How do you make long story more concise?

[Dim Sum]

Off-shoot of other topic.

When I see length of JVN flowchart, it seems really easy. Magic number appears to be 3.

One long JVN flowchart has three major areas. Fate/Stay has three routes.

...yet aside from KS, this seems elusive in many OELVNs and yet even as bad writer I don't feel much harder to create flowchart compared to writing actual script with only one route. (Even if two different scripts must branch, seems easier to write branch then start story from scratch in New Game+ scenario...like Saga Frontier 2 single story route with certain missed plots on paper looks much tougher than 999, FSN, KS and Ever17 despite it's lack of characterization compared to the VNs mentioned.)

Yet at same time, OELVNs in particular tend to be very short. Even some god awful fanfics have surpassed length of some mediocre fanfics yet OELVN scene has none of that...as if there is some mysterious problem.

99% of my own problems come from ignorance of drawing plot scenes exact to script , ignorance of how to fully understand menu choices and type in/explore variables cause of code ignorance and ignorance on how to make new game plot. That and slow typing speed. Slow VN making speed. All stuff that comes with the territory of sucking.

If I don't have those, it seems very possible to make one long VN even if it's just one really long bad VN. Even some VN makers have discovered they lost control of their game's length and writing too long but why rarity of long OELVN still? Why advanced OELVNs still not surpass FSN in length of route and menu branch points even if just have many bad menu branches that actually lead to routes?

If topic too confusing, I go back to thread title: How do you make long story more concise?

As much as I want opinion, I also want practical clue on how to replicate it but I also want opinion. There just seems to be missing road block I'm missing.

If problem is amount of artwork, D: Infinite uses lots of repeat sprites and pulled it off so why not OELVN D:Infinite without gameplay?

If problem is code, is it a problem with how to explore cookbook? I see code for Phoenix Wright game, I see Heileen exclusive code menu screen, I see stats game, I see battle engine but I don't see many combining all code to stall for length even if read many say they copy code?

If problem is writing, then what's roadblock I'm missing? Seems like you finish story then all creating alternate branch for story is adding menu choice and now you have concise. You don't got guaranteed quality but now you've got concise.

[nyaatrap]

You're missing money. They're professionals and earning their payment monthly. Also they are prohibited to write craps or they'll be fired.

[Dim Sum]

Money introduces quality but not concise length.

Again: there've been far worse long crappy fanfic epics than short crappy fanfics.

With OELVN, not the case.

[nyaatrap]

Read your topic several times but still I couldn't get the point of your question. What trouble do you have?

[Dim Sum]

Trouble? Personal trouble is making long story really. Seems so easy to do once stuff like art creation/RenPy code/custom effects/custom gui is resolved. (Which are hard to collect but there are makers such as you that made/able to create monstrous works by losing control of your work.)

If you eliminate all that, VN is no different than writing long fanfiction. Maybe easier. Add action scenes, sprinkle with interludes like beach scenes, make episodic routes, do flashback.

Yet horrible long fanfiction epics exist. Not so much for OELVNs.

There's no plethora of "crappy" FSN. Even KS is considered peak of OELVN.

What gives? What am I missing? Should I even try to create long VN despite slow as molasses creation speed?

Even if just OELVN vs. Kinetic OELVN...kinetic in general is lengthier.

concise
expressed using only a few words, but in a way that is easy to understand.

[AnthonyHJ]

How do you make a long story more concise?

• Look at your story, work out which bits the player will skip and cut them.
• Look for any part that doesn't move the story forward and cut it.
• Find every stage-direction and work out if you can possibly remove it, using art instead.
• Find every time that a character takes more than two paragraphs to get to the point and work out how to say the same thing in fewer words.

TL;DR - Get to the point as fast as you can and stay there once you do.

It's almost never the length of a game that is the issue, but the quality of writing. I could play a 4-hour OELVN if it was well-written, or drop a 30-minute one if the writing was bad. As long as you are not padding out your story (oh, this chapter feels too short, let's add some dialogue to bulk it out) and the player always feels like they are being driven forward, you will usually have a good game.

[nyaatrap]

Don't compare serious originals with fanfics. Fanfic doesn't require Marketing and Designing, even part of plotting. They are the most difficult things in the writing by far.
Actually, writing is the most hard part in the whole process of making VN. Professional VN writers are ones of the fastest writers in the entertainment world, but still the writing is the bottleneck of its development. When a game is delayed, it's mostly due to the writing. Writing a long original story keeping high quality (hey, don't ignore quality! if you are a serious writer, you never say to write low-quality crap. I don't understand who is writing that crap happily... They're aliens for me) is tough work and requires professional mind and state.

BTW, you're saying "long fanfiction epics exist". I just have no idea on such things. Are they good enough to get comrades to work with and have quality to make people pay for them?

How do you make long story more concise?

