No way

[N0UGHTS]

...I've always thought his first post made his identity painfully clear... Did anyone else have a guess, or was it just me?

Nah, I bet he agrees with his opinions. Maybe he's afraid of being proven wrong and his "wrongness" being known widely on the boards? Or maybe he just doesn't want to be known as a jerk. Either way, anonymity is a security blanket for him. He poked a few holes in it, though. :p

Though I don't agree with Nicol Amarfi's opinion on hooks (hooks can be "soft," too!), I have to agree that you shouldn't force yourself into something you really can't work with. I guess first, you should decide what POV you want the game to be in. First, second, third... And then go from there. But since you're focusing on the character, I'd advise you not to go with second. If you go with third, try writing in a stream-of-consciousness way. Though I guess this also applied with first...

[Nicol Armarfi]

...I've always thought his first post made his identity painfully clear... Did anyone else have a guess, or was it just me?

I was not the Guest poster...

[A22]

...I've always thought his first post made his identity painfully clear... Did anyone else have a guess, or was it just me?

Nah, I bet he agrees with his opinions. Maybe he's afraid of being proven wrong and his "wrongness" being known widely on the boards? Or maybe he just doesn't want to be known as a jerk. Either way, anonymity is a security blanket for him. He poked a few holes in it, though. :p

Though I don't agree with Nicol Amarfi's opinion on hooks (hooks can be "soft," too!), I have to agree that you shouldn't force yourself into something you really can't work with. I guess first, you should decide what POV you want the game to be in. First, second, third... And then go from there. But since you're focusing on the character, I'd advise you not to go with second. If you go with third, try writing in a stream-of-consciousness way. Though I guess this also applied with first...

Yeah, uh, that's quite cute that you want to take the intellectual and moral high ground in hindsight, but the guest poster was actually me, not Nicol. It's cool though that you were incredibly eager to jump on Nicol and say he was actually me because he agreed with me. Because, you know, anyone who agrees with an anonymous poster is clearly them.

Anyway, you(and everyone in this thread) also misunderstood "Nicol's" opinion, as I'm not against hooks, I just think that in this VN, where the hook is the premise, you don't need a hook so early in the game as a cheap excuse to skimp on doing exposition the legit way: gradually, after the setup.

Also lawl e-cred. The reason I posted anonymously was because

1) The guest option is right there, and I was feeling lazy having not logged in in months.

2) Renpytom actually looked up my IP to track me down on IRC just to say "lawl post under your account so you can be held responsible for your posts." Reminds me of way back when he did the same to track down FIA, who was posting anonymously because in LSF, you can actually be tracked down and have your chops busted for disagreeing with someone or criticizing them. And he had like 500 posts. Let me guess, he is also a troll?

[PyTom]

My thoughts:

The biggest difference between VNs and other forms of storytelling is the interactive/multipath aspects of VNs. That's actually a fairly big problem, and one that I think is best solved by having multiple paths in the game, one for the trunk and one for the branches.

Looking at Mikan's demo, I think the issue is less starting with a hook... it's just that a scene where the pov character is just waking up in the morning is kinda boring. You can have a few scenes before the main plot starts, but those scenes should accomplish something. I'm not sure what the first scene does.

OTOH, the game isn't that long before we start meeting girls, so it's not a big deal. You do get at least a few scenes to establish the characters before you have to start the main story. If you start a subplot early, you can go quite a while before starting the main plot.

(Oh, and the guest above isn't Nicol.)

[musical74]

BRAVO PyTom!! <thumbs up>

re Mikan: I actually like this idea more...it gives it more of a hook, and makes me more likely to want to play the finished game I'm a big proponent of giving characters personalities in games...it makes the game so much more enjoyable when you can relate to the character rather than a *generuc nobody*.

[N0UGHTS]

Yeah, uh, that's quite cute that you want to take the intellectual and moral high ground in hindsight, but the guest poster was actually me, not Nicol. It's cool though that you were incredibly eager to jump on Nicol and say he was actually me because he agreed with me. Because, you know, anyone who agrees with an anonymous poster is clearly them.

