Ask!

[Aura]

Do we know who originally occupied the seat Hisao occupies in class 3-3?

And what caused them to leave? Illness? Transfer? Death?

An extra seat just was added to the classroom for Hisao.

[tommo1982]

Did you ever think about releasing the game as a book? It'd be something. You surely noticed the stories you wrote tend to make people think and look from a different perspective.

My grandfather has arrythmia. I'm not sure whether a whole book would give me the perspective of what it means, more than going through the game. I believe none of you thought KS could be educational

[PheonixGRX]

I read through the FAQ's and I actually had a couple questions I wanted to ask you.

1) I know that you said that if anyone tries to create a new game/visual novel, it wont be with 4LS. I was curious as to why this was, and why not keep the company name of 4LS, and just have sub-companies in it. If one game has gotten you this famous, why stop? You can become a legitimate gaming company, with each and every one of you helping out, or leaving as some of you don't want to do more. The question is, why not keep the 4LS going, and try to reach the hearts of everyone, rather than just split up, with some never being heard of again?

2) If any of you end up creating more games/visual novels, would you ever charge people to purchase them? I know you said KS wont ever have this done to it, but as I said in the last question, you have gotten to so many people, and you could now make a living off of these games.

3) If offered, would you allow a manga/anime series/OVA be made off of the KS series? (This is just one that my friend wanted to ask)

I thank you for your time, and for reading this. Take care and enjoy yourselves.

[Aura]

Did you ever think about releasing the game as a book? It'd be something. You surely noticed the stories you wrote tend to make people think and look from a different perspective.

My grandfather has arrythmia. I'm not sure whether a whole book would give me the perspective of what it means, more than going through the game. I believe none of you thought KS could be educational :)

Don't really see any advantages in adapting KS into novel form, so no.

[Silentcook]

I read through the FAQ's and I actually had a couple questions I wanted to ask you...

1) You misunderstand. First, we're not a company by any stretch. We are just, as Aura put it once, "a bunch of fags on the Internet". Referring to us as a "company" implies many things that aren't there and that we aren't interested in, among them work hours, enforceable penalties for quitting when we like, or a desire to make money off our creation(s).

Even without that, our point was that the odds of us ALL working together again are zero, because just as you said, some of us want out. That doesn't mean that NONE of us will ever work together again, under the aegis of 4LS or otherwise.

2) Most if not all of us have jobs. I for one have no desire for extra income since with it comes extra hassle. Also, I think you are much too optimistic concerning your "making a living" statement.

3) That's a question that requires consideration by the whole gang, but the odds are "no". We extend our "no profit" policy to any such endeavors, so the possibility that someone would want to do that for free AND that it would be good enough to satisfy us is, again, pretty much zero.

[ewx]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

[Aura]

Did you ever think about releasing the game as a book? It'd be something. You surely noticed the stories you wrote tend to make people think and look from a different perspective.

My grandfather has arrythmia. I'm not sure whether a whole book would give me the perspective of what it means, more than going through the game. I believe none of you thought KS could be educational :)

Don't really see any advantages in adapting KS into novel form, so no.

To reach more people. Unless vast audience was never your intention in the first place. I just thought KS could be instructive for many people in various ways.

Yep, we don't really care about that. KS's audience is more than vast enough already for us, there's no need to reach out for more.

[Aura]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

Keeping the text contained in its own framework. Some people write very sprawling and flowing text that keeps on branching and spreading, but I want to keep my text very connected with itself. For every little subplot, offhand remark, theme, literary motif and other detail introduced, I wanted there to be some form of closure, echo or reflection before the story ends. It's difficult to keep track of so many trains of thought crossing over each other all over, while also trying to write engaging narrative, keeping the characterization in line and taking care of the plot.

[StudyOfWumbology]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

Keeping the text contained in its own framework. Some people write very sprawling and flowing text that keeps on branching and spreading, but I want to keep my text very connected with itself. For every little subplot, offhand remark, theme, literary motif and other detail introduced, I wanted there to be some form of closure, echo or reflection before the story ends. It's difficult to keep track of so many trains of thought crossing over each other all over, while also trying to write engaging narrative, keeping the characterization in line and taking care of the plot.

