Would Katawa Shoujo have worked as a written novel?

[Althamus]

It sounds great with regard to the price I'll definitely buy a copy.

Xanatos has a good point though. KS itself creates an incredible attraction to so many people, and speaking personally, one of the first things that pulled me in were the videos and music, as well as the art and small paragraphs/page making it easy reading, all things that the novel would not have. In addition, as Corp Crud said in his interview, because the story was written as a VN, he kept having to manually remove spades of description from his work, because it was all right there in front of the reader. I know there'll be pictures throughout, but it will still be a novel rather than a VN, and so will still need more description than it has.

Also, how do you mean re: pictures? I had assumed we were using the pre-drawn pictures, ie. Hanako playing snooker, Lilly confessing in the cornfield etc etc. as a way of a) tying it back into the VN and b) avoiding trying to mimic KS's work and style.

Good progress Any word back from Aura?

[yipyapper]

Awww, no one cares about the Unsung page? D:

[Althamus]

I think that doing beneficial things for the umbrella of Katawa Shoujo with an aim to get onto the unsung page is wrong, although I'm sure a lot of people who find their achievements noticed and praised would feel better for it.

Leastways, that's how I see it.

[UncleJellyfish]

Awww, no one cares about the Unsung page? D:

It's not that I don't care about the Unsung Heroes page, it's just that I don't care whether or not I end up on it. It's not my goal, nor an ulterior motive.

@ Chronopolize, this definately would not be considered a "light novel," as it will likely have about 350-400 pages, if not more.Though I would've preferred to work with the original text files, I actually find that transcribing it allows me to not only catch the few typos and grammatical inconsistencies in the original work, but it also allows me to make the changes required to adapt the meaning of each scene to a novel format. For the most part, everything is copied verbatim, but I've added a few things here and there to clarify who is saying what, or to add a bit more to a scene that only had a couple words said because the picture explained it more than the text.

@ XanatosPlannedThis86, I agree with you on many points.

[UncleJellyfish]

Roughly 26 pages ~10,100 words. Misha and Shizune are the embodiment of the devil himself when it comes to transcribing. It's not that it's difficult, but it's really tedious to find ways to show who's talking at different times without repeating the same thing over and over again. "Misha translates as Shizune begins signing" gets really bland, really fast, when it's read multiple times over. I have to reword it and add other little things to flavor it up. Hell, I even have to reread the VN a few times just to figure out who's talking when. >.<"

All in all, though, progress is moving forward. Been really busy today with work, so I didn't get much done, and I likely won't get much more than another 1,000 words or so done tonight, if I'm lucky. Once all five girls have been met at least once, I'll be sending out rough drafts to be proofread. I estimate it'll be close to 40 pages at that time. Mind, these are 8.5 x 11 pages with 1 inch margins, justified lines, and hyphenated text wrapping is active. The final product, being of a much smaller trim size, will probably see a roughly 30% increase in pages by the end of this.

Edited to avoid double posting:
While working through this, I feel myself getting drawn back into Katawa Shoujo, as though I were reading it for the first time. Transcribing it takes on a whole new perspective, and it feels completely new to me. I've even had to stop myself from reading ahead, because I forgot that I was supposed to be typing it out and just kept on reading. >.<"

[Althamus]

Are these A4 pages you're writing on atm? And yea, Shizune and Misha will be a pain. Now we know why the devs settled for:
Shizune: "..."
Makes it all so darned easy.

And I guess it says something for the VN once again if you've read the first section through at least 5 times, but are still getting caught up in it reading it through again now.

Also, did you ever get any word back from Aura?

[The_Doctor]

I just had this thought too. Well, as I'm making a prose interpretation of it, I thought I'd give novelization a crack, but you've got this. :3 I'll proofread, if you still need proofreaders.

[Mirage_GSM]

I'm not sure what Aura will have to say about this, but if you really don't want to make a profit just post the *.doc-files on the forum^^°

Regarding the workload, it's definitely doable. So far, it's taken me about two hours on average to type one chapter; a bit more if it's a long one. And you seem to have a lot more free time to devote to this than I do

[Althamus]

To me, the point of this was to have a printed, published booklet I could hold at the end of it ^_^ If I only wanted a .doc file to read on the computer, I might as well just read the VN.

Also, two hours to write a chapter? Is that an act, or each section of the act?
I can definitely recommend using a laptop running the game, with a doc file open on another computer... I tried that to estimate how long it'd take me to transcribe, and I wrote out a section of an arc in maybe half an hour tops? But then, I type pretty fast.

[Mirage_GSM]

Also, two hours to write a chapter? Is that an act, or each section of the act?

"Chapter" as in "scene" as they are in the library.

I can definitely recommend using a laptop running the game, with a doc file open on another computer... I tried that to estimate how long it'd take me to transcribe, and I wrote out a section of an arc in maybe half an hour tops? But then, I type pretty fast.

Well, if I were to just copy everything I'd probably be faster, but I'm writing it into another language. Jellyfish-ojii said he was adding in descriptions, so maybe that's comparable. For me it would be harder, because I suck at descriptions^^°

[Althamus]

Well, if I were to just copy everything I'd probably be faster, but I'm writing it into another language. Jellyfish-ojii said he was adding in descriptions, so maybe that's comparable. For me it would be harder, because I suck at descriptions^^°

Yea, that makes sense then. I thought you were just transcribing it as well.

[UncleJellyfish]

I have no idea what A4 pages are, lol.

To transcribe this, I have Katawa Shoujo open on one side of my screen, and Microsoft World open on the other side, on the same laptop. Perhaps the most tedious part is that I have to constantly move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse to advance the text in the VN and then click back on the Document. It's not hard or time consuming, but doing it for every...single...line...gets really tiresome. >.<" I'm just complaining for the sake of it, though. I'm not going to stop doing this because of a small inconvenience; it's to be expected.

[Katase]

I have no idea what A4 pages are, lol.

To transcribe this, I have Katawa Shoujo open on one side of my screen, and Microsoft World open on the other side, on the same laptop. Perhaps the most tedious part is that I have to constantly move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse to advance the text in the VN and then click back on the Document. It's not hard or time consuming, but doing it for every...single...line...gets really tiresome. >.<" I'm just complaining for the sake of it, though. I'm not going to stop doing this because of a small inconvenience; it's to be expected.

Well, you can always use auto mode, considering you could type fast enough. But it's not like you can't adjust the text's speed anyway.

[Althamus]

Auto mode is dangerous... if you miss a word, or can't quite get it fast enough then you waste a lot more time trying to go back and refind your place and sort things out again. Plus, not sure how much of a gap it leaves at the end of the line before advancing to the next.
I've tried transcribing song lyrics, and for songs with simple, clear lyrics I can go in realtime, until I miss a word or something, and then I spend about 15 seconds faffing before I'm good to go again

Also A4 (A3, A2 etc) are a standard size of paper, although apparently according to google it's not used in the US/Canada, so hey. A4 comes out at about 8.5" x 11" anyways though, so hey.

[UncleJellyfish]

Got a reply from Aura with a big, fat No. =/ Oh well. If I can't publish it, the least I can do is finish it and format it, just in case circumstances change later.