Dealing with frustration

[poopzlord]

Hi everybody, I hope you're all doing well!
So, I've been working on this game idea of mine for about 2 and a half months so far, I have most of the plot figured out, I've got all important character designs down and I just LOVE everything about it - it being my very first serious project and all. What I've noticed these past few days though is that I just can't get my ideas down on paper anymore ???
It's like... ahh, I don't know! I mean I know what I want the route's overall plot to be, and I have a very clear image of all the key events (as in the ones following choices that'll trigger CGs and advance the story in a meaningful way) for each of my characters, but it feels like I don't know how to get from one key event to the next? I'm constantly thinking that the story advances in a weird way, that there's too much happening in the story (because of all of the fillers needed in order to get from point A to point B), or that I'm just not writing an interesting story. The last part really sucks, because I really, truly love my story, and I would love to have my friends play it and feel invested in it the same way that I do, but I just can't see that happening with the way things are now, and I have no idea how to get myself back on track

I do have quite a lot of choices in my game too, so I've been thinking that maybe writing the different outcomes is what's confusing me most of all. I mean, I might write 5 alternate story lines and 20k words and feel like I'm really close to the end, but then, in reality, all that amounts to is maybe 15 minutes of actual gameplay - should I just stick with the line that gets the player to the "true" ending, and then fill in the other choices afterwards?

I'm really looking forward to reading your replies!

[Mammon]

The problem you describe here is exactly something I have warned people about in previous posts; that they have a story that won't work. It's actually creepy just how accurately similar your description is to the symptoms I describe.

Plenty of stories begin with a single cool scene in the writer's head, usually the ending. There can be a few other lone scenes too, a few characters that have a badass establishing scene or there can be a neat underlying theme in your story. You might have characters that are very defined and unique, and plenty of lore about the world you have.

All of that means absolutely nothing.

Sorry that I'm saying it so bluntly, but it is. A story shouldn't be selected upon whether it sounds like a compelling story, rather it also have the 'boring' parts in between when you think it out in your head. Preferably without even trying. If there's a really awesome scene but it will require half a story worth of build-up to make it work or for you to really nail a character's impression on the audience, then that scene/story should be scrapped.

Sometimes you'll have a story that will play itself chronologically in your head. A story that you feel does have all the elements including character building and the events between two important scenes. Those are the stories you should focus on, even if the singular scenes seem much cooler to work on. Unless those singular scenes can be woven into a story, they're just tiny stories in your head to amuse yourself with.

My advice would therefore be to scrap the project entirely. If you haven't been able to connect the scenes without adding bland scenes you feel nothing for, you're not going to finish it.

I can, of course, understand if you don't want to do that. If you don't, then don't. Who am I to tell you to throw away all the work and motivation that you already threw into it? If you do choose to do that, I'd advice the following things so you stand a better chance at least:
-Those alternate routes? No. Finish the main story line first, don't start juggling with more variations before that. They'll make sure you'll never finish the script otherwise.
-Try adding new elements that work better for the blind spots you have. Let's assume you have an action VN and the fight scenes are the cool parts. But those damn slice-of-life scenes in between are impossible! Add a new character who's not a warrior who's extravagant personality lends itself better for the scene, and have them kickstart the scenarios you're struggling with.
-If adding new elements doesn't work, maybe merge in a whole story. You probably have other stories as well, can one of them co-exist within the same plot and act as filler material?

Anyhow, scrap or adapt. Those are the two options I'd say you have. From what you described, you'll reach scrap if you don't manage to change your approach somehow or change the story whether you'd like to or not. The problem you described is that serious, it's a real story-sinker. I don't want to know how many of the great amount of first-time developers never finish their project for this reason, that this problem you're having is the writer's block they hit.
If you do choose to scrap and find a new story, knowing which ones are chronologically sound is hard. I myself tend to toss about 90% of my ideas and there are still some stories amongst the 10% that I wonder are actually practical. Maybe you will be able to identify them though. One of the most important things is that such a story always has a beginning in your head, and I don't mean one of those foreboding first scenes, I mean a couple of scenes that introduce the cast in a way you consider a good first draft. If you're making establishing scenes rather than the following more action-packed scenes that rely upon those establishing scenes, that's a good story to actually write out.

