Arcadia [Seeking Writers]

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Arcadia

(Working Title)

This project is actively looking for writers! Message me on Discord: ataleoftwokitties#4898

Arcadia is a visual novel in the YA romance genre set in the present day at a boarding school in the United Kingdom. Think Hogwarts without the magic but with the teen angst and interpersonal relationships. There is only one main romantic route, but it will likely have a bad ending.

Characters:
Protagonist—Nihil
Male
Age: 18

Nihil's Aunt—Aunt
As below, I've made the aunt a bit of a cunt. Could rewrite her character.

Main love interest—Perry (short for Peregrine)
Female
Age: 17
Her parents were really into birds, hence naming her after a falcon.


First draft of the first 3 scenes.
Will probably simplify the MC's diction and make the characters more distinctive and even.
Scene #1:

• Setting: Nihil dreaming—Classroom

• Character on Screen: Olivia staring at player in a flirty/seductive way.

• 

• One of the reasons for opening the game with a dream of the main love interest is to build anticipation for encountering her and immediately fulfill the promises made to the player in the marketing. I've done a lot of research and all the most popular mobile VNs make a point of giving the player what they are there for right away.

The text content of this scene is a professor giving a lecture on the topic of dreaming. I'll be doing research for this. It won't be very long. (I may also have Nihil speak or whisper to the girl, but she doesn't respond.)



Scene #2
Black screen
Voice from upstairs: "Up, Nihil! Up, up, up! | There's a letter that's come in the post for you."
Fade in from black to setting: Nihi's room in the basement
I wake to the sound of my aunt's voice echoing down from the kitchen.
I'm half-dressed before the memory of my dream catches up to my consciousness.
Fade back to image of girl (slow crawl), not in the classroom this time and distorted or different in some way to suggest the memory is less clear than the dream experience.
That girl again. | Who is she? | And why does appear to me, nightly, but never speak? | I feel like...
Aunt: "Now, Nihil."
"Coming."


Scene #3
Setting: Aunt's Kitchen
Enter screen: Aunt
Aunt: "I prefer not to be kept waiting when I call you, Nihil."
Nihil: "Sorry. I was just-"
Aunt: "Well it won't matter anymore. I've got a surprise for you."
She gestures towards an envelope positioned ominously in the exact center of the island[/kitchen table?].
I hesitate. | This is too ceremonial.
Aunt:"Go on."
Her shit-eating grin betrays an excitement that I can't recall seeing her show about anything involving me. | Something is up.
I open the letter.
Aunt slides offscreen; letter slide up from bottom:

Overlaid on this image (or something like it) will be an acceptance letter from Arcadia:

Greetings Nihil!
We are delighted to inform you of your admission to Arcadia International Boarding School for the class of 2024.

Located in the heart of the Sussex countryside, Arcadia is one of the leading sixth-form preparatory schools for academically ambitious students.
[a bit more of this letter to be written]

I suddenly become aware of my aunt's expectant glare and freeze.
So this is her way of getting rid of me.
I scan over the letter, trying to think of something to say. | My eyes stop at the words "academically ambitious".
This wasn't adding up. I didn't have the grades for this school. At least, not since...
Nihil: "How did you know I got in?"
Aunt: "Oh, a friend of mine knows someone in the administration. I told them about you and they were able to pull a few strings to get you accepted."
The stench of corruption envelops the kitchen. She probably donated an entire wing just to reclaim her basement.
Nihil: "I see."
Why does being rejected by people you don't even like still sting?
Aunt: "You should be excited, Nihil. Arcadia is one of the best schools in Britain. Students come from all over the world to attend."
Nihil: "I... | I am excited."
Saying the words feels like trying them on. | They might fit if I was cut out for this kind of school.
I certainly won't be sorry to be out from under my aunt...
Nihil: "Thank you."
Aunt: "Well I hope so. You know a lot of kids would kill to get into this school. | And be a little more grateful for it as well."
And most of them more qualified.
...
I resign to play along with her charade, with her derision masquerading as her... | giving a shit about me.
Nihil: "You're right. | I am grateful."
Aunt: "Right, then. Well, you'd better work on getting packed. It's not long before you'll be off and away.
Exit Aunt.
[Will add some reflection by Nihil here.]
[Will likely work in the details that Nihil's parents died in an accident which is why he's living with his aunt.}

After scene 3 the MC is basically heading to the boarding school so more or less a blank canvas except some of the setup contained in the opening scenes
So looking for people to help work on the boarding school romance drama.

