Is it Appealing?

nostalgic = a feeling of wanting, or being...

When people say they like an anime or a manga, usually it was because it appealed to them... Some people liked Naruto because they think Ninjas are cool...

why do they think Ninjas are cool, many reasons, but the most common is appeal... somewhere in their heart they wished, even for a minute moment, that they could be a ninja, or that the ninjas from Naruto were real...



I'm sure everyone has at least day dreamed or wished for a second that they could spend a day with their favorite anime character or something similar to that... when I was a kid I wished the world was more like a Zelda game, adventure at ever corner, and NO SCHOOL!

... even as we get older we still have those thoughts sometimes, when I watch School Rumble, often I wish real school was like that... School Rumble has appealed to me....

but now as a writer, my writings and stories must appeal to other people too... Which is a pretty hard thing...



so how can I get my writings to appeal to other people?

Well (keep in mind these things are simply my own theories...) the first thing to do is to see who your target is... do you want adults to like your stories or do you want anime fans?

Most popular anime like Naruto, Bleach and One Piece, are called "Main Stream" ...

Mainstream is something that appeals to the majority... you wouldn't call a screamo gothic emo anime, main stream, because a happy go lucky girl probably wouldn't want to watch it, it probably wouldn't appeal to her...

however Naruto is considered mainstream because in this time period Ninjas are considered "cool"... lots of people like Ninjas... so it makes sense that this appeals to people...

Twilight is mainstream because vampires are the "big thing" today... that doesn't mean everybody likes it, it just means the majority of people will...

The down side to mainstream is it has to be dumbed down for the majority of people to enjoy, it has to cling on to a gimmick, such as ninjas and vampires, and usually a "mainstream" anime or novel will never be that great, on a critical point of view, mainstream things just aren't that great...



Death Note obviously isn't mainstream, because there a millions of people who hate it... Death isn't appealing to happy happy smile all the time kids... if you look at the Death Note fan base, the majority is made up of emo, goth teenagers... I'm sure the creators would have wanted it to appeal to as many people as possible, but when you write on such "extreme" subjects, you're bound to have haters.... but I personally think Death Note is 10X better than Naruto or Bleach...



Anyways when I was writing Green Success (that title embarrasses me) I definately wanted it to appeal to everyone passable... but now I realize I want to add some edge to it, make it a little more epic and maybe even make it a more serious story... as well, I also wanted it to be considered a "Christian" story, as leading people to Christ is my main goal... so right off the bat, there goes a LOT of appeal... I would be very surprised if my novel ever went mainstream... Well honestly, I'd be surprised if I even sold over 100 copies.... I have to understand who I'm trying to appeal if I want it to appeal...

...When you write a story about blood and vampires, expect it to appeal to vampire fans... expect it to be hated by everyone else...

So I could go on and on about this, but I'll keep this short by using a specific example... Green Success, the story I know the best...

Some of the main "gimmicks" of Green Success I used to try to get some appeal:

Rich People
Huge Mansion
Money
Marijuana
Gangs
Teens who are treated equally to adults
houses made of cardboard
No Parental influence, (parents don't care what the kids do) <--- I like that one!
Characters with high respect by the entire town
Cute Girl who loves you no matter what
Dreams of becoming a Manga artist
Death
Poor Run down Church, but a strong fellowship
Gun violence
Family (Family of people who aren't actually related but still stick together and call themselves a family)

I hope at least one of these things appealed to you... but in order to get someone to fall in love with Green Success, I think it would take more than just one thing to appeal...



So I say, think about your stories, what "gimmicks" have you used and who you want it to appeal to...

I say Gimmick, because in all honesty I purposely chose those things because I knew they would be interesting and appealing things for people to read about...

I guess I could have added Vampires to Green Success. but I wouldn't stoop that low... :P

So think about your stories when you write, if it doesn't even appeal to you, then it probably won't appeal to others...

Just remember these are just my personal theories and ideas... I may be wrong...

..I put little fireballs in my posts because I want it to appeal to lots of people... because most people cant stand looking at a huge blob of words... They like pictures! So do I!

Twisting the Strings of the Plot....

Let's face it the best plot, the best ending and the best story mechanics are the ones where things all seem related, things are obvious but not straight forward, where things make a little more sense once you find out some piece of info... The best ending is one that doesn't just pop out of the blue...

A story that's connected, well thought out and most of all, isn't just a straight forward system of events, is an amazing story...

