No question again this week, but I thought it might interest readers to know what first prompted me to start plotting this story. So, here's the image and blog post that started this whole story running in my head....
Readers of the story will semi-recognize a variation of this moment from Chapter 6 ("Kung Fu Queen"); it was what originally got me thinking of what a relationship story between Chie and Yousuke might look like. And that surprised and speechless expression on Chie's face - much like the artist's comments - summed up pretty much perfectly the way that I thought (even an older) Chie might react to Yousuke being so compassionate.
Chapter 48 just went up this week, and I'm fixing up Chapter 49 right now, for posting on January 27, 2010. Not many more chapters left, and the characters have come a long way...but this moment still sticks with me as being at the heart of the story.
23 January 2010
08 January 2010
Giving up the fight
Okay, I get it. I'm a wordy writer; that's just my style. Unfortunately, it makes writing battles tedious or, as one kind reviewer put it, "dull."
Chapter 46, "Bushi no Kokoro" (The Warrior's Heart), has a crapload of fights in it. To add to the confusion, Personas are in this fight. Since I wanted to stay close to the essence of gameplay, I kept the whole you-gotta-smash-your-card-and-say-something-witty technique used in the game. I wonder if that's what's so tedious about them....
Anyway, after the initial reviews, I took out some of the brief fight descriptions, and after the latest review I got, I took out a chunk (about 300 words' worth) of one fight scene in particular. Unfortunately, there need to be enough fight scenes for it to be relatively realistic that the team would feel the brunt of having a mediocre healer, and for the healer in question to feel wasted by the time they got to the eighth floor of the dungeon...and all of the fight scenes need to sort of build off of each other. For example, there's a very brief fight where Kanji uses a new trick and once he has an easy win, he's got this over-confident grin on his face...and then he gets ambushed from behind, and suddenly everybody's hurting. It's meant to be dramatic (well, that's what I was going for, anyway), and I couldn't really leave the first little Kanji fight out before having the Killing Hands come in to fuck everybody up in HP and SP.
It's always a little bit disheartening to see portions of the story that I enjoy get clipped out (or saved for another day), when I really enjoyed writing those sequences in the first place. On the other hand, it's also good to take the criticism and try to figure out where the story can work better for people who read it. (I mean, I lose readers like crazy already...I don't want them to drop the entire story because my fight scenes are mediocre.)
I already knew that fight scenes aren't my forte, and I guess this just sort of proves it. :/
On a high note, though, there's only one (big) fight in the coming chapter (47, which should be up next week on January 13,2010), and then I'm back into a whole crapload of dialogue/emoting, which is something that I do think I do well. "Maturity" (as they call it) also comes back into play shortly, which I'll be glad for...it's been a while since my protagonist had a little bit of downtime.
Chapter 46, "Bushi no Kokoro" (The Warrior's Heart), has a crapload of fights in it. To add to the confusion, Personas are in this fight. Since I wanted to stay close to the essence of gameplay, I kept the whole you-gotta-smash-your-card-and-say-something-witty technique used in the game. I wonder if that's what's so tedious about them....
Anyway, after the initial reviews, I took out some of the brief fight descriptions, and after the latest review I got, I took out a chunk (about 300 words' worth) of one fight scene in particular. Unfortunately, there need to be enough fight scenes for it to be relatively realistic that the team would feel the brunt of having a mediocre healer, and for the healer in question to feel wasted by the time they got to the eighth floor of the dungeon...and all of the fight scenes need to sort of build off of each other. For example, there's a very brief fight where Kanji uses a new trick and once he has an easy win, he's got this over-confident grin on his face...and then he gets ambushed from behind, and suddenly everybody's hurting. It's meant to be dramatic (well, that's what I was going for, anyway), and I couldn't really leave the first little Kanji fight out before having the Killing Hands come in to fuck everybody up in HP and SP.
It's always a little bit disheartening to see portions of the story that I enjoy get clipped out (or saved for another day), when I really enjoyed writing those sequences in the first place. On the other hand, it's also good to take the criticism and try to figure out where the story can work better for people who read it. (I mean, I lose readers like crazy already...I don't want them to drop the entire story because my fight scenes are mediocre.)
