Word Minimum

[Camille]

A short story may be awesome and a long story may be dull.

That's why these are more like guidelines and general rules. I don't think anyone (except maybe Yummy?) would reject a VN just because it doesn't meet their word count "requirement". I generally don't play kinetic novels, but I gave TCAST a try and loved it. I generally like Japanese RPGs, but I tried Kingdom Hearts and hated it. Sure, I prefer VNs with at least 25,000 words, but I have played and will continue to play some VNs that have less words than that.

There's always exceptions, but it's impossible for us to experience/read/watch everything, so we have to come up with some general rules to use in order to prioritize and organize the things we want to make time for. Using your examples... If someone preferred short works, they might read the Old Man and the Sea because it's short. Then, if they loved it, next time they saw For Whom the Bell Tolls, perhaps they'd make an exception and try it because they had a good experience with Hemingway already. Thus, rules are slowly rewritten and more exceptions are added. That's life.

Sure, word count alone might mean nothing, but it's something that can be used as a general rule, so that's what people do with it. For me, it's like surrendering vs culling. I accept the fact that I might be ignoring some super great VNs by choosing to read (mostly) only 25,000+ word ones. And that's something I can live with.

[J. Datie]

My minimum word count is zero. It's a visual medium, so it'd be possible to create a full story using only images. I refuse to play anything with less words than that, though.

[lordcloudx]

Well, I'd like to add that the pacing of the story might actually play a bigger role rather than actual word count as to the perceived amount of time that a reader/player might take to get through it. In my case, for example, I felt that 1984 took just as long to read as the voluminous Fate/Stay Night due to the somewhat subdued pacing of 1984. Reading through a mere 1000 words can feel like years have gone by if the pacing is deliberately slow. On the other hand, reading through a hectic fight scene that takes up to 5000 words to tell can feel like it took mere moments to read.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I agree with J. Datie, there is no reason why you couldn't have a totally wordless game. I have seen plenty of wordless comics and they work just fine, there is just more art and the music would help set the mood. Anything upwards of that is good.

I am usually a bit wary of high word counts for short games though. I really dislike reading long winded stuff (Tolkien made me want to throw Two Towers out a window. Chapters and chapters of nothing happening!) and I much prefer stuff with a more direct approach. So it isn't so much about the word count as it is about the writing style.

Good writing needs to be very good at communicating, but there are few other limitations. As long as there isn't meaningless fluff and everything comes across really dynamically, I'm good.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

(Tolkien made me want to throw Two Towers out a window. Chapters and chapters of nothing happening!)

Thank you! I totally agree.

The Hobbit was the first fantasy book I ever read, and I loved it. Tolkien had an editor for it and wanted to make it understandable to children like his son, so in my opinion, it is actually the most readable and enjoyable of all his work.

Then came LOTR - the history of tobacco farming? Really Tolkien? You start a novel with a large chapter on the history of tobacco farming? Shades of Herman Melville interrupting the story of Moby Dick in the middle to spend several chapters on the history of whaling! (Melville wanted it to be educational - though even he admitted that getting the words for the whaling chapters on paper was like trying to coax frozen sap from a tree - I say, "Maybe that was a clue, Herman?!")

The "protection from the editor" power successful authors get is rarely a good thing. Word counts inflate, chapters meander as the authors decide to take interludes describing their latest obsession or philosophy, etc.

So I generally find the longer a work is, i.e. the bigger the word count, the greater chance the story is going to drag, fizzle out, meander, or lose its message.

It also worth noting that in other visual mediums, like movies - an hour and forty minute movie is usually 25,000 words, or 100 pages of 250 words. (Movie scripts are written where 1 page equals 1 minute of screen time.) Food for thought. A 70,000 word story would be the equivalent of a movie trilogy, and most of those are really individual stories of 25,000 words linked together.

[Auro-Cyanide]

(Tolkien made me want to throw Two Towers out a window. Chapters and chapters of nothing happening!)

Thank you! I totally agree.

The Hobbit was the first fantasy book I ever read, and I loved it. Tolkien had an editor for it and wanted to make it understandable to children like his son, so in my opinion, it is actually the most readable and enjoyable of all his work.

