10:35 it's called "feature creep" *My story writing tips* #1. Make sure your character has at least one quirk or feature or background detail that makes them unique and easily identifiable; your character can be a garbage man but if you give them something simple like some tech background then suddenly it's a much more interesting and memorable character. Rule of thumb: can your characters be identified even if you never give them a name? if yes it's probably good enough (note: your readers often forget names). #2. _More of a tip for novel writing..._ You don't have to answer all the questions, you don't have to even give names to every single character or thing in the world. Learn to write in a way that asks questions just as much as it gives answer, if not more. Especially if your writing a story that's intended only to be read (ie. a novel), giving people room to fill in the blanks with their imagination is much better then filling it in for them. For one it saves a lot of exposition some of your readers might find boring, but more importantly... let's say your story about dragons, if you don't ever describe the dragon in too much pointless detail then a person reading it in the west might imagine western dragons, while a person reading it in the east might imagine asian dragons. That's an obvious case but you can have a LOT of these small little details that the reader fills in himself (a "super steep mountain" is perfectly steep in the readers mind, but if you give them actual degrees of steepness then some readers will be underwhelmed-sometimes ambiguity is the only way to evoke the emotional response, any real value just wont cut it); cumulatively they make a big difference. Most people reading a non-wester novel will still imagine western characters even if they know the characters are supposed to be asian. Just as say, anime characters don't look "japanese" to most people, they just get auto-corrected mentally to whatever nationality the viewer is most comfortable with them being. Sometimes they get auto-corrected to nothing, they exist in the readers psyche as just the entity that satisfies the ambiguity places on them, which can be incredibly great thing for you as the writer! So don't fear ambiguity, it's many times your friend. #3. Tropes are often confused with cliches; good stories are 70% stuff that's known to work (tropes), 20% personalized touch (your spin on the tropes and usual frameworks), 10% completely original. Don't be afraid to use stuff that works, the key is how well you execute it, not how original it is (badly executed original ideas are just your own personal form of bullshit as far as the reader is concerned). Start humble, bend tropes so it's familiar but very different, use super original ideas carefully, sparingly and make sure you ease the reader/viewer into them (remember, they are not you!). Also, keep this in the back of your mind when writing: your super original super creative idea.... probably already been done, already failed, or isn't easily digested by anyone but yourself. Like I keep repeating and can't stree enough, execution is vital! stuff that's known to be good and work is your bread and butter and your friend, not your enemy! A good story is more then just "all originality" and I find it's a much more fulfilling experience not to ignore "good things" just because people like say critics like to nag on them. Remember, critics couldn't probably write a chapter, much less a story. #4. Sometimes when starting it's a good idea to have somewhat of a point of reference of the world. It's both a set of a mood/rythm kind of thing (like the music suggestion in the video), as well as a way to kickstart your imagination. I find throwing background story irrelevant traits into a (for lack of better wording) "side board" as well as just going on the internet and finding images that "fit" with the story I want and then grouping and organizing them, so as to build a mini "reference" bank works great, especially for more fantasy like stories. It's hard to visualize a world that takes 10 pages just to make a summary but visual stimulation can really help-though typically you end up with more "ideas" then you can even write down. #5. "Just write." If it's bad, no problem, write revisions, or scrap it and write it again entirely (keeping in mind what didnt work). Everyone's first iteration sucks, don't even be surprised when it happens. The more you practice the less iterations you will take next time. "Keeping it all in your head" is just as practical as the so called "multi-tasking"-so physically impossible even though we typically think of it as "we can do it if we really wanted to" (no you cant!) #6. Sadly I don't have any great tips for revisions, I just do what I feel works at the time. One thing that helps is spliting the writing into "logical" chunks. These don't have to be things you actually mark out to the read in the final version (the final version may very well just look like one continous piece), however for the purpose of writing it's really helpful for making changes to have everything split into tiny bits. It gives you points of reference and you can also easily navigate though your notes and other details. Typically I go for: