General Writing Help?

Questions, skill improvement, and respectful critique involving game writing.
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HFSaber
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General Writing Help?

#1 Post by HFSaber »

Okay, I know this is kind of vague, but I'm having a bit of an existential crisis.

I've never written anything like a visual novel. Most of the things I write have a lot of description in them, but you don't need that in a visual novel. They're mostly dialogue, and everything you need description for is just drawn out. I'm just worried that my writing will be janky and weird because I don't know what I should and shouldn't write. Plus, since my projects take place in a fantastical universe, there's the problem of lore I need to explain. How do I do that in a visual novel format?

I'm just kind of scared and need some advice.

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Ezmar
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Re: General Writing Help?

#2 Post by Ezmar »

The key to good writing, as with any skill, is practice and experience. For writing in particular, experience writing is important, but also important is experience in reading, understanding prose, structure, why things work, why others don't. Knowing how stories are put together and function is a skill that isn't really completely connected to your writing experience, and is a very broad topic. Once you have that, you can create a story in your mind, and then it's time to apply writing skills.

In my limited experience, skill in writing is the flexibility to figure out what it is you need to write, and the experience and confidence to know and trust your own narrative voice. If you start second-guessing everything you're putting down onto the page, your writing won't come across very well. You need to understand what makes your words flow out of you, and see it through. I tend to take a freer, feel-based approach to the whole thing, and I'm not terribly academic about it, but that's just my style. Others may have other experiences.

Visual novel writing in particular is sort of a cross between traditional narrative prose and script writing, with dialogue usually not being accompanied by tags (except sometimes in NVL format), but with written narrative instead of stage directions as you'd see in a play. Also worth noting is the visual aspect. It's important to have some idea of what will be conveyed visually and what won't, and be conscious about the flow of the scene in all aspects: what the player will be doing, seeing, and hearing. You don't need to know exactly, but being aware of these things makes it much easier to visualize the flow as you're writing.

As for lore, there are good ways and bad ways to do infodumps. Basically, only present the reader with an infodump if they've been primed for it. In my story, which involves time travel, the actual mechanics of the phenomenon aren't fully explained until chapter 6, which is a solid 80k words into the story. Until such a time as an infodump feels appropriate, "show, don't tell" is the name of the game. It's not a hard and fast rule, since sometimes telling is more effective than trying to find a way to demonstrate something, but in general, showing will flow better 90% of the time, and if you can find a way to demonstrate certain aspects of the story, you're generally going to have a pretty good grasp on the world and its inhabitants.

This has kind of gotten rambly, so for that I apologize. As always with my advice, I'd consider myself new blood as well at this point, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm not speaking from years of experience, nor do I have a strong background in teaching or education, so if someone corrects me on something, I'd advise you to value their advice over mine. :wink:

As with anything, it's all a learning experience, and you never stop growing, so fear of failure is the surest way to put a stop to your forward progress.

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Re: General Writing Help?

#3 Post by MI_Buddy »

I've never written anything like a visual novel.
First off, congrats on taking a step towards it then!

I noticed you say this:
Most of the things I write have a lot of description in them, but you don't need that in a visual novel. They're mostly dialogue, and everything you need description for is just drawn out.
And then this:
I'm just worried that my writing will be janky and weird because I don't know what I should and shouldn't write.
It sounds like you already know what you need to write, and what you don't need to. If it's clearly portrayed through the visuals and/or audio, text would be redundant. Otherwise, it helps clarify the story.

Don't view your tendency towards descriptiveness as a weakness either- this means you're envisioning things clearly, which means if you collaborate with others on projects, you can be a great visionary for projects!
Plus, since my projects take place in a fantastical universe, there's the problem of lore I need to explain. How do I do that in a visual novel format?
This doesn't necessarily change, you just have a different toolset. For example, you could show a series of pictures, have a short video even, etc.
I'm just kind of scared and need some advice.
Since I don't know you that well, I don't know whether you really need advice or encouragement.

Stories are the same at their core regardless of medium- what you're running into is a new medium. Which if you're interested in understanding some core concepts of different media, you can check out my packet on story theory (which includes Story Forms info) here.

If you need something fun and simple to experiment with to boost your confidence instead, here's what I'd recommend:

1. Start with a Kinetic Novel instead of a Visual Novel. Kinetic Novels don't have branching paths, so they're much simpler to develop starting off.

2. Make an extremely short Kinetic Novel.

3. Make it extremely simple: 1 scene, 1 character. Make a conversation. (If you need some free resources to help you start out, here's a character, and here's a background. You can search these sites for some more free assets).

And a tip that I take for myself when trying new things, but may not work for you:

4. Purposefully make it as awful as possible. This way everything afterwards will be better, and you'll learn a lot because you'll use tools the absolutely wrong way ("Hey let's make this character spin forever")- meaning that you'll learn how to use the tools. :)

I hope this helps! You can do it! :D
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Westeford
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Re: General Writing Help?

#4 Post by Westeford »

One of the greatest things about writing is that everyone has their own style. Some visual novels love to describe things, and others like to show more than tell.
I've always been bad at describing things in real life and in writing, so I use character's thoughts, reactions, and movements to describe it for me. Basically find a way to turn your weakness into a strength.
One thing I found that's helped me improve my writing ability is after watching a movie, episode of a show, etc. I think back and ask myself what made the story good, and what I would've done to improve it. It's simple, but effective.
Ultimately your goal is to write a story that you want to tell. What do you want your audience to take away from it? What's your message?
I hope I made sense.

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