Today is November 17th. It is the four-months anniversary of our visual novel, Don't Give Up On Me!

It's not a year old game, but it's nice to take a look back and remind ourselves of the entire development process. Me and my dear friend and artist Ryuzi_nea gave our absolute best in creating a visual novel that could be hilarious, unpredictable, absurd, yet also heartfelt and emotional. And we couldn't achieve that without a careful attention to the writing itself.

My objective writing this series of devlogs is to explain how Don't Give Up On Me!  came to be - what were our ideas, struggles, changes, everything that may come to mind. And by sharing all of that with you, dear reader, I sincerely hope some of the things here serve as tips for your own writing - be it for a visual novel, be it for something else.

In the part one of this series, I discussed about the importance of finding inspirations for our story - what could be used as a reference of any kind? What could we integrate from this reference in your writing? What could we make different, applying our own spin to it? Meanwhile, part two was all about evoking the right emotions for our story, as a boring story isn't one any person would wish to read nor write.

Now, in part three, I'll discuss about pacing, building up, endings, summaries... that is, the story of the game itself.

The Story Itself

Alright, Ryuzi_nea and I knew the tone for our story. We knew what we wanted to evoke. How did we actually write the story?

One thing we knew that was absolutely necessary was to space out properly all the events. Writing something that's supposed to repeat its same premise over and over is dangerous, although not impossible. Even when evoking the necessary emotions, if things happen too close to another, it might overwhelm the player. If it takes too much for things to happen, it may feel like the story is dragging. You have to figure out the pace for your story.

Pace can be a hard thing to manage, and I also don't have many tips to how deal with it aside from one thing: you need to feel the pace of your own story. Don't just write it! Stop, read it and try feeling it all. Do you feel overwhelmed by so many things going on? Do you feel bored? It's important to determine these things out. In case you still don't know it? That's fine! You can always get someone to read it and share how they feel. Having a perspective from someone else is always great.

One other thing that was important for us was to decide on what would the story build up to. Of course, in the case of a happy romcom, what awaits in the end is the blossoming of love (not everytime, though). But how does it happen? It can't be out of thin air, otherwise it can be hugely anticlimactic. It's the end of your storyline, the highest point of anticipation! Something has to put things in doubt, or at least let you know things are ending, it varies.

Either way, the way a story ends is hugely important. You can have the best plot ever, but if it doesn't end well, it can ruin everything that can come before it. Suddenly, the whole journey you were loving is attached to an ending you're not fond of. That is really dangerous, so it was really important for Don't Give Up On Me! to end up in a emotional stake, a buildup from all the stress the protagonist felt. Now he has a last attempt to fix things, as he leaves his objective aside for a better cause.

One thing that I also recommend to anyone is to write loglines and a summary. In case you're not aware, a logline is a one-sentence description of your whole story. A summary is a paragraph that also describes your whole story, but in five to eight sentences (in my case, I tend to write specifically five lines max). It may not sound enough, but trust me, it helps a LOT. Writing a logline/summary can help you figure out what you need to emphasize in your story, avoiding that you get lost while writing it all. A logline can also be used to entice people to get interested in knowing your story, so keep that in mind!

Conclusion

Writing is certainly not so easy if you want to give it the best possible treatment. I'm sure you even feel overwhelmed by all of these tips and the sharing of experience when writing Don't Give Up On Me! (especially if you read all the three parts, which I strongly recommend you do). But I must say, there's no secret formula on how to write. All these things come from our own experience, you don't have to follow them at all, unless you really liked them.

In the end, you need to figure out what works for you, and that's something you figure out with experience. So go on and write your visual novel, movie, series, book, whatever! We all learn from trying. I'm sure Ryuzi_nea and I even learned some new things while writing Don't Give Up On Me!

So that's it. Thanks for reading this whole devlog, and I sincerely hope it helped you somehow! And while you're here, consider checking out Don't Give Up On Me! It's a free game, it'll surely be a great time for you.