Finding motivation for reading when you just cant seem to get to it?

[Zidan209]

Don t force anything unlessl a break doesn t work

[Khazit]

10 hours ago, Nuka said:

This one is free

I know, I just say in general.

[yorikbad]

I usually read 1-3 VN at one time. So, if one if them starts to drag, I go to another game. But you have to be a fast reader with broad mind not to mess with each game's plot and characters. Also, some of the best visual novels need a special preparation or even right mood to embrace them. I've tried Sharin and LB three times before they won my attention.

And I like to think VN are like girls with different quirks and styles. And everyone has its own ideal type of girl. No need to struggle when the ocean is full with fish. With maybe few exceptions like Steins Gate, Muv Love, Ever 17. You just can't call yourself a true visual novel fan without finishing them. It's like a universal list or required set of knowledge. Like math in school. You have to do your homework.

[Nuka]

8 hours ago, Narcosis said:

I have the same problem lately, but with reading and enjoying books and vn's in general.

That said, if a visual novel takes long time to become interesting, it's either badly written, or awfully badly paced; good stories instantly take you to where it's the most interesting, give you a glimpse of what's to come and hook you up to it's premise, to the point you won't even observe how much time had passed since it all began. Majority of vn's starts from those damn boring slice of life fragments, regardless whether they are chuuni stories about people who jump between dimensions, fantasy war tales or post-apo sci-fi stories where a dude simply tries to survive against all odds; it's extremely annoying for a seasoned reader and I'm not surprised why so many people have problems with getting into new vn's after a while... unless you're that rare kind of breed, like @Clephas (wish I still had a passion towards reading like him).

When I think about it I have it this way with tv-series and other games aswell now a days, MAYBE it is because of Pokémon GO

BUT now Im gonna sit down and just give it another try!

[DarkZedge]

15 hours ago, Kawasumi said:

I feel like this, all the time, sometimes I actually just need to just force myself to start reading, because I know how awesome it is when I get started.

While I don't feel like this all time I've had rough patches where the motivation to boot up a vn  just wouldn't come at all and kept on going like that until I'd force myself and then find that I got hooked and had no more issues reading said vn. Sometimes it just happens, might be because you're not really fond of the common route, might be because of your own personal mood or situation where you simply can't sit down and relax reading.

There's a lot of factors that chip in when it comes to this and they can pile up to the point where you simply stop reading for a while, in my experience when this happened I've either had to take a break from visual novels in general for a period of time and do something else or had to force myself (like Sumi said) because it  really is great once you get started and hooked.

Nowadays it doesn't happen to me too often but I'm sure it's just a momentary thing and it will fall upon me again, it just happens.

 

Try not to worry too much about it, try different vns or do different things even take a break if necessary. Do things at your own pace so that you can enjoy them and in time you'll find your own work around for these things. 

 

Those where my two cents, hope you can push through it and enjoy whatever you choose to read or play.

[Nuka]

Yay! Been reading Emi's route for a few hours and starting to enjoy it again, finally!

[DarkZedge]

3 minutes ago, Nuka said:

Yay! Been reading Emi's route for a few hours and starting to enjoy it again, finally!

Glad to hear that  

[Nuka]

Just now, DarkZedge said:

Glad to hear that  

But Im probably not gonna go for romance next after KS. I need something mind-fuck-esque again

[DarkZedge]

Just now, Nuka said:

But Im probably not gonna go for romance next after KS. I need something mind-fuck-esque again

Go for whatever you feel like and love the most, that's the best way to ensure maximum enjoyment  a safe zone per se, genres you love and you know you'll be interested in.

[Clephas]

To be more frank about the idea of having trouble motivating yourself to play a VN... I experience that on a monthly basis.  Do you know how many VNs I've played all the way through that screamed 'kusoge!' five minutes in for my VN of the Month column?  Sometimes, it gets to where a single high quality VN in a month is the only one where I don't feel that way, sadly.

While I try to be fair, the fact is that I've read so much slice-of-life in the last seven years that it is really, really hard to enjoy any slice-of-life VN.  So... how do I motivate myself?

I actually don't know how I do it sometimes.  Most of the time, I try to find one element of the VN that looks interesting before I play it, usually by scanning the Getchu page or the CG gallery.  Unfortunately, that sometimes backfires... especially when all that is in the pic gallery is h-scenes. 

Sometimes, I really do just have to force myself, though.

[Funyarinpa]

Well, unless you *have* to finish that VN, I'd just say move on to another VN or game for the time being. You might not be in the right mood, or the VN might just not be for you.

