Target

Alright before you go ahead and tackle your conflict there is one more thing I need to mention. Silly me not to have mentioned it before, but see both the dream and the conflict rotate around one fundamental factor: who are you writing this story for?  What's your goal?

These two questions can be summarized in a simple word: target!


Let's analyzed them. If you are writing this story for yourself and yourself alone then you can ignore everything I am going to say next. If you are crafting this story around an audience the second question needs to tap in and affect the answer to your first one.

If you are making a story for others then ask yourself: who? and what for?

For money... you can skip what I will say next. All you have to do is make it completely wrong, dumb, ugly and post it on your blog with lots of advertisement. The internet has changed the World, turning people into trolls and lots of people like to feel good about themselves by bashing others. I thought I was the only one complaining about this phoenomenon until I read this article:If you want your piece to go viral, it's smarter to make a cringe-worthy video rather than an awesome one, because they know our asshole nature will get us passing it around. And they're right." - and then he says - it's a proven fact that we are horrible dickheads who love to just point and laugh at other people's failed attempts at creativity. We refuse to just let it slide when someone shows us something like Why Must I Cry opting instead to laugh them out of existence."

So I was reminded of how many of my friends spend their time talking about stuff they dislike and yet when I always the question: but if you hate it so much, why do you keep on reading it?
The answer is always: because it's so bad, I want to see if it gets worse.

So here's the solution to your money problem, make it super bad, send it viral, become Rebecca Black (you know, right, she was "built" to make money off of trolls!) and you are settled for life.

But now let's go back to serious creation, the one that will make you die happy but starving... but happy, but starving, but happy, but... I could go on for ever.

Choose your target audience and never forget who you are writing for. 
Some stories may start as kids stories and change along the way as the audience grows old and mature with the characters (long running series like One Piece, for example, do that).


You make sure that right from the start you hint at elements that even though, right now, are not there (like death), they might be there in the future and that is a warning, a warning that says: I am starting G, but I'll go T+.  If you don't do that then you are bound to stay in you G for ever and ever, it's a matter of honesty.

So... is your story a story for children or adults, is it for boys or girls?
Sometimes making these kinds of decisions not only will craft the narrative tone of your stories but even whether or not they are plot based or character based.

The younger the audience the more the plot will take over. Older audiences are into character development instead.

Children tend to like stories with more plot and a proactive protagonist who is also one of those OUT characters that will move mountains and stuff.

If the hero makes no effort to gain the happy ending they will blame you for telling a lame story.

Girls don't dislike slower pace and IN characters.

Older audience love slice of life, historical things, period dramas and such.

The choice of your target audience will also affect your color schemes and packaging. 
The younger the audience the more vibrant the colors will be.
You give a black and white comic to a five years old, he'll grab his crayons and color it for you (and that's what my nephew did to my comics, they look much prettier now).

Now let's say you are crafting your story around teenagers... good luck. The market is literally gone to crumbs and the invasion of the ultratrolls has lowered the quality of the language spoken by a lot. You will have to spoon feed a lot, while keeping a zillion subplots that, sometimes, are really not useful to the story at all. You will be a servant to the market and will be crafted by the market. You will be forced to obey the audience... if you want to survive. If you don't obey they leave you.

This is how the Japanese market was molded by his fandom and forced to create harem stories with particular stereotypes included: meganekko, antenna girl, chibi, lolicon, and so forth. One character for every slice of market.

You cannot afford a lot of nicely rounded characters and have to stay a bit flatter, making sure your hero is always politically correct. The moment they stop loving rainbows and unicorns or whatever thing is in fashion, the audience will accuse him of monstrosities and leave him. The moment his love is not devoted or is awesomeness is not bad-ass even when he does not win... he is done for.

Teenage market is very whimsical but if you go for it choose to write for girls as a female audience is more loyal than male readership.

All of this comes from many years of reports and numbers, coming from the marketing department, of a famous publisher I was working for. The Italian would say: carta canta e vilan dorme (paper signs and farmer sleeps). It's the paper talking here... the paper is valid even when the farmer forgets about it... unfortunately. I can only warn you and nothing more. The final choice is yours.

In the end whatever target you choose and however you decide to tell the story be also reminded of one thing: there are a lot of trolls out there that will throw piles of crap at you for the heck of it.
Trolls are easily recognizable: they don't know what they are talking about and their comments are clearly generic and showing that... they never did read your story to begin with, they are just there to bash you because their lives suck.

Two things you can do with those messages: you ignore them; or you read them, collect them and create a blog around them. People will flock to read your blog even if they  never read your comic... and that's because of the above mentioned article. LOL

Why ♥ your Sketchbook 2

Why ♥ your sketchbook again?

Because you can keep wild animals in it.

You can keep people, ideas, wishes... tickets... you can keep a place and a time.

