I want to make a Psuedo-Route

[KronosTrinity]

I read the Suzu route and absolutely fell in love with the writing and character herself and it made me want to make an Iwanako Psuedo-Route. However, I know one already exists so I was wondering if it would be in bad taste to try and make my own? If not im getting to work right away but I wanted to check and make sure nobody would bite my head off.

[Oddball]

I read the Suzu route and absolutely fell in love with the writing and character herself and it made me want to make an Iwanako Psuedo-Route. However, I know one already exists so I was wondering if it would be in bad taste to try and make my own? If not im getting to work right away but I wanted to check and make sure nobody would bite my head off.

Not at all. You write what you want to write.

I will warn you though that making an entire route is a lot of work. You might want to start smaller. Do a few one chapter oneshots first to easy your way into things, perhaps.

[KronosTrinity]

I read the Suzu route and absolutely fell in love with the writing and character herself and it made me want to make an Iwanako Psuedo-Route. However, I know one already exists so I was wondering if it would be in bad taste to try and make my own? If not im getting to work right away but I wanted to check and make sure nobody would bite my head off.

Not at all. You write what you want to write.

I will warn you though that making an entire route is a lot of work. You might want to start smaller. Do a few one chapter oneshots first to easy your way into things, perhaps.

To be honest with you, I have way too much time on my hands anyways. So I would like to kind of have something that will suck away all of that excess time I just spend sitting on my roof and give me something to look forward to doing. Im going to make sure I don't bring some really crappy story to the table though, don't worry. I am going to use the Suzu route as more of a quality guideline, so im going to start rereading that and taking notes. Anything tips that you could give me before I dive into this?

[Oddball]

Some tips...

Stop typing in Red
Make you you know your character inside and out before you even start.
Have a good idea where the plot is going. It might change as you write, but you need to have a good place to start from.
Do something different. Look for characters nobody else has done, or look at them in ways nobody else does.

[KronosTrinity]

Some tips...

Stop typing in Red
Make you you know your character inside and out before you even start.
Have a good idea where the plot is going. It might change as you write, but you need to have a good place to start from.
Do something different. Look for characters nobody else has done, or look at them in ways nobody else does.

No red, got it. If I may ask, do you think a story that doesn't resolve around Hisao would be a good idea? I have a vision for Iwanako but I don't want her to be involved with Hisao. Im considering her trying to avoid him, or the story taking from the bad end on the school roof, but im not sure if this would make for good reading or not.

[Oddball]

Some tips...

Stop typing in Red
Make you you know your character inside and out before you even start.
Have a good idea where the plot is going. It might change as you write, but you need to have a good place to start from.
Do something different. Look for characters nobody else has done, or look at them in ways nobody else does.

No red, got it. If I may ask, do you think a story that doesn't resolve around Hisao would be a good idea? I have a vision for Iwanako but I don't want her to be involved with Hisao. Im considering her trying to avoid him, or the story taking from the bad end where Hisao falls from the roof and dies, but im not sure if this would make for good reading or not.

Well, if you want to write a story about Iwanako without Hisao you run into the problem that it's just kinda not Katawa Shoujo anymore. I mean, she's a normal nondisabled girl and she doesn't attend Yamaku so right off the bat you've lot a lot of what makes KS special.

But not using Hisao at all? Sure. Fine. Hisao doesn't even interact with the majority of the people in his class, much less the school. You could even start things up before Hisao arrives at Yamaku if you like.

[KronosTrinity]

Some tips...

Stop typing in Red
Make you you know your character inside and out before you even start.
Have a good idea where the plot is going. It might change as you write, but you need to have a good place to start from.
Do something different. Look for characters nobody else has done, or look at them in ways nobody else does.

No red, got it. If I may ask, do you think a story that doesn't resolve around Hisao would be a good idea? I have a vision for Iwanako but I don't want her to be involved with Hisao. Im considering her trying to avoid him, or the story taking from the bad end where Hisao falls from the roof and dies, but im not sure if this would make for good reading or not.

Well, if you want to write a story about Iwanako without Hisao you run into the problem that it's just kinda not Katawa Shoujo anymore. I mean, she's a normal nondisabled girl and she doesn't attend Yamaku so right off the bat you've lot a lot of what makes KS special.

