Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased?

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磯七ラスミ
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Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased?

#1 Post by 磯七ラスミ »

I'm very obsessed with originality. When I learn something from other artists, it usually masks my past original ideas and I rewrite in my head the way I saw as "the correct way". In other hand, when I'm blocked, knowing more helps me to unblock me and let me build my own concept from the reference (or at least to skip that part and keep going).

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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#2 Post by nyaatrap »

Knowing ONLY VNs could make your writing more biased.
Knowing many arts always make your writing richer.

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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#3 Post by Mammon »

I think you need to know the medium you want to write a story in, in order to actually make that story. If you've only seen movies you wouldn't be able to make a good book because you learned to tell a story with visuals whereas your medium needs to be completely in text. If you play more VN, you know the limits and possibilities of the format and the ways that other writers found around these limits.

Of course you need to keep in mind to make something you want to make rather than just copying what others did, but you can't possibly hope to create something entirely original. Just look at these words I'm making, they consist out of letters that others came up with arranged into words that others made. And every story is based on the tricks and system of other stories. It's not a weakness but the evolution of storytelling. Once you suddenly come across a different system than the one you're used to, it can cause confusion. For example, I recently read an article about Kishōtenketsu, an asian form of storytelling that does not need conflict. This is a story that does not have some kind of motive or trouble that makes the MC do what they do. I tried to come up with a story of my own in this format, or remember a western story that did this, but came up empty-handed. While never in the exact same way, all western stories seem to rely on some form of conflict. Does that make all these stories unoriginal? Of course not.
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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#4 Post by gekiganwing »

nyaatrap wrote:Knowing ONLY VNs could make your writing more biased.
That is a possibility. I think it could become a problem if you've mostly read a specific type of visual novel. For instance, I bought and read quite a few of Peach Princess / G-Collections localizations between 2002 and 2005. Because of this, I thought of VNs as love polygon stories above all else. The titles I read had a protagonist, at least two possible love interests, at least one explicit sex scene per route, and occasionally an external conflict. There was rarely a villain or fast-paced events.

So yeah... it's good to experience a variety of prose fiction, theatrical plays, comics, interactive fiction, video games, and other formats of storytelling.
Mammon wrote:While never in the exact same way, all western stories seem to rely on some form of conflict. Does that make all these stories unoriginal? Of course not.
Writers often have something to say about their nation, culture, history, and so on. Some stories exude regionalism, while others are less specific to a place and time.

I searched for "story without conflict." The second article that I found mentioned three well-known stories which have little to no conflict. One was written by a Russian person, while the other two were written by people who lived in the UK for at least several years. (Are both nations considered part of "the West"? Maybe. Some people might say no.)
磯七ラスミ wrote:I'm very obsessed with originality...
There are maybe seven basic plots. However, these simple concepts can be crafted into thousands of different stories. Consider the notion of "voyage and return." In this basic plot, the protagonist journeys into an unusual place, deals with its quirkiness, and heads back home having gained some maturity. Tons of stories have been made with this concept.

I've mentioned it before, but I still recommend reading the TVTropes article So You Want to be Original. Then think about it.

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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#5 Post by Mammon »

gekiganwing wrote:Writers often have something to say about their nation, culture, history, and so on. Some stories exude regionalism, while others are less specific to a place and time.

I searched for "story without conflict." The second article that I found mentioned three well-known stories which have little to no conflict. One was written by a Russian person, while the other two were written by people who lived in the UK for at least several years. (Are both nations considered part of "the West"? Maybe. Some people might say no.)
Ironically that article seems to support my claim. The writer admits that two of the three stories are very obscure and barely known, and the Nutcracker should have been a terrible play according to his teacher but was beloved for the music and dance and such. And even then, though there is no true conflict in them overall, there is some conflict in each of them; slaying the rat king, bombs from Mercury and ... murder? Small as these may be they're in these stories.

In this regard I can call 'One thousand lies' another example like the three above but in VN form: there's an overall plot of a piano and a second plot about a missing figure that has nothing to do with the first plot, but neither can really be called the plot of the story. There's plenty of conflict in the story and at the same time there's none at all.
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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#6 Post by truefaiterman »

磯七ラスミ wrote:I'm very obsessed with originality. When I learn something from other artists, it usually masks my past original ideas and I rewrite in my head the way I saw as "the correct way". In other hand, when I'm blocked, knowing more helps me to unblock me and let me build my own concept from the reference (or at least to skip that part and keep going).
Originality is almost impossible. Even if you think it's completely unique and nobody has ever heard of a concept, there's someone out there who already did it. Most of what people consider "original" is nothing but giving a different twist to something already known, and a combination of lots of different known ideas.

And in order to do that thing you need a lot of references and influences. Reading other stories and enjoying different media gives you just that.

The more quantity and variety you read, the richer you get.
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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#7 Post by TheJerminator15 »

Guess I should throw my hat in here. Being obsessed with originality will most likely backfire. First, because it's almost impossible to do in this day and age. Secondly, because you spend so much focus and energy on crafting this potentially original idea that it in turn will typically damage the actual quality of your story. As you said, you see something new and are constantly rewriting your story, creating this horrible loop of you making headway with your story, then going back and redoing it because you have seen a new idea.

Take cliches or character archetypes for example. Many writers attempt to either subvert cliches in stories (such as the guy falling and seeing a girl's panties in anime) in an attempt to portray themselves as original. What they don't realise is that spending so much focus on doing such a thing only ends up feeling cliche in of itself because so many do it. Same with character archetypes, you have people who write stories in anime with a very cardboard cut out tsundere character, but believe that by having the cast be aware she is a tsundere and joke about it that it is suddenly original and a humorous subversion despite it now being done to death also.

As for making your writing biased or richer, that's always helped by being knowledgable and involved with the medium you're writing about. Read and analyse a lot of books, you'll be better prepared to write a novel etc. Same with VNs, it also helps that a lot of people here on the forum are willing to help and are very experienced at VN development in all aspects.
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Re: Knowing many VNs make your writing richer or more biased

#8 Post by Fuseblower »

I don't think you can achieve originality by reading existing fiction. Though it does help with technique and sets some kind of standard to aspire to.

A much better thing is to study your subject.

For my own VN, Tenkeiteki Tokyo, I don't read VN's set in Tokyo but I study Japanese culture and history. That's where I get my ideas from. The basic story isn't original (no basic story is original) but I hope the details are.

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