Story Crafting - What's your technique?

[jessicasurline]

Hey there everyone! I'm curious what are some various techniques you use to write your stories? I personally like to ask myself lots of questions to explore ideas. Feel free to post questions and answers for your own characters.

What is your character's full name?

What kind of a person/ being/thing are they?

What is their greatest need or fear?

What major event in their life has effected them the most?

Why are they doing here (in the context of your story)?

[abbastudios]

After i get an idea for a story, i will do some thumbnails with dialogue and notes on the side. Then I think about who the characters are more specifically and give them their own voice.

[eagle1]

Some other things to keep in mind when looking at characters. Does the character actually add anything to the story, or are they just there because you like the character.

The hardest thing for me to do in writing is cut scenes and characters. It's part of the process, but it's something I hate doing, so I save old characters for new stories, and will sometimes save scenes for late in the story, or other stories.

For the most part, though, I start with a single idea, then may sit on it for several years with it on a sheet of paper for notes. I add notes until I have a cast, a plot, and a theme. Not until then does the actual writing phase start, since that's when I finally have a story I can tell. I had a stack of note sheets just waiting for all of the elements to be in place before I start them.

Eagle
(I'm not likely to run out of stories to tell)

[SpavVy]

Let's see I come up with something to add in the story and ask for my friend/roommate for feedback then I write it out and do the storyboards and thumbnails and sometimes I will do them over again if I don't like the flow or to add touch ups. As far as my "main" character goes I can't answer all of them or else I'll be in spoiler territory.

Full name: Lucy Mays

What kind of person and being: Lucy is a Grim Reaper and she is a pretty laid back kind of character that doesn't get angry much, she actually gets more annoyed than anything especially when dealing with people that just died and can't accept the fact they are dead which I imagine can get awfully repetitive.

[AnnaLandin]

Crafting a story is a very organic process for me, moreso with bigger stories than smaller ones. Tiny one-shots I can usually plan pretty fast, and in a very organised fashion - but bigger stories need to sit around and stew a bit before they can take shape.

I try my best to steer clear of questionnaires like the one you posted - not because questionnaires are bad (they work great for some people!) but because they always lead me off track when developing characters, and my mind tends to be kind of scattered to begin with. XD When I create a character, they usually arrive with a personality and a function in the story, and I try to build from there. I don't need to know what their greatest fear is, unless that fear impacts the story. I don't need to know their full name, unless it comes up in the story - and so on and so forth.

Your questionnaire is pretty on-point - sticking to story-relevant questions - but a lot of the character-creation questionnaires floating around ask things like "what's their favourite childhood memory?" or "what was their first kiss like?" and stuff like that... well. Unless childhood memories and first kisses come up in the story, I don't really need to spend time thinking about it. To get metaphorical, I like to plant my characters, water them with a bit of story, and then let them grow on their own. I get nicer flowers that way.

I usually begin with a pretty general idea of what I want to do, and am inspired by a lot of things. Grassblades was born of my wish to do a story about the mismatched parent-child pair that turns up in manga sometimes (think Lone Wolf and Cub, bits of Usagi Yojimbo, etc.), as well as the wandering swordsman-thing - mixed with liberal doses of inspiration from Hellboy and a truckload of other stuff. I once did a comic all about the contrast between the sea and the sky, with themes about rootlessness, belonging to some place (and some person) and the meaning of home. I've done scifi stories all about being stuck on the ground and dreaming about the stars. I've done comics about selfhood and freedom and impossible choices.

All of that comes first, closely followed by a more solid idea of the plot and the characters - though still pretty open. I jot down some notes to make sure I remember the idea, and then I let it sit for a while. Eventually, it grows into something more coherent - with a basic grasp of beginning, middle and end - and I write down a more solid summary of it.

After that, I pull out my pencils. I sketch character designs, scrap and rework things in the basic idea, scribble outlines, etc., and eventually, I sit down and do the thumbnails/script - which is really the same thing for me. I can't do a written script and THEN do the thumbnails for the page-layouts. It all has to come at the same time, or I mess it all up.

So. Vague idea -> stew for a while -> brainstorm/solidify the idea -> design/redesign/scribbles -> script/thumbnails -> comic.

There are sidetracks and changes to this process depending on which comic I'm working on, and what happens along the way, but that's the basic idea.