But not using Hisao at all? Sure. Fine. Hisao doesn't even interact with the majority of the people in his class, much less the school. You could even start things up before Hisao arrives at Yamaku if you like.

I figure, Iwanako is a sweet girl at first. But witnessing something like Hisaos heart attack would change someone. Depression, anger issues, attempted Catharsis, things like these would be something she is ailed with and during the time with Hisao in the hospital she would slowly become volatile and spiteful. Im thinking maybe she developed Borderline Personality Disorder, and that causes problems in her current school so her parents send her to Yamaku. I also really want to give Kenji some light as well, making him one of the main parts of the story, though this is all speculation as of right now.

[Guest Poster]

To be honest with you, I have way too much time on my hands anyways.

You do now. But will you still feel that way in two months? The benefit of starting small is that you can learn where your limits lie, how quickly you write, how you deal with criticism and how you handle the inevitable end of the butterfly stage that sets in a few weeks after you started writing. These are all good things to know.

I kinda feel you're going at this from the wrong angle. The reason someone writes a fanfic is because he has a story in his head that he thinks is worth telling, not because he has too much time on his hands. Someone who has no basic idea of a plot and who's merely writing to spend his surplus of free time isn't going to finish what he starts or what he writes will be bland and uninspired.

I still think you should start small just to get a feel for how you do as a writer and not merely jump on the pseudo-route bandwagon because it's hip or something. The entire basic plot should be in your head before you even write a single word. And no, we can't help you with that. If someone doesn't know what exactly to write, he shouldn't write to begin with, much less start a large-scale project.

[Leaty]

KronosTrinity, please refer to this thread.

[KronosTrinity]

To be honest with you, I have way too much time on my hands anyways.

You do now. But will you still feel that way in two months? The benefit of starting small is that you can learn where your limits lie, how quickly you write, how you deal with criticism and how you handle the inevitable end of the butterfly stage that sets in a few weeks after you started writing. These are all good things to know.

I kinda feel you're going at this from the wrong angle. The reason someone writes a fanfic is because he has a story in his head that he thinks is worth telling, not because he has too much time on his hands. Someone who has no basic idea of a plot and who's merely writing to spend his surplus of free time isn't going to finish what he starts or what he writes will be bland and uninspired.

I still think you should start small just to get a feel for how you do as a writer and not merely jump on the pseudo-route bandwagon because it's hip or something. The entire basic plot should be in your head before you even write a single word. And no, we can't help you with that. If someone doesn't know what exactly to write, he shouldn't write to begin with, much less start a large-scale project.

You are going on as if im just going to start writing and have no concept of where the story is going. I do have ideas, I was just asking wether or not Oddball thought they were good ones. I am currently also writing a book, and im very deep into it already, however I want to take a break from writing it to dive into something else that ive been wanting to do since the Suzu Route, Iwanako. I know that the next year is pretty much going to be an empty slate for me and I would like a great activity like this to work on. Ive had images of Iwanako and Kenji arguing, ive dreamt of who Iwanako would be after the heart attack, and I really want to put those dreams and these images I keep having into a story.

[Helbereth]

Ive had images of Iwanako and Kenji arguing, ive dreamt of who Iwanako would be after the heart attack, and I really want to put those dreams and these images I keep having into a story.

First, Iwanako is a blank slate in terms of canon. All that's known about her is that she apparently has long dark hair, confessed to Hisao on a wintry afternoon, and summarily gave up on visiting him in the hospital after a few weeks. You can draw a few conclusions about her character from that, but not much. There's nothing wrong with it, but the conversations you imagined between her and Kenji are between him and an OC.

The major issue with generating a fiction involving Iwanako with anyone at Yamaku is that there isn't any reason for her to end up there in the first place. Leaty created an AU scenario where she traded afflictions with Hisao, had his heart attack, learned she had his arrythmia, and was sent to Yamaku in his place. Short of that, it's nearly impossible to concoct a plausible scenario that places her at a school half way across the country.

If the characters were of university age, it's possible she could follow him to the new school in the hopes of rekindling the relationship his arrhythmia denied them. That, however, isn't going to work for high school kids whose decisions are still being made for them by their parents and or guardians. There's also the angle of inventing a condition that would permit her to follow Hisao to Yamaku, or simply go there by herself - to hell with Hisao - but I'd have a hard time taking that seriously.