[YonYonYon]

1) Many people advise to just finish your first draft no matter what. Then, when everything is on paper or screen, you can see your mistakes more clearly and fix them. It's better to have some bad work done rather than nothing at all.
2) You probably think your story is boring because you've been working on it for a long time. I had this feeling when I was working on my comic, going forth and back through my script, making pages for days. But people mostly loved it and were surprised by many things in my writing.

Of course just jumping into it head first and then fixing the mistakes can be a bit troublesome and you can try to minimize the mistakes in the outlining phase.

If you're stuck between scenes, then don't be afraid to deviate from the later scene. Everything that happens should be born from the present. Like the butterfly effect, the future is dependent on the choices you made right now. If you can't make the scene happen, then it's not working.

I've seen a nice advice of how the story should go. Don't tell a story just like "this happened and THEN this happened", use more of "this happened THEREFORE this happened, BUT something else happened next". THEREFOREs add logical continuity, BUTs add conflict.

So, look at your first scene where you stuck. Keep in mind your later scene just for a reference, but it's not important right now. Then think, what is a logical continuation for the scene? What would characters do? How it will result? If there's a lull in this department, what can go horribly wrong? List some bad stuff that can happen right now, choose the one you like and go with it. Sometimes even writing "I thought I was ready for everything. I was horribly wrong." can spark your writing back.

Sometimes you can see the shortest and more engaging cut to your next planned scene. That's good! Sometimes you cannot, and then you have to cut the scene out, put it into a box and use in some other works.

I hope it'll help you a bit. And remember, just finish what you started if you love your story that much.

[hoihoisoi]

I personally think that this is a pretty common problem for writers, nothing to worry over too much, but here's some general tips to keep you on track since I've had times when I've stumbled upon blocks like these too.

1. Write a single true route first and finish your first draft
It's always good to focus your energy on a single true route first, it makes the entire thing much less complicated than say if you were to write all routes at the very same time. Having a focus on where you want to be, will get your setting and your main characters down first, and that I find is super important. What I'm saying might sound a bit weird, but your characters and settings are not fully developed when you're midway through your script. You will only kinda know bits and pieces of them while you're writing and your first draft inevitably will have very tropey/generic, not well defined characters/setting. But after you're done with draft number one, you'll find that you'll better understand your characters, the kind of motivations, personality, decision making abilities they will have. Once you have that in mind, go back to the starting point and change everything about the setting/characters to suit these new figures in your head. Give them backstory and history, it will start making the plot more comprehensive. But as long as you don't finish that first draft/route, your characters are going to stay that way, and it's really hard writing a script without totally understanding the characters you are trying to write about.

2. Character development and setting development
After you're done with script number one, it's time to move on to this part. Character development and setting development is incredibly important and ties back very closely to the last part in point one. Writing a character isn't just throwing a bunch of personalities together and hoping it'll work, characters are supposed to be humans with probably more hiperbole in some aspects of their personality. You can have a tsundere, but a tsundere who is a tsundere because she's a tsundere isn't going to make your character very believable. There should be a reason why she's a tsundere, maybe how she views the world, or maybe because of a past event, or maybe because that's the way her father brought her up in (Lol). Your characters should have reasons to why they are the way they are. Most of the time, you can blame it on a past event or a motivation they have. But you'll have to explain those things through flashbacks or how they handle uncomfortable/challanging scenarios. Can't just explain it in words unfortunately. Convincing your audience that those characters are real, making the audience care for those characters are what's going to add time in your story and make your plot more convincing.

