# Opening Words

Lately you've been dreaming about some characters you made up. It's pretty nice and vivid in your mind's eye. Something engaging, very deep, the likes of which nobody has seen or read before. And you're certain you want it to be a visual novel! Like novels, but with art. You think you've got the next "No More Future" in your hands, and you're ready to tell the world your story.

...are you sure you're making the right choice?

To me, every VN is special, each one its own story. And yet, often times I read about people dropping their visual novel development halfway through (example: Brave Paradise). Some aspect of it was not engaging enough, or too long a delay caused the playerbase to look elsewhere, or some in-fighting occured, etc. Lots of effort and love put in, mostly at the beginning, gone. The project goes sour and all the members have a bad taste in their mouths about the past few months.

Preventing that situation is very important. But how can you see the future? Well, the thing is there's no guarantee to anything in life.

So before you take that first step, read this gitbook from a fellow VN coder who's walked the path before. Don't make his mistakes. Good luck.

# Note

A majority of this book will have code in it, so be prepared for a lot of lines. Code written by me is free to use, if there is another author it will be stated. You are allowed to copy and paste, just do try to understand what the lines do and don't be afraid to experiment!

The contents of this gitbook reference intellectual property from other writers and artists; their content is subject to their own copyright and is used here under fair use policy. Should your content be here and you'd like it removed, please inform me about it.

To be entirely honest, I'm a coder first and a writer never. Yes, the most important part of a visual novel is usually handled by someone else in most of the projects I'm involved in. Apologies if it doesn't help as much as it should. This gitbook is a work in progress and I gladly accept feedback on all parts of it, which you can give via Discord (same link as above).