I'm writing something that I think I might turn into a simple text adventure. I'll spare you the details but its very self indulgent and I'm trying to find a balance between a plot that is overall very wholesome and a bunch of smut with all my weirdo kinks. The main character is distinct. They have their own history hang ups and are hopefuly pretty well fleshed out, but I kinda have trouble starting writing more than anything, so when I finally made myself start writing shit down I ended up vomiting up about 15k words of story told from the first person. It just felt right at the time, but looking back I'm wondering if things that people find enjoyable when read in third person may be a bit squicky in the first. That being said I haven't read many porn text adventures like that myself so I have no idea. I usually avoid self insert MCs in favour of MC's with more well built characters behind them, so I'm curious to hear opinions on how you identify with first person narratives like that, or if anyone can reccomend a text adventure simliare in style I can look at for inspiration.
How do you you guys feel about porn written in the first person?
- Thread starter SmallAngryLizardMan
- Start date
- Jun 10, 2017
- 10,966
- 16,214
It's not really different than first/third person for the visual itself, it totally depend of the reader/player.
But writing the whole story at the first person is generally more difficult than doing it at the third one ; at least if you want to do it right. You've first to find how you'll write the story itself, then stick to it.
Will it be:
- A diary, where everything will be narrated as a "recent past", including the scenes ;
Sorry mom, dad, I know that I messed. I promised to pass the day with you, and haven't done it. Is it my fault, or destiny ? I was already late, and like the elevator doors opened the instant I finished to lock my door, I rushed in and kicked down the girl who was trying to left at my floor. I know what you would have said, mom, sometimes I really just forget to think ; doors don't open at the 7 floor unless there's someone waiting to the elevator, or someone inside it. Sometimes it's even both.
- A confession, where everything will be narrated in past tense, with scenes possibly in present tense ;
it start years ago, I was lonely at this time, where I encountered this girl. I still just need to close my eyes to see this encounter as if it was just happening now:
I promised my parents to pass the day with them, and I'm already late. The instant I finish to lock my door, I see the elevator doors opening and, rush into it. Of course, would I have been thinking, it would have been obvious, there's someone inside... But I was not thinking and next thing I know, I knock down the girl who tried to exit.
- A living journey, where then everything will be seen from the instant, and where you'll have to have more dialogs ;
"Oh fuck, I'm late !"
I finish locking the door when I hear the elevator doors opening. Without thinking, an error probably, I rush. At least I'll not be more late.
"Hey !"
"Oh, I'm sorry"
Yes, it was an error to rush... I just kicked down the girl that was on the elevator.
This while a story told at the third person is generally easier to write. There's limits, obviously, but you can more freely switch from a tense to another for the narration. Is the story happening now, or is it something that happened a long time ago ? Perhaps are we reading the big books of destiny and we are having a glance of the future. All this don't really matter, we aren't living the story, we are witnessing it from whatever perspective.
It also offer you more liberties to switch from a point of view to another, since you seem to imply that there's more than one character. If you tell the story at the first person, you usually have to finish a chapter before you can switch to another point of view.
Honestly I'm not sure. The stuff I wrote yesterday was basically me just barfing up some scenes and things I'd been daydreaming up before I lost my nerve again. Feels really good to write now I've started though. It's all mostly in the moment with some past tense where the MC dwells on the past, or becomes caught up in bad memories. Now I'm giving it a proper editing sweep I've slipped into second person in a lot of points so that's gotta be fixed. Kind of showing my age with that. I like it but I have no idea if intimate scenes will work in second person so that'll be something to experiment with a bit. What do you think? I kind of like the punch of it. Instead of the text saying "I am x" it is telling you "this is who you are" and that kind feels more immersive to me wierd as that sounds? I'm gonna have to write out some more in both and see how it feels.
- Sep 4, 2020
- 91
- 47
Funny you should bring this up, since I just wrote up a post on my blog about this topic, after having walked through several other forum threads that had posted this question. I'll give the thumbnail sketch to what I discovered and my own feelings:
** There is, of course, a flashback narrative. In this form, the story is being told by a future self, so even though the narrative is 1st person, the narrator has more knowledge then was available at the time the events were happening. That can be an "out" to allow more flexible storytelling. But there are caveats. First, you have to do a flashback -- and for a VN that can have multiple endings, that means the "future" from which the narrator is speaking isn't really defined until the end of the "present" game. And second, even in the future, the narrator isn't going to have perfect knowledge. For instance, "As it turns out, my wife was having an affair with my boss..." leading to a scene in which the MC isn't present, but that "narrator-MC" knows happened, so it's OK to show it. Fine. Did the character learn this during the course of the story being told? If so, there needs to be a scene for it in the game. That locks the storytelling down -- it *has* to happen now. If the MC finds out after the end of the story, great, but how? If it's not shown, the player is going to wonder how it happened, and what happened because of it. Did the MC find out from his wife, from the boss, from someone else who had knowledge? If your story has a choice where then wife and the boss are eaten by aliens, you have a problem. A loose end if there is no effort to explain how the "narrator-MC" learned about it.
