For aspiring writers, November is a good month to get writing. November is designated as the National Novel Writing Month, or, NaNoWriMo; an event where a community of writers get together to encourage each other to write something amounting to 50,000 words, which is seen as typical novel length. NaNoWriMo is not a contest, but is meant to encourage people to actually write. Now, you may be wondering, why am I talking about this on a site that’s mainly about video games? Well, as it happens, there’s an equivalent for visual novels.

NaNoRenO is the visual novel equivalent of NaNoWriMo that runs in March. The name actually doesn’t mean anything coherent beyond sounding like NaNoWriMo, but the “Ren” part refers to Ren’py, a free open source engine for making visual novels, that is usually a go-to for the event. NaNoRenO started back in 2005 on the Lemma Soft Forums, a forum board dedicated to visual novels and other story focused game experiences, yet its more modern iterations have also been running game jams on itch.io starting in 2015.

As context indicates, people that sign onto NaNoRenO are challenging themselves to finish making a visual novel within a month. Unlike NaNoWriMo, there isn’t a length goal to meet. However, that is balanced out somewhat by the fact that the work that goes into visual novels is more involved, as there’s other elements like art assets and music to be considered alongside the writing. While doing pre-planning for the jam is encouraged, making any kind of asset that can go into the final visual novel before March is frowned upon.

NaNoRenO participants have put out dozens of visual novels, be they finished products or demos. Last year, 89 entries were submitted, including romances like Contract Demon, horror stories like Stroll into Darkness and goofy homoeroticism like Charles 2.0. NaNoRenO 2020 is currently still running. While we’re almost halfway into it, it doesn’t hurt to hop in if you’re aspiring to make a visual novel. After all, the point is to motivate you to get a visual novel done.

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