How to Write Visual Novels

Naturally grow your Visual Novel from ideation, to script, to branching narratives with this seamless creation process and other visual novel writing tips that will bring your game to fruition!
EPILEPSY WARNING from 1:42 to 1:46

00:00 The Process
00:25 The Idea
03:25 The Outline
08:58 The Script
12:54 Don't Skip Editing!
14:51 Branching Narratives
22:15 Add Gameplay
23:26 Polish!
27:57 Example in Action

[deckrect]

Writing a character profile is a two edged sharp vorpal sword. I've seen people stuck writing useless data and seen people getting great ideas from it to add scenes and conflicts. I prefer sticking to what my college teacher told me: If you can't see it in the story, it doesn't exist.

[exodusthethirteenth]

Here's a piece of advice that helped me as a writer. Write an idea of a character. The reader will only take away certain information about your character. The idea I have is to put that in the spotlight. Make your character embody the memory in a sense. If someone was bad to you, you don't remember what they did, just that they did it. Your mind paints them in a bad light, and in a subjective story this would help out a lot.

In terms of writing other smaller characters, you should keep a bunch ready, as a dungeon master I've had to do this, and when my players veered off course, we ended up using a bunch of these characters. They were basic characters that were given life through the choices the reader made.

[magpie_monster]

having a central story arc is such a good idea. I love vns and want to write one myself, but I always get bogged down in thinking about branches too quickly. great video!

[zenenez]

I was so confused for the first like... five minutes of this video, because you mentioned branching paths and I was GENUINELY wondering why webcomics would have branching paths. It took me five minutes to remember that visual novel is not another way to say webcomic and I about lost it. LOL. Good video though, 9/10, gonna go make a VN now.

[deckrect]

I used to be strongly opposed to choices leading to minor variations, because it felt like cheating, and every choice had to have impact. Impact still true, but I realized you may provide variations that changes the reader's understanding and the overall meaning of the whole story or a bit of it. And that's a powerful tool.

[moork]

I'm just at that stage of starting the writing, and it's really nice to have this kind of tips and pipeline. Thank you!

[nosywendigo]

Beginning and end is easy. The middles are the toughest to fill in. It can be daunting and scary. Maybe a video on how to fill in the middle?

[deckrect]

I specially like this video because it states some little tips that I had to find by myself, like the concept of a living document or writing down scenes and then arranging it into the outline. One thing I found that proved to be useful in my process is writing one or more scenes when I feel I'm stuck arranging the outline. I'm working in a project that was going very bad. I did write a scene and all changed. The characters, plot, mechanics... everything still the same. But it helped me finding the tone. Other times, writing a scene allows you to foreshadow the elements and the order they must come. Also, never fear rewriting what you already done.

[dnightwalker]

I have to add that, from experience, you have to be careful when you're writing your story. Everything you write down is potentially more assets that you're gonna have to add to your VN. Know your limits, and keep them in mind when writing. If you can only afford to commission art for a kinematic VN, and you're thinking of branching paths, then just make sure that the branching paths don't require new art, music, voice acting, etc.

[Mjumiman]

A big video on storytelling process? What a treat! Also, I don't know if I mentioned this yet but I really love your lighting setup.

[mushroomcrepes]

I've written 4 visual novels in the past 2 years and never finished any of them cause I am too ambitious and just start doing everything head on without thought. But this time I really want to write it out and plan everything!

[diqhcqr]

7:30 my favorite example of this is Katekyo Hitman Reborn! that started out as a gag manga and in 80 chapters turned into an action manga unlike anything else at the time (and currently on shonen jump). the second major arc after the tone shift still remains as one of the best arc seen in shonen jump!!

[ightdreamer]

Ive always dreamed of making games such as visual novels or RPGs.
And Visual Novels is a main thing I wanna start doing!

[ShadowoftheMask]

Lot of useful advice here(especially when it comes to practical stuff like outlining and branches, I have hard time grasping how to write or plan out a branch), though always good to remember that different people have different writing styles, so for me lot of advice here just sounds kinda alien because I never really have issue of "umm what is this character doing here" problem since my writing approach is this weird train of thought which kinda starts from character personal motivations rather than idea of what I want to happen :'D

Other thing I would comment that its usually better to do what you want to do rather than trying to figure out what would be profitable, since besides it being kinda hard to do market research, usually you do better writing anyway if you like what you are doing rather than trying to do something you aren't interested in but you suspect might be more popular.

[igretrovods]

1:43 that clip can be dangerous. Maybe a small seizure warning can be helpful

[bradnealip]

This is SO SO helpful. I'm only halfway through this video, and I've already gained so much traction on my idea. Thank you so much :)

[shaynsnyolo]

Wow almost nobody talks about this. Big up to you for making a vid about this!

[Inddesign]

i must get this out of my sistem...

i am currently on hiatus of my 1st "published" interactive novel, I was very discouraged by the lack of options that was given to me, also the bugs erasing my work.

(i got this crazy idea of writing in english when I am an industrial designer and a non english native speaker.😂😅)

but I still do not want to abbandon that "child" of mine. writer's block is serious, people!


your advice and channel is pure gold!❤ thank you!

but i am overwhelmed 😢

[HappyQCoins]

Have been thinking of starting on a visual novel The only 'professional' experience I have is illustrating, but I always wanted to write stories as well. I'll be revisiting this as a guide to get me through; thank you so much for this!

[IgloNudelGames]

Hey, thank you so much for making this video! I really enjoyed it, I am going to be making my first visual novel. Due the to concept and complexity I have in mind, as well as time pressure, it feels a little overwhelming. However, this video was very encouraging! It was nice to confirm that my approach to writing and planning isn't too off, haha. It was also great to get some advice on how to branch the narrative and maintain an overview - some of the more scary things. So thank you very much :DD