When did I say it was Nicol?! Ugh... :bashes head on deskstop:

Aww, never mind, never mind! I didn't guess either of you! (T_T)

[Mikan]

I suppose the first few lines of the game are a little off topic, but it felt like something should be there. I'm not exactly expert at storytelling, but I do know that my plots progress way too quickly, so I've been trying to slow myself down.
I'll try to read it out loud and record it and hear myself telling the story for the next draft. I heard that helps :v besides practicing writing everyday, which I have been doing (nothing amazing, just narrating what happened that day, or writing formal poems)

I guess there's a way fast openings can work, but I don't know if I really need a fast opening...
I'm hoping the visual elements will be "hook" enough to make the player want to continue the game. A catchy opening story could help, but it seems like extra work. It's either a catchy story, or catchy visuals. Doing both might drive the expectations of the game pretty high (if the opening is catchy in both plot and visuals, won't this be expected for the rest of the game?) or it might come off as being contrived (improbable things happening for the sake of happening).


The opening is always the hardest part of the game. Ah dear. Where to even begin the story? Where exactly does it get interesting? How much of the background information can I leave out? What am I forgetting?
I'm sure as I write more I'll know what to do in the opening...

[N0UGHTS]

This is my personal opinion, but I'd rather good expository writing than art when hooking early... Mediocre writing ruins visual art for me, and I can shrug of mediocre art if it has a good plot. Unless the art is really, really hideous. I don't think hideous art is something you have to worry about. :p

I have an interesting idea: Why don't you start the game off with a bunch of girls gossipping in the Girls' Bathroom? Talking about guys, how their school is co-ed now, etc. And while they're talking, the male protagonist passes by, and then the game's focus shifts on his POV. Or, alternatively, after the gossip, the game focuses on one girl. Class starts, and the male protagonist is introduced. And then, if you want you can switch the POV to him while he's in the classroom... Or not.

Man. For me, it's probably the middle that's the hardest part.

[monele]

Maybe you could just write the rest of the story first and go back to the introduction after all this? It's something I've seen suggested as, by then, you will know your whole story and know what's important to put forward in the first minutes. Also, you will have trained your writing skill for a whole story, and you introduction should benefit from it.

Also, graphics were definitely a hook for me, but as with writing hooks, they only pull you in. You still have to err... not let the fish slip away

[Jake]

I just think that in this VN, where the hook is the premise, you don't need a hook so early in the game as a cheap excuse to skimp on doing exposition the legit way: gradually, after the setup.

If this is honestly what you think, then you are... to put it bluntly, atrociously bad at getting this across to people.

Reminds me of way back when he did the same to track down FIA, who was posting anonymously because in LSF, you can actually be tracked down and have your chops busted for disagreeing with someone or criticizing them. And he had like 500 posts. Let me guess, he is also a troll?

Depends; was he being very aggressive, misrepresenting other people's opinions, throwing around insults like confetti at a wedding and being pretty hypocritical in the platform he was pushing to boot? Because that's how I'd describe all those 'guest' posts. All of those things will incite arguments, and inciting arguments is the goal of a troll.



And you still seem to be totally misunderstanding what people mean when they say 'hook'. It doesn't have to be fanservice, it doesn't have to be porn, it doesn't have to be spontaneous exposition syndrome and it doesn't have to be a cheap gimmick... it's not there to give the reader information or set up the entire premise, it's just there to be interesting. There has to be something interesting near the beginning, to get the reader interested.

If the reader has to read for ten minutes before finding anything remotely of interest to suggest that there might be a story there, then it's not high-class, it's not just avoiding poor exposition, it's just bad writing. Entertainment VNs are entertainment, they are supposed to entertain. If they don't entertain, they fail at their single job. The same as novels, plays, comics, animation, videogames or anything else which the consumer is expected to consume for more than a minute or two. End of story.

