Seeking VN narrative help

[Roach]

Hello I'm here to seek help for writing narrative for a Visual novel.

I'm used to writing scripts for manga's and games which (mostly) lack the more novel like story narrative. So I'm not used to writing narrative and somehow end up sort of repeating it.

The story is written in first prospective so the narrative is written with "I" and "me". Thus I end up starting with "I" half the time.

Could someone with experience give me some advice and tips on how to get more variety in narrative or is the following example acceptable? I personally dislike it when every thing starts with "I"?


An short example of some (alpha) dialogue:

It should be around this corner.

I turn the corner and spot a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.

I guess looking at the map yesterday was a wise decision as it took me only around 10 minutes to find this place.

Well than, were did I put that form?

I open my back only to be greeted by one hellish mess.

Wait... How did it get so bad on the first day!?

I let out a sigh. Maybe I should also change my habit of just shoving everything in my bag without a care.

It's not really presentable this way, than again who's going to take a look in my back anyway.

I fish out an slightly crumbled the form after about a half a minute of searching.

I guess this have to do, it's not like it's any official form or anything.
.

[Shadow]

First person perspective has that restrictive quality of always being stuck in someone's head and, as you've pointed out, sentences start to become very self-centred. Part of a way around that is to go into a prose-like style for a bit and focus on surroundings, observations and actions. In the end, narrative does much more than present an order of events, so getting into other aspects that make up your world will help ease repetition of pronouns.

Some examples:

Surroundings (which includes setting and objects)

"I open my back only to be greeted by one hellish mess. [...] Maybe I should also change my habit of just shoving everything in my bag without a care." could become "My backpack overflows with crumpled sheets, already yellowed by spilt juice at the bottom. Between dog-eared books, pencil shavings and a few coins scattered about, it's hard to imagine what kind of state it would be in on the second day of school." Flavouring surroundings with this kind of language can get overboard, but it still presents the idea that 1) the bag is messy, 2) whoever packed it is a bit of a slob and 3) it has only been the first day of school.


Observations

"I turn the corner and spot a door with a sign reading: student council lounge" could become "The student council lounge is around the corner, the worn cardboard sign hanging from its door making it seem like a few students crammed into a storage room and called it an office." Note that you can insert bits of character speech in observations of setting to allow their voice to go past just documenting what they do.

Action

No real example with what you have, but action (particularly those of other characters) can go past what the protagonist does and help inform what's going on. For instance, small body language—even in a VN—can show what kind of situation a character is in and how they feel about it. With that, dialogue is a pretty good informer of relationships. You can present who people are in relation to each other by the way they speak rather than introducing them through narration. Like so:

J: “Halley, I need to talk to you about something.”

H: “We’ve been over this, Josh. I’m not adopted. It may have worked when I was nine but not now.”

J: “Come on, I’m trying to be serious.”

H: “So was I; you had me wanting to go out and find my real parents.”

J: “Halley…”

H: “Alright. Is it girl problems again? Flowers don’t fix everything.”

He wrings the steering wheel.

H: “...Is it something at work?”

Like the everything, it can be overdone, but if you expand on these points, you can stray away from "I did this" or "I think this" kind of sentences.

[Applegate]

A key thing to remember when writing first person narrative is that, if the story is told in present tense, there is never any need to say things like "I notice", "I spot", "I see" or any other something that describes what the narrator is seeing, noticing, realising or otherwise thinking: that the narrator mentions any of the things already evidences that he has seen, noticed, spotted, realised, thought or pondered that thing.

[yukipon]

A way to avoid "overuse" of "I" is actually immerse/imagine yourself in that position and write what you think. If that doesn't work and you end up using "I" a lot, I'll just show you instead of trying to explain it:

Around the corner, there was a door with a sign reading: Student Council Lounge.

Looks like checking that map yesterday was a wise decision as it only took around 10 minutes to find this place.

...

This will have to do. It's not like it's any official form or anything.

There are only a few places where I couldn't change it without altering its meaning or intention.