If you are focusing quality, you can't write long. What you should think is how to make it longer. The story branching thing Fate S/N has is one of the techniques to make story longer, not shorter.

[Dim Sum]

How do you make a long story more concise?

• Look at your story, work out which bits the player will skip and cut them.
• Look for any part that doesn't move the story forward and cut it.
• Find every stage-direction and work out if you can possibly remove it, using art instead.
• Find every time that a character takes more than two paragraphs to get to the point and work out how to say the same thing in fewer words.

TL;DR - Get to the point as fast as you can and stay there once you do.

It's almost never the length of a game that is the issue, but the quality of writing. I could play a 4-hour OELVN if it was well-written, or drop a 30-minute one if the writing was bad. As long as you are not padding out your story (oh, this chapter feels too short, let's add some dialogue to bulk it out) and the player always feels like they are being driven forward, you will usually have a good game.

This is common misconception for word concise. That it means short.

Not looking for advise to shorten plot so in actuality the advises are all opposites.

See the problem is that it is length that's lacking. Quality? Since OELVN still niche area, people don't have clear concise quality plus I do think all the best JVNs have padding. Fans of the genre seem to eat it up.

4 hour is not 70 hour.

Don't compare serious originals with fanfics. Fanfic doesn't require Marketing and Designing, even part of plotting. They are the most difficult things in the writing by far.

Not comparing them. Comparing amount of long horrible fanfics to long horrible OELVN.

I just have no idea on such things. Are they good enough to get comrades to work with and have quality to make people pay for them?

No. However: moot point.

Fact is they exist. In OELVN, which besides KS is free and long?

...yet past certain length, many makers seem to exceed and claim to lose control of their work's length.

...yet it also true that they also tend to stop past a certain length and no consistent tell tale sign that I can see why makers would abandon/leave their lengths at less than certain amount of length. Maybe for pros talk of quality applies but for free OELVN there are tons of kinetic VN that are longer than actual VNs.

If you are focusing quality, you can't write long. What you should think is how to make it longer. The story branching thing Fate S/N has is one of the techniques to make story longer, not shorter.

Exactly. So question is how to make long story concise.

Seeing only couple of flowchart, FSN is not considered one of the longest VN (or at least it is not THE longest) but it is considered to have one of the most "concise" long story route for a JVN.

Saying it branches not enough. If we're making VNs of course it branches plus my branching problem has more to do with my lack of understanding of variables. (Constantly getting errors/too much code/too much vague idea at what variable to put.)

...so above is moot point cause it's coding related, not writing related. Totally making VN with zero variables and only basic menu choices.

Yet FSN is not only using method to branch paths. If you read some reviews, they say how script is entirely original despite same characters or they forgive earlier boring paths cause of ending (Ever17 esp.) or they forgive unrealistic fight poses and silly sex scheme cause of latter route while bashing earlier route (again FSN).

These stuff not only found in quality of story or found in lengthy VN but they often intangible opinion rather than measurable attributes like: Look at your story, work out which bits the player will skip and cut them.

[nyaatrap]

I'm sorry. I have no interest in horrible works. I have no interest in what other people who lack their professional mind doing. I have no interest in JVN, OEVN, or such terms which are used as an excuse. I have no interest in back-passing to a coder or an artist on my writing problem (I'm a coder and an artist and a writer however). So I can never understand those matters. If you are asking about them, I can't help.

I, who only have an interest to make my best writing, can only say there's no shortcut nor special techniques to write a good-long story. It's determination more than techniques. Unless if you determine, any techniques (actually, I know some) are meaningless.

[Sharm]

Just so you know, a common definition of concise is "short and to the point" so it actually does mean short, it's just that it's not all it means.

[AnthonyHJ]

I have never heard concise, a word which literally comes from the Latin for 'cut short', used to mean "padded out with useless text, but in a more acceptable way".

Padding is the opposite of concision. A story should be as long as it takes to tell. If you try to extend it, you lose quality. The only times you should ever artificially extend a piece of work is if you are writing an essay for school or getting paid per word.

[Camille]

VNs are harder to write than fanfic/prose in general because they're mostly dialogue and it's hard to come up with dialogue padding. Because of the art (in most cases) you don't have to describe that much like you do in regular novel writing, where description makes up for most of your word count. Japanese VNs—and Katawa Shoujo, which tried to imitate them (fairly successfully, I think)—are usually long and unwieldy because the writing is so convoluted. Internal monologues go on and on. They have paragraphs-long descriptions of things that don't need to be described. I was playing a Japanese otome game recently and they had three times where a character summarized the plot up to that point. Three times! I was playing this game attentively, so I really didn't need three recaps!

I think this kind of padding and purple prose is common in Japanese VNs and a lot of times we ignore it, but it's much more obvious when in English. The same sentence in Japanese would take a lot more text to be stated in English and oftentimes just doesn't flow as well. For example, when I played Starry Sky ~in Spring~ translated into English, I got so much more secondhand embarrassment reading it compared to when I played the game in Japanese.

