Casual flow of dialogue / slice-of-life narrative

[Risky.Klick.Kurisu]

How much does the flow of dialogue impact your enjoyment of a VN?

I've found that a lot of games I've tried lately, especially newer ones from first-time creators, have been way too abrupt / choppy for my liking. Not to say that they're poorly written, per se, but I feel that too much of the dialogue is written to have an impact and just throws things off-balance. Dramatic sentence -> comedic punchline -> angry exclamation -> dirty talk, rinse repeat, so forth and so on. I also think that it leads to criticisms of updates 'lacking content'.

Personally, I really enjoy when a VN includes smooth, casual, everyday style conversations that flow between the impactful events. But admittedly, I'm also a sucker for slow-burn, kinetic stories that really build up their characters and world. They also make story twists or lewd events hit that much harder, in my opinion. I play these types of games to relax and chill out, so I don't always need my brain firing on all cylinders.

I'm currently in the process of writing my own VN and find myself including a lot of slower conversations. "Hey, what did you think of the movie?" type dialogue. But again, that's what I'm personally biased towards, and have always had the creative philosophy of 'writing the story that you yourself want to read'. But at the same time, I'm curious to see what others think. Do you also enjoy immersive, everyday type dialogue, or do you find it boring and 'filler'?

 

[BOTBrad]

I very much enjoy that type of dialogue, but it definitely depends on the tone of the game. If it's literally just "sex simulator", then there's no point in it being there. In anything that's even pretending to have a story, though, it's much appreciated.

 

[baloneysammich]

I don't have a very good understanding of what "slice-of-life" entails, but I generally prefer light-hearted VNs with a minimum of "tension" or drama. Which I think is a feature of slice-of-life anime/manga. But AFAICT the core feature is a non-fantastical, everyday setting, which is definitely not applicable to any of my favorite VNs. Or most of my favorite fictional media of any kind.

Anyway, maybe it's not exactly what you're talking about, but I played a game recently where the transition from one scene to the next was generally very abrupt. The abruptness of the beginning of scenes could be explained by the fact the game allowed you to choose between sandbox and VN modes and I chose the latter. But I felt that most scenes ended quite abruptly too. And given the VN was otherwise pretty mediocre, it was enough to put me off it entirely.

 

[SatinAndIvory]

I hate poorly done casual conversations in a story, which is a majority of the games on here. I don't need to read the following type of conversation in any VN:

Person A: Hi, how was your day?
Person B: It was great! How was yours?
A: It was boring.
B: Oh, sorry to hear that.
A: What are you thinking of ordering today?
B: I don't know. The fish and chips sounds good though.
A: Oh yeah, I heard good things about it.
B: What are you thinking of ordering today?
A: I'm probably going to go with the porterhouse.
B: Steak? Sounds good.
A: Yeah. How was work?
....

It's drab, boring, and all it does is pad up game time. It doesn't add anything to the game. It doesn't set the mood, you don't learn anything of note (I could give 0 shits about what type of food the characters like to eat), and it didn't increase my enjoyment of the story. If anything it takes away from it because now, I have to read these boring scenes just to get to the good stuff. If you're going to include casual conversation in your story, at least make it fun, interesting, have potential plot relevance, and/or reveal the personalities of your characters.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

All this "yo brah, nice weather today" type of convo really bores me.
I'd much prefer to focus on the goals of the game, rather than making small talk about nothing.

 

[Hagatagar]

I've found that a lot of games I've tried lately, especially newer ones from first-time creators, have been way too abrupt / choppy for my liking. Not to say that they're poorly written, per se, but I feel that too much of the dialogue is written to have an impact and just throws things off-balance. Dramatic sentence -> comedic punchline -> angry exclamation -> dirty talk, rinse repeat, so forth and so on.

Which isn't a surprise, because almost none of them are authors/writers or have some kind of editor who checks the story and the writing with the authority to demand a change.

A lot of them just write whatever comes to their mind and it may well be that a storyline loses weight between updates because the dev either loses interest in it or comes up with a new idea.

But at the same time, I'm curious to see what others think. Do you also enjoy immersive, everyday type dialogue, or do you find it boring and 'filler'?

Slice-of-life-dialogue sounds easier than it is.
Mundane conversations can quickly become tedious, edgy, cringe or even patronizing towards the reader. This is especially true with meaningless/empty small talk, like SatinAndIvory and VoidTraveler mentioned.


For a conversation about a subject to be interesting, characters would need to have different opinions.
And the author has to present both of these opinions in a realistic way and also defend them in place of the characters. This is where the dialogues can get interesting.

Of course, characters can have the same or very similar opinions, but such a dialog is best abbreviated. Otherwise you just have a boring bubble/circle jerking type conversation. Unless of course the subject matter itself is informative in some way and not just merely opinions that are flung around.


Other than that, one has to be careful combining slice-of-life-(dialogue) with a more plot-focused story. They can easily get in each other's way and mess up the pace of the story.

 

[Doorknob22]

In porn, the dialog should contribute to one of two goals:
1. Advance the plot.
2. Give depth and believability to characters in order to help the player/reader suspend their disbelief. If you subconsciously "believe" that the character who now gave a brief monologue on how boring it is for her to meet with the school board next week, for example, the next time she kneels and take the MCs' cock in her mouth will be more enjoyable because some part of your brain "believes" that she really is a teacher. Believable characters are a relatively cheap way of increasing the erotic properties of a porn game/story/etc.