If you want to be an artist you have to learn to observe and learn from reality. The difference between those who doodles and those who get the jobs is that the ones who get the jobs are observant people.
Being creative and original does not exclude hard practice. Your imagination is a variation of something that already exist in nature so you have to learn the rules really well if you want to break them.

If you break them before you learn them it shows and your artwork will look amateurish.

Drawing from life - objects, people, animals, landscapes - is a good way to train your eye/hand coordination.

You cannot know what something looks like if you don't see it first and learn to reproduce it. If you need to draw the ellipse on an imaginary cup you have to observe what a real ellipse looks like.

If you draw by guessing and you draw what you think things should be like... it will show. Brain getting in the way of hand&eye (who are a prefect married couple) will always create troublesome problems for your art.

People who work in the artistic field will notice, will see all of your technical problems and wonder: can this person understand what he/she sees?

Never take your skills for granted, practice to improve them, try different and new things continuously but never stop going to the zoo to draw animals, even though zoos are sad, scary places, never stop drawing people sleeping on the bus or the train, never stop drawing buildings and perspective.

Drawing is a language if you don't practice that language you will loose the lexicon and the grammar.
Observation is the grammar and creativity is the lexicon.

Observe, draw and imagine. Look twice and draw once. Don't fall in love with your drawings... especially your sketches. Keep them rough and simple, try to capture the gesture, the angle, the motion, try to capture life. Understand the mechanics of the anatomy, understand the motion, feel it.

Only if you understand you can reproduce and be creative. Only if you learn proportions you can push them around and play with shapes. Only if you observe light you will be able to apply color theory.

Everything you think you can create anew it already exist in nature under a different form (cope with it, you are copying already, might as well use good reference!)... the most imaginative fantasy creature, the tallest dragon... they already exist in nature: a piece is attached on an animal, another piece is attached on another one. Our creativity is derivative and cannot live without understanding.


You can draw an eye in one thousand different ways... but it will always be, at the core, an eye.
So an eye, a standard boring eye, is the grammar, light reflects in a certain way because of its shape and the material is made of... and you can derivate your lexicon and make it long, golden, thick, oval, glassy, metallic, whatever... but it will always be an eye in a material you know the existence of.

So deal with it: practice and reality, if you want to be an artist, you cannot do without. :)

The In and Out of storytelling.

When we think about a story we think that our plot will move our character forward and sometimes we get tricked into believing that, no matter what happens, the more things we add the better the story will get.

Truth be told, for storytelling, simple is best. Adding details must be done carefully. The details that don't help your story move forward will hold it back. If they don't support your character, they'll make him/her trip and fall.

If details kill your stories you must kill the details. So it is very important for details to be useful, it is very important to use them to help propel the story forward instead of dragging it down.

That's why it is very important to remember that a story is all about: a dude with a dilemma and how he deals with it. 

But is your dude going to have a dilemma if he is statically accepting what is around him? The dilemma should always arise because the dream and the conflict are clashing.

That's why our D+D+D formula needs an extra smaller D in it: D+d+D+D.
The smaller "d" is the dream and, if you think about it, it is not so small after all. You have to provide your characters with needs and want. Particularly one need and want that will be in contrast with what they have. That dream and want will be the fuel to the engine called: achieving a goal.


If we stop for a second to analyze the stuff dreams are made of we realize that there are basically two types of dreams and wants. I usually play a little game with my students and tell them: Disney movies use a smart move, they don't have enough time to show you the DREAM so their characters will sing it to you. Let's make a list of what disney characters say in songs.
1) Oh, I just can't wait to be king;
2) Just around the river bend;
3) I want adventures in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can tell;
4) If only they'd look closer, would they see a poor boy, no sire, they'd find out there's so much more to me;
5) A whole new world, a new fantastic point of view;
6) I can go the distance;
7) When will my reflection show who I am inside;
8) Out of the sea, wish I could be, part of that World;

Oh, I could go on for ever. I was trained in those standards, I know them by heart.

But let's color code and separate them for a second. When you go and look at them closely you'll see that mainly there are some 3 common themes: I want to be someone else, I want to be somewhere else, I want to be me.


The first two look outside and the third one looks inside the character. 

So when creating a type of dream for your character you need to figure out what kind of person he/she is: is he/she an IN kind of guy/gal or an OUT kind of guy/gal?

Is he/she looking at escapism or is he/she looking for acceptance and understanding?

It is very important to establish this because it will help you establish the nature of the conflict as well.

Out kinds of characters will start a journey of discovery that might lead them to realize two things: they can achieve their goal because of who/what they are (the chose ones) OR they come to realize that what they thought they wanted is not how they thought it would be, they might realize that what they had was not so bad after all. So it's either make it or break it.
In kinds of character will start a journey of discovery that might lead others to realize two things: they had misjudged the hero and his/her abilities OR they always believed in the hero but the hero did not believe in himself/herself. Usually is a make it or make it kind of story.