- I was surprised at how popular 3rd person was. Most games are 1st person it seems, and yet there is definitely a desire for 3rd.
- One of the criticisms regarding 1st is the sub-genre of POV. Some people think that POV games are really attempts by the dev to avoid having to render yet another character. Perhaps. There is also the problem that with strict POV, some of the "fun stuff" is going to happen where you can't see it. And oh yeah, when your character gets a kiss from someone in the POV game, assuming your eyes are open, you should be seeing a lot of forehead. Instead you often see puckered lips, meaning you're getting kissed right on your open eye. Weird.
- Narrative issues. Diegesis is a style of storytelling in which the viewer is told what is happening. This can be through direct narration or narrative-like techniques such as choosing a camera angle or even showing a scene somewhere else -- planet of Endor, Palpatine's throne room, bridge of the Rebel ship, back to Endor. A 1st person story with the MC as narrator would be autodiegetic. That can be limiting since we should only be able to see what the character is reasonably able to narrate**. The alternative is heterodiegetic, where the narrator is not a part of the story being narrated. In film or gaming, the narrator would be the omniscient camera moving from place to place to show those parts of the story that are relevant.
- Gaming issues. With 1st person, the choices are always those of the narrator. That can make it difficult to inject the choice of a different character into the game structure. So "Does the bully punch you or kick you?" choice seems odd -- if it's up to me to decide what the bully is doing, why can't I chose to have the bully just run away? In 3rd person, all the choices are being made for "other" people. Even the MC is someone else. In this sense, the choice mechanism is as free as the camera is to move where it needs to go to make the narrative proceed when the game is 3rd person. The choices are heterodiegetic as well.
- Immersion. Obviously 1st person ought to run away with this. What is more immersive than moving a virtual person around the world? Well, that sorta depends. One aspect is the quality of the writing. If "I" am forced to say badly written dialog ("All your base are belong to us"), the immersion is broken. And then there's the problem of the MC being a jerk. Or worse. There's a certain ick-factor intrinsic in the MC being a horrible person (lots of these games require the MC to be what can only be described as a psychopathic serial rapist) and that horrible person is me. Uh, no, I would never do that -- and boom, there goes the immersion.
** There is, of course, a flashback narrative. In this form, the story is being told by a future self, so even though the narrative is 1st person, the narrator has more knowledge then was available at the time the events were happening. That can be an "out" to allow more flexible storytelling. But there are caveats. First, you have to do a flashback -- and for a VN that can have multiple endings, that means the "future" from which the narrator is speaking isn't really defined until the end of the "present" game. And second, even in the future, the narrator isn't going to have perfect knowledge. For instance, "As it turns out, my wife was having an affair with my boss..." leading to a scene in which the MC isn't present, but that "narrator-MC" knows happened, so it's OK to show it. Fine. Did the character learn this during the course of the story being told? If so, there needs to be a scene for it in the game. That locks the storytelling down -- it *has* to happen now. If the MC finds out after the end of the story, great, but how? If it's not shown, the player is going to wonder how it happened, and what happened because of it. Did the MC find out from his wife, from the boss, from someone else who had knowledge? If your story has a choice where then wife and the boss are eaten by aliens, you have a problem. A loose end if there is no effort to explain how the "narrator-MC" learned about it.
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Fun fact: Video games, Interactive Fiction, and Role-Playing, are pretty much the only genres of writing in which you can use the elusive Second Person Perspective, and it pretty much just works.
Edit: Oh, and advice on web forums. Apparently, you can use it there, too.
Edit: Oh, and advice on web forums. Apparently, you can use it there, too.
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I agree. Without realizing it, I ended using 2nd person in my game... and it fits. The only sections where players complained were written in first/third person by mistake. Those two sometimes slip in while I write.
- Feb 27, 2019
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- 214
In my opinion, making a first person game is easier than a third person, it doesn't need calculating the player character's relationship with every NPC, that makes writing dialogue easier. Writing a story however, can be different, you'll lose the help of visual elements that allow the player feel the environment.
BTW, you should present your work in the way that flows the best, not in the way that you think "the audience" wants you to do it.
Consider: Nobody even knows what perspective your game is written in before they download it. They certainly don't care enough that developers put "Third Person Perspective" as a bullet point on the Steam page.