Writing Routes for Romanceable Characters

[notimportantprs]

Hi all,

first of all, I'm relatively new to this forum, so if this has been discussed already, I'm sorry and please tell me so that I can remove this thread.

I'm in the process of plotting and writing the script of my first visual novel whose main genre is romance. It takes place over 14 days and the plot progression is linear, meaning that events don't repeat themselves like in dating sims, but rather build upon each other depending on the choices you make. Naturally, the plot diverges depending on which character the protagonist decides to pursue.
My question to all of you with experience in making these kinds of games is: How do you structure your writing/scripting process? What I mean by that is, do you write one route till the end, then the next route etc., or do you write the events of one day for all routes and then go to the next day?

For now, I've been going with the latter option because I was scared that if I write one route from beginning to end, the next routes would 'center' around what happens in the first route and would feel like an addition - even though I want all routes to be equal and there is no 'true end'. But I've noticed that when I write like that, it's difficult for me to emphasize with the emotional parts of the story because I constantly have to switch mindsets from one character/relationship to the next. So now I'm scared that the relationships will feel superficial because I can't really 'get into' the characters' minds the way I would if I wrote one route from start to finish. Ya feel me?

tl;dr: Advantages and disadvantages of
Route-by-route writing:
+author connects with characters better
+natural progress of relationships
-can lead to inconsistencies with other routes
-first route becomes focus of game

Day-by-day writing:
+routes and events intersect naturally
+game has an overreaching, logical plotline
-author has to switch between routes constantly
-characters and relationships lose emotional depth

So, which one do you choose? How do you deal with this problem? I would be thankful for any advice you could give me.

[Steamgirl]

I tend to use a mixture of the two approaches. Sometimes I just feel like writing a specific scene because it's on my mind. At other times I'm trying to "move the posts" so to speak, to make sure the story can be progressed to a certain point for all the different routes.

In truth, the best method is the method you find easiest to write. If you feel you can't connect with the characters because you're jumping from one to the other, then it sounds like for you personally, route-by-route writing works better.

When taking the route-by-route approach there's a danger of going off track with one particular character and writing 10x the amount you would for the others. Don't know if that's the case for you? I usually try to set some stepping stones beforehand, and try make sure I have roughly the same amount of stepping stones for each love interest. At the end of the day, some characters or scenes will end up being more inspired than others, but at least there's not a massive difference in the amount of content for each.

[notimportantprs]

Hi and thank you!

Haha yeah, that would definitely be the case for me because of course I have one favourite pairing, and I have much more ideas for that route than for the others. You know how it goes That's why I thought it would be best to write scene-by-scene... But you're probably right, the best would be to mix it.
I think I might stick to scene-by-scene for the outlining, to prevent plot holes and contradictions between the routes, but then switch over to route-by-route once I actually get to the writing part... hopefully that will produce the best results. ^^