When I play an RPG I am always stunned at how well thought out it is... Particularly the Zelda Franchise... Some things are only open to you if you have the right items, yet you are exposed to these things even if you don't have the item or aren't as far in the game yet...

In story logic, the reader/viewer is exposed to things they may not fully understand, such as in Gears of War the Locust and their origin aren't explained right off the bat, yet you are still throuwn right into the action and the fact you don't know everything about it, make the story interesting because you will have so many questions about it like "What are krill?" "Who's the Locust Queen?" Of course once you find out, it's just like getting the item in an RPG, it makes more sense, but it isn't necessary to know...

Every watch a movie a second time and realize it's not as entertaining as it was the first time? Most people think it's because it's their first time seeing it, they don't know what's going to happen, and so on... but I believe that's only part of the reason... If you watched a movie you already know everything about then it's obviously not as entertaining, however if you expose the reader to information about the movie or story, you explain things too much then it feels like a repeat, it stops feeling fresh and new and things start to get old...

In an RPG you are always going back and fourth, even though you have returned to the dungeon or area again you never do the same thing again, usually you have a new item such as the Hoock SHot, which allows you to reach places and areas you weren't able to do the last time you were there, maybe you got some Fire Arrows that allow you to melt the ice that you couldn't have done before... you might have seen the ice cube and wondered what it's for, and once you get the arrows if you still have remembered, you realize you can melt the ice... ...

In a story you can mention a setting briefly or a character briefly without going into complete detail... for example you can mention John is a gun dealer but that doesn't particularly have anything to do with the story... but come time the characters actually need the guns, the smart viewers will remember John was a gun dealer, while the dummer viewers/readers will watch as the characters look for the guns before they remember John was the gun dealer...

Now for some genius story twisting, the previous example was very general while my next example is a story that twists and twines back and fourth well... as you read, just ask yourself...


"Because this is happening, what will be the result? And why is the result important?"

--------------------------------------------

There was a small village, the huts were closely packed together... People were laying on the ground, their eyes half opened... Some of them turned on their backs while others stared at the sky...
"The town hasn't had food for days." A muscular man said behind a rock, "But my love for her will never starve!" He continued to carve on the rock with his drawing stone.

"Guys! We need to leave now! There's a giant monster headed this way!"
"What do we do?" Everyone in town looked up.
"We need to evacuate right now!"
"I"m starving, we'll do it after lunch..."
"There is no lunch you idiot!"
The people started to panic. They made a crowd in the middle of the tiny town...

"Huh? What's all the commotion about?" The guy behind the rocks looked to see everyone in a crowd. His cheeks grew pink, "The girls must be talking about me!" He walked over...
"Hey what's Mike doing here? I though we banned him after eating our last food supply!" The crowd turned around.

"Everyone please listen! Our weapons are no use! Our arrows and spears are too weak! Our only choice is to evacuate!"
"Hey what's that?" Someone pointed to Mikes Carving stone.
"What this?" Mike replied holding the stone, "I just found this weird carving stone in the mountains, why?"
The town rushed over and there was a huge commotion...

..."Finally! with these new spears and arrows we're sure to beat the monster!"
"Good, because I like my house where it is!"
[I don't feel like describing the fight scene, too late at night, point is they won]

Night time...
"mmm! Delicious! That monster sure made a good meal!"
"You're telling me!"
Mike sat alone behind the rocks... "Eat up my love, I don't care if I'm exiled from this town, as long as you're happy I will be too!"
"Hey?"
"Ahh!" Mike jumped.
A lovely lady stood next to him.
"Uhh, what do you want?" His cheeks were pink.
"You looked lonely back here and if it wasn't for you we wouldn't have gotten a meal, so here!" She offered him the meal and they ate together...

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I lazily wrote that, but, hopefully you saw how things twined together there in the story...

The town is hungry, the monster was a menace, the solver the monster problem and at the same time resolved the food problem...

It was apparent throughout the story what weapons they should use...

Mike used the carving stone because he had been exiled to the mountain...

He didn't get food because he had been exiled, but he got food from his love...

It is very simple, yes, but imagine something like this on a full scale book, and you got yourself an amazing story... something that will blow peoples minds...


Basically a plot that intertwines and is less straight forward is awesome... and I"m sorry for the lame example, but it's late and I'm sleepy!

I didn't cover everything I wanted to talk about, on how to make an awesome plot... but my last words for this "lesson" ... When creating a story, the best reference for plots, are plots.... just make sure their good ones! you don't want to be a copy cat, but creativity by definition is taking an already existing idea and adding to it, changing it and or personalizing it you way...

