Katawa Shoujo Forums

Okay, that's fine, inspiration works in capricious ways, but the question remains, why did you post this? What is your endgame, here?

I plan on doing one or two more parts, which will be just a little bit longer than the first one. It's just going to be a basic "Bad thing happens and [CHARACTER] and Hisao talk about it and other such emotional things" plot, but I could stand to get better at writing dialogue and I really wanted to do something with this idea.

I'm sure there's plenty of people here who are willing to help you work on dialogue as soon as you get around to writing some, but right now all I'll say is that without any context what you've written basically amounts to a placeholder. Essentially it seems like you've rewritten Hisao's mindset in the Deep End, but not meaningfully. Hisao's self-loathing seems forced when you cram his entire mindset into a single expository paragraph, and we have no way of knowing how Hisao got to this point.

Again, the problem here is that you really haven't written anything, and if you write a second part that's just as long, you're still not going to wind up with anything meaningful (well, not if you're going to write about depression and suicide, which is definitely a topic really needs a lot more thought put into it than a handful of words.) You need to slow down and really think about the best way to express the ideas you want to express. I don't want to criticize your creative process, but I don't think the way you're going about things is going to get you where you want to go.

Just my personal suggestion - the name alone gave me a dim view on this eh... story, before I even started.

I get the feeling this was written hastily under some bias(feels inspired in game for instance).

Overall suggestion - Change thread title, it's a major turn off, tone down the blatant anger in your writing, it makes it difficult to take seriously. I'd suggest changing the ending from "fuck you hisao" because, again, the implied anger is almost childish. Try something more refined "I choose a dosage of one pill that I'm certain will end it quickly and take it down. I take one last glance at the man in the mirror, you screwed up.

I'm sure someone who's not running on 50 something hours with no sleep can think of something better than that, but you get the idea, ending it with "Fuck you Hisao"(the comma doesn't seem necessary to me) just seems really.. you get the idea.


Anywho I like the theme of the story, seems like a "what if Hisao survived -The Manly Picnic-" scenerio (doesn't die by falling, suicides instead, either way, get a girlfriend or die trying huh?), but I think it was poorly delivered with too much negative emotion and haste. Tone things back a little and calm down before posting, getting a pretty unpleasant vibe(is that the right word?) from this.

All drabbles from one author in one thread, for starters. Bite-sized as they are, making one thread for each is the equivalent of dropping crumbs everywhere.

TheGoatman wrote:"Fuck you Hisao"(the comma doesn't seem necessary to me)

The comma is grammatically correct, though.

To me, since he bothers to reference the girls, and expresses that they've had the opportunity to turn their backs on him, this seems to occur a long time after the Manly Picnic. At worst, by the end of Act 1, the girls are indifferent about their new classmate, and aren't openly ostracizing him. Going up on the roof with Kenji has more to do with not having anything better to do and being depressed about his condition than any sense of rejection.

This then, I surmise, is most likely some time after the Manly Picnic--during which he doesn't "accidentally" fall off the roof. Since then, he's had the chance to try getting closer to the his classmates, especially the girls; he befriended them, perhaps even pursued one or more of them romantically, but, through missed opportunities, bad choices, or just his latent stupidity, he managed to gradually push them all away. The scene here, then, is perhaps a few months after the festival, sometime close to summer break I'd guess, when he's finally at his wit's end.

All that said, it's one long paragraph that doesn't provide nearly enough information to understand his thought process. If you were to develop this into something worth reading, establishing the back-story would be my first suggestion, and outlining the plot would come next. Even if it's just a short story, starting with a plan is Writing 101.

I always thought too many people took it for granted that Hisao has to die after the manly picnic. I mean, yeah, it's more than a little unlikely that he would survive, given his heart condition, but healthy people have survived falls from way higher than the Yamaku rooftop. The squelching sound would imply Hisao dies, but again, that's not conclusive.

Regardless of whether or not he does, the real reason why falling off the roof ends the game is because the story is basically utterly derailed by that point.

It's also possible to get more than a little chummy with Emi or Lilly while still falling off the roof at the end, so I always thought the notion that neither of them would be seriously emotionally affected by Hisao's death was really silly.

There's the Constant Companion one-shot that has Hisao surviving and especially a certain someone does care. I really like that one.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to redo this first part. It occasionally helps to just write for the sake of seeing what comes out before you improve it, but it would be a shame to leave it like that. I'll probably add more information and tone it down a bit.

Recidivism wrote:Yeah, I'm definitely going to redo this first part. It occasionally helps to just write for the sake of seeing what comes out before you improve it, but it would be a shame to leave it like that. I'll probably add more information and tone it down a bit.

What you should do is write in bursts if that's where your quality writing come out, then you should either store them, then add more and more bursts of proofread, or PM someone get another opinion. Shorts can be really effective, but they have to have the sort of BAM factor if you know what I mean Don't get me wrong, I think you're doing pretty good so far, but maybe compile your bursts until you have something with a bit more depth.

It's hard for me to sit down for more than 15 minutes at a time and write. I do all of my writing in bursts, and most of these are going to NaNoWriMo. But I can make something good if I put them all together, it's just that I tend to prefer the instant gratification I get from doing a good paragraph and then uploading it immediately. Lately I've been getting more ideas that demand something more, however. I have a lot of ideas swimming around for a Miki route that I would like to start in a few months, after I have some time to finish what's on my plate already and then get some notes on it.

I love writing, I truly do love it. But damn, does it exhaust me.

I'd suggest going for something in between these one-paragraph things, whatever they are, and a full route, at least until you're more comfortable writing something longer. Otherwise, you're likely to get frustrated and either rush things, or give up.

And, nobody's ever actually completed a Miki route, to my knowledge. It's even a bit of a curse on this forum, that nobody has completed one.

bhtooefr wrote:I'd suggest going for something in between these one-paragraph things, whatever they are, and a full route, at least until you're more comfortable writing something longer. Otherwise, you're likely to get frustrated and either rush things, or give up.

And, nobody's ever actually completed a Miki route, to my knowledge. It's even a bit of a curse on this forum, that nobody has completed one.

Also if you expect to write an entire route in 15 minute bursts -- "Holy continuity errors, Batman!"

Maybe try haiku.
A summer of love, summed up
in three easy lines.

I'm going to write a lot for a few months, getting progressively longer until I'm more comfortable with writing for an hour or two at a time. And by a few months, I mean anywhere between 4 and 18 months.