I already knew that fight scenes aren't my forte, and I guess this just sort of proves it. :/
On a high note, though, there's only one (big) fight in the coming chapter (47, which should be up next week on January 13,2010), and then I'm back into a whole crapload of dialogue/emoting, which is something that I do think I do well. "Maturity" (as they call it) also comes back into play shortly, which I'll be glad for...it's been a while since my protagonist had a little bit of downtime.
03 January 2010
Q: Is Souji a stranger?
Q: Is Souji a stranger?
Reviewer co426e asks: "You seem to write Souji as some kind of stranger to everyone. He seems the most distant and when they contacted Naoto first instead of their old leader, it made me think. Was this on purpose or not?"
A: Yes.
At least, the answer to the question asked is yes - it was on purpose that Souji is written the way that he is, and that the characters make the decisions that they do.
Seta Souji, the last player in the story, has always been something of an enigma to Chie and the others. He's pretty much unreadable, and he's full of so many mysteries - some small, others not - that no one can ever really tell what's going on in his head at any given moment. With the revelations that start to come in Chapter 46, this should become a little more clear to the reader.
Some of the reason why Souji is so enigmatic as both character and leader is that he's a tabula rasa: in the game, the player can make Souji anything s/he wants: sentimental wuss, womanizing bastard, and anything and all in between. But since no one is ever privy to another's true thoughts, no matter how much is said or expressed between them, I chose to make Souji the pinnacle of that kind of person mystery.
There are all kinds of minor and major conflicts going on with Souji. Some of them he's created for himself, and others are placed upon him by others. Some of these signify that the characters have grown beyond depending him, and others signify that there are still hidden jealousies and mistrusts involved. No one is ever one hundred percent good or one hundred percent malicious; even Shadows have echoes of the truth to them.
Readers who have been paying attention know that Chie is not completely convinced by anything Souji does or says, because she's still more concerned with how he relates to Yukiko and Yousuke (and now Kuma) to give her an unadulterated or unbiased view of what he's actually saying and trying to tell them. Even Naoto - who's usually the first to grasp the answers to these kinds of questions - still doesn't have enough information. But take comfort that the writing of Souji and those around him is no accident. He's meant to be portrayed as an outsider. At least for now.
Reviewer co426e asks: "You seem to write Souji as some kind of stranger to everyone. He seems the most distant and when they contacted Naoto first instead of their old leader, it made me think. Was this on purpose or not?"
A: Yes.
At least, the answer to the question asked is yes - it was on purpose that Souji is written the way that he is, and that the characters make the decisions that they do.
Seta Souji, the last player in the story, has always been something of an enigma to Chie and the others. He's pretty much unreadable, and he's full of so many mysteries - some small, others not - that no one can ever really tell what's going on in his head at any given moment. With the revelations that start to come in Chapter 46, this should become a little more clear to the reader.
Some of the reason why Souji is so enigmatic as both character and leader is that he's a tabula rasa: in the game, the player can make Souji anything s/he wants: sentimental wuss, womanizing bastard, and anything and all in between. But since no one is ever privy to another's true thoughts, no matter how much is said or expressed between them, I chose to make Souji the pinnacle of that kind of person mystery.
There are all kinds of minor and major conflicts going on with Souji. Some of them he's created for himself, and others are placed upon him by others. Some of these signify that the characters have grown beyond depending him, and others signify that there are still hidden jealousies and mistrusts involved. No one is ever one hundred percent good or one hundred percent malicious; even Shadows have echoes of the truth to them.
Readers who have been paying attention know that Chie is not completely convinced by anything Souji does or says, because she's still more concerned with how he relates to Yukiko and Yousuke (and now Kuma) to give her an unadulterated or unbiased view of what he's actually saying and trying to tell them. Even Naoto - who's usually the first to grasp the answers to these kinds of questions - still doesn't have enough information. But take comfort that the writing of Souji and those around him is no accident. He's meant to be portrayed as an outsider. At least for now.
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