I was actually wondering how many fans of 07th expansion are writers here. While I’m not expecting anything too spectacular, I guess it would be interesting to see other people’s stories they’ve either thought of or written.
Anyway, I guess you can say this thread is focused on sharing our story ideas with each other, giving tips/comments, and just generally seeing our potential as authors. And I’d prefer this thread to strictly be original ideas, so no fanfiction.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a writer, but I’m working on a little VN for the NaNoRenO 2017 thingy. For anyone unaware, NaNoRenO is a VN contest of sorts where devs make a VN in a month. There’s no prize or judging involved, it’s just done to encourage more people to make VNs.
I originally wanted to do something involving time travel, but plot lines with time travel get complicated so I cut it back and instead just tried to touch on some of the ethics of time travel.
Basically the story follows a rather helpless guy on a blind date. The date doesn’t go well, not an unsurprising outcome for him, but then something unexpected happens. He bumps into an old man offering his services. He has a device that can wipe the last few hour’s of memory from someone. He offers to use it on the heroine so that the protagonist can “replay the route” and try again at the blind date. The protag can then keep replaying the route until they pick the right choices. However each blind date ends up going a little different than the last…
(My VN ending twist)The twist is that the device is a scam, with the heroine and old man just pretending it works so the protag keeps paying to use the device.
While I’m hoping to keep most of the story pretty light hearted and humorous, I wanted to touch on the ethics of time travel, where such travellers are basically overriding the choices other people for their own benefit. This also kind of applies to VNs themselves, where players are almost behaving like stalkers in the way they’ll reload an earlier save to find just the right choices to manipulate people into doing what they wand.
We’ll see how it goes, I’ve absolutely no writing experience so I expect the VN will be terrible (if it’s ever finished at all), but hopefully it’ll be fun to try~
This actually sounds really interesting! Reminds me of Steins;Gate a bit.
(spoiler for the VN bunny is writing)
But if the device is a scam, how do the heroines memories get erased? Drugs?
Edit: There’s this story I’ve been trying to write since middle school-it sort of takes inspiration from When They Cry, Baccano, and (recently) The Great Gatsby. It really hasn’t gone anywhere since last year, and I’m considering scrapping it cause I feel like I borrowed to the point of plagiarism, and mostly cause the writing is so chunni I want to vomit.
Ah Steins;Gate was one of the inspirations. Me and my friends who are making this VN are also huge Zero Escape series fans, but didn’t want to throw in as many plot holes as those have. Just focus on one thing that had a logical answer.
(My VN twist)The heroine is in on the scam, she’s just pretending to not remember the protagonist each time so that the old man can then demand money afterwards to erase her memories again. We’ll try to drop hints in the writing about this, so at first, you think maybe the reason the Heroine slips up and uses the protag’s name before they introduce themselves is because of an after-effect of the device or something, but it’s actually just because she’s screwing up the scam.
Thought some music might be appreciated:
Oh nice! I wonder how much they’d charge to use it in a freeware VN?
Oh cool! I like the notion of this topic.
Most of my stories are up on GitHub, and most of those are short stories. Some are just meant to be humorous and not serious at all (granted the former takes a dark turn, which is itself intended as a different type of humor), while others, like this one, are written more seriously. It depends on how long I’ve been awake when I go to write a story I guess.
The longest story I’ve worked on, “Blur,” – slightly incomplete, needing a few paragraphs to finish it – comes out to between 60 and 90 pages depending on formatting, but it’s far too cringe-y to read through. That said, I did force @soggysadboi to read it, and he may or may not have died in the process.
This sounds like it could be a pretty funny story! I’m interested in seeing how it’s executed and how the protagonist reacts to a device like that supposedly existing, and to what happens in the end. Good luck on the VN! I’ll be sure to read it when it’s ready.
I know that feel.
For that longer work I mentioned earlier, it has “a bit” of chuunibyou trash in it and I’m just overall not satisfied with how it progresses or how certain dialogues and actions are executed. So I’ve been planning to actually rewrite the story for the longest time, but I’ve either been too busy or just not motivated enough to work on it.
Anyway, good luck with your story should you continue working on it!
I’m a writer! I haven’t written much published material, and my current attempts at murder mystery novels are stewing in my dropbox/Google drive, as I’m not satisfied with my writing skill yet to try and send the manuscripts to an agent…
But they exist! And are heavily influenced by the Detection Club and Umineko. As is the curse with most aspiring (and probably actual) novelists, there’s too many story ideas and not enough time to write them all, haha. Which is fine, since half of them are trash anyway.