... Also, I have more ideas than you can shake a stick at. Committing to any one of them is a titanic effort, and I've really set myself a task with Grassblades; it's going to be a huge project.

[Aeonhue]

I create the basic outline for my story just list of events that I want, after I've came up with an idea. Then I create a script just so I'd have my ideas down for each page. After that I just start doing rough sketches and fix story issues, pacing, and dialogue.

[Amymone]

When a get a great idea I keep it in a large book of ideas and every once in a while, when I have free time, I pair up like ideas and keep growing them into a full blown plot. When it's big and thorough enough, I make a folder for it and start filling it up with characters.

The initial cast is always small. I give each character an inspiration folder filled with photos of people and objects for later when I work on their character designs. Usually their personalities and storylines start to bud as I draw them, but only when I have found the direct connection between every character and the conflict that's when I start discovery-outlining through the whole storyline. If any last minute characters come up, I make folders for them for later.

• When the story is journey driven, I keep a list of locations, goals, and achievements that need to be reached along the way. Most importantly I keep a list of enemies for each event, how they are defeated, and what's gained from their defeat.
• When the story is month/holiday driven, I make a list of the days the comic will be posting that month and try to fit the story conflict of that month into the given amount of days.

I try not to exceed 30 chapters of outlines, but when I do, I know it's best to just let the story sit for a LONG TIME before going back, rereading it, and fixing weird things. Once it's comic ready, then I start breaking the outlines up into scripts, story boarding, and drawing every page out. Occasionally, twists and turns in the scripts causes the story to derail from the outlines, but it's nothing that a little reorganizing on my part can't fix. (The project I have right now, was original 32 outlines, but it's turning out to be over 40 comic chapters long.)

The only time I resort to questionnaires is when I have a specific theme I need to bounce off all of the characters and get their opinions about it. The first story I tackled was about employment and employers and employees, so I had columns of brief notes about what each character thought about their jobs, their bosses, and their coworkers. Only a small handful of characters eventually got to state their opinions about it in the final version of the story.

[jessicasurline]

I'm enjoying hearing all of your story crafting processes!

I myself let it be based on gut reactions at first. That way I can pick apart what I'm trying to say or how I want to get the audience to feel. The core of the story builds itself off this initial energy and from there I jump around to different stages of the story to give them a stronger foundation. You know, so the story arch makes sense and is satisfying. About this point, I share the idea with someone else so I make sure its heading in a good direction before I get too invested. From that point on there is a lot of filling in the blanks and connecting the dots going on. I then ask myself a variety of relevant questions to better identify the environment and how the people react to it.

I wait a long time to name my characters until I have a solid understanding of who they are. I don't know of anyone else who does this but I reference this book I own called The Secret Language of Relationships to find a matching birthday and how they may interact with different personalities. It's really fun to find out the sociology of people, especially when you guess correctly about how you would expect them to behave with specific characters. I spend a good amount of time trying to determine names. For example, Taylor Pruitt means “to cut” or “Cloth cutter”, her last name means “Brave little one”. In the story she seeks serious change in her life and when she goes out to find it, her hair accidentally gets cut, which symbolizes her emotional and mental transformation.

Anyway, this is about where sketching character fashion is derived from their personality and environment. In Visceral, Zeke's look is a collection of found items from the area he has been stuck for 7 years by himself. His pants show signs of ripping at the heels because he had to grow into them so now they are not as long and baggy on him. His shoes he had to craft because he grew out of his last pair. The list goes on but you get the point.

After all that prep pre production, I finally get to the part where I thumbnail up a bunch of pages and pick them apart till I find the layout and flow I'm looking for. Again, I show it around and get constructive feedback before going into production.

In the end I wind up with documents to keep track of the story outline, specific chapter writing, notes, references, and inspirations. Its a lot of fun!

[Raven_C]

Usually I start with a character. An idea starts in my head for a design of a specific character, imagining and sketching them multiple times, drawing fragmented scenarios even when there isn't a concrete story yet. I do this until a story emerges, or a basic idea comes up. In a sense, I usually just wait for my characters to tell me their story. I do bullet points of events in my head, then go from there.

[joannekwan]

Sometimes I start with a story idea, but most often I will design a character, develop them a little, and form a story around them. Microsoft Word is my best friend and I'll write down every little piece of info I think of for the story and characters (except appearance because I usually have a very strong vision of that already in my head). For names I'll often go to a baby name website or Google Translate and find names with specific meanings behind them, otherwise I go with what sounds good in my head. Then I might actually start sketching the characters to pin down their appearance.

