Recapping the story so far in episodic works

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parttimestorier
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Recapping the story so far in episodic works

#1 Post by parttimestorier »

Recently, I got around to reading a few installments in different VN series. It had been a while since I had read the first VNs of each of the series, and in all of the cases I had kind of forgotten some things. Even if I remembered the major plot details, I still kind of felt like I was missing some things because I had forgotten things like the details of one character's background, for example. And I think the reader forgetting a few things is probably pretty inevitable if you're releasing your episodes several months apart and they've read a bunch of other stuff in the meantime. So I've been thinking about how other episodic works could most efficiently provide a recap.

Obviously I guess you don't want to spend too much time re-introducing the characters and providing a ton of exposition about what already happened, since that might be really annoying for readers who read the first installment more recently and haven't forgotten those things. A lot of the episodic VNs I've read seem to try to just jog your memory by dropping quick references to earlier events, like, "Ever since such-and-such a thing happened, I've been feeling like . . ." But usually that doesn't really help me, because while I remember that that thing happened, I've forgotten a lot of the detail surrounding it. One technique I haven't seen but think might be useful would be if there was simply a choice at the beginning that asked if you need a recap. If you say no you continue to the story, but if you say yes, a little summary could pop up for you. That way the people who haven't forgotten things don't need to be bothered by it, but the people who have can easily get caught back up.

I'm interested in hearing how writers who've done episodic VNs have handled the issue of people forgetting stuff, as well as what other people's experiences reading them have been like.
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Re: Recapping the story so far in episodic works

#2 Post by fleet »

In Winterwolves Games commercially released Vera Blanc series, Jack Norton had an 'Introduction chapter' that the player could skip by clicking on a button that says "Skip Introduction". I use the same technique in my fan made Vera Blanc visual novels.
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Re: Recapping the story so far in episodic works

#3 Post by Mammon »

There are some things that were expositioned WAY back in the story (with potentially other 2 routes in between the exposition and the part where it becomes relevant), wherever such a probably forgotten detail comes up I plan to add a {a}call{/a} leading to a piece of text repeating that which is necessary to know. I assume the same might be useful for episodic games too. Or just the 'previously...' either at the beginning or as a separate file in the menu.
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