Don’t worry, my WIP starts with a dream sequence, too—and it’s the first no-no I wrote down! I think your use of it seems perfectly justified. And after reading @rose-court’s detailed (and hilarious) list, I also realized my no-no’s differ hugely when it comes to interactive fiction and games: things I won’t tolerate in traditional fiction, I’ve come to accept or even like in IF! So while a dream sequence would make me roll my eyes in a short story, I think it can be used well and meaningfully in IF. I think I’ll come back to this post and write out my no-no’s for games as well, but it’ll have to be later because I have a plane to catch.
If this is concerning something that happens in your WIP, I don’t want to comment on a work I unfortunately haven’t gotten the chance to read yet! But if it’s purely hypothetical, I’d like to say I wouldn’t really enjoy that unless there was some way to avoid it that I simply hadn’t done. If it’s an unavoidable occurrence, I would be strongly against it, mostly because in real life I can usually tell when someone is going to kiss me and I can move away if it’s unwanted. I’ve never been in a circumstance where someone just sort of lunged for me without me being able to dodge. Also, I would hate for discord to be sown between me and a partner over a misunderstanding that was not in my control!
Which does remind me of an unrelated no-no I have, for movies or shows or books or anything—
The “I can explain!/It’s not what it looks like!” moment, where someone walks in on someone else doing something that looks bad, but really isn’t. And the character blurts out, “Wait! I can explain!” instead of their actual explanation, and the other character goes, “Save your words! I don’t want to hear it!” and storms away, and the character doesn’t follow them for some reason. And then they don’t talk about it for a very long time, and all of their friends know they’re “in a fight.” Then the character has to do some sort of big romantic gesture to get the other character to forgive them, instead of, y’know, taking the few sentences it would take to say “The person I was texting was a dance instructor so I could surprise you on our anniversary, not another woman…”
I’ve recently been on a book reading spree (lesbian romance novels, to be specific) and oh boy what I would give for a book that doesn’t make me groan in disappointment every five pages. So here goes my list of recently discovered no-nos:
characters going on about their sexual exploits, or, even worse, being introduced by detailing how many girls they got hanging off their leg (I do not care and I do not want to know; I cannot relate and quite frankly, I’m not sure how or why that would make the character seem hot or desirable to me)
completely stupid adjectives (no lie, if you use ‘sexy’ to describe something about a person more than twice in one book, you’re doing something wrong)
love/lust at first sight (again, I cannot relate and it just…takes out all the slow, intimate parts of getting to know and care for each other; I want to feel like these two characters get together because they are meant to be, not because their sensitive bits just happened to tingle upon seeing each other)
badly resolved or unresolved conflicts (if a conflict has an unsatisfying conclusion, especially if it’s the main conflict, that’s just bound to leave a bad taste)
Biggest thing for me are stories where a 30 second conversation between any two characters would resolve all, or most, or even a healthy “some” of the central conflict.
TV shows are the biggest offender, but books and movies do it too, and sometimes even well regarded ones.
Ah, but then you probably lose most of the story. In the Lord of the Rings, right at the beginning Frodo is given the ‘One Ring’ and then begins an epic journey across Middle Earth to drop it into Mount Doom. The quickest way, by far, would have been for Gandalf to summon an eagle and simply drop the ring into the volcano from a great height but that would have resulted in a monumentally boring story!
My inner nerd kicks in at this point. If the ring traveled by eagle then Sauron would see it coming easily and kill it. Hobbit-travel is more sneaky and they are more resistant to magic.
Most have been mentioned already, but my top (bottom?) 5:
Elements tooted as important factor in the world which have no impact on the world outside the scenes in which they are spotlighted: For example the MeChips from HeroesRise. So they replaced the brain’s memory function. Ok. Where is the change to the juridical system that would bring? Why are there puzzles that require the player to remember something the character would definitely remember? Why is there talk about telepaths being needed to read one’s memories? They’re digital now, if you would need superpowers at all you’d need a technokinetic.
Spotlighting Chekhov’s Gun: We all know the thing that’s casually mentioned at some point in the story that will become important later. Some authors do it well, making it part of the whole. One might suspect it to become important but it’s not for certain. And then there are authors that virtually scream in your face how important something will be by constantly drawing attention to it… to then act as if you, the dull reader, could have NEVER seen it coming when it finally becomes important to the story.
Mixing up author- character- and reader knowledge: Whether we have a sequel at hand, or a different PoV, the moment a character knows something only the author (and reader) should know, or when the story reads as if the reader would know what the author/character knows… you messed up. Bonus points if you have a story where it seems as if the author was 100% convinced that no one could know something they don’t.
Putting the world in stasis: So, the characters do a thing. Then there’s a bit of fast forward, and we’re told how the character is now doing thing X. But wait. Why didn’t they do thing X in the bit we didn’t see? They’d have had enough time and opportunity. Also, why is everyone seemingly waiting for the characters to show up? Especially grating when the author keeps reminding us that there is a time-limit the chars are on. Yet they can spent their dear time fooling around without any consequences.
speaking of consequences, and this one is especially for CoG:
Stories that lie to you about possibilities We all know about railroading, and I hope we agree that in 8-9/10 cases it’s sh*t. But railroading gets even worse when a choice, or, hell, a stat makes it sound like as if there IS a different way. Opening at the close, I shall use another example from HR: Miss Artillery’s death is set. You can not save her. She HAS to get fridged so the MC gets their powers back (note: if you plan on fridging a character, please go and rewrite the entire bit). Yet the ‘power regain points’ threw off many people, having them try and try again. It’s misleading, probably a left-over from an idea that was never written, the stat never renamed/removed to fit with what was going on. Thumbs down.