Similarly for setting, you'll have to develop it as you go. Having a familiar backdrop such as Tokyo or London or America is going to ease your burden of explaining the setting of the story since there are references in people's heads about those places, but none the less, your characters are going to be placed in a particular 'context' within that familiar backdrop that will be unfamiliar to the reader. This context will probably drive your characters to do the things they do, so explaining this is important too. Things such as how the community views certain things, the politics of the area, the personality make up of the community, how the weather affects the livelihood of the people, what kind of local produce does that region sell - As ambiguous as some of these may seem, it provides context for the reader, a kind of guidepost for them to try and see through the lens of the character from the community/geographical location they stem from. Developing this part and convincing the reader that this setting is believable (From character interactions and the things they say about the people around them) will take time as well. As long as you're not writing about some alternative universe/world/timeline, then you'll have much less work to do in this department. But still. providing context for the reader will take up time in your script as well.

3. Adding plotpoints/events
Having only one or two great ideas that brings the story along will probably not make the writing easy at all. You'll have to add plotpoints/events to make the story flow. I'm not sure what kind of advice I can give you here, but throw in things that you know will develop the plot, a certain uncomfortable event or certain challenges that the characters face. Anything random that will advance the story will give you the opportunity to showcase character development/setting development and also give your character brownie points to show case why they are cool or are able to do something amazing. It might sound like you're forcing it a bit here, but come to your second or third draft, you'll find a way to ease these events into your plot without making it too forceful.

4. Just write
This I find is the most important one as it is the main activity that will drive points 1 to 3 to succeed. Just write, even if you hate what your characters are saying or acting, just write! As counterproductive as it sounds, just make sure you write day after day. Firstly, the more you write, the better the quality of your writing becomes as you're practicing your craft. Secondly, writing is the foundation to everything in your story, and it will allow you to finish your first draft. To me, a first draft will normally not be very good most of the time (Unless you're super talented at writing) and it will probably not take flight because there are so many things to reedit from a plot/character development/setting development perspective (Not just correcting grammer and spelling). Only through the great toil of editing and editing will it get it to the version you want it to be.

So yes, no matter how frustrated you are, just write. Getting to the finish line of your first draft is merely the first leg of the journey, your script is still incomplete. Editing will be the rest of your journey, and it will be long and arduous, even lengthier and possibly harder than your first draft! But! Do not underestimate the power of a badly written first draft, you might be surprised just how much motivation can come from it. It is after all the backbone of your story, which makes your brain kinda light up when you know that all that's left is the editing to be done. Next to which, your first draft contributes to point number 1 to 3 above.

5. Take a break every once in a while
When I say take a break, I mean a day to two days of break. If possible, write your script every Monday to Friday and rest on the weekend. Writing constantly will make your imagination shrivel up sometimes and also plummets your motivation when you hit brick walls. So yes, rest. After a day or two, many times, hopefully, you'll find a breakthrough. But if you don't, at least your motivation is rejuvenated a bit from the rest so you can follow point 4 again.

All in all, good luck and I hope some piece of this advice will help you in your journey! Good luck!

[Sleepy]

Aside from finishing the draft, my advice would be to step back and do a thorough plot outline first (about 1-4 pages), which focuses on telling the game's plot progression through how the player will encounter it. For ex: "Whether through combat or infiltration, the player retrieves the acorn from the bandits. Afterwards, Tattle is pulled aside by Weaver, who informs them the acorn is worth a lot of money. This leaves the player with three options: i ) they give the acorn to Cecily, who gives them trading materials and becomes a party member for the area out of gratitude ii ) they give the acorn to Felice, who will give them a significant amount of gold after completing two other events iii ) they sell it themselves, netting themselves enough money to go home but cheating the sisters out of the acorn".

Not only does this help put the events you have in mind into order, but it also gives you and idea of what resources you'll need and what the game flow will be like. This saves a lot of time, since it means you don't have to spend a lot of time drafting it all out and then realizing late into the process that it's not working.