books, titles, arcs, events, summaries, chapters, paragraphs. I sprinkle ocasional "info dumps" for myself. Usually at least half the stuff is things I force myself to be true for reference when writing but may never be directly revelealed; it's good to write things down that are important even if they're not things you can ever write down directly in the chapter, so long as you know then the info will "trikle" down into other details of the story indirectly and allow everything to have good structure. For your own good, start a glossary of terms and character details early. #7. ALWAYS start from the top down. It's very very easy to write "short" timespans (chapters, paragraphs, etc). BUT, it's hard to glue things togherer, it's hard to make something that makes sense, it's hard to give structure and purpose. So if you focus too early too hard on short timespan you'll generally end up with a lot of work leading to a big mess. Don't be too strict with your structure either. It's very fun to read a very "loose" story where things just happen out of the blue sometimes. But don't be completely with out purpose-your characters should have an objective that is true, even when they forget about it or don't mention it in layman terms every chance they get. Like I mentioned before I split things into logical bits (it's simpler to go with known sectioning terms like chapter, arcs, etc, but you can really do anything), when you have an "idea" think of it like this: "if this was several books, what would the books be" (always force yourself to think of at least 3, trilogies have good synergy), then choose one book and choose a framework. Hero's journey is always a good (easy) one; just give it your own personal touch if you're feeling its not good enough, dont be too weird, your readers do have some expectations! Playing with the expectations is better then giving them a complete oddball. Write with either titles or very short paragraphs (2-3 lines at most) the general arcs, then go in and write titles, chapter titles and so on. *Do not be afraid to leave blanks!* Nobody is perfect, got a great idea for part 1/5 and part 3/5 and nothing else, no biggie, just figure out how much time you need to fill in later inbetween and leave yourself some notes and write your good ideas of the later parts now. Because your splitting everything into bits, holes are really just missing bits, it's very easy therefore to focus on the parts you know and defer them to later or the "sleep on it" strategy. When you get to summaries, stop until you get everything from summaries up to the arc level complete. The actual chapters are after all details, get a solid foundation then everything will come naturally in place. Knowing future events, character development direction and so on is also immensely helpful and makes the busy work that much easier and quality that much better (less risk of writing something that makes sense only to yourself for the split second you put the words down). By knowing the future direction you can add cameos, hints, foreshadowing etc but most importantly, you can avoid completely writing things that have no future relevance. You can do this blind too of course, but I find that's a double edge sword with your blood already on it. It's essentially like saying "I'm gonna cut myself now in hopes this is still sharp later", don't do it. If you're that determined to make the "cut" then just go up in the structure, build up the thing you're going to foreshadown, then go back and write with confidence. Another big reason to write with structure first, details second is the issue of getting side-tracked. It happens. Most of the time its a good thing, nice spark of the imagination forcing you to write some good scenes. But, there's a limit. And that limit is when it starts to mess with the structure that's in place. You can plan for a title of a chapter but write 10 chapters where you initially intended for one, that's not a problem. But if you write a chapter and it veers off course of the structure, or just doesn't tie back in all too nicely, that's a problem. Maybe it's a structure problem, if it is go and fix that instead but either way set yourself some limits watch out for when things dont go as planned, it's a check that somethings not quite right.
damn I’m copying this comment, print it, and pin it on my wall so I don’t forget about it when writing. You couldn’t be more precise and helpful cause it’s perfect that way.
All three ideas sounds pretty useful. For one of my stories I thought of it as recreating a datalouge like what they have in Final Fantasy. I am always amazed on how much information and dedication the creators and designers put into making their own world and it also gives me the impression of a real life world.
Those are some interesting methods to create your stories and expand them to something great. For one of the stories I've been trying to build, I've taken a typical genre (the magical girl genre for example) and I've tried to think about some what ifs that no one's thought of (what if the main protagonist doesn't want to save the world, what if they just wanted to live an ordinary life). I have a fantastic character I want to use but it's just trying to come up with an original problem/adversary to overcome.