Basically my reaction when I re-read my most recent manuscript a few months back. Though parts were better than I remembered, the whole was cringe. lol. The locked rooms were fun, though ^^
my life too. Probably most of our lives. I really need to set a time to crank out an hour of writing every day, or something.[quote=“BunnyAdvocate, post:2, topic:1092”]
I’m working on a little VN for the NaNoRenO 2017
[/quote]
I worked on one of those too! Back in March 2015? I think so. With Kinjo Goldbar, if I recall correctly…author of Detective Butler? It took a month longer to finish most of the assets, and then the whole thing was cancelled in the end, but it was a crazy ride. I had the most ridiculous spreadsheet on Google Drive, which we ended up scrapping. It was a ton of fun, though. I might return to the VN world someday. VNs are pretty fun, haha
I’m a writer, working on a novel at the moment. My short stories tend to be fanfic because it’s easier and I write them more as a break from my bigger projects.
My novel does take some inspiration from Umineko with the theme. I guess if you want the elevator pitch it’s about the daily life of citizens in a near-future utopia-ish megacity, except not really because the main cast are all inhuman lesbian witches with deep seated issues(which is the main Umineko influence I suppose).
I’m not seeing any spoilers in my posts here so far. 'Less you’re talking about the Steins;Gate reference.
(spoilers for Umi pairings)
Last time I checked, Beatrice and Battler canonically banged and Ange shacked up with Amakusa.
Lambda+Bern were confirmed before either of those pairs, disregarding the fact the ‘lesbian’ part was the least important part of that sentence wrt to Umineko.
It’s a small world. After all, @pictoshark is currently trying to convince all of us to read that.
Ah okay, I just was confused by the wording in your earlier post. Didn’t realize you were referring to your novel and not R07’s.
slam dunks self back into existance in this forum
Incoming long ass post
Did someone mention writers and stories?? I do stories, yes.
Anyway, considering I want to become an animator or at least a comic artist, I have a lot of ideas of my own. My official project currently is on hiatus, but it’s just a doctor who pony ask blog, but I’m damn proud of the story because most of it is my own original characters and I thought up most of the creatures, adventures, how the entire universe works, etc etc. It is a bit of a fanwork unfortunately, but come on now, I am waaay too proud of this project. Although I’m probably not gonna link it up here because I don’t think any of you are type to like a “doctor who” and “pony” thing. Besides, it’s on a hiatus. So doesn’t matter, haha.
Oh but this is only a project that is already in works. I have tons of other stories in mind that I want to develop eventually. Granted I’ve been mostly developing the worlds and individual character stories than a full on storyline arc.
For one, I have a world where magic exists, and I even did an animated video (For a final project for multimedia class) that takes place in it, featuring one of my really personal characters, Violetta. She’s an asshole, and uses illusion/nightmare magic, so she can manipulate people to do her biding, and she’s generally a really powerful magician who’s only goal is to get to a point in life where she can be treated as a princess. In the animation however, it’s mostly shown her backstory, how she became the person she is today. But the gist of it is that she cared waaay too much of what other people thought of her and she had pride issues, but then she decided to only impress herself and not care about anyone else. Aaand she almost killed her asshole brother and ran away at age 15. And became one of those magic trick street magicians. I haven’t figured out how she goes from there, but it’s slowly getting somewhere.
Another character that exists in this same world is a character that I just call “Scarf”, (don’t ask, it makes sense to me), and she’s basically an immortal being who in truth is a sprite who’s just pretty much possessing a corpse, with the addition of remembering what that corpse remembers, aaaand she basically loves everyone, goes on adventures and shenanigans, and she just cares and worries about everyone and tries to help. And she likes strawberries and teasing ponies until they just melt from blushing too much.
And I have a lot more characters in this world, but this is not all.
Another idea I have is specifically for a rpg type of game I wanna make, which takes place in the normal every day world, except with some supernatural elements hidden in plain sight. It features a girl who has a ghost of her dead brother following her around, and doesn’t understand why she can see him and not anyone else. But she just accepted it and just tries to look normal in front of her parents. And brother gets confused on why she sometimes ignores him, since he sort of still thinks that he’s alive. And then she moves into this weird town village thing and she starts seeing more strange things and even gets inside an abandoned house, and after some shenanigans and a knockout later, she meets these two other people. One is a dude called Miguel, who doesn’t react much to anything and has just this constant blank stare, as if he had no soul or whatever, but he’s an expert in supernatural stuff. The other one looks like a young girl with bat wings, but she’s in reality a soul eating demon called Veronica, only Miguel and the protagonist can see her, excluding other supernatural creatures, at this point in time at least. And she sustains herself from constantly eating Miguel’s soul, 'cause in this world, souls can regenerate as long as the body is still alive to contain memories. So anyway, this trio will just get into shenanigans with other supernatural creatures, like ghosts, demons, witches, psychics, some urban legend creatures, etc etc.