Good luck making epic plots and God bless...

Just an Update

Andrew from my novel "Green Success" he is known for his disabled right hand, which is why he never fights back in a fight, but also because he used to be right handed, he is now left handed and ever since, his drawings and writings have never been quite as artistic as they used to be... this is an important factor to the story because every time he get's into a fight he will never fight back, and the past event pertaining to the disablement of his right hand is a key element which will drive the story to the ending... - Andrew T. (c) 2009 Green Success


I've been watching CLANNAD, one of my most favorite anime's of all time... and it really got me doing some major changes to my story...

as I re-read it I realized some important things. The biggest: Everything in my story, every even and every conversation could easily be summarized in a few paragraphs... WHICH IS NOT GOOD!!!

I realized my entire novel was the equivalent to about three anime episodes, just stretched out to about 25 chapters... and that wasn't good, I wanted to maximize the density of my story, have so much things happen that the reader would be forced to re-read it again just to capture everything. I also wanted to generalize my imagery to I'm not hand feeding the reader every bit of detail. I only left the major details like the scar on Andrew's RIGHT hand, and during the emotional scenes, I always make sure to mention that the sky is blazing orange!

Basically if I made a line where the straighter the line the less events and things are going on, my old version of the story would be almost completely straight, while this new version is completely tangled.

I only fixed up the first few chapters though, so I still have a long way, but luckily I am sticking to the original main story line, I"m just adding side stories and events and turning the plot line in many directions but in the end it will lead to the same ending as the original... just in a more fun and exciting way!

I've improved my sentences as well, by using "proper grammar" stuff, I've added many different sentence types and words and things to keep the reader interested, so every adjective isn't just "the" and every time a character talks, it isn't just "He said" , it would be more like, "He yelled, 'Thief!'" or "She yawned, 'why does the moon have to hide tonight?'"

So that's what I've been doing for the past few weeks... and also since it is the beginning of summer I"ve been partying a whole bunch! But now that every thing's finally settled down I can get back to work... which is a bad thing, DON't TAKE HUGE BREAKS FROM YOUR STORIES!!!! I've increased the density of my story so much and I've taken such long breaks that I completely forget where I am or what's happening in the story so I have to re-read and it may take a day or two just to absorb all the info before I"m ready to continue....

Here's just some inspirational links to songs that I listen to when I work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yAritJDKDs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QguA_qEEpkw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G1Pl1kmnh4


So good luck to anyone writing a story out there... I"ve completely dropped the idea of ever getting popular.... when I first started writing that was my goal... but now I realize two things:

1, I will most likely never get popular

and 2

My story has to be something I will pour my heart out to, not some cheezy lame American entertainment where all they want is profit... I'm going to write about what my heart truly feels and I will pour out all my emotions and feelings into this one story and if it becomes popular then "YES!" but if it doesn't , then for the few who read it, all I ask is that they are moved, changed and even inspired by it....

I'll be blogging whenevr I feel like it... good day! and God Bless!

Dressing up!

Right now I am finished with the story of my novel, I know exactly what happens, I know what I want to happen and how it ends and everything like that!

The only problem is that the story isn't developed well enough! Basically the whole time I was writing the story I did it in noob style... (previous posts) which basically means I over explained it.. which is bad because the reader is supposed to figure things out on their own so they can experience it for themselves! Instead of explaining why the character did the thing he did just have him do it and leave the explanation for later, instead of saying the character was scared say the the character was shivering or that he/she hid under the bed.

So that's what I've been doing, I've been "dressing" my story up! And I have changed so much while still keeping the same basic plot. The story has changed so much not even I recognize it anymore! I am very proud of it, so I will give a short preview/summary.

The story of five high school kids who live in a dump, the worst, most poor place one could ever live, a trash ridden city where a cardboard box could literally be one's house. These boys are so poor and angry, why is everyone around them so happy and cheerful? The set out on a quest, one to make money and two to leave this worthless dump of a town. They end up falling down the wrong path when they start to sell marijuana. They become super rich off of it and it is a constant struggle to keep hush about it and to keep quiet about it at all times, while one of the boys decided it's enough and leaves, all he wants is to be creative and make money off being creative, not off of selling crap. Here in lies the story of violence and romance, weird parts, funny parts that actually made me laugh out loud when I wrote them, happy and romantic parts that made me actually want to be one of the characters and perhaps one of the saddest stories I have ever written... The Green Success will be published sometime soon!