Also, you should definitely have someone look it over when you finish writing.

[StarMasayume]

Everything above is good advice. Just my two cents, some simple tricks to keep in mind is just rearranging the sentence so you don't need to say I at all or at the beginning.


I turn the corner and spot a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.
Turning the corner, there's a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.

I guess Looking at the map yesterday was a wise decision as it took me only around 10 minutes to find this place.

Well than, were did I put that form go?

I open my back only to be greeted by one hellish mess.
Opening my bag, I'm greeted with one hellish mess.

Other than that, what others have suggested about paying more attention to surroundings and thoughts are good points.

[Sapphi]

Everything above is good advice. Just my two cents, some simple tricks to keep in mind is just rearranging the sentence so you don't need to say I at all or at the beginning.

I turn the corner and spot a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.
Turning the corner, there's a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.

Be careful with this. You might create dangling participles. (I'm a little out of grammar practice so I'm not entirely sure if the above example is one or not.)

[Applegate]

Star: it's actually better not to start sentences with present participles overmuch. It's better for the reader to know as quickly as possible who is executing the action.

[Roach]

Thank you all for your tips and examples.

As I already thought, the narrative of a visual novel is a hard thing to grasp. I'll need to study up if I ever want to master this.


But what about this:

Character A: “What are you doing?”

I stop working and look up at 'character A'

Is she seriously asking me that question? She told me to fix the dog house less than an hour ago.


Should I just remove the part where the Protagonist stops doing what ever he was doing like something like this:

Character A: “What are you doing?”

Is she seriously asking me that question? She told me to fix the dog house less than an hour ago.

I'll never get things done if she keeps interrupting me.


It still starts with I but it's more and less the thoughts of the character instead of what is actually happening. Or is there an other way?

[Shadow]

I turn the corner and spot a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.
Turning the corner, there's a door with a sign reading: student council lounge.

Be careful with this. You might create dangling participles. (I'm a little out of grammar practice so I'm not entirely sure if the above example is one or not.)

Yeah, this example has a dangling participle. When you read it, you can assume that the narrator is the one turning the corner. Though if you look closely, the verb "turning" is modifying "door" (or "sign"), since there are no other subjects in the sentence that can carry out the action. Even if it can be implied or assumed, sentences like this can become confusing. It sounds much more natural and less confusing to have "turning the corner, I..." than "turning the corner, there's...".

Though it'll be worth it if you get a proofreader to go over the script once it's done.

Edit:

Should I just remove the part where the Protagonist stops doing what ever he was doing

You can show actions with sprites. If it's an important action that has a particular meaning in the context, then keep it in, but in this case, it looks better if you go with example two.

[nyaatrap]

I have no sense to write English, but after reading your text, I noticed it possible to write them without any description, using a combination of sprite's animations and a bit of supportive monologues. Japanese VN is written in this "no description" style mainly. I think you can try to mix these style?

[yukipon]

I'll just combine the two, if you don't mind~.

Character A: “What are you doing?”

I stop working and look up at 'character A'

Is she seriously asking me that question? She told me to fix the dog house less than an hour ago.

I'll never get things done if she keeps interrupting me.

The second line has little to add to the scene, and as such the player doesn't need to know this because... this is as what the player would be doing; the scene itself forces the player to stop and look at 'Character A'.

You could get away with putting in "I look up at 'Character A" if there are no sprites, but you don't need "I stop working," because chances are the protagonist has already stopped working the moment 'Character A' spoke to him. There are other reasons why you'd add this, but it would just be confusing. So let's not go there~.

The fourth line shows the protagonist's irritation, and it's perfectly fine to keep. I do have some reservations about it, but for now, it's fine.

Just make sure you get a proofreader.

I have no sense to write English, but after reading your text, I noticed it possible to write them without any description, using a combination of sprite's animations and a bit of supportive monologues. Japanese VN is written in this "no description" style mainly. I think you can try to mix these style?

What she said. ^_^

[Roach]

Thanks all, all the advice helped a lot.