Tag Archives | plotting for evil overlords

Cross Pollination AKA doing more than one thing is useful!

Posted on February 1, 2012 in On Silent Suns, On Traces of Chaos

So… Between the painting of Traces of Chaos and murdering the population of Skyrim (and, admittingly, killing everything that dares to cross Fem!Shepard in Mass Effect 2.) I’ve been quietly working on my second comic, Silent Suns1.

Silent Suns features an ensemble cast. Not something I’d ever done on my own, but these characters have been developed together with John, a good friend of mine2. This resulted in one of the most important writing lessons I ever got in my short career: Every character has to be crafted for the maximum ammount of useful inter-character conflict3.

In the first book you’ve got the Pilot, the Tech, the Playboy, the Killer and the Doctor. Not many characters, are they? Both the Playboy and the Killer sleep around, but they clash about their respective attitudes towards their partners. The Killer and the Doctor clash about their choice of profession. The Pilot and the Tech about the demands of their ship and their respective definitions of feminity. The Pilot is a bit of a prude and goody-two-shoes, which nicely leads to conflict with the Playboy and the Killer. The doctor’s prim and proper, the Engineer’s rarely seen without being covered in greese and oil. The doctor feels responsible for the Pilot and the Engineer, being the oldest person on the ship, whereas the Pilot firmly believes she should be in charge.

A wonderful recipe for tasty, tasty drama small and big. And the best thing is, it arises naturally.

So what does that mean for Traces of Chaos?

I never really thought about this before, mainly because the common writing advice is “make the most interesting character the main-character” and well, Siendes has by far the most interesting character arc in ToC. And it is a good advice, really, but very, very few characters can carry a whole story on their own.  Siendes can’t. She needs support.

The Another Life storyline’s fine in that regard, just due it’s setting. It’s “Siendes among humans” afterall. Mona’s good on keeping Siendes on her toes (it’s why they married)  and Asar von Prehn, well, you’ll see. I am going to tweak some minor characters a bit, but Another Life is full of foils for my dear Des.

The main story is another matter.

Siendes needs a foil, somebody on her side she can clash with, preferable somebody she likes but who can still keep her on her toes. Siendes, unchecked, tends to be a bit of a bully.

Welp.

Maybe I can introduce Shivret earlier than planned, we’ll see. I have at least six months to think about that properly and I’m sure I’ll find a way.

Footnotes:

  1. Silent Suns is a spin off only in the sense that it is set in the same universe as ToC – but the story plays in Andromeda instead of the Milkyway, so there will be a minimum of cross over. You definitivly can enjoy one comic completly without having to even touch the second on. ↩
  2. The original plan for this comic was me doing art and worldbuilding with him doing the writing duty, but, as usual, life intervened and John had to pass off the writing duties to me. We’re both sad about this. ↩
  3. Story = Conflict. Conflict = Story. This is the fundamental truth of story telling. The best characters are those that suffer oooh so pretty when you rip their dreams, hopes, hearts and desires to a bloody pulp and force-feed it to them with huge vat of sulfric acid. ↩
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The Basics of Story Telling: Story, Narrative Structure, Implementation

Posted on November 22, 2011 in Thoughts & Musings

Lately I’ve been asked a few question about writing in general and writing for (web-)comics in particular, and while I happily chat about stuff like that, we prolly should get the basic terminology as it is used on this blog first.

Just to keep down confusion, you know?

Chances are you already know most of the following, provided you’ve ever cracked open a single book1 about creative writing. You might not know the words or have seen it put together in such a “snazzy” diagram, but the concepts themselves are nigh inescapable.

 

The Story

Characters: Who’s acting in the story?
Plot: What’s happening?
Setting: Where & When is it happening?

I think most aspiring writers are familiar with character-plot-setting – it’s the holy trifecta of the writing business. But all in all, the story itself is just an idea, a pure thought construct. You cannot share a story without the aid of the narrative Structure and the Implementation.

 

Narrative Structure

Like a decent piece of music, a story needs a rythm, a tact, a beat. The Narrative Structure is a framework to make sure that certain things happen at certain points of the story to keep the audience engaged. The ideal here is that the reader/listener/observer is carried away by the story’s rythmn – without ever realizing that it exists.

The most intuitive narrative structure is the beginning-middle-end2 one, but in our Western World the three-act and the five-act structure are the most common.

In general goes the more space you to work in with the implementation, the more complicated the narritive structure can be.

 

Implementation

If the Narrative structure is rythmn and tact, the implementation is the music as whole.

Implementation here means the actual words and lines on paper or screen. This is the story “made real”, this is how your audience interacts with your ideas. Until we invent telepathy, they can’t look in your head experience the story – your audience can only see what you commit to paper or electrons.

All your characters, your setting, the structure, your whole story, that’s carried by the implementation. This is the world of the details and their bigger meaning – your word choice, the way you structure your paragraphs, the very form you choose (short story, doorstopper novel, tv series, graphic novel, etc.), cuts, scenes, chapters and (in case of comics) panel and page breaks – all this matters, all this is the implementation.

Great characters, perfect narrative structure or a good plot – if you have a bad implementation, all of those barely matter. On the other hand, a good implementation can carry a bad story. “The plot sucks so much and the characters have the depths of a sheet of paper – but oh man, it’s fun to read!” That’s great implementation at work.

No implementation, no audience, no story. Basta.

 

The Disclaimer:
I’m self-taught artist/writer and still in the midst of learning the ropes of my craft. These posts are part of my learning process and a way for me to sort my thoughts, so don’t take this post as a recipe for Absolute Truth, Justice and American Pie. (Success is not guaranteed, either.)

Take what you’ve just read with a healthy dose of skepticismn and make sure to use other sources, too.

Footnotes:

  1. alternative sources: wikipedia, the google results or one the thousands blogs about creative writing ↩
  2. Don’t laugh. There ARE stories without a beginning or end. They can work too, but they’re different. Certain short storys, for example, often just start somewhere without having a setup, a proper beginning. ↩
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Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules For Writing Fiction

Posted on September 23, 2011 in Resources & Tutorials, Thoughts & Musings

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Source: ; Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.;

 

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Vernor’s Law of Writing

Posted on July 28, 2011 in Resources & Tutorials, Thoughts & Musings

All scenes need to accomplish at least two (and preferably all three) of the following:

  1. Providing background information for our readers
  2. Developing character
  3. Advancing plot

If the scene does not accomplish at least two tasks, change it or, preferable, cut it. Tighten the story, don’t meander, don’t dilute your writings.

Plot on its own is just a list of things that have been done. Background info alone might make a wikipedia entry, but not story. And few readers have patience for the kind of navelgazing that’s developing characters without any news on plot or background.

A scene that does too little dilutes all writing.

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