How to Fight Your Desire to Rewrite

[SupersizeMyHeart]

How the heck do y'all who have put out finished works do so without worrying forever about how much better you could make your work with a rewrite? I'm constantly haunted by the urge to rewrite every scene. Any tricks I could learn about finding my comfort and just being okay with my level of writing?

[Sarchalen]

Speaking as a writer, I work on them until I know they are as good as I can make them at my current skill level and that I really couldn't make it any better. There is a point where you can genuinely say "I am happy with this." and that is when you release! Some people force themselves to release just for the sake of putting it out and say "ill do better on the next story" but I don't think a writer can ever be happy like that.

I think you will know when you are okay with your level of writing, but you don't get there by conceding and instead practice getting better so you can love your own writing! When you can write a scene and be really happy with it, that's comfort!

[DHLamb]

I'm always still learning and searching for writing advice myself. I usually find advice for regular novel writers and am sorry I haven't been able to talk to VN writers more.

Okay, first, I ALWAYS worry and feel insecure about everything I publish. But I still publish it.

My process for my last two VNs has been:
1. Write the first draft, which is pretty bad. Try not to edit at all, so I can get to the ending (or several endings, if that's what I planned.)
2. Read the whole thing and figure out what's wrong with it. Get some new ideas for adding characters or subplots that would make it better. Make a plan for structural changes, then add or delete scenes.
3. Repeat step 2 until I can say the story is decent. But the goal is to finish it, so do it maybe three times max. The first structural edit is the most significant. After that, the improvements aren't that impressive.
4. Edit sentences, read the text out loud, change small details.

Ideally, I would say if I am able to test the whole game and have very few edits, it's ready to be released. But in practice, I change a lot every time I test it. I release it anyway, because I have set a release date, and after playing the same 6-hours-long game for 20 days in a row, I can't do it anymore. Technically, I *could* take a month off and then come back and keep doing the same... but why? At that point, I don't want to do it anymore. Nothing is ever perfect. People have probably already decided whether they want this game or not based on what they see: how many love interests, do they have wings? Is it the kind of game they usually enjoy? Me editing the sentences ten more times won't really change much. It won't change the meaning of the story.

They say a work of art is never finished, only abandoned. I feel that's true. You stop working on it. It could always be better, but then you'd never publish it. I want everything to be perfect and feel guilty because it's not, but I convince myself to let it go. If, as an artist, you no longer feel inspired to work on something, you should care about yourself and move on to something that inspires you now. But if you enjoy those rewrites, I guess it's perfectly fine to keep doing it.

Some anti-perfectionist tips:

• If it's not released, no one can enjoy it. It's like it doesn't exist!

• Does the value of your work come from it having no flaws, or from people being able to enjoy it?

• Games aren't books. In case you make a mistake, or you really want to edit something, you can update the game after release.

[dragondatingsim]

There are certainly stories about writers who kept re-writing their novel until it was "perfect", sometimes over the span of years (or even a decade?).

It really depends on your goals - do you want everything to be perfect, or do you want your game to be finished during a certain time frame?

Maybe you just need to come up with a particular process that meets all your needs for the final script and give yourself a limit for rewrites, edits and drafts.

With time passing, some creators can certainly start to feel the pressure of moving things along to get something out.

Personally, I've gone as far as to make edits even after I pasted the script into the game to adjust certain word choices or sentences for flow. At some point, every creator has to eventually let go to let their game be shown to the audience.

[RizVN]

I suck at writing. Which is why I quickly write and publish my game, so I can get criticisms and feedbacks specific to my works, then I can improve on those. So I become less suck at writing. Then I repeat the process as opportunity allows.

I usually submit my game to a ranked game jam, which gives people incentive to review other people games, including mine. No matter how bad my game is, at least the creator of that game jam would play it and leave a review or rating.

If your friends happen to like Visual Novels, you can also ask them to play and give feedback. My friends happen to be MOBA enjoyers or those who skip stories and dive into the game.

So yeah, I suggest get your work out there and let the feedbacks coming.