As I continue to wallow in the throes of research on an overwhelmingly large topic in order to write most of someone else's visual novel, I keep finding myself focusing on one of the two parts of the game I absolutely will not be writing: the love story parts.
Not focusing on them in the sense of "it's those parts I find myself imagining writing" but in the sense of "how do I even write the lead-ins and lead-outs of romantic scenes?" Knowing your limits is, of course, an important part of being a writer, and I have long since come to understand that I 100% cannot write characters falling in love. Being someone who does not feel romantic or sexual love, this is hardly a surprising fact. (Though it is surprising how long it took me to figure out that I couldn't write it; I kept trying to write love stories stories with love in them long after I realized I was asexual and aromantic.) For the most part, in my own works, even if I can't remove romance entirely, I can at least work to avoid the "falling in love" stage of a story and it generally works out at least enough for me.
But this time it's not my story, so I don't have that control. And, as is common (but not universal, no matter what some people think) in visual novels, there is a dating sim aspect to the game. Well, "dating sim" isn't really accurate, but I'm not sure what a better term would be. I can't really explain the story since it's not my story to share, but I think I can at least admit that the player character has entered a mostly-closed location in search of a particular individual who he knows is there but whose face he does not know, so he has to get to know all the people there who match the missing person's general description (age, mostly) in order to figure out which one is the person he's looking for. In the process, he can fall in love with one of them, leading to a different branch of the story that leads to the romantic ending with that character. (Not that all the suspects are potential love interests, and at least one of them won't return the player character's affection even if you pick them...) Consequently, when we leave the research and planning stage (another hindrance in writing this game is that we're having trouble finding times we're both free to discuss the game) I'm going to have to write each character's subplot such that it could lead into romance, but doesn't have to.
I am unsurprisingly feeling very daunted by this idea.
I did at least come up with the approach of having the subplots advance in a manner similar to the S-Link scenes in the newer Persona games (the ones back on the original Playstation having been entirely different) which should make writing it a lot easier on me, but...
...the prospect of finding a way to make seamless lead-ins for the other writer's love-related scenes in still scaring me a lot.
Also scary is the prospect of trying to write something set in ancient China, given my lack of firm knowledge of the setting. Obviously, that's why I'm doing research (I've been reading a lot of online information, and have just received one of the two books I ordered last week (on top of two books I bought in person)) and have been watching some Chinese dramas on Netflix, plus reading the translation of the original novel one of them was based on, but...at the end of the day, it still feels a bit like I'm attempting to do something I'm not qualified to do. Like, does it still count as cultural appropriation for me, a white person, to write something set in China when I'm doing so in partnership with (and under direction from) someone who is of Chinese ancestry? I mean, I hope that makes it okay, but I still feel a little iffy.
The irony about my extreme inability to write love is that when I read (or sometimes watch) something with a great romance in it I often find myself reacting like a giggling teenager. *sigh* Even to me, I don't make sense.
(BTW, for anyone who's interested, let me recommend that drama and its original novel (though unfortunately the official translation is so far only up to volume 2 of 5 on the novel), because they're super-good. On Netflix, the drama was given the translated title of The Untamed, which is a bizarrely flavorless title, and I don't think it accurately translates the show's title, though I'm pretty sure the drama does have a different title than the novel. The novel's title is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, which I admittedly can see making any network (or streaming service) wince, despite that it's a really good title. I decided to read the original 'cause looking around online I began to realize that the drama had been heavily self-censored to be allowed on Chinese television, and it sounded like the novel let the two leads actually admit to being in love with each other. I'm actually still only most of the way through the first volume, but it's already much more direct about...well, it's not really "their feelings for each other" at this point, just "his feelings for him" since it's not reciprocal yet...but it still had me acting ridiculously giddy because he's adorable in his inability to express his feelings. (But that's exactly the sort of thing I know I'll never be able to write, but hopefully my co-writer will be able to add that sort of thing into scenes I've already written...) The drama version seems a bit simplified all around (which is astonishing, considering it's 50 hour-length episodes long!) but the cast was really excellent (and the hero is quite possibly the most beautiful man I've ever seen a picture of) and the scenery and sets incredibly gorgeous.)
