Show, Don't Tell vs Internal Dialogue

[SatinAndIvory]

I am making an incest visual novel where I mostly follow the idea of "show, don't tell", where I try to use facial expressions and other images to show what a character is thinking without flat out telling you. It works well for the type of storytelling I'm going after. However, I think things get interesting when it comes to sex scenes.

I think "show, don't tell" in a sex scene could be very interesting. For example, you could slowly see all the visual signs of a mother's expressions and her body language as she slowly goes from apprehensive to more and more into touching her own son's cock. There's an art to purely visual storytelling that can be pretty effective and hot.

However, I think the internal dialogue of the mother as she attempts to reason or justify touching her own son's cock can be very hot as well. The battle raging back and forth in her own head that her son isn't privy to, as well as how it contrasts with what she might be saying to her son in that moment, is pretty hot imo.

Maybe the better way is just to combine both and have lots of visuals to convey this internal conflict, while also utilizing internal dialogue to do the same. But then, wouldn't this be jarring for the players if there is no internal dialogue for the entire visual novel except during sex scenes? What do you think?

 

[Advent Games]

It's either, or. It's an amateur mistake to swap narrator types. So, either you make the reader privy to everyone's internal thoughts (an omniscient narrator), or you only convey what the point-of-focus character is thinking (first or third-person limited narrator).

I know this flip-flopping happens often in indie-porn games, mainly as an easy vehicle to reassure the player/protagonist that what they're doing is accepted and consensual with the love interest. It's still technically an amateur mistake.

 

[Sir Gary Bummer]

It can be pretty tough to work with facial expressions in VN's. I typically feel the need to exaggerate them, since a subtle smile or frown doesn't come across as easily in a static image. At the same time you don't want characters to look silly, so you have to find a good balance.

When it works, expression and body language showing a characters internal conflict is usually superior to internal monologue, IMO. The issue is in the difficulty of making it work.

I know this flip-flopping happens often in indie-porn games, mainly as an easy vehicle to reassure the player/protagonist that what they're doing is accepted and consensual with the love interest. It's still technically an amateur mistake.

That's why I, as a true professional, only flip-flop for the sake of bad jokes.

 

[Doorknob22]

I am making an incest visual novel where I mostly follow the idea of "show, don't tell", where I try to use facial expressions and other images to show what a character is thinking without flat out telling you. It works well for the type of storytelling I'm going after. However, I think things get interesting when it comes to sex scenes.

I think "show, don't tell" in a sex scene could be very interesting. For example, you could slowly see all the visual signs of a mother's expressions and her body language as she slowly goes from apprehensive to more and more into touching her own son's cock. There's an art to purely visual storytelling that can be pretty effective and hot.

Yes. Absoloutly. It's not called "very interesting", it's called professional writing.

However, I think the internal dialogue of the mother as she attempts to reason or justify touching her own son's cock can be very hot as well. The battle raging back and forth in her own head that her son isn't privy to, as well as how it contrasts with what she might be saying to her son in that moment, is pretty hot imo.

No, no, fuck no. Show, don't fucking tell. You have one main character: stick to him. You can show the conflict of secondary characters by their actions: Expressions. Body language. Turning to leave. Coming back. Hand gestures. Postures.

Don't hesitate to sometimes have images with no text, you don't have to describe what the players are already seeing. But for the love of god, please don't give your players internal dialogs of secondary characters. It's just so... amateurish.

The fact that you're aware that hearing the thoughts of secondary characters is problematic is encouraging. Good luck!

 

[balitz Method]

Keep in mind that you don't have to take creative writing 101 advice as gospel and that sometimes the thrust of it is more important than following it to the letter. What "show, don't tell" usually means is that relying on exposition as a crutch can lead to less effective storytelling just because declaring something is both less interesting than and more dead than presenting it without that measured "here's what this is" sort of explanation. Once you've explained something people tend to stop thinking about it and take the explanation as the final word on the subject.

It's not -really- referring to things like internal dialogue that expresses what someone's feeling in the moment. With that you just have to use your judgment. Sometimes nonverbal communication says it best, but when someone's really struggling through something that anguish can be more engaging if you're plugged into their thoughts. A nice exercise is to write full thought commentary for the scene and then reread it a few times, trimming here and there to find the best spots to mix in visual storytelling.

Remember that a visual novel has a limited capacity for that, too; the text -should- be the star of the show and should get preferential treatment. In this medium the visuals are a spice.

 

[balitz Method]

also don't let people scare you away from swapping point of view characters. Plenty of professional writers do it. As long as you're not being haphazard about it there's no reason why you can't swap narrators from scene-to-scene.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

I also don't think that you need to sheepishly follow the "show don't tell"-formula. This is definitely a very important advice for beginners who try purely to describe things instead of just adding some images to it, what makes the narration much more vivid. But when you look more in depth, there is much more to it and one can use different mixes of showing and telling in very meaningful ways.
Additionally one would give this "show don't tell"-advice even to a pure writer, who has no images to tell his story at all. And here it would mean to use more figurative language for narration instead of only conveying facts.
If you show the thoughts of your character or not is in my opinion rather a stylistic decision and can even be quite interesting, when you use it in a meaningful way.

As you say yourself, If you use thoughts only in sex scenes, you will face nevertheless probably a problem. It might come off as detached from the rest of your story and thus break the immersion of the reader. So you might have to show the thoughts of the Mom-Character throughout your VN to make everything feel more consistent. To highlight the good bits, you still can use thoughts in different intensity, so put in more thoughts, when the Mom-Character is in higher inner turmoil.