the things they were playing in order to see.

Some possible approaches:

If the individual stories are interesting in themselves because of things having nothing to do with Sailor Moon, is it really necessary to make it a Sailor Moon fangame? You could tell a story about villains searching for undercover superheroes that we don't already know, and then there'd be less frustration about them not having shown up yet.

If you space interesting events out well enough, then telling all three stories simultaneously and always focusing on whichever of the three is currently 'most active' should work. That is, instead of telling Week 1 Character 1, then Week 1 Character 2, then Week 1 Character 3, you can do one week as one character, one week as the next, etc. This will keep things constantly moving forward. The protagonists you're not currently following can still talk to whoever the focus IS on and give them a little bit of information about their current situation so you're not lost when you switch back.

How long it makes sense to stay on each character before switching depends on how long your overall story is! I would normally expect this kind of setup to eventually start leading to faster and faster switching as we get closer to the climax and storylines converge.

[Nekochi]

If the individual stories are interesting in themselves because of things having nothing to do with Sailor Moon, is it really necessary to make it a Sailor Moon fangame? You could tell a story about villains searching for undercover superheroes that we don't already know, and then there'd be less frustration about them not having shown up yet.

The short answer is that I want to make a Sailor Moon fangame. The longer answer to this is that I love Sailor Moon, both the world and the characters and I want to play around with it. I'm pretty much obsessed with Chibi-Usa and the Sailor Quartet and I've wanted to create a game where you could date them for several years now. I've decided to add some more meat to the story and created some characters of my own to reflect that because I think it makes for a better game, but that's where the whole thing started and despite the fact that it has grown, I can't imagine creating it to not be a Sailor Moon game. Moreover, as someone who wants to be a novelist, I'd rather use my "original ideas" for my "serious writing." This particular story, as it is now, is something I could never actually publish and sell unless I were to move to Japan, become fluent in Japanese, and learn to draw doujinshi.

If you space interesting events out well enough, then telling all three stories simultaneously and always focusing on whichever of the three is currently 'most active' should work. That is, instead of telling Week 1 Character 1, then Week 1 Character 2, then Week 1 Character 3, you can do one week as one character, one week as the next, etc. This will keep things constantly moving forward. The protagonists you're not currently following can still talk to whoever the focus IS on and give them a little bit of information about their current situation so you're not lost when you switch back.

This is what I'm planning to do overall, but I'm still not sure how to do "week 1" since I don't think that meeting all the characters is something that should be done by hearsay.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to tell me what you think. Your response is really helpful and has given me a lot to think about.

[papillon]

Nothing wrong with making a Sailor Moon fangame IMO, it just does mean that you need to consider your players' expectations and not spend too long in areas that seem to be unrelated to what they came here to see or they'll likely get frustrated.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I always find present tense narration awkward and stilted. It sounds staccato - one beat, one beat, one beat. No harmony or flow can be built up using it. It always reads like a laundry list of items being checked off one at a time.

Present tense also removes the ability to do effective foreshadowing. It's all going to be fairly blunt, and the protagonist MUST notice the foreshadowing to comment on it. Which removes a lot of tension. As Hitchcock once noted, dramatic tension is two characters having a leisurely conversation at a breakfast table, unaware there is a bomb set to explode underneath the table. That is, in fact, the mark of good tension and suspense - the basic formula. The audience is aware of an impending threat to characters they like, and the characters are ignorant of the approaching danger. It's what makes the viewer or reader sit on the edge of their chair and yell, "Look out! Behind you! Look under the table! Turn around!"

You can still have tension with characters being aware of the approaching danger, but it is considerably less, because we as an audience no longer feel solely responsible for the safety of the character - the character has now shifted some of that burden onto themselves.