Well… it’s certainly avoidable… mainly because I imagine most people would just be avoiding that character by that point…
Honestly, this is a problem for many stories, and probably ought to be a no-no on its own. If the character would remember something, then it’s stupid to force the player to remember it. I can’t do magic or punch through walls, but my character can, so why should I have to remember what my character should? (And if I’m playing a stupid character, just say that he can’t remember. )
I mean, if I get a good enough reason as to why my character might for a moment not remember something (stress, euphoria, etc) okay. But as per example, HR is a game that over and over reminds us that memory is stored on those chips. yet our character constantly fails to remember things. Why?
That sucks too, but I mean when the game decides (disregarding your opinion or previous options) that your character is interested and you either don’t have an option to say no, or it’s a fake option that still ends as though you agreed.
Romance stories trying to pretend to be supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi, but still putting the angsty, angsty romance so much in focus, that we end up having the POV character constantly angsting about their RO(s), when their world is litterally in danger, and they’re the one who’s supposed to frickin’ fix things!
Usually comes with insta-love, love triangles (Despite the insta-love. How does that make sense??), and oh-so-plain-and-insecure but supermodel-level-gorgeous MC’s who are Not-Like-Other-Girls.
It’s to the point where I just avoid fem-POV straight romance stories, because uuuurghhh…
Yeah; that makes sense. I’m talking more about games which include (for example) exams or tests which are testing the player rather than the character.
Agreeing on avery important thing is the most crucial thing to a relationship
Seriously though I probably would’t mind a character who is so flippant or carefree that their bar has little importance.
Mr @ParrotWatcher does both of those things. Lani can forcibly kiss (though it’s pretty avoidable and situational) you and it can turn into a not what it looks like scenario. Though that depends on who your RO at that point is. Kay does that but Anara doesn’t from my memory. And even with Kay you can explain it to her right after she storms out.
I laughed so hard at this one only because I’ve read far too many #1 spot wattpad books with em, and I’m just like yea no.
I positively loathe a story where the characters all make obviously stupid choices, but the author writes it as if they’re smart. For example the most evil guy in the whole book was scared of a group of beings that were locked away. He warns his daughter not to ever touch them or go near them, cos they only want to destroy the world, no other purpose whatsoever. And guess what, so called smart and strategic character gets her feelings hurt and releases them for revenge, cos of one person. I stopped reading.
Character descriptions that are thrown at you as soon as you meet the character. Unless there’s some important aspect that we need to know immediately or something striking, then I always think it’s better to add descriptions when they’re important or just later on.
Prophecies about the chosen one. Just . . . no. I wanna read something about the one guy that just got pulled into the craziness of the Chosen One’s quest. Edit: @Pizza_is_good in other words, yes. I just saw your post after posting my own lol.
And finally, horribly written villains. This is almost everywhere and it’s more so due to me being so critical of villains cos I love them. I want a villain like Lotor from Voltron or Solas from Dragon Age. A villain who is deep and I have to seriously come to terms about whether or not they’re evil. I want to finish a book thinking “well they weren’t all that evil, they had good points and if you think about how they were raised and surrounded by, it makes sense”. Not these, I have a horrible tragic backstory that gives me the right to kill everyone.
I feel like I can name more if I actually read the book.
Meh. Like I can like a villain who doesn’t have a good reason or internal conflict. I mean Carnage and Joker are pretty popular despite just being criminals. And the tragic backstory can sometimes work for me depending on who the anger is directed at and how much tragedy happened. Though honestly someone with a really tragic backstory but it having little effect on their character or them simply being happy go lucky people in spite o it sounds great to me.
Completely agree, I love Joker because he does things just to piss people off. So of course I make an exception. The angry tragic backstory, yea if the villain is mainly going after those who wronged them. But unless innocent people get in your way, then I don’t see why some villains go down the “world domination” path. Unless again you’re the Joker and your idea is to do it for the heck of it.
Still wouldn’t explain why the character doesn’t become a blank slate when the chip’s forcefully removed in 1…
(let’s face it, the worldbuilding in HR is either a complete mess or non-existent at all)
Just to note: in light of these conversations I’ve been making it much easier to have Chi and Anara not misunderstand the situation, and slightly easier for Kay, too (although, yes, after you follow her). (If you’re with Sammy… still just avoid Lani. )
I think your use of it seems perfectly justified. 
And after reading @rose-court’s detailed (and hilarious) list, I also realized my no-no’s differ hugely when it comes to interactive fiction and games: things I won’t tolerate in traditional fiction, I’ve come to accept or even like in IF! So while a dream sequence would make me roll my eyes in a short story, I think it can be used well and meaningfully in IF. I think I’ll come back to this post and write out my no-no’s for games as well, but it’ll have to be later because I have a plane to catch.
mainly because I imagine most people would just be avoiding that character by that point… 
(And if I’m playing a stupid character, just say that he can’t remember. 
)
Sounds rather nifty.
)