The future

[Dwarf]

while on the subject of word counts can you give a comparison of how much 100,000 words is?

How many words is a harry potter book? LOTR?

Google is a tool to be used. But Order of the Phoenix is the fattest with 257,045 words. Sorcerer's Stone is the smallest with 76,944 words. For the Tolkienites, Fellowship has over 177k words, while Return of the King has 134k.

War and Peace is around 590k in English, I think I read that Act One is close to that (or maybe it was that the full version is estimated to be close to that?).

[G3n0c1de]

War and Peace is around 590k in English, I think I read that Act One is close to that (or maybe it was that the full version is estimated to be close to that?).

From the 'Estimated Length' thread:

For context, Act 1 was roughly 100,000 words.

[ContinualNaba]

Path rewrites don't necessarily mean the entire thing was a waste of time; practice makes perfect, and Act 1 is largely the way it is simply due to the fact that we've discarded a lot of past material and become a little better at writing each time.

Also, each path is roughly 75,000 to 100,000 words depending on length.

How much of each path are required, non-path specific scenes, though? The shower scene, for instance.

[cpl_crud]

Some.

Seriously there are close to 200 scenes. We're not going to count.

[Suriko]

I'd rather say "not many at all" than "some".

But it's a pretty trivial distinction.

[cpl_crud]

I was on my phone at the time.

I was trying to make a crack at how it was a pretty dumb question but then my train came.

The paths are seperate. Any scene that is in a path is path-specific. Pretty much everything is "worthy". We went on a massive "filler" diet years ago.

[Csihar]

As long as we're kind of on the subject, I've been curious as to how the paths relate to each other. Do they all take place on the same timeline (say, for example, Misha's cancer gets worse and she dies at the same point in every path, affecting the various characters differently) or are they all pretty much independent (Misha only dies in Shizune's path and no one else's)? I seem to remember hearing that Aura came up with a basic outline that everyone else went from, but are we talking about shared plot milestones or was it more of a basic "Yamaku has a festival here, field trips here, exams here" kind of thing? Apologies if I'm drifting too far off topic here.

[Suriko]

Characters with little relation to each other (say, Lilly and Rin) will have less of each other in their respective paths and the events that happen around each will be shared less than characters who are more closely linked (such as Lilly and Hanako). Huge major events, like your example of Misha dying, would be definitely shared across all paths if they happened. It's a little from column A and a little from column B, but mostly, it's your latter scenario. Every character has a different story.

I hesitate to go into any more detail though.

[Leotrak]

The paths are seperate. Any scene that is in a path is path-specific. Pretty much everything is "worthy". We went on a massive "filler" diet years ago.

So how many scenes are there that just had at least one of you screaming in frustration because of how many possible paths could lead to it, thus giving it dozens of variations?

(say, for example, Misha's cancer gets worse and she dies at the same point in every path)

Spoilers -_-"

[Suriko]

The paths are seperate. Any scene that is in a path is path-specific. Pretty much everything is "worthy". We went on a massive "filler" diet years ago.

So how many scenes are there that just had at least one of you screaming in frustration because of how many possible paths could lead to it, thus giving it dozens of variations?

This is largely the reason we decided against shared scenes in the paths. There have been attempts, but they've all failed, mostly in the conceptual stages.

[Aura]

I seem to remember hearing that Aura came up with a basic outline that everyone else went from, but are we talking about shared plot milestones or was it more of a basic "Yamaku has a festival here, field trips here, exams here" kind of thing?

For Act 1 only. The path scenarios are by their respective writers. The realities of KS developement more or less dictate that the path stories have to be extremely separated from each other.

[SirMax]

(say, for example, Misha's cancer gets worse and she dies at the same point in every path)

Spoilers -_-"

[Minister of Gloom]

Why is everybody so eager to kill Misha? What did she do to deserve this?

[ElisaMasah]

I suspect lot of people will gadly kill Shizune too ... yet she has Plot Shield, something Misha sadly lack ...
And she is a bit loud ...

[Member22]

This is largely the reason we decided against shared scenes in the paths. There have been attempts, but they've all failed, mostly in the conceptual stages.

Its a good thing that you guys are against shared scenes... I remember a VN I played some time ago called Family project... it had such potential in the beginning in terms of plot. But then, the shared scenes in every path seemed to stretch the vn to outrageous and bloated proportions, to the point that I found my finger pinned to the ctrl (fast forward) button for the majority of the game. The lack of shared scenes would make every path a story in its own right, which helps a lot in terms of replay value (and a lot of other advantages)