Book Creating (Starting)

This is a picture of the main character from my book, Long, who is obsessed with money and getting rich. He is based off my cousin who is around the same age as me, and is the same age as me in the novel. His role in the novel is very important as he helps convey the moral lesson important to the book! - Green Success - Andrew T.

I am writing this post because I want to help people who want to do something useful in their lives. I hope that my words help you and don't hurt your writings, but I am also writing this to remind my self of how to write a book, or at least how I wrote my book, because I feel I am losing my creativity as I grow older, so I want to use my own creative ideas of the past to help me someday in the future, and to also help any one who reads this!

When I began writing my book believe it or not I originally intended it to just be a short video for film class. I was listening to music in my room and as usual I closed my eyes and began to imagine crazy and weird things as the music played. Well the idea was to make an action film with guns and shooting, but also a twist at the end. The video I imagined that night was simple, drug dealers have a shoot out with the cops they drug dealers are having a blast, friendship builds from this experience and they are all laughing and shooting cops. The Drug dealers are winning of course, but eventually the viewer notices that the Drug dealers are high and then soon after one of the drug dealers starts to lose his "high" and begins to see what really is happening. Well as you would expect, things aren't going so great, and as he looks around he realizes the people he was just talking to were just hallucinations and at the end the drug dealer dies.

So I wanted to make a film as our final project in film class (Freshmen year) but we decided on something else after discussing the "drug" problem. Anyways I liked the idea so I kept it well protected within the depths of my mind. Soon enough I decided that that was going to be the ending of my story. (Spoiler warning for anyone actually intending to read my book when it comes out)



So the main point I want to come across is decide on the ending of your story before you actually write it, that way every even you write in the story can lead to the end and also so you have a good idea your self where you want your story to go. Magically if every event points towards this possible end, (While the reader believes there could be a million ends to the story) then all your events will be related and it will make the story seem much more believably and that the ending wasn't just pulled out of the writers butt at the last second.

Ephesians 2:10 - For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Now a big problem I came across when writing this book was characters. I wanted realistic characters, I wanted them to be as lively as possible and I also wanted them to be convincing and precious to me. Well one day I decided, if I want realistic characters I should base them off real people, so that's what I did. I based one of the characters off my self, another off my cousin and the antagonist off everyone who hated me. This way when I base my characters off real people, the characters can then be as real and as lively as possible, giving each a different personality! So I'd recommended doing this, especially if it's your first book.

So next was the "hard" part, the part most people struggle with the most, THE MAIN CONCEPT. Before I could come up with a plot summary I needed to know first, what is the moral of my story? Now if your story doesn't have a moral then I suggest you stop right now, because there is no point in writing or reading a book with no moral lesson of any kind. I decided to pick a moral lesson that I felt would really be good, one that I HAD A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH, because I have observed it in our society for a long time now! The moral lesson I chose to convey could be considered two lessons, the first is don't waste your time with temporary pleasures and meaningless things such as spending your days socializing and what not. The second, "side" lesson was that your creativity is a gift and as easily as you obtained it, it can be taken away. With these two lessons in mind I decided it was time to make my plot line! Or at least attempt!

I really didn't have a clear cut idea of how my book's story line was going to go, but I knew where it was going to lead, because I had already decided upon an ending! So I decided I would just start by introducing the characters and settings first, as some of you have read from my previous posts (The first Chapter of my book) You should have noticed how I slowly revealed the setting and characters one at a time. I started by using my own home town as the setting. I know my home town so well so writing about it would be easy. Then I decided to start my book! I wrote about nature, and gave lots of beautiful imagery, then I transitioned to the school setting where I started my story and instantly I jumped the reader into the events without giving them any prior knowledge of what was going on. This is crucial in writing because it not only jumps the reader into the book quickly, but also sparks questions and interest which the reader will only find out by reading the book further! I genius idea is it not?

After that I quickly introduced all the characters at once, not by making special paragraphs to describe them, but by describing them through their actions in the story as they played out the events, nothings worse than a story that moves slowly and has interruptions because the writer need to clarify something or talk about the characters in the middle of an even. I decided I would go more in depth with all the characters later in the next chapter, after all the events of the first chapter were done and I felt I could slow down the pace of the book to talk about these characters.

So That's how I started my book, I will later go in depth of my actual writing of the story, but this section is titled (Starting) so I'll leave it at that! I hope everyone who reads this appreciates my advice and may someday benefit from it!

- Andrew T.