Oh and there will only be 1 love interest,... so it's just about writing a quality YA romance that, while it has some decisions, is fairly linear (except that I think I will have the possibility of a bad ending)

Both Nihil and Perry lost their parents in the same accident which was maybe a train accident or some major disaster. The place he saw her before is the commemoration event for the disaster. So this can be worked into the story when they meet at the school and eventually discover this about each other.

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

This post is a giant rant about why mobile VNs are the future of reading for young people.
I wrote it for a job posting on Upwork. Thought some of you might enjoy it.



Hello, my lovelies.

I have been sent from the future to hasten the rise of the visual novel, which will in the 21st century overtake the traditional novel as the primary reading medium for males under 25 (females follow a couple decades after).

What the heck is a visual novel you might be asking.

Well, strap in because this part is a bit boring but knowing the future is useful. Trust me.

Visual novels are basically illustrated novels delivered digitally on mobile (other platforms too but mobile is what matters). To be clear: Although they occupy the same spaces as games in the app stores, visual novels properly understood are NOT video games. True VNs are entirely text-driven and have no gameplay mechanics whatsoever. They are basically just colourful e-reader apps with dynamic illustrations. This project has nothing to do with gaming, only story and art.

Ok! That was the boring part. Now, consider this confluence of observations:

1. The VN market is enormous and growing insanely fast.
How enormous and how insanely? Well, take this as an example:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... id.catalog
This title has 3 million reviews and over 100 million downloads. There are many other comparable titles that approach those numbers.

2. The quality of VNs available is, with some rare exceptions, abysmal.
Now, the title I just linked does a LOT right, even in comparison to the kinds of things available in the future. But at the date this is being posted, they fall well short in some key areas, including STORY. The stories are engaging in ways, but they are trite and utterly forgettable. Also this game paywalls you after about 2 hours of gameplay in a very predatory and sleazy way.

While I have studied and learned from what is working to dominate the market right now, there is simply no reason not to elevate the medium of VNs as quickly as possible.

What I'm saying is that there's a gap in the market. Millions of young, voracious readers are yearning for quality VNs and the market is simply not delivering them yet. What this means is that there is a huge opportunity to make mountains and mountains of cash by delivering a superior product to a new and underserved market.

Does money not motivate you? The moral argument for this expedition is readily at hand! Quality literature improves the world. As VNs overtake traditional novels, there will be a huge drop in the quality of the stories and the themes being explored unless we do something about it. For the love of all that is holy, think of the children!!!

But perhaps you still doubt that VNs are going to overtake traditional books. Allow me to dispel you of your skepticism once and for all, my darlings:
Over the 21st century, the proliferation and ubiquity of high-powered cell-phones is going to continue apace. VNs have EVERY advantage over traditional books.
They are free to download,
always available in your pocket,
have visuals to attract the kids,
share spaces with other forms of kids entertainment like video games and thus get more natural traffic,
are easier to market via other apps,
are more viral because they are easier than books to show friends in school,
etc, etc, etc.
(I totally plagiarized all those points from an article written in 2077 lol).

Oh here's some contemporary supporting articles I can link without breaking the temporal prime directive: https://www.polygon.com/mobile/2018/11/ ... ideo-games
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/the-ris ... ual-novel/

VNs are going to become the primary way young people consume the written word. The only thing yet undecided is who is going to make truckloads of cash by elevating the medium and offering the superior product first.

[gekiganwing]

Arcadia is a teen romance, bishōjo visual novel set in the present day at a boarding school in the United Kingdom. Think Hogwarts without the magic but with the teen angst and interpersonal relationships. The school is for high academic achievers—"gifted students"—but the protagonist did not get admitted to the school due to his academic performance like other students.

Think about how to make this *your* story, rather than a hand-me-down version of fiction which you enjoy. I've struggled with this idea for a while, and thus I can't provide any easy answers. That said, consider the following...

* Write down things you want to include in your story. Include as many ideas as you want, even ones which seem difficult to implement. Write down story concepts even if you think they will end up on the cutting room floor.
* Write down another list: things you want to exclude from your story.
* Read the TV Tropes article So You Want to be Original. Write down things to remember. Just keep in mind that while TV Tropes is amusing, it can be a huge time sink...

