What makes Kinetic Novel great?

[morinoir]

Hello guys! I finally post my first topic in Lemmasoft!
Also, English is not my first language so don't mind it if you find any weird words or gramatical errors here and there >u<

So, I'm currently working on my first visual novel with my hubby. I made the art and together we discuss about story and other development things and one day, after read some posts in Lemmasoft, I finally found the difference between visual novel and kinetic novel (I'm so noob! >A<) and I decided that I want to make kinetic novel instead.

I found many useful post about kinetic novel here, but I really want to hear your suggestion about things that will make a kinetic novel great and not less enjoyable than visual novel, other than story. One thing that makes visual novel shine is it's choice system or interactivity which kinetic novel lack. So I'm thinking, since story is the strongest part of kinetic novel, then naturally beside creating great story I also must consider deeply of how I will present those story to my audience.

Any of you have some thoughts to share?

[Mammon]

It's actually pretty easy to make a good kinetic novel when only taking the Kinetic/Visual novel difference into account. A kinetic novel is pretty much like a book, movie or series, there's no choice there either. Having choice is actually a pretty rare thing in most stories, VN's being the deviant. Just remember that as long as you make a good story in the other aspects and mention that your story is a kinetic one, the difference between VN and KN isn't big or important in terms of appreciation and popularity. However, to go a bit more into detail:


A (good) visual novel allows the player to go down several different paths leading to different endings, thus allowing the player to either feel like they're having a say in the story, or seeing the story from different angles. Essentially, it's a story with the what-if scenarios already being a part of the original story. (Or, option 2; it allows you to pick which boy/girl you want to romance and essentially allows the reader to read multiple different stories with the same prologue and characters. I have to mention it because most VN's are this format.)

A good kinetic novel, compared to a visual novel, is a good story where the player doesn't feel the need or urge to make choices. The path they're following does seem like the right path compared to the other choices they might have had, it's the route they would've followed either way. They don't feel like the author is forcing them down a path that they didn't want/wouldn't have chosen themselves or that seems unlogical. In other words, the writer made a story where the motivation of the protagonist, the events that happened and the reaction of the characters make sense to the reader. It's a very difficult task for the writer to judge whether they did this right.

I think the best way to see if a kinetic story works is to instead look at failing to do so: The writer does the exact thing that the readers DIDN'T want to happen. Now this is where the 'choose your romance' part becomes relevant because it's the easiest to understand example: You are a protagonist and you meet 3 characters that seem to be romantically available/interested in you. The worst thing that the writer can do, is to give the reader the feeling like they'll get to choose which romance to pursue, and then choose a route themselves. This is almost guaranteed to upset the readers that wouldn't have chosen this route. How to determine whether this applies:

1) Does the reader feel like there should be a choice? Especially with the example above this is quickly the feeling they get, but with non-romance plots this is much easier to avoid because it's not the norm for there to be a choice per se.

2) Does the writer give choices that suggest that the reader gets to choose eventually, only for the choice to be made for the reader after all? I have actually seen this, and it's pretty much the worst possible thing you can do. It's like the writer is intentionally rubbing it in that the reader can't choose.

3) Do the choices that the protagonist make, make sense? If the protagonist is a pretty determined or intelligent fella, or if the circumstances make for a pretty obvious solution, people won't mind not getting a choice. If the protagonist is indecisive and seems neutral to choice, or if the circumstances seem like they're giving multiple viable choices, people will get the feeling that there should be choice.


Just remember the romance route thing, that's the only example of bad kinetic novels I know, but it's one I've seen multiple times and it can singlehandedly RUIN that story. Especially stories that would be good otherwise or had popular/good stories preceding it. (Damn you Sunrider:liberation day! You ruined the entire franchize!) With any other case, it's much faster that people put the problem with the story, writing, causality or logic of the story rather than it being kinetic instead of interactive. Just think about any story you ever read while thinking 'why didn't they just do this or that instead'?

[Zelan]

First of all, if we're talking about me, personally, I'm not generally a huge fan of KNs. The special thing to me about visual novels is the choice-making aspect - if you take that away, what's the point of making it a game in the first place? Why not an animated short film, a comic/webcomic, or an illustrated novel? (I'm sure there are plenty of people with valid answers to these questions, but the point is that I'm not a huge fan of them personally.)

But Zelan! You've played some kinetic novels! Why would you do that if you don't like them? Great question! Here's the honest answer: the very first kinetic novel that I played, Starlit Flowers, was a fluke. (Man, I just keep bringing this one up, don't I?) When I originally stumbled upon its NaNoRenO WIP thread, it was planned to be a full VN. However, partway through the development, one of the people working on it announced that the team had decided that the story would just work better as a kinetic novel. I was disappointed at first, but the art was so cute and I liked the idea so much that I decided, "Heck, why not?" Long story short, I played it and loved it.

So what's my point with those two convoluted paragraphs? It's that I'm generally not a fan of kinetic novels for various reasons, but if the story is interesting enough to draw me in, I'll give it a go. Essentially, my standards for a KN will be higher than for a regular visual novel. I need a good story either way, but a clichéd plot for a KN will turn me off more than for a VN. Same for art lacking in quality.

