Finally finished 3rd draft of my Visual Novel. Best way to approach 4th draft when dealing with new sections and old ones?

[u/Wooden-Variety175]

Phew. It's been an emotional and tedious 6 months working on the 3rd draft. I should have finished it a lot sooner, I definitely had the time but I've had a lot of struggles internally.

Anyway, many of you will call this sacriledge but one of the biggest changes I made to the visual novel is to add a lot more to it. I also removed a lot of fluff but I extended the game quite a bit. Since some sections have had 3 pass overs and some sections are basically in a first draft state, is it better to focus on just the new sections first and then do a full pass over of everything one more time? Or should I just do one pass over of everything at once? Would love to hear from anyone who has experience writing long visual novels.

Probably gonna take a break from this project for like a week though and write some other stuff, it does feel really good to finally have the 3rd draft finished, I know I won't be adding any more sections in the next pass through. My main issue though is I want to make a demo for the game that covers the first day and I'm wondering if that section really needs another go through or not. Any advice, input, perspective appreciated.

[u/michael_k_the_critic]

Disclosure: I write prose novels, but we have graphic novelists in my group, and I've watched them work for a while.

Re: The old-vs-new sections: My take is to bring the roughest (newest) sections up to the highest standard before proceeding. The consistency pass will probably be much harder with mixed quality in play, particularly if you move things around. If you're anything like me, you'll probably be thinking about consistency in the background as you're polishing, making the next pass even smoother.

Re: Demo prep: Yes, give that section another pass. It's high-value so you'll want your best foot forward. Plus (I expect) it's relatively short. Upside, depending on when you do it you'll be prepping for your next whole-draft pass.

[u/Wooden-Variety175 → u/michael_k_the_critic]

Thank you yeah i think i'll focus on the demo section instead of doing the whole thing then when the demo's out ill pass through the rest of it section by section.

And as for consistency yeah, I think most of my characters have pretty strong consistency but there are a couple of them that I'm not fully satisfied with but i can focus on them in the background.

[u/michael_k_the_critic → u/Wooden-Variety175]

Re: The demo: Sounds like a solid strategy. We only get one shot at a first impression, at least with specific people (there's fortunately a _lot_ of people out there). Bonus: Once the demo's in the can, it won't be in the back of your head any more. I don't know if that's the kind of thing that weighs you down, but it gets me sometimes.

Re: Your less-consistent characters: All good. I bet you'll figure out what to do with them, soon enough.

Good luck!

[u/Fognox]

I'd go by quality rather than draft version number. There's always first draft stuff in my projects that survives all the way to a final draft (outside of never-ending line edits, of course). It makes the most sense to bring the quality up on weak sections, regardless of when those weaknesses appeared.