EVNs that try to imitate their Japanese counterparts by having lots of purple prose and padding are just painful for me to read (I could never finish Katawa Shoujo because of this), so I can't write them myself. BCM is looking to be around 200,000 words (probably closer to 250k) when it's complete, and though that's barely half of Katawa Shoujo's length, I'm perfectly okay with that. I don't see the point of making things long just for the sake of being long.

[Dim Sum]

Just so you know, a common definition of concise is "short and to the point" so it actually does mean short, it's just that it's not all it means.

Problem is not common definition.

Problem is society change.

Once people like to read, then they got TV, then they like to read again, then they got Twitter, then they like to read again, then trolls learned the use of tl;dr, then they like to read short again, then we grew entitled, we want things that pander to us not to the OP and online became as much a game of lingo as real world. Maybe harsher. All strangers. No netiquette. No borderlines. No standards except for what land you can admin in with enough people going in there that can help.

I have never heard concise, a word which literally comes from the Latin for 'cut short', used to mean "padded out with useless text, but in a more acceptable way".

Padding is the opposite of concision. A story should be as long as it takes to tell. If you try to extend it, you lose quality. The only times you should ever artificially extend a piece of work is if you are writing an essay for school or getting paid per word.

um...now you have?

VNs are harder to write than fanfic/prose in general because they're mostly dialogue and it's hard to come up with dialogue padding. Because of the art (in most cases) you don't have to describe that much like you do in regular novel writing, where description makes up for most of your word count. Japanese VNs—and Katawa Shoujo, which tried to imitate them (fairly successfully, I think)—are usually long and unwieldy because the writing is so convoluted. Internal monologues go on and on. They have paragraphs-long descriptions of things that don't need to be described. I was playing a Japanese otome game recently and they had three times where a character summarized the plot up to that point. Three times! I was playing this game attentively, so I really didn't need three recaps!

Yep. That is style of VN I'm making. But not successfully.

I'm currently trying to make OELVN with really long boring and convoluted writing and it easier than opposite as you can see from misunderstanding of a few paragraphs in this thread of mine.

...but...

It's not really long. If I can add boredom, I fulfill one of my goals.

I don't see the point of making things long just for the sake of being long.

Sometimes when you're crappy VN maker, you want to make really bad instead of really good. It also help when people just keep saying they don't understand your point after several paragraphs. That's niche opportunity IMO.

Setting that aside however, I see advises as neutral and not really good and bad.

IMO there's difference between useless and here's tip.

Example:

I see most bullet points as useless and often inconcise (in my head I could sum them up in one-three words or one sentence most of the time) but I also view them as neutral rather than offensive useless most of time.

Therefore I see padding tip as similar. To my slim experience, there have been novels who had short descriptions but word count rose through descriptive action scenes. Something many JVNs also do. Problem is: don't know generic setup.

Only clue is anime to Western animators stuff like I think I once read Samurai Jack fan praise it over Rurouni Kenshin cause it doesn't pad sword slashes and make them profound. That is to say, animation wise, Samurai Jack had multiple clean slashes truer to live Samurai films where as RK had one major attack.

I see games like FSN do that type of stuff but I have no expertise to narrow down that trick as neutral tip.

I think long mangas and anime too not have that problem. JVNs too.

It doesn't translate well in quality but I think quality too distractive for thread. Many free OELVNs lack length especially non-kinetics. Rather focus on length only rather than point of length (esp. cause there's already one thread for that.)

[Sharm]

Did . . . you just try to tell us that the definition of concise is wrong because you don't think it's defined that way? Go to google, type in concise, look at the synonyms. Or, if you're lazy, just click this link. Please don't argue about facts, it's distracting and trollish.

As for the actual point of this thread, I think the reason there aren't really long VN's is because most people who want to do something long do the kind with choices, not kinetic novels, so you have to write twice as much or more to get the same length of text in a single play through as one read through of fanfiction. I also think that really long stories tends to mean "hasn't been edited yet", which you aren't going to have as often with VN's. In VN's, the act of making it a game makes it much more likely that it has been edited down at some point, either by the author as they're coding so it's less work or by someone else working on the VN because they didn't want to do all that work for stuff that wasn't important. Basically, the act of creating a work of fiction in VN form tends to make it concise.

[Dim Sum]

Did . . . you just try to tell us that the definition of concise is wrong because you don't think it's defined that way?

Nope.

Go to google, type in concise, look at the synonyms. Or, if you're lazy, just click this link. Please don't argue about facts, it's distracting and trollish.

I googled etymology and it is a fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology

Not etymologist however, but to my knowledge no one needs license to experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change

Basically, the act of creating a work of fiction in VN form tends to make it concise.

Disagree.

But only looking for advises right now. Sorry for not taking up on opportunity to debate.