"itās really hurtful and confusing when people stop engaging with us, and our brains tend to start filling in the blanks, and those explanations are often much harsher than reality."
I've been writing fic for ten years and have slowly gravitated towards solo visual novel development because of this.
On top of the usual self-doubt, my brain tends to delete the memory of creating a work once it's finished. Sometimes I legitimately have no memory of putting Those Words in That Sequence, which makes me feel like a stranger wrote the work.
The visual novel development process gives me a more tangible record of progress. I can open the files and see the art assets, the script, the animations. It may still be niche macaroni art that only appeals to an audience of exactly me, sure, but at least I don't feel quite like I'm weighing the value of my soul on the scale as I would throwing a fic into the void. My work exists regardless of whether the world ignores it.
Plus, I don't take low downloads as personally as low hits on AO3 because there are extra limitations and hurdles to consider. Not everyone is on itch.io, not everyone has the space, etc.
On a site that sees millions of daily visitors, where it costs them much less to access my fic, it's hard not to think I wasted my time if there's no response. Especially since I am a discovery writer, so my fics sometimes takes months or years to finish.
After a certain point, no engagement starts to feel less like a fluke of visibility and more like a waste of your finite time on Earth. I can't waste time beating myself up just because I write unpopular things in a weird style.
In addition, I often feel like social media is so Srs Bsns about the sanctified craft of writing that writers have forgotten how to have fun. You must outline, must save the cat, must have three-act structure, must show not tell, must not be OOC, must thread a narrowing needle between cinema and interiority, must update every week. You must write according to a shifting set of rules and mores. You have to write to fandom market, and tough luck if you write anything that falls outside of it. You have to write as though your work is going to be screenshot and spread around on TikTok. You must Suffer(tm) for your art to be considered any good, and man, how unappealing is that?
Visual novel development isn't always roses tbf, but here your work doesn't have to be the cream of the crop just to have a fighting chance. VNs and fic are also similar in that the mainstream considers them a child's version of a more mature art form. Like how fic is often unfairly characterized as "warm-up writing" compared to original fiction, VNs are considered "not real games."
Because VN dev involves so many different moving parts that can easily spiral into scope creep, I feel more allowed to be proud of simply completing a project. (Whereas I feel more like being told "you finished your fic!" can come across as a participation trophy at best; at worst, no one responds and you spend an hour staring at the wall in existential despair.)
Nor does your project's existence depend on the whims of an audience. If I want to throw in minigames, I can throw in minigames. I'm allowed to be my own audience and enjoy what I made because it's a toy that I built.
Hi gentle anon, thank you for sharing your experiences and reasons of how and why you got into visual novel development, it was really fascinating to read!Ā
So I have to admit I know absolutely nothing about visual novel development, but after your post, i did some research and went on itch.io, very cool!! (although i havenāt played a story yet but i plan to!, iām not quite sure where to start though, so any recs welcome)
(also for anyone else reading who is equally not sure what visual novel development is, my understanding is that theyāre immersive story-based games where you play through a narrative and make choices that affect what happens. Sort of a really sophisticated choose-your-own-adventure? please correct me if iām wrong!)Ā
Anyway there was a lot of great food for thought in what you wrote so iāll just pick up a couple of things if thatās ok cause otherwise iāll be here all day overthinking everything š
i really appreciated your point that visual novel development seems to change the relationship between creator and audience, cause fanfic can sometimes feel like, āI made this for people,ā whereas it feels like youāre saying something closer to, āI built this thing and it exists independently from being witnessed by people.āThe satisfaction comes not only from whether people engage with it, but from the fact that the thing now exists. I think that sounds really cool and healthy.Ā
I was also really interested in what you said about experimentation - yes agree,
sometimes fandom can feel pretty evaluative. Not because people are trying to be harsh, but because there are often unspoken ideas about what good writing looks likeā¦ Iāve definitely had experiences where Iāve tried something different and the response has essentially been, āthis wasnāt as good as your previous stuff.ā In that sense, comments can feel a bit like receiving feedback from a teacher on an assignment -Ā Ā it makes you very aware of the readerās expectations, and it makes me feel self-conscious when i write anything, like iām less likely to want to experiment, and it feels like thereās less freedom and grace to do so.Ā
But by contrast, some of the most fun writing Iāve done has come from discord server prompts and fandom challenges. The prompts are often slightly frivolous or deliberately low-stakes, and that seems to create permission to experiment or try your hand at things you wouldnāt normally, cause then you can blame it on the prompt š
It sounds like for you, visual novel development is this creative space where every decision doesnāt feel as though itās being measured and evaluated, and I think youāre so right that our hobbies need that. They need freedom for play and fun.Ā
The one thing your message left me wondering about is the role of the audience in witnessingā¦ so I totally agree that creative work needs to be able to remain meaningful even in the absence of an audience.Ā
But I also think a lot of people (me, especially) write partly because we want difficult emotions like grief to be witnessed by another human. One of the things grief researcher David Kessler talks about is that processing happens not just by expressing an emotion like by writing it down, itās also about having that emotion witnessed. A witness doesnāt remove the emotion, but they do help confirm that the experience happened and that we arenāt alone in feeling those emotions.
And from his research, it seems that the act of being witnessed helps us with emotional regulation and also integrating the experience or emotion into our sense of self and life story, and helps us with processing it and making sense of it all.
So I found myself wondering how visual novel development fits into that. If audience response has less power over whether the work feels real, what role does audience response still play when it comes to processing big emotions like grief and trauma? If witnessing serves a different function from validation, what do we do when thereās no one watching?Ā
iām just thinking out loud!, so feel free to push back. and if anyone else wants to chime in too, please do.
Anyway. thanks again for taking the time to share your perspective and experiences, it was so interesting to read.Ā