I'm still deciding between the medium-standard anime style and something a bit more realistic. Part of the reason a realistic approach might work well is that I also photograph live models and so I'm considering using real models and then having an artist go over those photographs to stylize them etc.

Think about what category or style of art will fit well with your story. Specific examples of British comics art might be an option. Expressionism? Impressionism? Cel-shaded polygon art? Voxel art? A world portrayed through a fictional operating system, such as Mystic Messenger? Another option is to tell your story through drawings, such as Lynd Ward's Gods' Man. Yet another option is to look to Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure books for inspiration, using as few illustrations as possible.

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Hey gekiganwing!

I really appreciate your thoughts! I definitely am trying to keep how much I am using other fiction as influence in check. To be honest, Harry Potter wasn't even in my mind when I first came up with this idea, but it is by far the most popular boarding school story so I just kind of used it as a way to get the skeleton of the concept in the fewest words possible. TvTropes is such a cool website. Thanks for linking that article!

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Other VNs—What I've Learned:

1. In the world of fiction, the concept of choose-your-own-adventure is viewed as kind of a joke or just for kids. But there is something so powerful about them in the context of a romance story for the following reason: In real life, you often don't know if a relationship is going to work out. But in a romance novel, you generally know pretty early on who the protag will end up with and that it will be a happily ever after ending. The fact that in VNs with multiple endings you can get the genuine sense of not knowing if a relationship is going to work out until the last second, is very powerful. I'm thinking of Emi's route from KS. In the good ending, it really does seem like things might not work out, and this creates tension for the reader. Also, whether or not it works out is based on the players decision. When done well, this should create richer and more engaging experiences than traditional novels.
(I really want to be able to understand and enumerate other specific advantages that VNs have over novels. There are many obvious ones like music to enhance emotional impact, but there are tons of hidden ones, too.)

2. I think determining what decision require player input is an art in itself. Lots of VNs have unpredictable consequences to actions and this is a major flaw. I read somewhere that the player should be rewarded by paying close attention to a story by having details offer subtle ways to predict how different options will turn out (not in the sense of memorizing everything or being a detective, but just reading cues and understand the characters). I think this is absolutely correct.

3. I think KS using the festival as an event common to all characters that marks the end of Act 1 is a brilliant way to give each of the characters their own goals and have their lives intermingle in a way that seems natural and coordinated rather than random. It also makes the writing process WAY easier because instead of having a complete blank canvas for each character storyline, you can just ask the question "what would this character be doing in relation to this upcoming event?"

4. One thing that I think is great about Emi's route from KS is the fact that you have a locked in plan to go running with her on the track every morning. There is something about that repetition and the fact that it happens first thing every morning that allows the player to excitedly anticipate it as the previous day is ending and he is going to be seeing her soon. Also, Emi as at her Emiest when running, so the interaction almost always has positive feelings associated with it. It's much different from the habit of having lunch with her on the roof every day. It's much more effective for some reason.

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Community and Culture

One of the main goals of this thread is to build a community around this project, which to me is as exciting a prospect as making progress on the VN itself. Though I have studied writing and am currently developing the story, I hope to eventually see myself first and foremost as a project and team manager. I feel strongly that the biggest requirement for a production like this is to create a culture and community that people want to be a part of and that facilitates each person expressing themselves creatively and individually. There's a really good book on this subject called Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/180 ... tivity-inc
Catmull co-founded Pixar with Steve Jobs and ran the company during the creation of the Toy Story movies. In that book, he describes many of the dangers lurking when trying to navigate the creative process in a team environment. I think anyone who has been a part of VN creation on a team will recognize the problems he describes as common within these communities. So, in addition to keep the project moving forward, I am taking responsibility for the health of the community that forms around this project.

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Character Profile #1: The Aunt

Early 40s.
Attractive.
Blonde.
Bit of a cunt.

Told protagonist's parents that she never wanted kids before she was forced to take in her nephew (the protagonist) after the death of her sister. She does a poor job of hiding the fact that the protagonist is imposing on her space and her life, though she will feign caring at times. She is not overtly mean, but she is impatient. When she doesn't get the responses from the protag that she wants, she will quickly expedite the point, assuming authority which brooks no questioning.