Anoooother idea I have involves anthropomorphic animals, this one I wanna turn into an animated series for adults, as is like, it’s styled as a cartoon for kids, but geared towards adults and adult problems. I don’t really have a story for this one yet, but I at least have a cast of characters I wanna use.
And then, I have a multiverse world, for now I just call it the Bookverse. (spoilers for Umineko Chiru, probably mostly for EP7-EP8) This one is heavily inspired by umineko’s meta world, in a way that each story contains a world by itself and that there are people who enjoy these stories and the fact that the characters from these stories can come out and interact with others Not sure if I explained this properly. I thought of this universe after listening to “Der Vorleser” and created a character named Charlotte, who’s just a character who doesn’t remember anything about herself, more into this sometime later if people are interested Anyway, in this multiverse, each story is a universe, which by themselves contain “Characters” who just follow the story, and “Aware Characters”, who are aware that they are inside a story and get out of it whenever they like, think of characters that break the 4th wall. (Maybe I should just call them Wall Breakers, lel) Outside of these stories, there are the creators of the stories, the “Writers”, they always carry a book with them to write on and perform some feats. In some universes it’s magical, in others it’s a destiny changer, and in others it barely works. These people can pretty much be considered gods, but most of them try to just pretend that they are simple characters, since they live in hiding, normally. Then we have the people who are in charge of keeping order within this multiverse, the “Editors”. For reasons, they think that writers are dangerous because they are too powerful, so they are usually ordered to find writers and turn them into “bookworms”… turning them into worms that can’t do anything basically. But they wish to maintain order, and have these special gloves in one of their hands that allows them to move between universes/stories.
Anyway, most of these can live within stories, or within hub worlds, basically worlds where there’s no story going on, it’s just a place where aware characters and, to some degree, normal characters can meet other characters and aware characters from other stories, and it’s a place where editors are born, raised, and trained by other editors. Think of that hub place from Wreck-it Ralph and replace gaming characters with characters from books or comics. Most of my stories exist within this multiverse, aaand I also have characters who are authors and editors.
Oh and this is not even diving with collaborative stories I have with my boyfriend and others. But as far as my own stories go, these are my main ones at least.
Hey guys the forum is now usable so I can tell you all about my dumbass brainchild.
I’ll just talk about the setting. Easier that way.
Alchemy was an ancient art, one that allowed humans to turn certain substances into others using complicated sigils that each had their own function, almost like a programming language. It allowed one to turn straw to gold, transform compost to the finest steel and even make potions that had bizarre effects on the human body. Knowledge of alchemy made a mere man into a god that could do whatever he wished given the time.
You may have noticed the above sentence was all in the past tense.
Alchemy no longer works. When it was brought into the world by a being in a realm we cannot even begin to understand it was set up in a very clever way. Instead of paying the upkeep cost for Alchemy themselves, the being set it up so Alchemy was powered by humanity’s belief in it.
There is one piece of Alchemy that still works in this modern scientific era. One technique that sits outside the rules, one potion that is a special case. The Elixir of Life, as it would be ridiculous for those who drank it to continue aging if people stopped believing in them.
The elixir makes people immortal by transforming ordinary human beings into Phoenixes. Creatures almost identical to humans.
Phoenixes can choose to shatter if they take sufficient damage, a terribly painful process where they break into billions of tiny red crystals and then reform with no wounds. They never age, are immune to temporal attacks (no time travel shenanigans) and can use the Phoenix Arts, terribly powerful abilities that are kind of like magic spells from a video game. The only way you can identify a Phoenix is their orange eyes, perpetually razor sharp maxillary canines and burn marks on their back where one would expect wings to emerge from.
The being that created alchemy and the universe is in critical condition, the act of creating a whole world was already beyond it’s limits, modifying it to such an extent would obviously cause this outcome. The being is now so damaged that it acts like a mindless robot acting out the orders is gave itself to maintain the world without thinking about them. As Alchemy and Phoenixes were added recently they are higher on it’s priority list than the rest of the universe. In addition, it only has a limited power output.
If too many Phoenixes are alive at once, the universe might cease to exist.
In recognition of this threat a cross country government funded organization called the Immortality Prevention Agency was brought into being. It was founded to track down samples of the Elixir and destroy them before they fall into the wrong hands.
Then the IPA’s R&D division discovered something. How to kill Phoenixes.
They discovered that every time a Phoenix uses a Phoenix Art something called a Phoenix Feather appears at a random point on the globe that corresponds to the Phoenix that created it. The Feathers themselves are incredibly difficult to destroy, and just shatter and reform even if you do. They “freeze” if kept out of the sun for 24 hours which makes them trivial to detect across the planet with the right technology until they “thaw”.
