Most Difficult Thing About Visual Novels

[Fenrir34]

What do you think the most difficult thing about visual novels is? For me it has to be the writing and being able to stay motivated. As someone who often finds it difficult to get writer's block to go away, I find it hard to be able to write all day. Another thing, and this is more personal, is how I feel. When I feel down or depressed, which is a lot from some reason, I can't write as well unless the scene is dark and/or dramatic. This is a problem because I have a lot to write in both vn's and school, but my depression gets in the way of that. This is why for me writing is the hardest thing. I like coding more sometimes then I do the writing, but I still love to write even when it can be so frustrating.

[Caveat Lector]

Programming. There are parts of it that are easy once you know what to do, but actually getting there requires sifting through a ton of traceback error messages.

[Zetsubou]

The hardest part for me is finding the time to work on a VN.
Like novel writing and coding, it takes some time to get into the right mindset and pick up where you left off last time.
I don't even bother starting if I know I won't have at least half an hour of free time.

[Fenrir34]

Programming. There are parts of it that are easy once you know what to do, but actually getting there requires sifting through a ton of traceback error messages.

You have a very good point. I hate when I have errors in coding. It does make it difficult especially when you have many of them @_@. Still, I find it fun at points, but that's usually when I'm able to look at the game and see how my coding went

[Fenrir34]

The hardest part for me is finding the time to work on a VN.
Like novel writing and coding, it takes some time to get into the right mindset and pick up where you left off last time.
I don't even bother starting if I know I won't have at least half an hour of free time.

I'll admit I haven't experienced that yet, but that's because my schedule has some good free time. But I can agree that finding a good place to write something is very difficult. It could take you a month or even more before you actually write something, and that's bad when you have dead lines

[Catalyst Edge Gaming]

For me it's the time. Being a full time student takes a lot of time out of what I have to take care of my financial stuffs and then doing classes, sitting down on a project takes a bit of self motivation when I get home just want to sleep haha.

[sendo]

Writing is the hardest part for me. I can write 'scenes' but I find stringing them together to make a cohesive story quite difficult. I pretty much learn 'by doing/seeing' and I'm stumped when I don't know if what I've written is okay or not. It would be great if there was an 'anatomy' in writing so I can put my work side by side and figure out what parts are wrong and stuff (y'know like anatomy models in drawing, or maybe even like a 'compiler' that will parse my text and puke fatal errors for every mistake I did ahaha). One other thing is that, I tend to re-read what I've written a lot and I rewrite weak parts, over and over, ad infinitum. That's why the longest I've written was like about ~2K ahaha ha. And dialogue is my bane! I love funny/Boke and Tsukkomi dialogues, but I can't seem to write one to save my life tasukete!! Dx

"Then why not post it here for critique or somewhere?" Well, like I said I learn by doing. It's probably easy for experienced people to point out what I need to do to improve, but I'm kinda stubborn in that I want to make mistakes and realize what my mistakes are, if that makes sense. This way, what I learn is really hammered in. It's like when I improved in drawing, I didn't just look at a tutorial and go "ohh, uh huh, yeah" and then I instantly mastered a certain aspect - it took a lot of man hours to figure it out and really understand that "Ohh! So this is because of perspective. Uh huh, this part goes here because anatomy. Yeah, my painting sucks because muddy values." and so on.

My goodness, look at that rambling. tl;dr Writing is hard for me!

[Asceai]

For me, writing as well. Programming's the part I enjoy the most, actually!

[Fenrir34]

For me it's the time. Being a full time student takes a lot of time out of what I have to take care of my financial stuffs and then doing classes, sitting down on a project takes a bit of self motivation when I get home just want to sleep haha.

I'm only part time and it's hard, so I can't imagine what it's like trying to do them when you're a full time student . I guess the best times would be on weekends, but even those can be swamped with homework.

[Fenrir34]

Writing is the hardest part for me. I can write 'scenes' but I find stringing them together to make a cohesive story quite difficult. I pretty much learn 'by doing/seeing' and I'm stumped when I don't know if what I've written is okay or not. It would be great if there was an 'anatomy' in writing so I can put my work side by side and figure out what parts are wrong and stuff (y'know like anatomy models in drawing, or maybe even like a 'compiler' that will parse my text and puke fatal errors for every mistake I did ahaha). One other thing is that, I tend to re-read what I've written a lot and I rewrite weak parts, over and over, ad infinitum. That's why the longest I've written was like about ~2K ahaha ha. And dialogue is my bane! I love funny/Boke and Tsukkomi dialogues, but I can't seem to write one to save my life tasukete!! Dx

"Then why not post it here for critique or somewhere?" Well, like I said I learn by doing. It's probably easy for experienced people to point out what I need to do to improve, but I'm kinda stubborn in that I want to make mistakes and realize what my mistakes are, if that makes sense. This way, what I learn is really hammered in. It's like when I improved in drawing, I didn't just look at a tutorial and go "ohh, uh huh, yeah" and then I instantly mastered a certain aspect - it took a lot of man hours to figure it out and really understand that "Ohh! So this is because of perspective. Uh huh, this part goes here because anatomy. Yeah, my painting sucks because muddy values." and so on.

My goodness, look at that rambling. tl;dr Writing is hard for me!

Same here. Connecting scenes can be very difficult as well, and I have much lack of confidence in my writing, so sometimes I end up rewriting the whole thing. I don't mind critiques on here really, but worry that my writing is so bad that people will hate it....And I make a lot of mistakes in what I write XD. It's thank to those mistakes that my dialogue and characters have become a bit better and more in depth, though I still have to work on it. Also have a good number of weak parts. They usually come at scenes that are trying to go to something emotional. I'm good at emotional scenes though and try to always have them, though that continues to be difficult 0_0

[Fenrir34]

For me, writing as well. Programming's the part I enjoy the most, actually!

Yup same here, though we might be in a small group. I can get why people might dislike it though. It can get very frustrating at times.

[SundownKid]

In my case, marketing. It's hard enough to make a visual novel, but then you have to market it or it will be forgotten.

[TrickWithAKnife]

I guess I would have to say time as well. It's difficult to find a reasonable amount of time when I'm not too tired to focus. If I can, then everything else becomes a lot easier.

[Sonya]

Programming is the biggest problem. I remember when I first started making VNs, I just wanted to make the art and the writing, and the programming contributed nothing to the actual quality of the visual novel (story and art), the code was there just to make it work.

This is the main reason we developed a complete GUI visual novel creator for users at our site, something really simple to use, almost like a film editor:
see? ---> http://demo.joilly.com/editor.html

There was just SO many people(at least on our site) that hated to learn programming >_<

But in my own opinion, the most difficult thing about visual novel, creation wise??? It must be the writing. Inspiration is hard, and the best sources for inspiration is real life. When it comes down to it, it's how people can relate to characters in the story, so the closer it is to 'real life' the more likely the richness of the story comes out.

Oh btw, if any of you wanted to check out more of the visual novel creator, go to our site thread: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 57&t=27279

[Rossfellow]

Writing, definitely. When all is said and done, even if you have A+++ Art and music assets, the writing will be the core of your VN and what it will be remembered for. The writer has the ultimate priviledge in a creative group.

I just wish inspiration hits me at more appropriate times. I hate being ON FIRE when it's... 3AM or something.