I think everyone has this kind of problem with their story. Because the story/genre itself doesn't _have_ to be original (for example: a hero goes on an adventure, a story about revenge etc.) but it's the _execution_ that makes it interesting. If you already have an interesting character then I'd say half of the story is going to be good (because how many animes have you seen where the protagonist is useless or overly energetic who ruined the good concept of the story... I'm dying for something new). But don't get discouraged. An original problem/adversary is not the only good point in storytelling. As far as I know, there are 4 different things you should consider for a good manga: -setup (when, where, who, why, what and how), -story (the kishotenketsu that was explained in the video), -characters (you said you have a good idea of your new character so I'll leave that to you) -and episodes (the little stories that make up a chapter. I can only come up with one manga that does it distinctively, namely Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun. Basically every page builds up to the climatic final page, for example a funny misunderstanding, however every single page is also a story on their own like....hmmm It's like every page is a new funny story, except that it's only funny if you've read the previous one. The misunderstanding is building up and at the climax you solve it all. I'm sorry I'm really bad at this, just read the manga and save yourself the headache). If you're going to post you story online, people are generally very forgiving when it comes to originality of problem solving/adversary. Just make sure that the "episodes" leave a good impression on others. If your story has only one big climax pro chapter, it's going to bore the readers before they even reach it. But if you have a few little ones in between - that's what makes a manga more enjoyable. Do I even make sense? Sorry for my rambling haha
Hero's Journey was popularised by Joseph Campbell in his Hero With A Thousand Face. It's an anthropology/social culture study, the creative story telling aspect was popularised with George Lucas and Star War.
.... i feel like the kishotenketsu guy..........described freytag's pyramid instead- a western method. ...? i've been researching kishotenketsu a lot, but... the ten is specifically a "twist", not a challenge per se. the examples of ki sho ten ketsu that i found, always put it as the twist being completely UNRELATED to previous eventts, it's something new, it's meant to be strange and "how does this relate!?" and then the conclusion explains how it related. Or else for longer narratives, the Ten then is answered by more development (Sho) and another Ten happens etc until conclusion...... His sounded like standard westren narrative formatting.. it was just a challenge not a twist... .. ??
i can't find the source but someone drew a comic describing it. Ki; girl at vending machine. Sho: girl getting drink out of vending machine. Ten: some dude's sitting on a wall observing the garden. Ketsu: girl brings the dude a drink. (this form doesn't even need a conflict, actually, to tell the story. but the Ten, the twist, is meant to be seemingly unrelated)
10:35 it's called "feature creep"
*My story writing tips*
#1. Make sure your character has at least one quirk or feature or background detail that makes them unique and easily identifiable; your character can be a garbage man but if you give them something simple like some tech background then suddenly it's a much more interesting and memorable character. Rule of thumb: can your characters be identified even if you never give them a name? if yes it's probably good enough (note: your readers often forget names).
#2. _More of a tip for novel writing..._ You don't have to answer all the questions, you don't have to even give names to every single character or thing in the world.
Learn to write in a way that asks questions just as much as it gives answer, if not more. Especially if your writing a story that's intended only to be read (ie. a novel), giving people room to fill in the blanks with their imagination is much better then filling it in for them. For one it saves a lot of exposition some of your readers might find boring, but more importantly... let's say your story about dragons, if you don't ever describe the dragon in too much pointless detail then a person reading it in the west might imagine western dragons, while a person reading it in the east might imagine asian dragons. That's an obvious case but you can have a LOT of these small little details that the reader fills in himself (a "super steep mountain" is perfectly steep in the readers mind, but if you give them actual degrees of steepness then some readers will be underwhelmed-sometimes ambiguity is the only way to evoke the emotional response, any real value just wont cut it); cumulatively they make a big difference. Most people reading a non-wester novel will still imagine western characters even if they know the characters are supposed to be asian. Just as say, anime characters don't look "japanese" to most people, they just get auto-corrected mentally to whatever nationality the viewer is most comfortable with them being. Sometimes they get auto-corrected to nothing, they exist in the readers psyche as just the entity that satisfies the ambiguity places on them, which can be incredibly great thing for you as the writer! So don't fear ambiguity, it's many times your friend.
