What is your writing process?

[Slooty_StoriesX]

Specifically, how do you organize your notes for your visual novel and keep them straight? Do you keep a separate doc for each 'route' for example, or do you just have one massive doc sectioned off as needed, or what? Any apps you find particularly useful when it comes to writing or organizing?

 

[Winterfire]

Game Design Document for the general "tree" (routes, etc. Including the intro and the end).

Everything inbetween has no organization, and I've been fine with it.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

Multiple txt files split by act and chapter, with some google sheets for keeping track of the technical side of things. Variables, common scripts, etc.

 

[Slooty_StoriesX]

hmmm Ok, I see. I also see some helpful guides liinked in your message....

 

[AllNatural939]

In my case, the main story was written before I even started the game. Any alternate route, any detour from the original plan, exists only in this crazy little head of mine...

 

[anne O'nymous]

To summarize the answers: Everything that works for you is the "good way" to do it.


But this:

In my case, the main story was written before I even started the game.

Is the most important point.

You don't necessarily need to have all the story written down to the last detail, but you need to know all the key points and possible outcome. Too many games end abandoned, or with a rushed ending, simply because the author reached a point where he don't know how to continue his story. And the only way to
avoid this is to know the whole story first.

Having an answer to those four questions is more than recommended:

• What is the MC final goal?
• Why the MC want to achieve this goal, or have to achieve it?
• How the story will end?
• What will be the all intermediary step that the MC will have to pass before he reach his goal?

Ideally, those four points should also regard each one of the character playing a role in the story.

Then you put all this together into a coherent story line. Something like:

• The MC starts to notice weird things
• The MC investigate them
• The MC encounter X

Here come the first branching. Either:

• The MC investigate on X, believing that she's responsible
• The MC confront X
• The MC learn that X is also investigating
• X don't trust the MC as is reluctant to collaborate

or:

• The MC ignore X
• X notice the MC
• X investigate on the MC, believing that he's responsible
• X confront the MC
• X don't believe that he's just investigating

Then it fallback on a common route, with slightly difference on the writing depending what path have been followed:

• The MC understand that he have to earn X trust
• The MC learn that X have [whatever] issue
• The MC works on solving X's issue
• The MC earn X's trust

and so on.

That way, you'll never be really stuck. You can temporarily not know how to write the next scene, but you'll always know what is the next step that you need to reach. Therefore, you'll at least know what the next scene need to looks like, what will seriously help.

 

[eevkyi]

I use

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to keep things organized. Regarding the entire process, after defining all the routes in a gdd, I create one or more diagrams using

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to better visualize all the branches. Then, I start writing each of the routes in text files with

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(using the

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to catch mistakes), making notes on a trello board as needed.

In a solo project, once this is complete, I reread everything and see if any revisions are needed before actually starting to insert the dialogues into the game. In other scenarios, I forward the material and wait for feedback.

 

[papel]

Personally, if I was doing a VN with several routes, I'd use either dokuwiki or otterwiki, so that I could make graphics out of the routes with Mermaid syntax. Example -

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The code below works on otterwiki, you can try it on their demo page.

```mermaid
graph TD
    Start[Scene 01] -- Player agrees --> R1(Route 1)
    Start -- Player disagrees --> R2(Route 2)
    Start -- Player flees --> SC3(Scene 3)
    R1 -- Maria shows up \n Kisses player--> SC2{Scene 2}
    R2 -- Lara shows up \n Berates player --> SC2
```

With wikis, it's easy to link words or phrases to other pages, so you could have a page for each Scene, a page for each Character, etc. You'll have to get used to writing stuff in markdown and mermaid can take some time to get used to, but it can be useful.

 

[Turning Tricks]

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is a nice app for organizing your thoughts and stories. I've played with it a bit and will be switching over to using it for my planning, once I start my next project.

 

[Slooty_StoriesX]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone. Much appreciated!

 

[drsnake]

Me and my co-dev, wrote the initial draft simply in google docs.
We used it mainly because we'd like to keep alot of things in the same place, other assets etc. where also shared through google drive.
Now i gotta say, most of the initial draft got completely revamped inside the game, so most of the dialog lives inside engine..
That's definitely not the 'smart' thing to do, but it's how things evolved inside our project..