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I have very little experience writing, but I have a premise for a game I really want to make, so I'm taking a shot at it. My problem is I'm terrible at making a story interesting. "I sneaked out of the castle, joined a pirate crew, went on a big adventure, and saved the world" isn't very interesting. It needs plot twists, and a more interesting ending than, "and then I saved the world and lived happily ever after". Any help, personal experience, or resources would be very much appreciated.

I think tvtropes.org is a pretty good resource. You can find a lot of character types, plot twists, and other stuff there. Taking a trope and changing it up in your story can make your thing more interesting. :v There are ending tropes too. (a problematic thing is that if you like to read these things, it might make you just... kind of.... loose your free time to the power of lots of text)

"I snuck out of the castle, joined a pirate crew, went on a big adventure, and saved the world and lived happily ever after."

Is perfectly fine as a plot if it is done well. Are the characters interesting? Is the writing interesting? Then even that sort of basic plot can be fine. Especially considering we are talking about a VN that might have lots of character choice. I mean...depending on character choice, they may fail to save the world and may not live happily ever after. Or living happily ever after might look slightly differently depending on what choices they made.

Have you tried studying real-life things that you find interesting? Read about science, about history, about politics, and see if something catches your eye. Plenty of stories have been written that are inspired by or are otherwise connected to actual events (or apocrypha about these events).

Ask yourself questions about what you want to write, and don't be afraid to be creative: "Who's sneaking out of the castle, and why? What kind of pirate crew is the protagonist joining? Are the pirates anthropomorphic animals? Which world is being saved? Maybe it's Mars!"

More importantly, don't be so hard on yourself, or you'll never actually get to writing anything. I have this problem sometimes too. You don't have to write the Next Big Thing for your story to be entertaining.

Heartstrings wrote:I have very little experience writing, but I have a premise for a game I really want to make, so I'm taking a shot at it. My problem is I'm terrible at making a story interesting. "I sneaked out of the castle, joined a pirate crew, went on a big adventure, and saved the world" isn't very interesting. It needs plot twists, and a more interesting ending than, "and then I saved the world and lived happily ever after". Any help, personal experience, or resources would be very much appreciated.

The main thing to do is just outline it in more detail first. Before you start writing, look up how to make a story outline.

The devil is in the details, that story could have a ton of plot twists and an interesting ending or it could be boring and cliched. Just look at what is cliched and try to subvert it.

Just a few examples...

Cliched: The princess snuck out of the castle under cover of darkness.
Not cliched: The princess convinced the king to give her swordfighting lessons, then defeated the knights guarding her.

Cliched: The princess fought the evil pirate and took control of the pirate crew.
Not cliched: The princess decided to convince the crew to mutiny, because their captain was such a jerk.

Cliched: The princess went on an adventure to find the 6 Crystals of Power. When she found them, the evil lord kidnapped her first mate and she traded them in exchange.
Not cliched: The princess was too lazy to find the 6 Crystals, so she snuck into the evil lord's castle, rigging his magical doomsday device to explode if he used them.

Cliched: The evil lord is defeated in a giant battle, the world is saved!
Not cliched: The first mate was actually the evil lord and he was following her the whole time. Now she must fight him mano a mano to save the kingdom.

I am of the opinion that execution is vastly more important than premise. I would rather read through a magnificently well-written VN about being a japanese high school boy who has the option to romance one of several archetypal female classmates than a pile of careless slop about C'thulu rescuing planet Earth from spaceborne invaders.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not necessarily the twist that makes a story interesting. What makes a story interesting to me is diving into the minds of the characters and witnessing how they encounter and either overcome or succumb to their struggles. Even without a major mind-blowing twist, it's entertaining to see how people pursue their goals and react to everything that happens around them along the way.

In fact, I would recommend deliberately choosing an uninspired premise and challenging yourself to execute the writing of a story based on it so well that nobody even notices how trite the original idea was.

I don't quite agree that it doesn't matter how cliched the story idea is. There can be some ideas or settings that are so cliched as to be unenjoyable to certain people no matter how well-written the story is. The execution matters a lot more than the general plot to be sure. Still, having an unusual plot well-executed is a lot better than a cliched and well-executed plot.

These are all really good points, thanks guys.

Do not aim for a twist ending unless you've written about 80% of the story. Otherwise you risk writing the story for the sake of the twist and it can come off as trite and annoying. At 80%, you can better see what ending your story can have and any twist you think of will be much more organic.

Also, "I sneaked out of the castle, joined a pirate crew, went on a big adventure, and saved the world" is a perfectly good premise! Start writing.

Edit:

Start writing.

I thought I should emphasize that. Planning and thinking about it is alright but you really need to get words down on paper. Speaking from my own and my friends' experience, we often think of ideas that we never thought of once we actually started writing.