#3. Tropes are often confused with cliches; good stories are 70% stuff that's known to work (tropes), 20% personalized touch (your spin on the tropes and usual frameworks), 10% completely original. Don't be afraid to use stuff that works, the key is how well you execute it, not how original it is (badly executed original ideas are just your own personal form of bullshit as far as the reader is concerned). Start humble, bend tropes so it's familiar but very different, use super original ideas carefully, sparingly and make sure you ease the reader/viewer into them (remember, they are not you!).
Also, keep this in the back of your mind when writing: your super original super creative idea.... probably already been done, already failed, or isn't easily digested by anyone but yourself. Like I keep repeating and can't stree enough, execution is vital! stuff that's known to be good and work is your bread and butter and your friend, not your enemy! A good story is more then just "all originality" and I find it's a much more fulfilling experience not to ignore "good things" just because people like say critics like to nag on them. Remember, critics couldn't probably write a chapter, much less a story.
#4. Sometimes when starting it's a good idea to have somewhat of a point of reference of the world. It's both a set of a mood/rythm kind of thing (like the music suggestion in the video), as well as a way to kickstart your imagination. I find throwing background story irrelevant traits into a (for lack of better wording) "side board" as well as just going on the internet and finding images that "fit" with the story I want and then grouping and organizing them, so as to build a mini "reference" bank works great, especially for more fantasy like stories. It's hard to visualize a world that takes 10 pages just to make a summary but visual stimulation can really help-though typically you end up with more "ideas" then you can even write down.
#5. "Just write." If it's bad, no problem, write revisions, or scrap it and write it again entirely (keeping in mind what didnt work). Everyone's first iteration sucks, don't even be surprised when it happens. The more you practice the less iterations you will take next time. "Keeping it all in your head" is just as practical as the so called "multi-tasking"-so physically impossible even though we typically think of it as "we can do it if we really wanted to" (no you cant!)
#6. Sadly I don't have any great tips for revisions, I just do what I feel works at the time. One thing that helps is spliting the writing into "logical" chunks. These don't have to be things you actually mark out to the read in the final version (the final version may very well just look like one continous piece), however for the purpose of writing it's really helpful for making changes to have everything split into tiny bits. It gives you points of reference and you can also easily navigate though your notes and other details. Typically I go for: books, titles, arcs, events, summaries, chapters, paragraphs. I sprinkle ocasional "info dumps" for myself. Usually at least half the stuff is things I force myself to be true for reference when writing but may never be directly revelealed; it's good to write things down that are important even if they're not things you can ever write down directly in the chapter, so long as you know then the info will "trikle" down into other details of the story indirectly and allow everything to have good structure. For your own good, start a glossary of terms and character details early.
#7. ALWAYS start from the top down. It's very very easy to write "short" timespans (chapters, paragraphs, etc). BUT, it's hard to glue things togherer, it's hard to make something that makes sense, it's hard to give structure and purpose. So if you focus too early too hard on short timespan you'll generally end up with a lot of work leading to a big mess.
Don't be too strict with your structure either. It's very fun to read a very "loose" story where things just happen out of the blue sometimes. But don't be completely with out purpose-your characters should have an objective that is true, even when they forget about it or don't mention it in layman terms every chance they get. Like I mentioned before I split things into logical bits (it's simpler to go with known sectioning terms like chapter, arcs, etc, but you can really do anything), when you have an "idea" think of it like this: "if this was several books, what would the books be" (always force yourself to think of at least 3, trilogies have good synergy), then choose one book and choose a framework. Hero's journey is always a good (easy) one; just give it your own personal touch if you're feeling its not good enough, dont be too weird, your readers do have some expectations! Playing with the expectations is better then giving them a complete oddball. Write with either titles or very short paragraphs (2-3 lines at most) the general arcs, then go in and write titles, chapter titles and so on.
