Making decisions?

[J13]

I guess i'm more looking for advice then anything.
With most menu choices it's usually pretty simple (Ie, Press the red button or don't, run left or right) where i have the most difficulty is conversations between characters. Normally i'd want to include about 3 possible responses/actions, 1 that makes that or another character like you more, less or make no difference. With only a few words on each menu button i find i have difficulty writing something that wont seem either so ambiguous that the player has no idea how to respond successfully or so obvious that the player can work out the affect each response would have immediately.
Basically i'm looking for how people decide what how people decide both when they include menu's in conversations and how they avoid the above problems. Any advice would be appreciated.

[PrettySammy09]

I thought that Ren'Py allowed for as much text as you want in each menu choice. I've seen really lengthly menu choices in games before...so therefore, you could put full sentences if you wanted to.

I usually put in a choice if it has something to do with how a character feels towards another character. For example.

George: So Kimmy, want to go out to dinner tonight?
Kimmy: Hmm...well...
CHOICE: YES, NO

But, you seem to have a problem with something more complicated than that. You want choices that affect the relationship either negatively, positively, or not at all. But the same idea can apply -- how a character feels about another character.

Heroine: Player! Let's go out to get ice cream after school, okay?
Player: That's heroine. She's...
-Hyper (no change)
-Cute (positive)
-Annoying (negative)

And then Hero would proceed to treat heroine like he describes her. If she's hyper, then he'll be a little overwhelmed, if she's cute, he'll be a little flustered and embarrassed, if she's annoying, then he'll want to get away ASAP.

So when it comes to choices within conversations, I'd say focus on the relationships between characters and how different choices would affect them.

[chronoluminaire]

That kind of balance was what I was aiming at with both When I Rule The World and Elven Relations. The final decision in When I Rule The World that decides whether you get ending 1 or ending 4 was designed to be non-obvious which way would be better. And several of the conversational choices in Elven Relations have had people unsure which is better.

There's an excellent book by Robert McKee called "Story", where he discusses how to write a compelling plot. It's specifically about writing movie screenplays, but a huge amount of the advice carries over to visual novels or other forms of writing. One of the points I remember from that is that the ending should be "unpredictable yet inevitable". There should be surprises in the ending that the audience aren't expecting; but they shouldn't be arbitrary - they have to follow inevitably from what the characters have done earlier in the story.

I think a similar principle can apply to VN choices. The consequences of that decision should be "unpredictable yet inevitable". The consequences have to match up inevitably with the decision made (we don't like "Sweep the floor"/"Mop the floor" decisions affecting which girl you get), but they shouldn't be immensely predictable (well, not all the time).

So, for a practical example: let's say the protagonist is out on a date with a girl. If the menu is something like:
"You're looking lovely tonight."
"I'm going to get a drink."
"Hey, don't you think that blonde over there is pretty cute?"
, that's probably too close to the "too obvious" side (unless the middle or bottom option are actually what you need to do). So make the choice instead something like:
"I'm really happy to be here with you."
"Would you like me to get you a glass of wine?"
"That's a sexy dress you're wearing."
Then at least it's a bit less obvious (and the best choice might vary depending on the girl). That kind of choice would work best when the girls' personalities have been fairly clearly defined beforehand.

Or even juicier examples might be the times when we really don't know what to do in real life. For example, a girl is standing in front of the protagonist, crying and saying that the world hates her. Should he:
Say "You know that's not true."
Say "Why do you think that?"
Say nothing but hug her.
Keep quiet and wait for her to continue.
One of those might well be better or worse than the others, but it would depend on the girl and the situation, and that's the kind of situation a lot of blokes feel pretty clueless in!

I hope something in there is helpful for figuring out how to make the decisions non-obvious but also non-arbitrary