[Nuka]

I couldnt be happier to say im over this bad stage FINALLY and back on track. Spent the day almost finishing second route of Saya no Uta and starting Hanakos route after finishing Emis of KS. Hopefully able to start another VN during the weekend! Yay

[Nandemonai]

On 9/12/2016 at 9:46 PM, Khazit said:

If it costs money, then you paid for it, might as well finish it .

Not the least bit true!  Time is neither free nor unlimited.

I actually want my money back for Kara no Shoujo 2, for instance.  A true land mine.  I didn't even get past the insufferably-long flashback to a bunch of boring people I don't give a crap about doing boring things I didn't care about.  Hell, even the ones I did care about (because they're in the first game) were boring!  When I heard the first game's cliffhanger was only addressed in a cursory way, I said 'okay, that's it.  They're just jerking my chain, I'm outta here' and deleted the game/the saves.

Did I pay for the game?  Yeah.  Is it worth playing?  Not even a little bit.

As for the OP's quandry - that's always tough.  Sometimes, sticking it out gets you past a rough spot into the awesome parts later on.  Sometimes that rough spot is right in the beginning, and that's real hard.  Soul Link is like this; the beginning is very uneven, but the game picks up in a big way right after the prologue.  They were trying to establish the characters, but succeeded only in writing some real generic pablum that really doesn't do the story justice.

The problem is, how to tell whether you're reading Soul Link (a bad first impression, which then gets good) or Kara no Shoujo 2 (a bad first impression ... because it's just bad)?  That's hard.  See, if you find yourself thinking "I want to read this, but not right now" ... only months go by and you still haven't picked it back up ... what this really means is you don't actually want to read it.  Sometimes this is because of something temporary (like the intro to Soul Link) and sometimes it's a sign that you're better off moving on to something else, because it's just not for you.

[sanahtlig]

1 hour ago, Nandemonai said:

I actually want my money back for Kara no Shoujo 2, for instance.  A true land mine.  I didn't even get past the insufferably-long flashback to a bunch of boring people I don't give a crap about doing boring things I didn't care about.  Hell, even the ones I did care about (because they're in the first game) were boring!  When I heard the first game's cliffhanger was only addressed in a cursory way, I said 'okay, that's it.  They're just jerking my chain, I'm outta here' and deleted the game/the saves.

Did I pay for the game?  Yeah.  Is it worth playing?  Not even a little bit.

I don't think I've ever come across someone with such a terrific grudge against a particular game.  I also don't think I've seen anyone else ranting about Kara no Shoujo 2.

[Eclipsed]

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Not the least bit true!  Time is neither free nor unlimited.

I actually want my money back for Kara no Shoujo 2, for instance.  A true land mine.  I didn't even get past the insufferably-long flashback to a bunch of boring people

 

57 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I don't think I've ever come across someone with such a terrific grudge against a particular game.  I also don't think I've seen anyone else ranting about Kara no Shoujo 2.

Ya, a fair amount of peeps find KnS2's 'prologue' to be quite insufferable, since it's 5 hours of focusing on KnS2's new cast's slice of life past when all you wanna do is just continue where KnS1 left off

Though, there were also some who said it was the best part of KnS2  

[sanahtlig]

I never even got past the first investigation in KnS1.  The voice patch had been announced and I stalled my playthrough to wait for it.  After that, I never got the urge to start playing again.  MG basically lost me because of their clunky handling of the voice licensing.

[Fred the Barber]

11 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Not the least bit true!  Time is neither free nor unlimited.

QFT. Sunk costs are real. Overcome your latent irrationality — don't let sunk costs make you throw good time after bad money.

[Nandemonai]

On 9/17/2016 at 11:10 PM, sanahtlig said:

I don't think I've ever come across someone with such a terrific grudge against a particular game.  I also don't think I've seen anyone else ranting about Kara no Shoujo 2.

They managed to piss me off enough that I said 'enough, I'm done with the whole company'.  I probably would have bought Flowers, except it's made by IG, so no thanks.  I don't suppose I can dispute that I have a terrific grudge against the game

 

On 9/18/2016 at 0:15 AM, sanahtlig said:

I never even got past the first investigation in KnS1.  The voice patch had been announced and I stalled my playthrough to wait for it.  After that, I never got to urge to start playing again.  MG basically lost me because of their clunky handling of the voice licensing.

The first Kara no Shoujo is really good ... except that it has a crazy cliffhanger that (apparently) is only briefly touched on in the sequel.

[Okarin]

"Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free - you are a pirate!"

What it reads. Just do what you feel like doing.

I'm a route completionist and want to try every eroge in existence that appeals to me, but especially this last winter I was very fed up with it and with unemployment, so I took a long break. But I'll be back in earnest. Best thing under the sun is mixing work with eroge sessions, like in my olden days of "Period" and "Little Busters" (some 3 years ago).