Through a bizarre and very expensive process, the R&D team managed to find a way to imitate the ancient Alchemical art of infusion without using any Alchemy. Unfortunately each feather is rather picky about what weapon type it will accept being infused into. A weapon infused with a Phoenix Feather becomes a Phoenix Slayer, a weapon capable of killing the Phoenix that created it’s feather.
The paradigm has shifted for Phoenixes. Sure, they kept themselves hidden before now, but now their lives are on the line.
And for the IPA, who has no way of knowing how many Phoenixes there are in the world they have no choice but to move like the wind, killing as many Phoenixes as they can find.
To make matters more complicated there are whisperings of the return of the sister of Alchemy, that which elevates the human body to the level of the gods.
@NotKyon Thanks for your interest! I’ll be sure to link it here when the VN is done. As for the protag’s attitude towards the device’s existence, I’ll just say that this is a guy who accepted without question the claims of his landlady that the stains on the walls were a positive feature, something that gave the room an “authentic big-city vibe.”
@ghagler Oh I know that cringe feeling, but you can think of it as a positive. Cringing over your old writing is evidence of how much better you’ve become as a writer since then.
Oh you’ve done NaNoRenO too? A whole month seemed so long to write what seemed such a short story, but we’re nearly midway through already and we’re still going back and rewriting out concept. I can see why you’d need at least another month for some assets, I expect I’ll be the same. As long as I get to finish up this story, regardless of how long it takes, I’ll be happy.
@pictoshark Ah thanks for the reminder on the spoiler tag format. I couldn’t remember what the format was to give the spoiler label. I’ve edited my comments.
@Contessa A cast of inhuman lesbian witches with issues? I’m sold on the pitch already!
Ooohh, nice topic! All of you have a lot of fun/interesting ideas, and I’m a bit jealous 
I’m a writer as well! Though, not a very consistent or decent one, if you ask me. For that reason, not much of what I’ve written has escaped the Google Drive bin of failures and hopeless WIPs. Not to say I’m short on ideas, however.
When I do write well enough, I tend to lean towards science fiction. I’m currently working on a few things, one of which is focused on the limits of AI and the definition of “humanity,” and another about the ability to manipulate time, and essentially becoming a godlike being as a result. These two actually overlap, and take place within the same universe.
Recently, I’ve tried writing in a format fitting for a VN, considering how much I love the medium. Though it’s a bit tough to justify the extra work that would be needed to create one, sadly.
I’ve struggled with the same thing. It’s a lot more effort to craft a story that has a much smaller global audience.
On the other hand, VNs are an indie medium, so it’s a lot easier to get a “studio” started and rolling; traditional novels, on the other hand, have a steep uphill climb (as far as I understand it, for self-publishing) unless you get offered representation by an agent to sell it for you to the Big Booksellers.
For now, I think I’ll just work on novels unless an opportunity to make a VN comes along. I used to try and get a group on lemmasoft, but it proved too troublesome in the end. Not to mention I need to work on my writing skills regardless, haha.
Since we’re all talking about stories that we’re writing, I’ll mention the two murder mysteries I have cooking: one is fully written. 5 separate times, actually. It’s improved a lot since versions 0 and 1, but even version 5 still lacks a lot; I’ll have to come back and rewrite the whole thing in the future, as I can see some fundamental problems I had in the structure/prose/etc. that made me unsatisfied with it to begin with. That one’s a clear homage to And Then There Were None and Umineko: locked room murders at an island mansion with logic battles, etc. I definitely do want to rewrite it at some point, though; the locked rooms are too delicious to give up. 
That’s on break. I took some time to read a lot and try to get a better feel for how I wanted to write and how to write better, and am now ready to tackle another novel to try my new style out. It’s another murder mystery with locked rooms and logic battles with a truth language, but it’s a more fantasy setting: princess gets kidnapped, tracked to an abandoned forest mansion, people get murdered in locked rooms, and so on.
On a different train of thought:
In the Discord earlier, we were discussing that it might be a neat idea to have a murder mystery writing month for Rokkenjima’s writers! Since we’re knee high in lemmasoft’s current competition this month, maybe May? Thoughts? We can even form teams and such. Once we get the month down, I’ll post a “matchmaking” thread for those who want to work in groups and/or state their intentions of what to create. It can be a short story, a novel, a visual novel, and really anything except an actual corpse.
How do you guys find writing content for a VN compared with conventional short stories/novels? I’ve found it really difficult to get used to as there tends to be far less descriptive prose about how people speak or look, you rely on sprites and the interface to convey that for you. It’s also forcing me to break up my tendency towards long rambling paragraphs into shorter, punchier sentences; which is probably a good thing.
I mentioned already on Discord, but I’ll say here too; it sounds a really cool idea! I’m glad we’re waiting for May though, even if NaNoRenO officially ends at the end of March, I think we all know that we’re going to still be fiddling with assets and rewriting bits well into April.
