How to create an Adult visual novel game

Writing Course:

Writing an adult visual novel game

By Sihil

Hello and welcome to a very short crash course on how to write adult visual novels. I have been writing plots for AVNs for around three years now and have worked on games like Lord of Imagination, Whores of Thrones, and Ravager. Currently, I am making my own AVN named Loose Ends.

There are three major parts of creating an AVN:

• the first is the writing
  

• the second are the renders and
  

• the third and the most overlooked part are the sound effects
  

SOUND AND MUSIC:

We’ll give the shortest amount of time to sound effects because, frankly, it’s the one that needs the least amount of description. Even so, you can build the atmosphere you want very effectively by adding the sound effects of a gun getting shot, a pair of birds chirping, or a sultry moan, hopefully not in the same scene.

It’s always a good idea to find stock music to populate quieter parts of the story but with stock clips, you get what you pay for so don’t expect anything special. If you have some money to spare, many composers would provide custom music for less than thirty dollars. Fiverr is a great site for finding such freelancers or you can opt in for Epidemic Sound and use the collection of 1000s of songs for 12$. At the end of the day, having bad or no music in your AVN wouldn’t make your good game bad but having good audio direction in your good game can definitely make it great.

WRITING:

Now let’s focus on writing because that’s my favorite part. Since most of the focus is of the game is on the sex scenes, you can absolutely get away with mediocre writing. But of course, if you want your game to stand out, your writing needs to stand out. A great way of standing out is through the prose. Generally, it’s not the biggest factor but it does make a difference between a bad writer and a slightly less bad. You could read poems to improve the rhythm and cadence of your writing but let’s face it, most people neither have the time or the interest in reading poems so in general, just read your prose aloud, if it sounds awkward, it is bad. Learn about weak syllables and the strong ones and try to alternate between them. This is especially important in the scenes that are either otherwise boring or in the scenes that are an important part of the story.

Now to the meat of it. There are three broad subsections of writing that you should focus on:

• the characters,
  
• the plot,
  
• and the world-building.
  

Now if your story takes place in the contemporary world, world-building wouldn’t require much effort. Even so, subtle hints that make your MC’s situation more concrete would be great. If you’re writing about a story that is set in another world, you can really go as deep as you want with world-building. But the law of diminishing returns is as strong here as anywhere else. So small details paint a concrete ideas of what it feels like to live in such a world.

For instance, let’s say your character is a dwarf living in the mountains, mining, engineering, and seducing those saucy elven tarts. Since you’re living in the mountains, you won’t be eating the kind of food someone living in the plains would be eating so show that using your character having almost entirely meat-based supper or haggling with a goblin trader for the potato prices since they’re expensive in your mountain fortresses. Show, don’t tell.

The plot is the easiest section to learn and the hardest to master. It’d be great if you familiarize yourself with the hero’s journey template and the three-act structure used in movies. These are not rules set in stone and you can absolutely circumvent them but I’d suggest breaking the conventional rules only after you have mastered them. “Show, don’t tell” is, again, the motto you should live by but an equally important motto is “don’t show, don’t tell and don’t prematurely ejaculate an important mystery thread”; in a story, it’s almost as important to not reveal key information at any given time as it is to reveal them. This is especially true for whatever plot twist you have planned for the story. If you show too much info about it, the player will see it coming, if you show too little, the player will feel cheated as the plot twist might end up feeling like it came out of nowhere. Generally speaking, the more you practice, the better instinct you’ll develop for it.

Now, this is the most important part of writing: the characters, if you have time to learn just one thing, learn character writing. It is also the hardest skill to teach. In general, if you’re an empathetic person, you’d have an easier time in getting your MC’s and the other characters’ shoes; This is important because the more you make your character feel like a real person, the better chance there is for the audience to get attached to him or her.

As a general rule, people like characters who are proactive, competent/intelligent, or generally witty. If the audience either likes your MC or at least is intrigued by him or her, you’re halfway there. The other half of the way you travel by giving your MC a genuine flaw and overcoming it. To be clear, flaws are not the same as limitations. For example, let’s say your character is a 26-year-old straight guy who is 5’6”. Unless he sacrifices a lamb to the manlet gods at the twilight hour, he’s likely going to remain at that height until he dies. This is a limitation that the character can’t ever overcome but let’s say he is insecure about his height and that is preventing him from making connections with women. This is absolutely a character flaw that can be overcome by the end of the story. And this journey shouldn't be a straight line. Have him make some progress, then have him fail, have him stumble, have him suffer. Just be really mean to your MC in the second act, the more sadistic the better. You have to be intensely and relentlessly mean to your characters. So if you’re a good person and a writer, that’s just two strikes against you. The more you make your MC struggle, the more rewarding it will be when he finally gets down and dirty with the girl of his dreams.

GRAPHICS:

I can keep talking about writing for hours since it’s the area of my expertise but we have to move on but if you want to learn more, check out the lectures on creative writing by the best-selling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. They’re available on YouTube for free and believe me, you’re lucky that they are.

Now moving on to the renders, I’m not an excellent 3-d artist myself so I’m going to only tell you only the things I’ve learned from pestering people who are. This is also the area that is the most likely to halt your dreams of becoming an AVN artist. In general, you at least need a decent GPU if you’re planning to create 3-d renders. Assuming you have that and the will to keep tinkering with a facial expression in the scene for the seventh time hoping this time it’s “just right”, start learning the basic rules for composition and balance. It’s a good idea to learn about the color wheel as well. If you’re planning to use 2-d art, chances are that you already know more about it than I do but in the 3-d section of things, if you’re planning on using DaZ and are not an expert in it, you can find pretty much everything you need on youtube:

• WP guru,
  
• IT Roy,
  
• Thurndorn gaming,
  

are great channels that provide in-depth tutorials for you to follow.

Moreover, there are various sites that are great for posting your work and getting feedback one of them is Spicygaming.net and their Discord. Daz’s own forum might be helpful there. If you want to get better quickly, your google-fu skills should be good, especially since DaZ has the kind of learning curves on it that would make your average step-landlady in adult games look waifish by comparison.

So in conclusion, like most skills, creating an AVN is like working out a muscle, the more you do it, the better you get at it so the 5th update of your AVN will always be better than your 1st update on a technical level at least, provided you want to improve. You should absolutely temper your expectations, you won’t be making thousands of dollars right away, that ship sailed with LewdLab in like 2017-18. Even so, persistence is the key. If you keep learning at all times and keep improving, eventually, you’ll be proud of what you end up producing and who knows, your pockets might end up feeling decently heavier too.

Stills from the adult games:

Behind the Dune

Release Shaggy's Power

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