In any case you can have a proactive or a reluctant hero. The Proactive OUT hero dives into adventure to prove something to himself, the Proactive IN hero dive into adventure to prove something to others.
The reluctant hero does not want to go into adventure, whether he is IN or OUT, he believes he has nothing to prove and others are right about him even when they are wrong. Usually this is a hero who has nothing to prove but learns the most.

 In the next post we'll see the nature of the conflict and how it reacts to the dream.

Theme and thesis

 In our previous post about "What ifs...?" I mentioned the importance of picking a theme and a thesis.

The two definitely walk hand in hand since the thesis is your opinion about that theme. So let's say you want to talk about the environment then you'd have to develop, in your story, your thesis about it... for example: if we don't do something about the environment we'll kill the planet.



The theme I chose for The Pirate Balthasar is Independence. Although there are individual subthemes for each character, they all lead to the same main theme: I gain independence through acceptance, I gain independence through perseverance, I gain independence through knowledge, I gain independence through giving, and so forth. So think about linking your themes and create a nice hierarchy.

Usually a theme is something you can summarize in one word: perseverance, environment, mourning, loss, freedom. The reason why you pick a theme is because you want to express an opinion about it. If your story does not come with an opinion... it's not really worth reading and that's my opinion (LOL).

It is very important to link your theme and thesis to the character's goal/dream and to the conflict, as well, but we'll talk about dream and conflict in the next post.

Now we need to talk about thesis because thesis are pretty tricky.

As I said: the thesis reflect your opinion on the matter/theme chosen so chose it carefully. Let me mention the example again: if we don't do something about the environment the planet is going to die.

The tricky part is... there are antithesis!

So somebody may answer to your thesis with a: this planet is a rock crawling with life! Life is stronger than anything. If anything, by destroying the environment, we are only killing ourselves and maybe that's not such a bad thing after all. This planet is better off without us.

Because there will be plenty of people whose opinion will diverge from yours you have to make sure you plan ahead and create a response to every possible antithesis... sort of like... predicting an attack and planning a counter attack or a plan B.

How to counter attack such an antithesis? Something like: that is true but it will take the planet eras to heal and nothing guarantees we won't come back and do it again and again! So are we really here, stuck in a loop, to torture the place we live in or can we do something about it? Are we here to live as bacteria or can we live in harmony with the environment and stop this process of endless pain and sorrow for good? And just because I won't be there in the future is that an excuse good in enough not to cherish here and now?

Now these kinds of disputes can go on for ever but you chose how and when to deliver all the possible thesis and antithesis along the story before your audience vomits sentences on you and you should be quite alright. Especially if you state your main idea early on, embed in the hook and in the narrative compromise, the fault will only stand on the shallow mind sitting on the other side and you can proceed scot-free: you performed your duty.

Fundamentally if you respect your theme and thesis you are never bound to stray. You will have to respect the narrative compromise, the hook, the character's goal and dream and keep your clarity in check. We'll talk about narrative compromise and clarity in another post.

For now I end it with theme and thesis because there's a lot to think about. Just remember: you drop a bomb in deep waters and shallow fishes will come belly up. But deep fishes will see it coming.
Use your bombs well and aim for deep fishes.

Know your story.

What's a story?

A Story is something with a Beginning, a Middle and an End. As simple as that.

Your story has to start, go somewhere and then find its way towards the ending. It might seem logic but try and ask this very same question to anybody you know and almost nobody will come up with this answer.

Because it's simple, it's straightforward and it's a bit obvious.

But clearly that is also what a story need: it needs to be simple, linear and obvious.... but don't take this words literally.

Simple is best, linear means you need structure and obvious simply means that everything must be clear enough for everybody to understand, without a reasonable doubt, without interpretations of sort, without way outs.

What are the main elements you need in a story?

You need a character, his environment, you need his dream, a conflict and rising action and then a resolution and then...

No, let me summarize this better. A story needs these elements: D + D + D.

Or to say it better: a Dude with a Dilemma and how he Deals with it.

A Dude is a Character.

The Dilemma is a Conflict.

And how he Deals with it is all the series of Rising Complications that would lead him to the Final Resolution.

A story can be moved by two things: plot and character.

Plot drive stories can be quite tricky and may lead inexperienced writers to character betrayal.

Character driven stories, if not dealt with properly, can lie flat and never go anywhere.

Plot is the series of events that move the story forwards, carrying the character along for a crazy ride.

It needs a good amount of cause and effects.

There can be stories with very little plot but there can never be a story without characters. 

It is one of the reason why a character driven story is to be preferred to the plot driven one. You can have a cool plot and mess up the character, then nobody will believe you... but you can have a cool character keeping together chaotic elements and people will follow you in the ride (let's not forget that most movies have very simple, linear plots and are held together by the charisma of the protagonist).

If you really want to know your story you have to know your character.

Know your character and he/she will move the story forward for you.

Know your character and you shall also know your story. 

Index