*Do not be afraid to leave blanks!* Nobody is perfect, got a great idea for part 1/5 and part 3/5 and nothing else, no biggie, just figure out how much time you need to fill in later inbetween and leave yourself some notes and write your good ideas of the later parts now. Because your splitting everything into bits, holes are really just missing bits, it's very easy therefore to focus on the parts you know and defer them to later or the "sleep on it" strategy. When you get to summaries, stop until you get everything from summaries up to the arc level complete. The actual chapters are after all details, get a solid foundation then everything will come naturally in place. Knowing future events, character development direction and so on is also immensely helpful and makes the busy work that much easier and quality that much better (less risk of writing something that makes sense only to yourself for the split second you put the words down). By knowing the future direction you can add cameos, hints, foreshadowing etc but most importantly, you can avoid completely writing things that have no future relevance. You can do this blind too of course, but I find that's a double edge sword with your blood already on it. It's essentially like saying "I'm gonna cut myself now in hopes this is still sharp later", don't do it. If you're that determined to make the "cut" then just go up in the structure, build up the thing you're going to foreshadown, then go back and write with confidence.
Another big reason to write with structure first, details second is the issue of getting side-tracked. It happens. Most of the time its a good thing, nice spark of the imagination forcing you to write some good scenes. But, there's a limit. And that limit is when it starts to mess with the structure that's in place. You can plan for a title of a chapter but write 10 chapters where you initially intended for one, that's not a problem. But if you write a chapter and it veers off course of the structure, or just doesn't tie back in all too nicely, that's a problem. Maybe it's a structure problem, if it is go and fix that instead but either way set yourself some limits watch out for when things dont go as planned, it's a check that somethings not quite right.
No one said thanks to you? well,thanks!
this comment is actually 700x better than the video itself, for a start it actually talks about the writting aspect :)
thank you
This was enlightening comment, thanks!
damn I’m copying this comment, print it, and pin it on my wall so I don’t forget about it when writing. You couldn’t be more precise and helpful cause it’s perfect that way.
4:28 *girl in the back*
Wait, what's going on? Oh, recording, need to leave!
XD yup. i saw her too.
Hero's Journey isn't just a Japanese way. Is a humanity way!
When that Japanese lady walked around the corner and spotted the camera she was out of there quick af
Thank you very much for sharing video! 😊🇯🇵🌸
Ah brilliant! Great to see people realising the power of Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu. It really is foundation of everything in Japanese manga.
2:44 yo this girl just explained the plotline of miraculous 😂
Lmao frl
All three ideas sounds pretty useful.
For one of my stories I thought of it as recreating a datalouge like what they have in Final Fantasy. I am always amazed on how much information and dedication the creators and designers put into making their own world and it also gives me the impression of a real life world.
Excellent upload. My brain has learned stuff (doesn't happen often).
Those are some interesting methods to create your stories and expand them to something great.
For one of the stories I've been trying to build, I've taken a typical genre (the magical girl genre for example) and I've tried to think about some what ifs that no one's thought of (what if the main protagonist doesn't want to save the world, what if they just wanted to live an ordinary life). I have a fantastic character I want to use but it's just trying to come up with an original problem/adversary to overcome.
I think everyone has this kind of problem with their story. Because the story/genre itself doesn't _have_ to be original (for example: a hero goes on an adventure, a story about revenge etc.) but it's the _execution_ that makes it interesting.
If you already have an interesting character then I'd say half of the story is going to be good (because how many animes have you seen where the protagonist is useless or overly energetic who ruined the good concept of the story... I'm dying for something new).