Yes! The Hobbit was much more enjoyable in my opinion. The mythos of the Lord of Rings was wonderful and everything, there were just too much... hot air. I admit to skipping a large chunk in the second one because it just kept going on and on and on and on.

If it doesn't add anything to the story, for the love of god don't say it. Also, please do count on the reader actually having an imagination. They are perfectly capable of imagining things with only very mild direction. I don't like it when people describe a corridor as having four doors, three on the left and one on the right, when you don't actually need to know about the doors. As soon as you say 'a warehouse' people will imagine a warehouse. Description should just aid in the mood and feel of the place, not describe every physical detail. It is a waste of time, move on with the action!

[Aleema]

The difference between writing a screenplay and writing a novel is huge (and is different for playwriting as well). The reason movie scripts typically have less words is because that's not the writer's job to describe the movie in great length. It's the job of the actors, the director, the DP, and the editor to take "they watch a sunset" into "they sit closely together, their hands barely touching as red and violet cascade over their faces." When I read a book, I would rather read the latter.

But I do feel a visual novel is more akin to movies than a novel. You have music and visuals to show what the sunset looks like and how the mood feels. But it's also part novel ... I personally like to write as if it were a novel, since CGs are expensive, daymn.

[yummy]

It's possible to have a media which only has images and music without any text. Whereas it'll still be called visual novel is another matter.

I will now try to justify the fact that I attach importance to word count.

I have grown fond of long stories that covers adventure, fantasy or sci-fi stories. My bookshelves are full of them, ranging from classic ones to newer trends (that I read when I ride the train). But generally, I feel a little bored when a story is only limited to one tome.
For example, I'd have been really sad if the scenaric tale of The Wheel of Time by R. Jordan had been limited to one volume.

What really sparks my interest is the ability of the authors to describe instants, just like Proust with his madeleine tale (maybe does it seem boring to most).
It's some sort of time suspension, it's nostalgic and sensible. And that's why it moves me.

I don't think it's something that can be explained in a short manner, it takes a lot of attention, it just has to be elaborated. At least that's my point of view. I might be wrong, but that's just how I think.
You have to give time its own time.

That's why I think VNs are really amazing. It adds an additional layer, new means to express a scene, the ability to transmit a wider range of emotions.
It could be really awesome if the images would be animated and act just as the description goes on, but there's also the matter about the reader's imagination. If the audience is able to imagine intermediate actions when reading a manga or comics, why wouldn't they be able to imagine a scene by looking at CGs with text and music?
I'm aware that it's nothing new to the OELVN community. It has been discussed many times.

The real meaning behind my choice about more than 70k words is simple, and could actually be summed up into one word. Dedication.
I'm sure some will accuse me of being impolite, and that everyone should be given a chance and all (and that I have not released anything yet) but...
I have read lots of first game tries in this forum and I haven't posted comments about them for a long time.

Generally, first tries are meant to sharpen one's skills (or releasing beta, etc). But it has become a trend to only release this kind of first tries.
That is to say, very short stories, with only a few scenes. Several reach their impact scene a little too fast and make the audience feel "not so good but okay at least".

I have now understood all too well that it's not the 70k word count that makes quality, but I think it's still the frontier before a VN begins to have its own "emotion complex". A range of emotions that would be linked in a mean that it defines one author's work. But it takes time to make a story that long and that detailed. Thus the 70k.

Now I'd really like someone to prove me wrong because I'm sure there are stories I haven't read that are under this word count. So please recommend me one OELVN that is under this 70k frontier and that I might appreciate.
Please.

[lordcloudx]

That's a challenge that no one can really win unless you let them, you know.

[Aetheria]

Generally, first tries are meant to sharpen one's skills (or releasing beta, etc). But it has become a trend to only release this kind of first tries.
That is to say, very short stories, with only a few scenes. Several reach their impact scene a little too fast and make the audience feel "not so good but okay at least".

I would take that as an indication that the story just wasn't very well-written, not that the author didn't write enough of it. If you have a mediocre story with clumsy pacing, padding it with more words probably won't help much.

[Camille]

The difference between writing a screenplay and writing a novel is huge (and is different for playwriting as well). The reason movie scripts typically have less words is because that's not the writer's job to describe the movie in great length. It's the job of the actors, the director, the DP, and the editor to take "they watch a sunset" into "they sit closely together, their hands barely touching as red and violet cascade over their faces." When I read a book, I would rather read the latter.