I also agree with focusing on the true/crit path first. First, because it simplifies your work flow and second, because it gives the rest of your game a backbone. After you have that much, it's much easier to go back and add more paths or choices if you want to. Or, you might even decide you don't need all to add that much after all and just cut it. Either way, you'll have the most significant part of the game drafted, at least.

[Lesleigh63]

Do you have an outline sorted out.
List your key events in the order they occur. As for the 'filler' or linking sections.
A linking section can be very short - just a couple of sentences.
Linking sections can be used to let your reader 'rest' after a particularly dramatic event.
Linking sections are good for showing the passage of time.
Linking sections are good for showing your character's reaction to what has just happened (the inner thinking processes) and how they intend to move forward.

[Katy133]

Okay, from reading you original post, I have three main ideas on what the problem may be caused by, so I'll go through all three points.

Point 1) Writer's Block

So, I've been working on this game idea of mine for about 2 and a half months so far, I have most of the plot figured out, I've got all important character designs down and I just LOVE everything about it - it being my very first serious project and all. What I've noticed these past few days though is that I just can't get my ideas down on paper anymore ???

What you may be experiencing at this point might be writer's block or burnout. There's several different ways writers get past writer's block: So people find it better to just grid through a really bad first draft just so that they have something to work with, while others find it better to take a break from the project and come back to it later with a clearer mind. Or you may need to change up your strategy on how you approach plotting out each of your scenes, which I'll talk about below.

Point 2) The Script Document Is Too Linear

Do you have an outline sorted out.

Since we can't see the outlines you've written so far, I can't tell how you wrote down and organised your VN's routes.

An interesting thing about VNs is that you can create routes that split the story, making it different than traditional films or books. Because of this, writing your scenes down in a text document like a film script doesn't really work, because it's difficult to organise different branches in a linear text document.

So if you're not doing so already, I'd recommend using Twine to visually lay out each of your plot points, and arrange them in the right order. You can just write down a summary of a scene in a few sentences for each Twine card if that's easier to organise things.

Point 3) Unclear Story Architecture

As director Edgar Wright put it, "Enter every scene late, and leave the scene early." What he means by this is that you can transition from one scene to another whenever you want, and therefore, you should cut to the next scene when your current scene has finished doing whatever it's use was (Whether it was to show information, show characters making choices, moving the plot along, or illustrating the plot's/route's theme. Hopefully, each scene should do all of these things to some degree). As soon as a scene has no more use, that's when you can fade to the next one.

I mean I know what I want the route's overall plot to be, and I have a very clear image of all the key events (as in the ones following choices that'll trigger CGs and advance the story in a meaningful way) for each of my characters, but it feels like I don't know how to get from one key event to the next? I'm constantly thinking that the story advances in a weird way, that there's too much happening in the story (because of all of the fillers needed in order to get from point A to point B)

To help organise everything that's happening in your VN, I recommend using a story grid. I've talked about story grids in another thread, so I'll quote what I said before:

So, I've been toying with this kinda horrifying story idea for about three years and the middle parts are still blurry. Should I just start writing?

There's a great book by Stuart Horwitz called "Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline without Using a Formula." It's incredibly useful (it's gotten me out of a lot of story-related jams) because instead of asking you to write your story to a constricting (and often dull and/or vague) formula, the guidebook instead asks you to draw your story's scenes and moments onto a "story grid."

Stuart Horwitz wrote an article about it here and he even includes a story grid J.K. Rowling wrote for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as well as a free PDF of the first chapter from Horwitz's Book Architecture.

TL;DR: A story grid is organised as follows:
Column 1: Chapter number.
Column 2: Time the series ("series" as in "a reoccurring event/motif/arc that's linked to the story's main theme") takes place within the story (some stories are told out of chronological order).
Column 3: Chapter title.
Column 4: Plot. Basically, the "plot" is all the "series" from columns 5-onward meshed together. (Plot=Series1+Series2+Series3+etc)
Column 5-onward: Each of these columns represents a series.
Rows: Each row is a different chapter.

For a story grid example, see J.K. Rowling's.