Interactive novels?

You may not be aware that there’s a brisk trade running for writers for visual novel projects - every bit as brisk as the trade for visual novel artists. While there’s more tolerance for what I like to call “programmer’s writing” than “programmer’s art”, the expectations for both are improving.

Simply put, both skills are necessary for a visual novel (especially the commercial variety), and having one is no guarantee of having the other. In both cases, “work for exposure” is common, especially for new artists/writers-for-hire working on relatively short free projects (such as game jams), although there is also an assumption that commercial works will pay artists and writers alike for their labours - and that people who wish to work on a commercial basis only will have that preference respected. (Those who ask commercial-only artists/writers to “work for exposure” are the ones who get roundly mocked all over the internet, that I believe you were alluding to in your comment). This is where I suspect researching the field prior to commenting may have aided you in getting a response more to your liking.

Other fields I’ve seen multiple people recently and successfully charge money for contributing to visual novels: musicians, writing editors, proofreaders, translators (especially for the Japanese/English language pair), voice actors, sound editors, programmers (for adding specific features to visual novels), user interface specialists and marketers. In all these fields, the previous comments also apply - it is not “artists only”.

Some of these are applicable to other forms of commercial interactive fiction also.

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@Laziram I don’t think your posts should be scoffed at. Probably, no one intended to do that.

And you’re right, working for exposure doesn’t sound like a sustainable life choice to me.
Yet we are all grateful to those who write software for free :wink: .

Share your play.
Dull work must pay.

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