But don't get discouraged. An original problem/adversary is not the only good point in storytelling. As far as I know, there are 4 different things you should consider for a good manga:
-setup (when, where, who, why, what and how),
-story (the kishotenketsu that was explained in the video),
-characters (you said you have a good idea of your new character so I'll leave that to you)
-and episodes (the little stories that make up a chapter. I can only come up with one manga that does it distinctively, namely Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun. Basically every page builds up to the climatic final page, for example a funny misunderstanding, however every single page is also a story on their own like....hmmm It's like every page is a new funny story, except that it's only funny if you've read the previous one. The misunderstanding is building up and at the climax you solve it all. I'm sorry I'm really bad at this, just read the manga and save yourself the headache).
If you're going to post you story online, people are generally very forgiving when it comes to originality of problem solving/adversary. Just make sure that the "episodes" leave a good impression on others. If your story has only one big climax pro chapter, it's going to bore the readers before they even reach it. But if you have a few little ones in between - that's what makes a manga more enjoyable.
Do I even make sense? Sorry for my rambling haha
Attack on titan's story based on Ki-sho-ten-ketsu ❤️
I'm writing a manga with my brother and so far we already have a story and main protagonist and antagonist
How did that go?
2020 now... How far are you now? I started in 2017 too But I'm still rewriting the first arc and I'm not really good at drawing...
Only half way through but got all the characters and plot done. Still working on it and started drawing some of the characters out
@@lazygamer2995 and now?
you guys are nerds. i lov u.
0:26 this is the same stock sample used in "Interspecies Reviewers" (異異種族レビュアーズ) end credits
4:25 lol that girl be like "shit, gtg"
I love this series.
That's exactly what I do, and I go a step further: I write my own songs for it.
( Plus being able to write poetry helps captioning later. )
Thank you so much for your assistance 🙏💕
Tanks guys you helped me a lot : )
great video! Please make more like this ^ ^
Amazing channel ! Suscribed
I'd write a novel about my story before I put it into planning and creation
Nice
Hero's Journey was popularised by Joseph Campbell in his Hero With A Thousand Face. It's an anthropology/social culture study, the creative story telling aspect was popularised with George Lucas and Star War.
Joseph Cambell...the monomyth... awesome.
Ki sho ten ketsu is good for shonnen like attack of titans
Looking through google images at Nature and beautiful villages.
Can colourful mangas be published or just black and white mangas?
ki sho ten kestu is the same as the hero's journey
one thing i learned from this video. Makeup was not made for Japanese onna.
Hello! Can you give me a tip because I really wanted to make a story where the setting of it will be in japan.
.... i feel like the kishotenketsu guy..........described freytag's pyramid instead- a western method. ...? i've been researching kishotenketsu a lot, but... the ten is specifically a "twist", not a challenge per se.
the examples of ki sho ten ketsu that i found, always put it as the twist being completely UNRELATED to previous eventts, it's something new, it's meant to be strange and "how does this relate!?" and then the conclusion explains how it related. Or else for longer narratives, the Ten then is answered by more development (Sho) and another Ten happens etc until conclusion......
His sounded like standard westren narrative formatting.. it was just a challenge not a twist... .. ??
i can't find the source but someone drew a comic describing it.
Ki; girl at vending machine.
Sho: girl getting drink out of vending machine.
Ten: some dude's sitting on a wall observing the garden.
Ketsu: girl brings the dude a drink.
(this form doesn't even need a conflict, actually, to tell the story. but the Ten, the twist, is meant to be seemingly unrelated)
The guys said, "but something unexpected happens"
like the other methods too
3:28 whys this guy shaking its making me anxious too lol
لماذا عنوان الفيديو بالعربي ولا يوجد ترجمه للعربي ،ما هاذا الاحتيال
Am i the only one who thinks that girl's look like Reira-Trapnest from Nana anime..? lol
Cathy cat what r u doing here?💁
Is that shia labeaouf ?
Hola
Annays Plaza x2 jaja
I can’t draw...