Word of advise to future developers : Stop cramming useless texts in your dialogues

[Andonthatday]

No really.
I LOVE a good story more than the sexy part itself. But so many developers out there just fails miserably in dialogue writing or justify it by narrating every action the character is doing. Its not immersive and is boring AF.

Don't write 5 sentences when 2 can do the job.
Your story is not that good for us to sit through back and forth texts for 15 interactions.
Write actions (or have them shut the door in anger) rather than narrating they're mad. We will get it.
Info dumps at the starting stages are a turn off. I'm not saying just go straight to sex but if that 15 sentence doesn't move the overall ARC of your story forward than its useless.

Every interaction needs to invoke or peel atleast one layer of the character. Write down adjectives of what defines your character and see if your dialogues showcases which traits.

 

[botc76]

Wise words.

 

[MissFortune]

Just like everything, there's good and bad infodumps. If your game is about a college student with a women's studies major, then yeah, there's zero actual need for that. Dialogue and showing over telling are going to do a lot of the work for you in a lot of ways. But if your game is about a lawyer, PI, Doctor, Government agent, or of the like, then it tends to get pretty involved.

Sometimes there's no easy or short way to break something down in a way that doesn't fuck up immersion beyond finding a way to explain it in the story/dialogue (explaining X to a new assistant/young hire/etc., or show X how to skirt the law in X way.). Point is, context and story will always demand how much you need. Sometimes that's more, sometimes that's less. But choosing an arbitrary number like 15 accomplishes nothing.

 

[botc76]

Just like everything, there's good and bad infodumps. If your game is about a college student with a women's studies major, then yeah, there's zero actual need for that. Dialogue and showing over telling are going to do a lot of the work for you in a lot of ways. But if your game is about a lawyer, PI, Doctor, Government agent, or of the like, then it tends to get pretty involved.

Sometimes there's no easy or short way to break something down in a way that doesn't fuck up immersion beyond finding a way to explain it in the story/dialogue (explaining X to a new assistant/young hire/etc., or show X how to skirt the law in X way.). Point is, context and story will always demand how much you need. Sometimes that's more, sometimes that's less. But choosing an arbitrary number like 15 accomplishes nothing.

I think this is more about the type of story where the MC constantly waxes philosophies or where the characters just go through the same conversation several times, or where every trivial detail is being explained again and again.

For me, it's not about the actual number of words, it's about what is actually being said through them. Reading five pages of an interesting discourse is fine, reading one page of boring filler dialogue that is completely unnecessary is not.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Sometimes there's no easy or short way to break something down in a way that doesn't fuck up immersion [...]

For me, it's not about the actual number of words, it's about what is actually being said through them.

Especially since it mostly depend on the reader.

Of course, there's a point where we will all agree that too much is too much, but whatever how important they are for the story, a series of dialog lines will always feel useless for someone who would totally miss their point. And, at the opposite, if you make it too obvious, precisely to ensure that everyone will get what is happening, then you'll find readers who will complain that their immersion have been broken by this baby talk.

Finding the right balance is just impossible when your game will be played by people all around the world and that lie in an age range that goes from 18 to 60+. They don't share the same references, the same culture, nor have the same life experience. A hint that would looks obvious for a 40+ years old West European have really big risks to be totally missed by a 20yo Asian by example.
There's a moment when you've to decide what will be your public, and to accept that a more or less big part of the others will find your game lame.

 

[rk-47]

context is important but it should be dripfed as the story goes on, we find out more as the game progresses until the ending when all is finally revealed, some infodump in the first scenes is fine but it shouldnt drag on

 

[woody554]

"don't be bad writers, be good writers."

it's an understandable complaint but futile.

 

[Chiakipus]

Still, writing decently well is a skill that can be learned. It might need more rounds of proof reading and rework if you're not a gifted prodigy, but most people aren't in any area, so w/e, it's just one of the many chores you need to do to deliver professional work.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

Writers, you just need to git guder! Duh! I mean, yes, writers need to git gud, but complaints are useless if you're not telling people HOW to avoid the mistake that irritates you.

In particular, infodumps are bad if you're not using any techniques to make them palatable, of which there are several. For a classical LORE INFODUMP you can, make it optional, use a Watson, frame it as a story (although this one is pro level, if you can do that, you don't need my advice)

 

[Chiakipus]

The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you even need one? Really, really need one?

Tolkien stowed his info dumps away in the appendices (and Hobbit never got one, despite multiple re-releases).

Literature nobel prize winner Ishiguro made it his trademark to never present a full picture in any of his novels, you only get glimpses as they emerge naturally from dialogue. (No, someone going "I know nothing about the world I live in, what's X?" for an hour isn't natural.)

Hemingway is famous for a very terse writing style that not only does away with that, but also keeps the descriptions to a minimum.

Mass Effect hides 90% of the lore dumps in optional dialog trees (never at the quick responses) and menu codices which you need to get out of your way to access.

And that's just some (fairly famous) examples.

When in doubt, just resist the urge to preach and present only the bare minimum. If people complain that they don't get things, you can always figure out a spot to put it later.

