Writing Lessons 7: General advice
First up music. Yes music. Now I don’t mean having songs in the text as that just does not work unless it is an actual song that we know the tune and melody to.
What I mean is give your story a sound track. You might not ever tell anyone any of the songs but if you set up a happy song, sad song, awesome song, heart-warming song and a theme for each character. This helps you really get the hang of them and puts you in the right mood to write the scene you are working on just by playing it.
for example in one of my back burner ideas I have the character of Gil who is a strategist with low physical ability; he’s closed off and has had his innocence shattered one too many times so he has We Are Broken but on the other hand his brother/son/clone/split personality/thing called Enkidu is rash and headstrong but hiding a heart of gold underneath it all; he pushes people away so that he doesn’t hurt them later so he has War. I also have happy, sad, awesome and heart warming songs for the same story.
Next up you have to think big but act small. This is just a case of confidence and people skills. No one likes an arrogant person so you should always be aware of you short comings (or at the very least act like you are aware of them) at the same time you need to think like every story is a great idea and worth writing. You might realise otherwise afterwards but you need to give everything its fair chance and also be confident enough in your ideas to post them on the internet/send them to publishers.
Finally research, research, RESEARCH. Put the work into your fiction and show that you care about it. If you have mythology references or science or guns or focus on a sport or anything then you need to know what you are talking about. It really shows and makes all the difference.
For example what elevates Negima over all the other echhi battle manga is that Ken Akamatsu puts pages of text at the end of each volume explaining the magic in great detail in both mythical context and physical workings. Compare this to works that give a one sentence BS explanation and you can tell which is better.
I research each mythical species that appears in the wishes verse no matter how different I end up making them from the source because then I can add little side comments or other touches that make reference to it for everyone who has some knowledge. I can’t think of anyone who has read it that really knows the thousand paper cranes folklore or much about angels past the basic things everyone knows (and are almost entirely wrong) but on the off chance that someone reads it and sees that I put the effort in then that’s enough for me.
So that’s that for now. I might do some more later but for now this is the last regular update. Focus will now go to Crank out the Volume, my writing and a big project I have been working on. So for now I’m Silica and doen’t go doing anything I wouldn’t.