[Aeonhue]

I think I might try desiging a character first, just to see what I come up with!

[UzukiCheverie]

I like to think of crafting a story as a journey of discovery :3 I've been polishing and refining Time Gate for years, and even these days I'm still thinking of ways to tie up the loose ends I never got around to fixing, cleaning up potential plot holes, etc. Yet through all of it I feel like the characters have been the ones guiding me through the story, telling me what needs to happen in a way that works for them and is fit for them. Some will live, others will die, but I don't like putting my characters through things that don't make sense to or for them. It's just like a big adventure of discovery :3

It sounds silly, but it's how I've come up with a lot of my ideas, including some of my best ones.

[lazorchef]

There isn't any specific way, but for me it has to be compartmentalized just a bit.

The plot is like a bubble in a glass of chocolate milk (bear with me), and the more air you add, the bigger it gets. The space it takes up on the surface determines how many smaller bubbles can fit inside.

The smaller bubbles are plot points that the characters sort of slide around on according to their scripted personalities.

Protagonists bump into each other (and villains) based on what side of the glass you start them on, but gravity dictates that they must move one way or the other.

Why did I explain it like that....

[Cielle]

my story crafting process is kind of a mess. I don't have much of a method, though I've tried many in order to be better organized. But it never works for me >.< usually I'll get an idea for a character and a situation--most often it's the inciting incident, but not always. From there, I work backwards. How did this event come to pass? why are these characters involved? How does it benefit them? How does it hinder them? Usually I end up writing hundreds (yes, hundreds) of pages of notes fleshing out the story and the characters. The hard part is going back later and sifting out the good from the bad and forming the story. For my current story, I ended up changing the antagonist a couple of times. The problem was that as I started developing the back-story and personality of my "antagonist", I realized he wasn't really an antagonist. So I had to rethink a lot of details. But I guess the moral of the story is that usually when I write, I feel more accurately that I am discovering the story the characters want to tell, so even if I outline and do the whole snowflake shebang, the story will change of its own accord.

[allenthomas]

I pretty much as the same questions before I start actually BUILDING the story. In the character development phase, I asked all kinds of goofy things like favorite foods, favorite colors, least favorite color, pet peeves, etc. It may seem mundane but sometimes you never know what little thing may help you at different times when planning the story. I actually envy people who can just create a story on the fly. When I do it, it always seems to unravel.

I also like to plot out the major moments of my story along with its beginning, middle, and end before I ever start actually writing down the story.

[AnnaLandin]

@jessicasurline re: naming characters - it depends on the character, really. Some of them seem to name themselves, while others I have to dig a little deeper (and when I do, behindthename.com is my very best friend). Sometimes, I try to pick names with specific meanings (and in the case of my character Akane, she is named during the course of the story, and her name means "red" for a very good reason), other times I pick ones that sound nice and fit into the larger context of the story.

I try not to go too obvious with the name-meanings - if I create a heroic character, I try not to name them something that means "brave" or "heroic" or "victorious" or something, because that's a bit like showing the readers a big old spoiler right from the start. XD

[StevenDacasin]

you can craft a story anyway you want. Personally i think about if the story is mostly character driven or plot driven.

[crabman21]

Mines kind of happen by stuff I experience in my life.

[purrlpankras]

I normally just blast metal and stare at the wall, then things normally come naturally.

But sometimes they come out a little weird as in Likho. /even i dont know whats going on/ but people
seem to like it? hue hue

[Not in anyway do I recommend staring at walls, they might get offended and steal your soul for hours]

[patrickj]

This sounds a lot like what I'm currently doing, including changing the antagonist. Coming up with a plausible reasoning and rewriting parts of a character and it's actions and decisions throughout the story so that everything falls into place can be really hard, especially if the changes cascade into other changes, those into even more changes.

In a way, my storywriting is like a cycle where the characters slowly change the story as they develop, and the story further develops the characters, as it advances. And everything I add will need to be cycled through a lot of times to fit in perfectly and may result in changing things that seemed totally unrelated at first. It's like throwing together bricks of story and character and constantly asking "why?" and "how?" to slowly refine them and work out how things are going to fit together in an authentic way.