 

[Jack Madrigal]

Bah... it's hard to draw a line and say this is good and enough and this is too much horseshit, no matter how much you love something there's someone somewhere that wholeheartedly hate it.

Is the way that appeal to the masses the best way ? where do you define the limit of how many peoples you want to please?

Like Chiakpus mentionned and as I already said in another thread, there should be as much lore as you want, hell make it the cycles of dunes, but make it optional for peoples to access if they do so chose (like mass effect lore, world of warcraft etc, there's always somewhere a book, a datapad, a note that you can choose to ignore and that contain details about the world, in copious amounts of details.

that would be the only reasonable solution that could fix all the problems including world hunger.

 

[Count Morado]

It takes a lot of bad writing to become a good writer. It also takes a lot of reading to become a good writer. A lot of reading of bad writing. A lot of reading of good writing. Most of the developers on here have done none of the above. Also, there is a good number of developers writing in a language which is not native for them. For many, this is a hobby or a hunch or, at best, a side hustle.

Players will need to understand that and be more lenient in their assessment. Hemingway, Tolkien, King, Rice, Wordsworth, Twain, Chekov, Atwood are few and far between... even in the publishing world and most people only know of their works because they are taught in many schools. The average person barely reads the daily news, let alone literature.

 

[Glorified_ignorance]

Hmm, prolonging dialogue extends base time(game play) and value of actual project. More depth on

environment/atmosphere you are being dragged into was never a bad move imo.

I do believe majority of people don't mind this kind of things.

But demanding for dev's to stop what they love doing, is wrong.

Also what guy above me wrote.

 

[Hagatagar]

 

[Count Morado]

View attachment 2898830

 

[botc76]

Especially since it mostly depend on the reader.

Of course, there's a point where we will all agree that too much is too much, but whatever how important they are for the story, a series of dialog lines will always feel useless for someone who would totally miss their point. And, at the opposite, if you make it too obvious, precisely to ensure that everyone will get what is happening, then you'll find readers who will complain that their immersion have been broken by this baby talk.

Finding the right balance is just impossible when your game will be played by people all around the world and that lie in an age range that goes from 18 to 60+. They don't share the same references, the same culture, nor have the same life experience. A hint that would looks obvious for a 40+ years old West European have really big risks to be totally missed by a 20yo Asian by example.
There's a moment when you've to decide what will be your public, and to accept that a more or less big part of the others will find your game lame.

Hm, I don't quite agree. I mean, I agree partially, but not quite in regard to that the perceived quality of text/dialogue depends mostly on the reader.
I think there are standards of quality that hold for everything, and I think more often than not real talent and skill will be recognized. Maybe you won't have the biggest following or the highest money count on patreon, but you will have your fans, just like directors like Tim Burton or Wes Anderson don't always make huge blockbusters, but their films always find their audience-

 

[Northern_Blade]

If we put aside elaborate sentences and unneccessary word padding for a second ... I think writing the same scene with more vs less words really affects the vibe.

It's like how long a shot lasts in a movie. The more verbose the description, the slower the pacing. This gives the reader more time to breathe, to pause, and to interpret what was said. Like a particularly long shot in a movie, this slows the pacing down and makes the reader lingers over every little detail.

The fewer the words however, the faster the pacing. Quick. Lightning. Racing breathlessly onto the next scene.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] but you will have your fans, just like directors like Tim Burton or Wes Anderson don't always make huge blockbusters, but their films always find their audience-

Aren't you proving my point ?
They make good movies (well, Anderson have some fails too), but there's way more people who totally miss the qualities of those movies, than people who appreciate them to the point they felt in love with it.

 

[Jack Madrigal]

If we put aside elaborate sentences and unneccessary word padding for a second ... I think writing the same scene with more vs less words really affects the vibe.

It's like how long a shot lasts in a movie. The more verbose the description, the slower the pacing. This gives the reader more time to breathe, to pause, and to interpret what was said. Like a particularly long shot in a movie, this slows the pacing down and makes the reader lingers over every little detail.

The fewer the words however, the faster the pacing. Quick. Lightning. Racing breathlessly, like an action sequence. Onto the next scene.

There's always something that unsettle me with AVN as you call them is when there's a graphic support, you visibly see what's going on and the text describe in detail what you're looking at, I always find that to be absurd, why is there the need to tell me what they are doing when I can see it just fine xD

I'm ready to bet you can remove a lot of excess text if you let the obvious for the eyes to see and focus on eventual inner-monologue or perhaps talk about the senses, the smell the warmth, the blood pounding in your temples...

and also vulgarities, I hate dirty talking, it always make me cringe, I understand that porn can't always smell like Dove soap, but damn...

 

[woody554]

Hmm, prolonging dialogue extends base time(game play) and value of actual project.

I'm just rambling by nature. when I need a 7 line scene I write 11 pages. then I cut 10 pages. then fix that 1 page of snippets I have left, but when it's done it's 7 pages again.

it's not that I don't understand the problem, it's just that if I turn my back for one second there's 10 pages more. making it deliberately longer is the last thing I ever think about.