Yes, there are a lot of badly-written VNs about. This is totally irrelevant, because we're discussing how to make a good VN. Hitler was a landscape painter, etc. Yes, there are differences between VNs and books or videogames, but this is mostly irrelevant as well, because we're talking about telling stories, and stories still generally have the same fundamental characteristics regardless of the format. It's not like apples and oranges, it's like oranges and grapefruit; there are more similarities than differences, and saying that VNs are "totally different" to books is just ignorant. Pushing to constantly ignore the conventions of a medium and be in the avant gard, that is pretentious - not giving someone general advice about recognised and established methods of doing something.

[Mikan]

I don't really understand why you guys are so eager to point and yell "TROLL TROLL" when the discussion was a valid one. Trolling would be if the poster posted things knowing that those things would certainly piss off x user or users, which isn't what happened here -- two users had different opinions, that's all. They wern't out to pull each other's strings and no one's accused anyone of being hitler. A good argument is needed now and then to solve problems out. Is lemmasoft against solving problems?

[Nicol Armarfi]

Is lemmasoft against solving problems?

Yes, as extensive discussion on the topic has proven.

[monele]

I think what was not appreciated was the fact all the posts were anonymous at first (lazyness not being the most obvious reason), that it seemed like he meant "VNs/introductions/hooks should be *that* way" and that he employed an overall holier-than-thou tone :

Stop treating an eroge like it's a full length professional novel. Know your medium. This is almost insulting.
I like how "it doesn't need a cheap gimmicky cliche hook in the first 10 lines" translates to "HURR DURR NO BACKSTORY AT ALL."
Protip: Most eroge/dating sims/whatever ARE poorly written.
Starting off with a hook is unnecessary, and starting off with such a shitty hook is offensive.
Nice job posting while TOTALLY misunderstanding.
Yeah, uh, that's quite cute that you want to take the intellectual and moral high ground in hindsight (...)

Stop doing? Hurr durr? Protip? Nice job? That's quite cute?
Sorry, but that's terribly condescending to me. Screams "hey morons! I have truth, you have nothing!" to me. Where's the discussion/argument when one of the sides is clearly convinced he's the one being right? And even if there can be a discussion based on this, there's a minimum of politeness and diplomacy when you're trying to make a point.

[Jake]

two users had different opinions, that's all. They wern't out to pull each other's strings

It didn't look that way at all, since 'Guest' was clearly misrepresenting what mrsulu had said, and behaving in a very antagonistic manner. Also the stuff Monele mentions.

If he wasn't doing it on purpose, then sure - maybe he's just bad at communicating what he means (maybe he spends too much time in antagonistic communities like 4chan), or maybe he forgot details... but those are exactly the kind of things you would do on purpose if you were trying to troll a discussion. He didn't appear to several different people here to be contributing anything but malice to the thread, so it's really quite a normal conclusion to jump to.

That was the entire point I was trying to make, but because you POSTED WITHOUT READING MRSULU'S POST, WHICH IS ONE PAGE BACK, you failed to see that Mrsulu wants the game to start with a cliche panty flash

The above, for example, is either an outright lie or a total failure of memory - and given that he's chastising another person for not reading the post in question, that looks pretty bad. Unless someone erased the part of mrsulu's post that he's talking about after the fact, or on a re-reading of the thread I totally missed it too, but I'm skeptical.

[Deji]

In screenwritting, what you're looking for is called "catalyst", which happens almost right after the story starts being told and it's purpose is to determine a main-ish conflict (which can be shifted to somehting else later) and set the story in motion.

If the story is about the main character, then the catalyst should be the fact he's going to this co-ed school for the first time. The question is: what does happen at the start of the story that will start the series of event that will conform the story itself and make it interesting?

If the focus is not the protagonist but all the main charaters and the story will be focused on how their life changes because the school becomes co-ed, well, that's the catalyst. I think that fact is more of a catalyst for the girls who were already there and used to an all-girls school than for the protagonist himself. You could take the protagonist as a witness narrator of what happens to the girls and how are they all affected by this (And eventually get to know the full story of everybody by playing all the girls' routes)

Reference: Wikipedia, because I can't find my screenwritting course notes >_o;