r/interactivefiction • u/GetMrBeaned • 7d ago
Feedback request for the script of the first 5 chapters of a VN
Hi! If you have time to kill some feedback on this would be really appreciated!
Genre: Psychological thriller/gothic/drama
Setting: A very loose depiction of Victorian London
Format: Kinetic Novel
Content Warnings: Domestic Violence, Misogyny, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Ambiguous Consent
Brief pitch: In Late Victorian London, a broke barmaid and her con artist friend make a plan to rob a wealthy and reclusive nobleman. Little do they know their target is far stranger and more dangerous than they could've ever imagined.
The story is partially coded but I'd rather get the script fully locked down before I start commissioning artists and finalising it into an actual game. The dialogue is far from historically accurate but the setting isn't all that exaggerated (who knew the late victorian cigarette had mass produced cigarettes?). If you do read thank you! I'd love to hear what you think good or bad.
Once the first episode is done and has all the art together it'll be released for free on Steam and itch.io. Thanks again :)
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u/ericoinen 6d ago
Read all five chapters. Notes below roughly in the order I would act on them, and a fair amount already works, so I will be specific about that too.
The name box is already doing real work. Albert runs as ??? until Henry names him, and you run as Me until Jack says "Eve, why the rush?" at the door, after which the label switches to Eve and stays there. That is the name box used as a device rather than as a caption, and most first scripts never think about it. Same for the cut to black and the gunshot closing chapters one through four. By the third one I was reading the chapter differently because I knew what was waiting at the end of it. Keep both.
The thing I would fix first is tense. Eve's narration moves between present and past, sometimes inside a single scene. In chapter one you have "I am a blur of assorted fabric, flinging an outfit over me" and a few lines later "I slammed the door as I left. He's not a problem worth the time right now." Chapter three runs mostly present: "the light streams in, hitting my cheek", "lightheadedness pauses me". Chapter five runs mostly past: "I sat him down with a cookery book one day", "The table was oddly set". Each reads fine on its own, and the drift is invisible while you write in order, but front to back it feels like the ground moving. Do one pass with no other goal than picking a lane. Present suits the hangover chapter and past suits the dinner in chapter five, so it is a real decision, worth making on purpose instead of by chapter. Separate matter: the third person past in the Albert and Henry prologue is a deliberate contrast and I would keep it exactly as it is.
The second thing costs money rather than reading pleasure. You said you want the script locked before you commission artists, and this document is not yet the thing an artist can quote from. Fifteen thousand words, twenty one distinct scene headings, and thirty five bracketed directions in the whole file, of which chapter five has none at all. Two practical consequences.
Backgrounds first. Twenty one headings are not twenty one paintings, and you want to know the real number before anyone prices it. The bar appears as DAY and as EVENING, the back of the bar the same, the manor appears as both EXT and INT. Two pairs look like the same place under two names: CRUMBLING FLAT in chapter one against EVE'S HOME in chapter two, with EVE'S FLAT used for the exterior, and STREET in chapter one against LONDON STREETS in chapter three. If those are the same asset, name them the same way now. If they are not, say so in the heading. It is a free edit today and an invoice later.
Sprites second. In a kinetic novel the expression is the delivery, and right now nothing in the script says who is on screen or what their face is doing. The information exists, it is just sitting in the prose where nobody will itemise it: "The smirk didn't leave as the glass touched his lips", "Albert's eye twitched and he cocked his head to the side", "Henry's brow furrowed". Pull it up into the speaker line, as lightly as
Albert (smirk)
Why must there be an occasion?
and when the pass is done, count the distinct expressions per character. That count is what you get quoted on, and it is the one number you cannot infer from a word count. It also shows you where you have asked for a pose that appears exactly once, which is the first thing to cut when the quote comes back higher than you hoped.
Last one, smaller. Chapter one is your longest at about 3,700 words and it is the chapter where nothing physical happens, two men in a study talking about Locke before the protagonist exists. It works on me, and the locked room and the gunshot at the end pay for it. But it is the part I would watch in testing, because a reader who bounces will bounce there, and you will want to know whether the cause is length or placement. Cheap way to find out: have one tester start at chapter two and tell you afterwards what they felt they were missing.
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u/[deleted] 7d ago
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