Kurt Hochenauer, author of the liberal political blog Okie Funk, spoke to our class today. I'd known him previously as the guy who occasionally wrote editorials for the Oklahoma Gazette. If I had one take away from the short lecture, it was try, fail and keep trying. If I had another, it would be to find niche that no one else fills. His comments on interesting titles basically boiled down to, "Get people to want to read your stuff"
That said, you got to have stuff worth reading. Again, find something only you can provide and get people in the proverbial door.
You've also gotta have a thick skin to blog. Some insults are just downright funny ("Cardigan-coated twit") but the internet really seems to bring out the misanthropy in people.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Planning a Brave New World
Akira Toriyama, of Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest fame, was also famed for
having no real plans for the directions of the series. He wrote the
pages for the one week, turned them in and didn't have any plan for the
next week.
From his page on the Dragon Ball wiki: "At that time, it began to be more fun to think up the story than to
draw the pictures. But with the story, I basically only thought of each
chapter. That is why I end up getting caught in these quagmires.
(laughs) Around the time of Trunks' time travel, it was dreadful. I kept drawing, and it just got more and more incoherent."
By that point he'd been writing Dragon Ball for about half a decade. And the incoherence led to a certain zany charm in the early days. Dinosaurs and kung fu masters coexisted peacefully on Dragon Ball's Earth.
Dragon Ball was enormously successful, obviously, a juggernaut that modern shonen (boy's manga) pay homage to when they're not outright plagiarizing the things that made it such a money cow. So it is entirely possible to just start writing and see how the fictional world turns out.
However, most fiction depends upon an internal set of rules that the reader uses as a sort of map to understand the world. When these rules are broken, it still has to make sense.
They should be broken. That's the second reason they exist: to heighten dramatic tension. People will keep turning pages because "You said people can't do that but this guy is. Why?"
Rules exist to be broken, but they have to be broken on purpose. There's a whole Tvtropes page to plot twists that make no sense. If you don't want the dubious honor of being on that list, keep your rules breaking logical and consistent.
From his page on the Dragon Ball wiki: "At that time, it began to be more fun to think up the story than to
draw the pictures. But with the story, I basically only thought of each
chapter. That is why I end up getting caught in these quagmires.
(laughs) Around the time of Trunks' time travel, it was dreadful. I kept drawing, and it just got more and more incoherent."By that point he'd been writing Dragon Ball for about half a decade. And the incoherence led to a certain zany charm in the early days. Dinosaurs and kung fu masters coexisted peacefully on Dragon Ball's Earth.
Dragon Ball was enormously successful, obviously, a juggernaut that modern shonen (boy's manga) pay homage to when they're not outright plagiarizing the things that made it such a money cow. So it is entirely possible to just start writing and see how the fictional world turns out.
They should be broken. That's the second reason they exist: to heighten dramatic tension. People will keep turning pages because "You said people can't do that but this guy is. Why?"
Rules exist to be broken, but they have to be broken on purpose. There's a whole Tvtropes page to plot twists that make no sense. If you don't want the dubious honor of being on that list, keep your rules breaking logical and consistent.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)