bramble-child [kinetic novel, fairy tale]

[dreamfarmer]

Hi there. I've lurked here occasionally but only recently made an account. I like to dig around and read those threads where everybody shares stuff like 'word count'.

I want to start implementing some planned but unwritten novels as visual novels. Those are big projects for a beginner. So I decided I'd take an old fairy tale I'd invented and learn the process with that. So, er, I took a couple pages of Grimm's-style fairy tale text and turned it into a 77 page fairy-tale-esque novella. And now I've started turning that into a visual novel script. Here's a link! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I3B ... sp=sharing

I don't actually have any idea how to pitch this except by sharing the first couple paragraphs of the novella. Ideas are welcome.

Once upon a time, a young woman lived in a cottage in the woods, all alone. She hadn't always been alone; for most of her life she'd had her mother and, occasionally, her mother's strange guests. But ever since her mother had died and the strange gentleman with the horns and the tail had taken her remains away, no strange guests came.

There was a village nearby, but she wasn't welcome there. She never understood why. She did her best to be kind and good. Even the gentleman with the horns and tail had commented. He'd looked her over speculatively, then said,"Ah, well. You're a good girl, just like she wanted. I'll see how far that gets you."

I'm already finding that some stuff I /told/ in the novella ('telling' is the bread and butter of a fairy tale style, alas) needs to be turned into monologues or dialog extensions. I spent a while struggling with the feeling that I was writing a play, but after thinking about how film would show the same things I decided to roll with it. I have no idea if it's a dreadfully dull beginning for a VN/KN, though.

[dreamfarmer]

Slowly working on proof-of-concept implementation of my manuscript. Not final art but in that general region.

[fleet]

I like the art.

[celinarose]

I've always been a fan of Grimm's tales so, this immediately caught my eye. The art is beautiful, especially the background. That little excerpt has made me extremely about the storyline already. As for the problem with turning the text into dialogue, I use either of two ways to solve this. Having a narrator, or having the MC recite their actions themselves, in different fonts/italics/bold.

[dreamfarmer]

Yay! I'm happy to see some interest.

I've been working on music this week, which I don't dare share. But here are some character pose sprites. I modified her some from the last version.

And a possible menu screen? A placeholder anyhow, because I got tired of looking at blankness.

[celinarose]

The sprites look really good. But it's the backgrounds that I really adore. They're very fairy tale-ish

[dreamfarmer]

More backgrounds!

[dreamfarmer]

Yet more art.

[dreamfarmer]

To close this out:

I implemented the first third of this kinetic novel as part of a beta test for Visual Novel Maker. It was released as a demo alongside a number of other games. I never mentioned it here and I don't know why. A couple months later I determined that I did not want to finish implementing it in VN Maker (which is a fine engine but I was kind of scarred by dealing with lots of bugs in the pre-release phase) and I did not want to transfer it to Ren'py, so instead I took the manuscript form and the art and combined them into an illustrated novella that I stuck up on Amazon for a few bucks. I think this is probably a better fate for it than a quirky kinetic novel with weird art.

I'm now engaged on another project, an actual visual novel using more typical (commissioned) character art. The backgrounds will still be Photoshopped renders and photos. I'll post a thread for it once I have my first demo.