Admittedly, there are some things that the KN format just makes sense for, especially what I mentioned earlier about choices feeling forced. If you feel that the choices are unnecessary, that will show through your writing, and the readers will pick up on it. If you feel the same way about your story, a kinetic novel is probably the way to go.

And heck, I claim not to like KNs, but two of the ideas that I've got bouncing around my skull are for kinetic novels so ehhhh. <: Do what you feel is right and your story should turn out fine.

[Mammon]

First of all, if we're talking about me, personally, I'm not generally a huge fan of KNs. The special thing to me about visual novels is the choice-making aspect - if you take that away, what's the point of making it a game in the first place? Why not an animated short film, a comic/webcomic, or an illustrated novel? (I'm sure there are plenty of people with valid answers to these questions, but the point is that I'm not a huge fan of them personally.)

True, on Lemmasoft people will be expecting VN more than KN, but in most other media it's a rare luxury. Well, luxury, most movies, games and books that feature interactivity tend to be rather bad most of the time because it's still lineair in practise. However, I think that for many people, ren'py is the best available format to make an illustrated novel. Are there other programs that could do it? Most likely, but I don't know them. And animated short films and comics are even further out of the reach of beginning developers, especially if they're not artists.

Admittedly, there are some things that the KN format just makes sense for, especially what I mentioned earlier about choices feeling forced. If you feel that the choices are unnecessary, that will show through your writing, and the readers will pick up on it. If you feel the same way about your story, a kinetic novel is probably the way to go.

Jup, you should never add choices for the sake of choices or you'll end up like Telltale games. Successful, well known and very wealthy. Wait... Scrap that, I meant you'd end up with stories that will all end the exact same way regardless of your choices. And the bigger your story, the more difficult it will be to add choices that will feel relevant because the more changes they should cause over time due to causality.

[morinoir]

Thank you so much to Mammon and Zelan for their suggestion!
Now I'll be honest, I have to re-read some of the paragraph to fully understand it haha... but from what you wrote, basically I have to make solid story that won't make readers think it should be done otherwise. Am I right??

I'm glad that my story is mainly about family and friendship with no romance to pursue, something that will remind you of those family animation movie from disney or dreamworks (my main inspiration is Nightmare Before Christmas fyi). That way I don't have to think who will end up with who and why not the other person. I can't wait to show the synopsis of my story to lemmasoft people and hear your thoughts about it! ^^

Do you guys have suggestion about visual aspect and story presentation? I'm an artist so that will be my main focus for this project, aside from story of course.

[Mammon]

Now I'll be honest, I have to re-read some of the paragraph to fully understand it haha... but from what you wrote, basically I have to make solid story that won't make readers think it should be done otherwise. Am I right??

Sorry, I can be a bit vague. But yes, a story that doesn't make the reader feel like it should be done completely different is a good tip for any format of stories in general. Writing a story in ren'py adds the additional challenge that people might feel like choice could've been added at some point. However, do not overestimate this challenge, unless it's with something like the aforementioned romance choice or giving choices that don't matter, it's actually EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to do this wrong. It already speaks for itself that a story with crooked or just stupid actions, developments and character motivations has flaws that are a problem of the story itself, not a lack of interactivity.

Lets take a movie you've seen as an example here; Nightmare before Christmas. Let me come up with three possible points where the movie could have added a choice:

-During Sally's song, whether she should approach Jack or not. (romance choices)
-When about to discover the land of Christmas, the choice of going into one of the other trees instead. (branching routes)
-While Santa was being tortured, for him to (try to) touch his nose. (should have been)

Each of these would make for a possible choice if the movie were a VN, do you expect/demand a choice with any of these? No.
-It would be possible for Sally to approach Jack earlier, confess her love, and maybe add a few other romance-related choices later to get a good and a bad ending romance-wise. Would work if the movie were a visual novel (and it would make that ending of the story more logical than it is now), but not absolutely neccesary.
-The choice for Jack to go into any of the other trees would immediately make for about 4 or 5 different stories of equal length, which would have to be made as well. I believe the movie was about an hour long (?), so that would be about 45 minutes*4 on top of that. Again, possible, but no one is going to demand it and everyone will understand if you never implement such a choice.
-Santa can apparently fly away by touching his nose, and during the torture he had the opportunity to do so. Why didn't he do it? This is not really a choice-worthy moment rather than one of the 'crooked logic/plot holes' that shouldn't be in there (albeit a nit-picky one.) At best, one could give a choice here, only for Hoogie Boogie to see it and intervene before Santa can escape to circumvent people calling it a plothole, but most problems like this are best fixed in the story overall (or left in because this isn't really a big flaw).

I'm glad that my story is mainly about family and friendship with no romance to pursue, something that will remind you of those family animation movie from disney or dreamworks (my main inspiration is Nightmare Before Christmas fyi). Do you guys have suggestion about visual aspect and story presentation? I'm an artist so that will be my main focus for this project, aside from story of course.

I think a warm and fuzzy kind of artstyle in shades of brown, or cute round characters with bright happy colors will work best with a family animation- esk story, but then I read Nightmare before Christmas (which is the last animated movie I'd think of when mentioning Disney/Dreamworks) and I'm immediately not sure about this any more. I'll have to wait for that synopsis of yours before I can give a proper answer to this... BTW, where's Pixar in that list, they make the best family movies by far.