And I think it can still make perfect sense for a player to choose a character's actions, even in third person narration. In the game I am writing at the moment, third person narration is used and the player is "telling a story". In other words, ostensibly the player is the narrator, who is some character in the story or someone who witnessed events or heard about them, or at least a narrator with some control over the fate of the characters. It is left ambiguous if the events really happened, or are just fanciful embellishments on the narrator's part. It works very well when the protagonist is a defined character with a character arc for players to explore and play with. Anyway, it works like this:

The air was hot that day, shimmering across and distorting the faces in the gathered crowd. The majority were bystanders present for free and vulgar entertainment, but select individuals had appraisal in their eyes, eager to measure the worth of the man standing before them. Daniel stared back, debating whether or not it was better to speak out and risk antagonizing the mob, or swallow his pride and remain silent.
Player Choice: Speak Out, Remain Silent
(The player chooses to "Speak Out".)
Daniel nervously cleared his throat and tried to force the rising knot of fear back into the pit of his stomach. He knew the dangers of voicing his opinions in the present circumstances, but his conscience would let him do nothing less. That's the kind of man Daniel was. Moral. Brave. A little foolish.
(The player chooses to "Remain Silent".)
Daniel's lips parted, then closed. The anger and shame rose in him like a fever, flushing his face a raw red. He wanted to believe he was a moral man. A brave man. He'd thought of himself that way his entire life. But the crowd was too big. Too angry. And on that hot day so many years ago, Daniel hung his head and said nothing.

It works, and it maintains tension that I feel first person present can't support. I always wonder who present tense narrators are talking to. An audio diary they got for their OCD that forces them to record every action they take? A diary they walk around writing in during every event in their lives? For me, the present tense always takes a lot of the danger out of events, because I don't feel the protagonist can truly be harmed. If they are knocked out, I know they'll wake up. Because they have to.

In third person subjective, the protagonist is free to die at any time. Drama can be built up because all the characters can die and their story still be known or told. Like Papillon said, there are several POVs that can work, depending on the story you are telling, but I think almost all of them work better than present-tense narration.

[Nekochi]

It works, and it maintains tension that I feel first person present can't support. I always wonder who present tense narrators are talking to. An audio diary they got for their OCD that forces them to record every action they take? A diary they walk around writing in during every event in their lives? For me, the present tense always takes a lot of the danger out of events, because I don't feel the protagonist can truly be harmed. If they are knocked out, I know they'll wake up. Because they have to.

I've always felt this way as well! I just wasn't sure if it applied to visual novels as well because 99% of the time you see them in first person present tense. It's somewhat of a relief to see that by using what is more natural to me, not only will it not be super weird, but it is also what some readers prefer. Your example also gives me a lot to think about regarding the balance of text and visuals. As I mentioned in response to Papillon, I want to be a novelist, so obviously I love to write. I'm almost exclusively a prose writer, so I'm not used to the idea of having some sort of aid to your storytelling. I've been trying to keep in mind that this is a visual media and telling the story mostly through dialog, but your example makes me wonder if my approach isn't too minimalistic, especially when having more narration comes naturally to me. Definitely something to consider.

Thank you for taking the time to answer, I'll take what you said into account.

[Funnyguts]

I hate present tense narration in pretty much anything but VNs. For some reason, the VN format makes present tense a lot more palatable.

[Greeny]

I have to disagree with LateWhiteRabbit on a few points.

I always find present tense narration awkward and stilted. It sounds staccato - one beat, one beat, one beat. No harmony or flow can be built up using it. It always reads like a laundry list of items being checked off one at a time.

Well, you're not entirely wrong there. It almost always does read like a laundry list. But that's because present tense is very hard to do properly. The problem is that not many writers know when to use a present tense first person perspective. (I'm not going to talk about present tense third person because that is a stupid PoV.) This mode of writing essential crawls into a character's head, and that's just not suitable for a story that's about what's happening, which is basically most stories. You should use first person when it's about emotion. When it's more important how the character feels about what's happening. When writing first person present properly, you should never describe what is happening, but rather how the character feels, leaving the events themselves implied.

Present tense also removes the ability to do effective foreshadowing. It's all going to be fairly blunt, and the protagonist MUST notice the foreshadowing to comment on it..

Well, in writing, yes. But remember that we're making Visual Novels here. Just because the protagonist doesn't comment on something, doesn't mean you can't show it to the player. This disconnect between the narration, and what is on screen, can actually be a powerful tool that only really exists in first person present. The protagonist not noticing something we can clearly see makes it all the more notable.