I also think "I sneaked out of the castle, joined a pirate crew, went on a big adventure and saved the world' is a perfectly good plot. My most thematically complicated project is essentially "I go to school and make friends which helps me deal with my own problems" and my own favourite book ever is essentially "I try to get revenge on debt collectors." My favourite movie is "The supreme bad guy must be defeated" and my favourite game is "we have to save people from being murdered." Anything sounds boring when you reduce it to its base details!

Pretty much as everyone has said, the devil is in the detail. She joins a pirate crew? Does the majority of the story take place on land or at sea? What would pirates want with someone who grew up in a castle? How does she save the world? What's the setting? How many people are in the pirate crew? What do the pirates want? What does the protag want? Do their interests align? And so on and so on. I mean, if we're going to reduce stories down to their base elements then pretty much every story is "A thing happened."

Besides pirates will make your game really appeal to the otome crowd. (Just don't tell them I said that )

TBH, one of the main things they tell you when analysing writing and creating your own stories is to answer this questions: "What does ____ want?"
Answer that, and you can throw obstacles at them. Are they strong enough to overcome them? Do they need help? Perhaps this obstacle changes what they want. Do they even end up getting what they want? Maybe their desire conflict with another characters.
This can be a plot device, or a scene device, depending on how you use it. Plot twists can come from answers being answered in an unexpected way, or so similar to what we thought it was going to be, with a slight twist that turns it into something completely different.

I know that I'm being vague, but that's so that you can have a general idea to work with. An example (Harry being sent letters to attend Hogwarts):
Who wants what? Harry wants to visit the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Obstacles: His aunt and uncle.
Why do they stand in his way?: They do not allow him to attend the school by denying him permission and cutting off his contact with people who can help him.
Who solves the problem?: Someone other than Harry (Hagrid).
How do they solve it?: etc etc etc

This is the sort of thing you can map out in your mind. You might find that you don't have an obstacle. This can be okay. John Doe doesn't need to have a fire-breathing dragon between him and the girl he's asking to borrow a pencil from. It might be more interesting for John Doe to have something or someone (like the girl's twin brother) stopping him from talking to the girl if he plan on asking her out.
The same can be applied to a larger scale.

As for interesting endings, I find that the best endings are satisfying endings that spiral from an interesting climax. Like with an essay, you could end with something that reminds of the beginning, a clever thought, but no new idea (unless you're one of those authors ).

-Nat

Also, don't forget to foreshadow your twists early on. Most readers aren't comfortable with sudden Ass Pulls, and a twist can come across like that if you introduce it totally out of the blue.

Lexer wrote:Do not aim for a twist ending... Otherwise you risk writing the story for the sake of the twist and it can come off as trite and annoying.

Ahem... I've got news for you, speaking from professional experience, if you plan to have a twist in a story --especially if it's near the end-- you ARE supposed to write the story specifically 'for the sake of the twist.' In fact, that's precisely how Mysteries, Horror, and Comedy stories are written.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote: "To deliver fullest satisfaction, a story should be...conceived with deliberate care toward a single effect. A skillful literary artist has a constructed tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents- he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step.”
-- Edgar Allen Poe

A more familiar name for this is "The Punchline."
-- You can't have a punchline if the story isn't a set up to deliver one.

You start by coming up with what you want for a Twist; an Ironic moment, a Secret, a Murderer, or a Monster. You then design the entire story to conceal, disguise, and mislead the readers from discovering the Irony, the Secret, the Murderer, or the Monster until either:
-- 1) The absolute Worst possible moment for the characters to find out about it; usually when it's far too late to do anything about it.
or
-- 2) The the Great Reveal near the end.

The only time it comes off as trite or annoying is when 1) there isn't enough Story to support the weight (gravity?) of the punchline, and/or 2) the writer plants too many 'clues' and gave away the punchline before the reader gets there. In other words, the writer was SLOPPY about it (or simply inexperienced.)

OokamiKasumi wrote:2) the writer plants too many 'clues' and gave away the punchline before the reader gets there. In other words, the writer was SLOPPY about it (or simply inexperienced.)

Too few clues can lead to a unsatisfactory story as well. The best writers have enough skill and experience to determine how many clues should be evident to the reader, and time their reveals appropriately.

Plot is overrated. Readers are going to forgive you for a simple story if the character and setting makes up for it. Maybe your story won't have the same kick to it, but readers will enjoy it nonetheless.

What you may need, more than a twist, is a conflict that the protagonist needs to fight. At least this is what is missing from the outline you wrote. Something that sparks interest and empathy for the character and gives it more depth.

Since you say that you aren't very experienced, I would go against a twist ending if you didn't plan it beforehand. Usually adding twists to a story that doesn't need it just diluites the experience. I find it a turn off when I read a simple story with good characters that I enjoy, and then a twist ending that has no sense to exist pops out. Sometimes you can foresee what happens froma mile away and that doesn't make a lot of difference in the quality of the work. Sometimes it even enhances the value you get out of the story.

But again, my suggestion is to focus on making interesting characters first.