But I do feel a visual novel is more akin to movies than a novel. You have music and visuals to show what the sunset looks like and how the mood feels. But it's also part novel ... I personally like to write as if it were a novel, since CGs are expensive, daymn.

I agree with this 100%, especially the part about CGs being expensive, haha!

[Applegate]

Hell, Hemingway wrote a single sentence story, which I shall present here in its entirety: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I felt this required quoting because it's quite peculiar. Not to pretend to be a literair elitist or anything, but having never read anything of Hemingway, I now want to solely because of this story.

Because it is this story that tells more than some stories written with more words. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn". I imagine to myself a couple who were excited to have a baby, and have tried many times. They even bought all sorts of articles for babies. Maybe the mother-to-be bought these shoes as a promise to herself to have babies, but after many years she, instead, sells the shoes, for she was infertile. Or maybe her husband was.

Maybe their baby died.

It makes me think about a great range of possibilities and no matter what I arrive at, I can only conclude sympathy for whoever put out such an ad. I spent an hour just imagining the possibilities.



Yammy, I'll take you up on your challenge, but I require you point out a few contemporary stories that earned your favour so I know what you would enjoy. Based on that I will recommend you a short story that I feel is quite good, but I'll have to disappoint if it's high-fantasy you enjoy because I do not enjoy that.

[yummy]

I'm not particularly a fan of whichever genre, it's not like I favour any genre actually. By contemporary, do you mean the last two decades?

For Fantasy:
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time,
Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn,
Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy,
David Coe's Winds of the Forelands.

For Sci-Fi:
Bernard Werber's Ants,
John Scalzi's Old Man's War,
Orson Sott Card's Ender cycle

To sum up, for fantasy it would be tales you find in contemporary shounen manga, but with a focus on character relationships and lone human limitations (distance, strength). For Sci-fi, it would be asking questions about a future, how that universe would be plausible, how far its definitions go and how the characters point out what doesn't work.
It just means I'm your standard audience, nothing special.

But these stories aren't essentially focused on love relationships, that you find in most VNs. That might be where the challenge begins. Add to this characterization, akiba-kei writing codes, pop culture, and it's a real mess.

@Cloudie: I'm not saying first tries are useless, I meant making a first try game is only a first stage towards bigger projects.

[Nebi]

Now I'd really like someone to prove me wrong because I'm sure there are stories I haven't read that are under this word count.

What about the short story? Creative writing teachers would probably recommend their students to practice writing good short stories before attempting an epic.

Many short story writers define their work through a combination of creative, personal expression, and artistic integrity. They attempt to resist categorization by genre as well as definition by numbers, finding such approaches limiting and counter-intuitive to artistic form and reasoning. As a result, definitions of the short story based on length splinter even more when the writing process is taken into consideration.

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Other definitions place the maximum word count at anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 words. As a point of reference for the science fiction genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America defines short story length in its Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of less than 7,500.[2] In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000. Stories with less than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories",[3] or "flash fiction."

A compelling story need not be long. The Boy Who Cried Wolf from Aesop's Fables, comes to mind. Writing a good, original short story is another challenge altogether. :]

[lordcloudx]

Heh, I'd take you up on your offer and try to get you to read at least one of the stories on my own VN portfolio, yummy, but I stand by what I said that no one can win your challenge unless you let them -- and I don't like leaving things to the whims of others.

In any case, I guess I'll state my own preference for an ideal story here myself. For me, the best stories should only be 1 chapter or a maximum of 5 chapters long at 1.5k to 2k words per chapter... so probably around the 7k to 10 mark. Any longer than that and the story tends to talk about way too many things all at once when I'd really like it to focus on a single, central theme or story arc that caught my interest. Mitsukazu Mihara's works are good examples of stories that seemingly take multiple chapters to tell but wherein the chapters are self-contained stories in themselves. The anime Kinou's Journey as well as Toward The Terra are good examples of this as well.

For now, the best OELVN story for me would be M12's "The Sight of Autumn" (no longer available online, I believe: http://vndb.org/v2403) and the best short story I've ever read (subjectively) is, "Calling You" by Otsu-Ichi (localized by Tokyopop)