Pitching Your Visual Novel - What's Your Premise?

[evgaming]

Ok, here goes my premise!

Crushing Skies, A Visual Novel

Crippled from disease and confined to a wheelchair, Amara yearns to be more than the object of everyone's sympathy. Yet the chance to shine during a summer internship at Archi Tech Research turns tragic with the sudden death of her older sister and an imminent nuclear reactor meltdown. Amara must use the lab's mysterious Project Mnemosyne to send her memories back in time to save her sister and city, while weighing the moral implications of playing god with time.

[Anarchy]

Ok, here goes my premise!

Crushing Skies, A Visual Novel

Crippled from disease and confined to a wheelchair, Amara yearns to be more than the object of everyone's sympathy. Yet the chance to shine during a summer internship at Archi Tech Research turns tragic with the sudden death of her older sister and an imminent nuclear reactor meltdown. Amara must use the lab's mysterious Project Mnemosyne to send her memories back in time to save her sister and city, while weighing the moral implications of playing god with time.

I think the last two sentences do a great job of getting us interested in the conflict, but the opening sentence doesn't quite hook me. It feels a bit vague and generic. Try experimenting with it a little more. Maybe give us more specifics on the "disease"? Or maybe try to introduce conflict in the very first sentence?

Trapped in a wheelchair due to a crippling disease, Amara swears that she'll become more than the object of everyone's sympathy.

Something like that? She feels a bit more active and interesting to me that way.

As for me, I finally decided (on the very last day!) to participate in NaNoWriMo by making a VN/game. Here's the working title and premise:

Title: Krakenwrecked!

Synopsis: A kraken airstrike leaves an anarchist bard and her shipmates stranded on a carnivorous island. Will the four women escape? Can they survive when the entire island is out to kill them? And most importantly, whose turn is it to throw out the crotchblood pads? (Homoerotic subtext optional.)

Alternate Synopsis: An anarchist bard, a laudanum addict, a meat artiste, and a coffin-toting teenage undertaker are left stranded on an island after krakens eat their ship. Will the four women escape? Can they survive the island's attempts to murder them? And most importantly, whose turn is it to throw out the crotchblood pads?

Pitch: Four lesbians wash up on a carnivorous island after their ship is dive-bombed by krakens. What will destroy them first, the natives or the sexual tension?

(Okay, so the pitch is kind of a lie. They're not ALL lesbians. One is a bisexual single mother and another is asexual but sorta panromantic. But "two lesbians, a bisexual, and an asexual kinda-sorta panromantic" is way too long to put in a pitch.)