Yet to be named characters speaking

[Shinoki]

For the most part, a main character is probably always going to have friends, family, etc. that he or she doesn't need another introduction to. I'm not big on the whole: "This is xxx, she's my cousin." or blah type of throw the info down exposition. But, not having the name of the character makes it kind of annoying to write dialogue.

In novels, you can usually go like: "She spoke to me, "blah."" or "I said, "blah.""

However, for the most part, I feel like that doesn't seem to work too well with visual novels with the unnamed other people. It's even more troublesome when the narrator speaks and the narrator isn't named. Using the format of [I/self/me]: "dialogue" seems a bit jarring (unless it isn't?) and having it like [name]: "dialogue" might be a bit misleading.

How should I go about writing the dialogue for unnamed characters who the narrator technically knows?

How should I go about in that situation where the narrator has yet to name him/herself?

[namastaii]

What I tend to do, is just have a character and define it as 'stranger', 'voice' etc whatever.

define v = Character('Strange voice')

v "Hello? Who's there?"

and It'll show up as:

Strange voice
Hello? Who's there?

and whenever I have the main character talking to themselves, I have no name show up
so it just shows the thoughts. Then when the main character speaks, I either show their name or have it as 'Me' I just define them as different characters.

I'm not sure if this answers your question..

If it's a strange voice for instance and the character is later introduced then you can just change the script to have the following dialogue said by the character that actually has the chracters name instead of 'strange voice' etc.

[Zelan]

If you don't want to do the introduction-type narration, I'd say your best best would be to just use their name and move on. Your audience isn't made up of idiots; they'll probably understand pretty easily that the protagonist already knows the character, and should be able to figure out HOW the characters know one another through their interactions.

The only time that labeling a character "???" makes sense to me is when the narrator and/or protagonist is meeting the character for the first time, anyway.

[fleet]

Here's how I handled it in my most recent work

The page shows two men (one dressed as an officer, the other a sailor) on the deck of a ship, there is a town in the background.

Sailor: Why does the Governor want to see you, Captain Reynolds?

Captain Reynolds: I have not idea, Mister Roberts.

Mister Roberts: Do you think he's going to arrest us as pirates?

[RotGtIE]

Sounds to me like you need to trust your audience a bit more. Not every line of spoken dialogue needs to be accompanied by dialogue tags, even when you're writing in the novel format (which is certainly something you can do in a Visual Novel). In fact, cold-opens are a great way to start a scene. They tell the audience that a highlight of the story's events has been arrived at without any transitional buggery getting in the way of the good stuff. If you've built sufficient rapport with your audience, they will trust you to deliver needed information to them in due time, or even be able to piece the necessary components together on their own.

Often in dialogue, especially when there are only two characters involved in a conversation, you can do away with dialogue tags entirely for large portions of the discussion. Readers pick up very quickly on a back-and-forth, and they also understand when a new character has suddenly injected themselves into the dialogue unannounced. It's one of those things you can get away with based on a mutual trust between yourself and the audience.

As always, an excerpt will allow us to be far more helpful than relying on our speculation about your scene.

[TheJerminator15]

The way I did it in my recent piece was to simply have the names not be at all important for this character which the protagonist knew but was just being introduced to the audience. The dialogue was the focus. In the middle the MC then had a quick bit of narration where how he referred to the person as was dropped. Then just simply used that moniker from then on.

[indoneko]

Alternatively, you can also remove the names completely and just rely on the side images instead (but you might need a dedicated artist to draw each and all of your characters). Of course, this is assuming that your VN is not made to be played in NVL mode...

[Shinoki]

Thanks, guys! I think I have it figured out now.

@RotGtIE: Ahaha, yea. I do need to trust my audience a bit more.

[Katy133]

I've seen some visual novels (The Blind Griffin is one I remember) solve this by turning the character tag into a gag. For instance, a new character is introduced with their dialogue box's tag as "This Jerk."

[Zelan]

I've seen some visual novels (The Blind Griffin is one I remember) solve this by turning the character tag into a gag. For instance, a new character is introduced with their dialogue box's tag as "This Jerk."

My favorite example of this is from The Knife of the Traitor. When Lilja is first introduced, his dialogue tag is simply "WTF."

[SupersizeMyHeart]

Usually I just write '???' or something thereabout. It's, uh, not the best, since you don't know a guy or gal is speaking. I'm working on a more efficient method.