Not to sound discouraging, but you're facing a whole long series of daunting tasks to pull off a believable fiction that somehow results in Iwanako ever meeting Kenji.

[KronosTrinity]

Ive had images of Iwanako and Kenji arguing, ive dreamt of who Iwanako would be after the heart attack, and I really want to put those dreams and these images I keep having into a story.

First, Iwanako is a blank slate in terms of canon. All that's known about her is that she apparently has long dark hair, confessed to Hisao on a wintry afternoon, and summarily gave up on visiting him in the hospital after a few weeks. You can draw a few conclusions about her character from that, but not much. There's nothing wrong with it, but the conversations you imagined between her and Kenji are between him and an OC.

The major issue with generating a fiction involving Iwanako with anyone at Yamaku is that there isn't any reason for her to end up there in the first place. Leaty created an AU scenario where she traded afflictions with Hisao, had his heart attack, learned she had his arrythmia, and was sent to Yamaku in his place. Short of that, it's nearly impossible to concoct a plausible scenario that places her at a school half way across the country.

If the characters were of university age, it's possible she could follow him to the new school in the hopes of rekindling the relationship his arrhythmia denied them. That, however, isn't going to work for high school kids whose decisions are still being made for them by their parents and or guardians. There's also the angle of inventing a condition that would permit her to follow Hisao to Yamaku, or simply go there by herself - to hell with Hisao - but I'd have a hard time taking that seriously.

Not to sound discouraging, but you're facing a whole long series of daunting tasks to pull off a believable fiction that somehow results in Iwanako ever meeting Kenji.

Well creating a condition for her to go isn't as hard as you may think.
Though it isn't entirely relevant, I had something similar to Iwanako happen in my life, and I know how it changed me. I went through severe depression issues and changed as a person entirely. Seeing stuff like that really screws a person up, Ya know? So im thinking that it would be possible for her to go down the line of a delinquent, developing Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorder, eventually getting her suspended from school. After seeing a counciler, it wouldn't be impossible for him to refer her to Yamaku, a place where she could cope with her issues and be around other people who are broken in similar ways as she is.

Once getting there, in my opinion, she would try to avoid Hisao. With Kenji in the picture, there are some extremely big time gaps of where he talks to Hisao, leaving a lot of meat on the bone for a relationship between him and Iwanako. Ultimately, the letter proved to be my biggest issue, though that could easily have been fabricated to keep Hisao thinking she wasn't there just in case he ever caught a glimpse.

I guess the whole, "it would be more of an OC than an actual Iwanako" would present a problem, but I think we all imagine different scenarios in our head of how people turned out after the events. In my mind I picture Hisao becoming a Scientist, though im sure someone came along the lines of imagining him as a teacher or a doctor like the ones that saved his life. Making a story on how Iwanako developed after the heart attack is a stretch, but it could be a fun ride and an enjoyable perspective of who she became.

[Silentcook]

I was wondering if it would be in bad taste to try and make my own?

Leaty, the author of the work in progress you mention, has posted in your thread already. If you worry about that, you'd do well to read her comment.

General tips about writing fan fiction can be found in a sticky within this forum. While you're there, take a look at the "no requesting" sticky - it applies to authors too.

Yamaku canonically accepts even non-disabled people, but is defined as not being able to accept students whose disabilities are primarily mental.

I had something similar to Iwanako happen in my life

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but I'll say that while on the one hand writing from experience is good, on the other author self-insertion is definitely a bad idea.

Other than that, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Rather than spoiling the plot of your hypothetical piece of writing, it would be better for you to work on it.

[KronosTrinity]

I was wondering if it would be in bad taste to try and make my own?

Leaty, the author of the work in progress you mention, has posted in your thread already. If you worry about that, you'd do well to read her comment.

General tips about writing fan fiction can be found in a sticky within this forum. While you're there, take a look at the "no requesting" sticky - it applies to authors too.

Yamaku canonically accepts even non-disabled people, but is defined as not being able to accept students whose disabilities are primarily mental.

I had something similar to Iwanako happen in my life

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but I'll say that while on the one hand writing from experience is good, on the other author self-insertion is definitely a bad idea.

Other than that, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Rather than spoiling the plot of your hypothetical piece of writing, it would be better for you to work on it.