 

[anne O'nymous]

How much does the flow of dialogue impact your enjoyment of a VN?

It's not the flow itself that matter, it's the interest and relevance. What mean that slice of life are good, as long as they serve another purpose than just filling the holes.

To keep your movie example, it should:

• Tell us something about the characters ;
  (S)he like this movie because it remind her about this/that, and it's something really important for him/her.
• Open to another scene ;
  "Well, it's a book adaptation, I have all the books from this author, come to my room, I'll give you [whatever title], it's his best. Since you liked the movie, I'm sure you'll like the book". And then they are now in the bedroom, who know what will happen in this more intimate place.
• Strengthen the relationship with this character ;
  It's the most common use, they discover a bit more about each other and feel closer now.
• (Starts to) solve an issue between two characters ;
  "You know, [whatever character] also like this scene, and for the same reasons than you. Perhaps you have more common point than you think, give her/him a chance."
• Tell us something about the story ;
  "The movie is good, but it's really sad that it's the last one before the prudishness laws. The ending scene is the last time actors kissed in a movie".

[I surely forgot some]

Of course, when I talk about relevance, it don't regard the whole dialog.
You don't need to directly jump to the fact that it's the last movie where actors kissed, nor to stop once it is said. What matter is that, when the dialog will end, the player have the feeling that something have changed, either in what he know about [whatever related to the game], or regarding the characters and their relationship ; whatever how innocuous the scene was by itself, it wasn't just a filler, it served a purpose.

 

[Risky.Klick.Kurisu]

It's not the flow itself that matter, it's the interest and relevance. What mean that slice of life are good, as long as they serve another purpose than just filling the holes.

how innocuous the scene was by itself, it wasn't just a filler, it served a purpose.

Well said! And I completely agree with you that dialogue should serve a purpose.

I suppose my post was vague / poorly worded; I didn't intend for slice-of-life to equate to fluff or filler dialogue. The examples from your post perfectly show the type of dialogue that I enjoy reading in VNs- casual, yet intimate and character-building. I just feel that it is lacking in a lot of recent projects, and perhaps I've already consumed all the 'good ones' (in the sense of what I enjoy, not related to quality).

But also that's what has motivated me to start work on my own project! But as Hagatagar said,

Slice-of-life-dialogue sounds easier than it is.

So we shall see if I can deliver!

 

[Cosy Creator]

I think every scene should serve a purpose, rather than every line. Honing in on every line is what makes dialogue feel too streamlined and unnatural as described in the OP.

I read this somewhere else so I can't claim credit for it, but every scene can be reduced down to three core purposes:

• Character progression
• Plot progression
• World building

A crap scene will do none of these things. A mediocre scene will do one. A good scene will do two, and a great scene will do all three.

 

[Gwedelino]

All this "yo brah, nice weather today" type of convo really bores me.
I'd much prefer to focus on the goals of the game, rather than making small talk about nothing.

It's all about finding the right balance.

Characters that's only talking about the goal of the game aren't characters anymore. They're just puppets.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I suppose my post was vague / poorly worded; I didn't intend for slice-of-life to equate to fluff or filler dialogue.

It's not necessarily you, it can also come from me.
The last game I played felt like I was witnessing each girls talk to their therapist. It more than possible that it had an influence over the way I've read what you said.

 

[danarchist_lewd]

Outside of the stuff folks have already said about how your dialogue should feed into either plot, character, or exposition.

Your narrative flow should basically work like this:

1. Event of some kind occurs that...
2. Our characters react to, which causes them to...
3. Act, which causes consequences (this is step 1 again).

You repeat this process indefinitely.

Now, in a slice of life, these events are often very low stakes. Here's an example:
-MC starts dating some one new, and...
-That person takes them on a date, which goes poorly, so...
-Our MC talks to their friend about how the date went, and as a result...
-They resolve to do something different on the next date.

Your gameplay mechanics can feed into this system as well. Here's an example of what that might look like:
-Player chooses to go on date with some one.
-Player makes dialogue choices on date that their partner doesn't respond well to.
-The date does not end with sexy times, which the player wanted.
-Another character asks them how the date went. This is actually an opportunity to directly tell the player what, in gameplay terms, went poorly. imo you should be as obtuse as possible with this stuff.
-Then the player can choose what to do with that info. It varies depending on your game.

I think if you couch your dialogue in this format, it will help you let the dialogue flow through to where you're trying to get.

 

[woody554]

yeah, the short choppy sentences bother me too. but it's probably better for a bad writer to eliminate his shortcomings through that than writing long BAD lines. for most of us it would only mean added drivel, making reading it excruciating. writing is hard.

 

[woody554]

For a conversation about a subject to be interesting, characters would need to have different opinions.

or ANY kind of conflict. like the reader knowing something character/s don't, characters knowing something we don't, leaving us hanging about something, setting up secrets but not telling what it is, and so on.

analysing good movie dialogue is very instructive about how incredibly many ways there are to inducing conflict. even something like ghostbusters has a different conflict hidden within EVERY line, which makes their random banter interesting without any overly dramatic 'in walked a man with a gun' gimmicks.