VioletMemoir
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Violet Memoir Dev Log! VERY IMPORTANT!
🕑 Added 2023-05-05 10:21:32 +0000 UTCHey, just wanted to let everyone know I've been doing some serious re-evaluating of Violet Memoir over these last couple of weeks and realized that I've been approaching the story in a rather flawed way. While I don't regret it, there's a lot of fluff in my story which has really bloated things up and I realized that with the way the story is going, I would essentially be another 4 years away from finishing, which just doesn't seem reasonable on anybody (and that's under the assumption I would do 20-30k updates which is double my workload).
I'm wanting to ask you guys what you think would be best about this. The easiest (and likely ideal) solution would be to cut and streamline very hard. That means the story's pace is likely going to pick up immensely and the romance will lose a lot of its filler. I still plan on finishing each character's arc but there likely won't be any dates or anything like that. Some of that romance will have to be left on the cutting room floor. A lot of the romance will be scenes that directly tie into the plot.
This is a pretty radical change and would remove essentially a third of the game as I did intend to go to 21 days each initially but I figured out that even if I cut down the size of each of those days to the size of an update. It would still take me nearly 4 years to do unless I released multiple days at once, which would require me heavily increasing my workload or massively reduce the size of the days (which would cut fluff anyway).
Even with this change, it would still likely take me a little over 2 years to finish Violet Memoir, which is still a decent commitment but not 4 years long. This would, however, mean that Leigh and Oscar's routes are basically a third done already, and Lucas is just under halfway. Which is still plenty of time to do their whole stories.
The only other solution I could really think of, that didn't require me abusing the hell out of myself by increasing the workload, would be switching Violet Memoir back into being a singular story instead of diverging routes. This was actually how Violet Memoir was in its initial conception where we would jump between everyone's nightmare sequences but I scrapped that early in favor of a route-diverging system, something I very heavily regret now. The main issue with this is that it would require such extensive rewrites and still basically just be route-based just with a lot of shared scenes.
Please, I'd love any and all kinds of feedback for this. This is a pretty radical decision that will be determining Violet Memoir's future.
Comments
Oni
If I have to be completely honest, waiting longer for such a great story to be finished doesn’t bother me at all personally. I prefer stories with a slower burn and more small details added in to really flush it out. I’ve waited much longer for other VN’s that I love so only 4 years actually seems very reasonable to me. I have to agree with other sentiments here that hearing that there is “so much more” ahead than anticipated is really exciting. It simply means that there is even more that I could get to see from this story and these characters that I love so much. Though I can perfectly understand if the time frame is something that you being a writer just don’t feel comfortable or satisfied committing to. But as far as I’m concerned you’ll hear no objections from me regarding a longer wait.
This_One
I really like the route-based nature of the novel so far, but I understand it means about thrice the work. I would prefer shorter routes, with a de-emphasis on fluff and more focus on the story. An example of a visual novel that does this well is Echo. Though that did take a long time to develop (6 years I believe), it does have more routes. But, more importantly it does a similar thing to what you're considering. The start of each of the routes is primarily fluff, with character development and slow-burn stuff, and then partway through, things switch to being more story and horror focused. It does leave a lingering feeling of loss, of wanting more of those sweet moments, even if you are enjoying where the story goes. But that's part of the experience, wondering what simple romance stuff these characters could've done IF there weren't supernatural shenanigans demanding their attention. I'd love it if you took a similar path, with fluff-heavy starts that quickly get derailed by story events.