[ProfAllister]

Now, I don't want to pile on with all the negativity, but there's some important context here that you should be aware of.

There have been many, many, MANY attempts to write Pseudo-routes. There's some disagreement on what exactly constitutes a pseudo route, but, to date, there are precisely TWO completed pseudo-routes in which everyone considers them indisputably pseudo-routes (i.e., Hisao x girl, same general time frame, multi-act structure, etc.) (For those of you keeping score at home, that would be the Rika Pseudo-Route by Hearts/Rikabro and the PseuPseuSu by Lunch/Scissorlips). In both cases, things became very difficult near the end, and the authors both more or less suffered complete burnout shortly after finishing. Most other attempts have been prematurely shoehorned into a rushed end (with the author admitting that he had pretty much given up), have been explicitly abandoned, or, as is the case with yours truly, continue plodding along at a glacial pace. This is so endemic that we have the notorious "Miki Curse," relating to the fact that so many Miki pseudo-routes have been attempted, but they all seem to die catastrophic deaths.

So we're all a little bitter, jaded, and heartbroken. It's like the (historically inaccurate) movie Anastasia. We are the dowager empress, and you're Anya. We've encountered countless people claiming to be the true heiress, and they've all disappointed us. So we've decided that enough is enough. You may very well be the true heiress, but you have a long hard road ahead in proving it to us. And it's likely going to take more than a good-looking lovable rogue and a memory of peppermint oil to convince us otherwise. We're tired.

And, to be honest, there's some degree of pattern recognition here. The attitudes of "I want to do something big" and "this is something to keep me occupied while I work on a bigger project" and "[completely 'original' idea]" tend to be warning signs. They could mean nothing, or they could mean everything.

And, to speak from personal experience (and from talking to others who have attempted it), writing a pseudo-route (or any long-form work) is hard. Writing one tends to take at least a year, often more. Even if you have a storyboard, outline, and all the beats planned out, there's still quite a bit of work in simply adding the connective tissue, to say nothing of the constant cross-referencing to make sure it's both consistent with the original and with itself. And a lot can happen in a year. Off the top of my head, since starting my Misha route, I've changed jobs, had a kid, and been diagnosed with a disability myself. Others have had events like deaths in the family, nervous breakdowns, or simply "not feeling it." It's a significant commitment, and not one which should be taken lightly.

Finally, on the subject of originality, I'd be inclined to somewhat disagree with Oddball. Originality is important, but it's far more important that something be good than original. And a key part of that is determining whether your original idea is original because no one's thought of it, or because no one's attempted it. And if no one's attempted it, why haven't they? There are plenty of ideas that haven't been written because, frankly, they're bad ideas.

Now, is your idea bad? Let's look at what we have here:

Not Hisao - Fair enough. There's plenty of Hisao-focused stuff, and plenty of good non-Hisao stuff. Just pointing out, though - a lot of people won't consider it a pseudo-route unless it's Hisao x ?.
Iwanako - Not a bad idea per se, but definitely a difficult one. If she's not going to Yamaku for some reason, it's extremely hard to justify at all. If she does go to Yamaku, that comes with its own set of issues.
Borderline Personality Disorder - Nope. Canon has Yamaku specifically not designed to cater to mental disorders (because those require and entirely different set of facilities, treatments, accommodations, etc.). You'd be better off having her end up in some kind of freak accident that leaves her physically crippled, but that leaves the question of "Why Iwanako?" Additionally, she'd very likely be aware that Yamaku is the school that Hisao went to. There are actually a significant number of schools like Yamaku in Japan; she might want to avoid the one Hisao's at (especially if she went Borderline over the whole incident, but that's another story entirely).

You want Iwanako at Yamaku? Best bet (which hasn't really been explored) would be her coming to visit over the summer break post bad-end (Rin's and Hanako's are most conducive to this setup). Summer breaks aren't necessarily at the same time, so she could be visiting while Yamaku classes are in session, for that matter. That gives plenty of opportunity for Iwanako to interact with the entire cast, if you so desire.

Whatever you choose, I wish you the best. And just remember, we're not discouraging you from your current plan because we're mean people. We're discouraging you because we're mean people who have legitimate reasons to expect that your plan is a bad idea.