Is that why you did that one Rin scene?

[TheHivemind]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

For me the hardest part of writing is knowing when a given idea just isn't worth pursuing. I have notebooks and files full of stories that I thought were really great, but because I just kinda jumped into them without actually working out how the idea would be executed, they never went anywhere. The initial planning phase is key (or at least it has turned out to be for me)--otherwise everything kinda meanders and then you just quit because you don't know where you're going.

That's not to say that you're always going to follow whatever plan you sketched out (sometimes you decide to conclude things earlier than you thought, or you just get rid of a couple events that on second thought aren't necessary), but the act of sitting down and planning out your story/essay/whatever will help get you in the right frame of mind. The problem (at least for me) is that I always get impatient with that part because OH MAN I JUST THOUGHT OF THE COOLEST BIT OF BACK AND FORTH or whatever. You gotta be disciplined, and it is kind of lame, but the results will be way better if you are. I've said it before but I wasted just an atrocious amount of time writing a draft of Emi's path without having any kind of plan for where it was going and in the end it was like a solid year or two's worth of work down the toilet. Totally not worth it.

[ewx]

Ok, so I'm planning stuff now, but I'm running into problems.

Is there a definitive time scale on which events happen? I know the festival is in act 1 whichever route you go on, but things like Tanabata and the track meet are really starting to confuse me.
If there is anything even resembling a calendar or just an ordered list of when those things happen would help because I am confused as hell right now.

[cpl_crud]

Don't really see any advantages in adapting KS into novel form, so no.

Before we'd get Katawa Shoujo The Novel, I'd prefer Katawa Shoujo The Merchandise, anyhow.


Katawa Shoujo - Gigantic box of tear resistant tissues!

Nuff said.

[cpl_crud]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

The hardest part for me was writing to a "plan".

When I think of a story, the skeleton of it appears in my head quite quickly, and then I hang the meat of the story off those bones. Similar to Hivemind's response, I jump back and forwards a bit, adding in new little bits an pieces all over the place.

However, in KS, we had a pretty rigorous planning regime. This involved writing little snippets of each scene so that everyone could comment on the structure of the story, and also to make sure that there was a certain consistency to the story; this was, by the way, absolutely necessary within KS.

But when I tried writing the scenes, I found myself constrained by the preconceived flow that the story had to take, and that de-motivated me.


The other thing for me is editing. I can quite easily gloss over a bit of text that I have written, fix up errors and timing/flow issues, but to really dissect a piece and re-write it is hard. It feels like you're re-doing something that is already "complete". However, one thing that I did learn from KS was Aura's (and other's) dogged commitment to quality. Even if it's a pain in the arse, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing it right.

[Aura]

What was the hardest part of writing?



I fancy trying my hand at it but knowing ahead what kind of things to look out for would really help.

Keeping the text contained in its own framework. Some people write very sprawling and flowing text that keeps on branching and spreading, but I want to keep my text very connected with itself. For every little subplot, offhand remark, theme, literary motif and other detail introduced, I wanted there to be some form of closure, echo or reflection before the story ends. It's difficult to keep track of so many trains of thought crossing over each other all over, while also trying to write engaging narrative, keeping the characterization in line and taking care of the plot.

Is that why you did that one Rin scene?

"That one Rin scene" is pretty unspecific.

[Aura]

Ok, so I'm planning stuff now, but I'm running into problems.

Is there a definitive time scale on which events happen? I know the festival is in act 1 whichever route you go on, but things like Tanabata and the track meet are really starting to confuse me.
If there is anything even resembling a calendar or just an ordered list of when those things happen would help because I am confused as hell right now.

The timeline of KS is not very rigorous at all. Events do follow each other according to a rough timeline across all the paths, for instance the track meet is always the weekend after the festival, but there are discrepancies and such here and there.