It's very normal if a reader or a spectator only knows manifestations, but not motivations. Imagine that you study "method acting" and you're given a script, and your task is to perform strange actions in a veritable manner. You have to mentally recreate thoughts and feelings of your role, creating a whole imaginary personality on a basis of just a few pointers.
If that's all this actor is getting, then the director isn't doing their job.
It's an interesting exercise BTW.
I don't think that authors have to be necessarily explicit about feelings and thoughts. A need to use your imagination to understand characters' actions can sometimes enrich the experience.
While that's fair, this also takes a lot of mental processing power. The way I fill in the MC's motivations might be entirely counter to what the dev intended, and I could, for instance, run into situations where I want a choice because the MC isn't reacting in a way I built him up in my mind. This in turn can lead to frustration and a total disconnect with the MC and what's happening in the story.
I do agree that not everything needs to be explained.
Show, don't tell, is important, certainly in a visual medium like AVN.
Your comparison with method acting leans closer to roleplaying, but if you try to roleplay this MC, like actively crawl into his skin instead of self-inserting... Then you don't get much to work with. This is a blank-slate MC who rarely takes the initiative, and whose (re)actions are (mostly) left up to the player. We get to know about his trauma, but not what he's dealing with in the day-to-day.
A snippet from my notes:
Code:
So far, this hasn't been a story about how he deals with his loss and how this impacts his everyday life, and I think that's a shame.
I would find this story far more compelling if I got to read the MC's thoughts and he shared his feelings. His thoughts wouldn't
only give us a baseline on his state of mind, but could also convey valuable background information about what's going on a in a scene.
For instance: what's going through his mind when Sarah puts his hand on her breast? Is he excited? Does he actively want this?
Does he think of Ella and what she'd think of this? Does he feel any shame or guilt related to her, and an inner conflict with
liking this experience?
With so little insight into what's going on inside his head, I don't see how we can have an MC who has an arc and grows as a person.
While the player can guide his actions, we only get an insight in his mental state when we refuse to engage. For instance, the way
he responded to Ben when declining the job offer.
The situation with Sarah is a good example of what I run into, I think. I was already conflicted about allowing her to cuddle, but eventually decided that it might be good to test the waters. Then, when she put the MC's hand on her breast, I wanted the option to pull the hand away. If the dev provided framing for certain options to be there (or not), then I would understand why, and take that information forward in future interactions.
"I want to show and not tell (I hate mental expression in games. If the character thinks something, then let him act accordingly and not write down his thoughts or useless dialogue)"
This is entirely fair, but I think it mostly applies to something like:
scene mc_grabs_coffee
MC "(hmmm coffee)"
When it comes to motivation, sometimes a thought is needed to make certain the audience is on the same page. Same for exposition, sometimes the MC thinking or referencing something can help the audience understand, where doing the same in dialog would feel clunky or out of context.
A hundred to one she wouldn't call any cops then. She actually didn't want to. Especially I'd get the impression that a girl of her dressing habits (and "social standing") might not like dealing with the police.
I entirely agree with that. I just think that the MC's worry and him being under his mother's thumb as a bigger threat than the 0.1% chance that Ella would actually call the cops.
PS. Ah, you mean not the behavior at the graveyard, but previously? Yes, likely.
Yeah, exactly. Though this is only through the benefit of hindsight. When the MC meets Ella, we really have no idea what's going on with the mother. (And arguably we still don't.)