[Thr33_Seas]

The Aunt.
Early 40s
Occupation: TBD but something that puts her in the upper class both in terms of income and culture.

She doesn't necessarily need to have a job to be in the uppermost stratum of society. She could've received a huge settlement from a divorce or lawsuit or something and invested the money into stocks and bonds or what have you for passive income. That's how capitalism works, baby.

How she fits into the story:
She is a convenience character. She has a role to play to help establish the story and then she will be largely forgotten. In this sense she is fairly insignificant.

It's mostly because this goes against my doctrine in character creation, but I don't like characters made up simply to accomplish some important plot point. It strips away any sense of identity they have and essentially transforms them into a machine.

A model example of this is Godfree from Sword Art Online. If you can't remember who he is, well, there you go. A point being made.

I don't know if you've ever seen or read SAO, but basically, there's this one scene where the protagonist Kirito nearly gets killed by some psychopath whiteknighting his girlfriend. The purpose of the scene itself, if I remember correctly, is to solidify the couple's relationship, but Godfree has exactly one role in it, and that's getting Kirito alone with the whiteknighting psychopath. And then he gets killed off himself. He barely exhibits any personality, and we know nothing about him.

SAO Abridged attempts to mitigate his forgettableness by transforming him into a Shakespeare-quoting doofus who only breaks character at the moment of his death, but since he only receives so much screen time, there's only so much the parody's writers could do for him.

Rounding this back to your game, I think you're thinking about this character too mechanically. You're only viewing her for what she does and not for who she is. It's important to consider how she's the catalyst that brings the first act to its conclusion, but she's the legal guardian of the protagonist, whom I shall from henceforth refer to as Bob until you decide on an official name.

Bob's lived with his aunt for a number of years. When you're stuck in an environment with a certain person for an extended period of time, that'll change a person, and since she's no sweetheart, it'll have a negative impact on Bob's personality and his future relationships. He might not be trusting of others. He might become a touch misogynistic. He might forget what it feels like for someone to love him, so when one of the girls displays affection toward him, he might push her away.

Even if you drop her after act I, Bob's aunt is an everlasting presence throughout the story, and the breakthrough in his character arc might be unburdening himself of her influence. To reference the game you're drawing heavily from, Iwanako may not make an appearance after the very first scene of Katawa Shoujo, but her letter to the school becomes an important reflection in how Hisao develops.

Most games get abandoned in the first 10 minutes.

I was originally going to contend this, but after a quick Google search, I found out that gamers are the single most impatient demographic on this planet.

I could also make her kind of hot, but it's worth noting that the aunt is going to be kind of unlikable, so it might be unwise to put an unlikable hot character as the first character the player encounters. But it might not be. I have to think about this more. It's not a decision that needs to be made right away.

Should I bother asking why you would entertain the notion that you should make Bob's aunt physically attractive? And then rescind the idea as though there were a correlation between attractiveness and likeability?

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Deleting because this post was outdated.

[ATaleOfTwoKitties]

Deleting because this post was outdated.

[Thr33_Seas]

One time I had a cat. He was all black with white feet—the cutest! I had him for about 9 months and then he went missing. I think he was stolen, but it's also possible that he ran away because cats are heartless assholes.

Fixed for accuracy.

To give a little guidance about what I think I will like for the names of my characters (though this is not a rule): I really like names that have a sense of being both familiar and strange. The work of fiction that does this the best, I think, is Game of Thrones. Here is a list of names from GoT that, though not something many of us have encountered before, are also not completely strange sounding:

Joffrey - like Jeffrey
Samwell - like Samuel
Walder - like Walter
Benjen - like Benjamin
Eddard - like Edward
Euron - like Aaron

Without doing any research, I'm assuming common, modern names are just the natural evolution of the medieval versions Martin uses in his books.

M:
Niall

You mean Mòrag's little brother?


You wouldn't like my naming convention, since I just go down a list of names and pick the first one that stands out.

But if you want to be meaningful, it's common to give characters names whose meaning reflects their personality or role in a story. The kanji used in the names of My Hero Academia's characters frequently reflect their exact Quirks, as one example. Your beloved Katawa Shoujo does this with Shizune's name.
But a lot of other Japanese authors will just name their characters after local train stations or something, so.

Alternatively, you could just be like one of those parents who's like, "I want my child to be unique and special," so they replace the I in their name with a Y.