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J-P'z Comix and Artz
J-P
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Its incredibly hard for me to ask for help cause it puts me in a one down situation and I feel I must do this myself. I'm usually very very self critical with my work so I don't have to rely on others. Its just something I hate to do, but to be better, I may have to break out of this shell.
Anyhoo, here goes.
I need some help with my art and my writing. My biggest problem right now is with telling a story. I have so many plots but nothing tying them together. Also no internal conflict to have the reader connect with the characters.
Anyhow. I have these two characters, which most of you are familiar with.
Flake (shroom) and Berb(Turtle)
They are so weird for me to think up things for them. I can go with just short gags and have them go through episodes, like if you were watching cartoons like Dexter, FlapJack, Loony Toons and what not. Its just I made them more for long epic adventure. I mean, Berb can fly and shoot bullets out his head.
I have an idea of what I want them to go through, but the way I have it starting and all is just so full of holes and I don't feel any character development in them.
This is how I was going to have it play out. It starts like this.
Already by page 2 there is a plot hole. Why would Flake, the mushroom, make a second turtle if he just finished his main one? My idea is just he had left over scrap metal, but really, the reader won't know why. Also, why would Flake make them in the first place?
What happens shortly afterward is that he starts showing Berb, the turtle, what his giant mech turtle can do. He activates an arm cannon and has it blast a tree. Flake is extatic and looks at Berb and says "sorry bub, your out. In the forest, large animals don't get pushed around." Kinda crappy dialouge.
The mech Turtle looks at Flake and Berb and decides to go ahead and blast them. They doge it and Flake is like
"I can't belive this, I created you!"
"and I can destroy you."
(predictable! I hate it!)
He pushes the self destruct button on his remote but it doesn't work. The mech turtle says he deactivated it. So it goes into a huge fight between flake and berb and this mech turtle.
After the Large Mech Turtle is destroyed, Flake puts the original copy of the computer chip into Berb. Berb becomes more powerful but it takes a lot of energy to power the chip. The chip is able to use organic matter for energy, so Flake goes into some little antics of finding Berb food. Some of which get really out of hand, like killing a cow and some ducks, then later a monkey and a bald eagle. Then Flake decides to
find an alternate source of energy...so he doesn't have to kill so many animals T3T
He uses his NDS to do some research of this portal that is protected in the forest. It guards a Black Diamond that stores a lot of energy.
What happens eventually is that Flake winds up unleashing a great evil shadow looking guy who starts to turn the forest into a more metal type forest and turns the animals into robot shadow type of creatures.
So Flake wants to keep this black diamond, this big bad guy, I'll call him Lurid, wants it to. What also starts happening is that the secret base Flake stole the chip from finds him and sends out 4 robot generals to capture him. These robot generals join forces with Lurid in conquering the forest. So Flake wants to right the wrongs he committed and set things right.
.....writing this all down is actually helping me right now, wow. Writing is fucking awesome.
Anyways, one of my biggest beefs is at the very beggining, should I go ahead and tell the story of how and why Flake went about building his turtles? Like how he stole the chip and was bullied into doing so? I was going to use that in a flashback to build emotion later in the story, but the flashback wouldn't occur till much much later in the story, so mabye it would still pack the emotion that it needs? I'm starting to think it would with what I have planned out.
WOW, writing is really helping! This is the first time I've wrote this down. I can see why now its encouraged.
Anyhoo, I need more internal conflict with Flake and Berb, or something, gah, I dunno, critique what I have so far please. any ideas at all would be much appreciated.
Side note. I need to write what I know, and from experience. The way this story is sounding is like something from Fern gully, Avatar, and Hayo Miyazaki Movies. Mans dominating the forest. Which is something I do attest to, just I don't know much about it.
I dunno, I'm trying to dig deep to get a good story together, and only I can write what I know, you guys can't really tell me what I know. But any food for thought would eaten like a starving hobo.
--
Asking for help is so hard for me to do.
Anyhoo, here goes.
I need some help with my art and my writing. My biggest problem right now is with telling a story. I have so many plots but nothing tying them together. Also no internal conflict to have the reader connect with the characters.
Anyhow. I have these two characters, which most of you are familiar with.
Flake (shroom) and Berb(Turtle)
They are so weird for me to think up things for them. I can go with just short gags and have them go through episodes, like if you were watching cartoons like Dexter, FlapJack, Loony Toons and what not. Its just I made them more for long epic adventure. I mean, Berb can fly and shoot bullets out his head.
I have an idea of what I want them to go through, but the way I have it starting and all is just so full of holes and I don't feel any character development in them.
This is how I was going to have it play out. It starts like this.
Already by page 2 there is a plot hole. Why would Flake, the mushroom, make a second turtle if he just finished his main one? My idea is just he had left over scrap metal, but really, the reader won't know why. Also, why would Flake make them in the first place?
What happens shortly afterward is that he starts showing Berb, the turtle, what his giant mech turtle can do. He activates an arm cannon and has it blast a tree. Flake is extatic and looks at Berb and says "sorry bub, your out. In the forest, large animals don't get pushed around." Kinda crappy dialouge.
The mech Turtle looks at Flake and Berb and decides to go ahead and blast them. They doge it and Flake is like
"I can't belive this, I created you!"
"and I can destroy you."
(predictable! I hate it!)
He pushes the self destruct button on his remote but it doesn't work. The mech turtle says he deactivated it. So it goes into a huge fight between flake and berb and this mech turtle.
After the Large Mech Turtle is destroyed, Flake puts the original copy of the computer chip into Berb. Berb becomes more powerful but it takes a lot of energy to power the chip. The chip is able to use organic matter for energy, so Flake goes into some little antics of finding Berb food. Some of which get really out of hand, like killing a cow and some ducks, then later a monkey and a bald eagle. Then Flake decides to
find an alternate source of energy...so he doesn't have to kill so many animals T3T
He uses his NDS to do some research of this portal that is protected in the forest. It guards a Black Diamond that stores a lot of energy.
What happens eventually is that Flake winds up unleashing a great evil shadow looking guy who starts to turn the forest into a more metal type forest and turns the animals into robot shadow type of creatures.
So Flake wants to keep this black diamond, this big bad guy, I'll call him Lurid, wants it to. What also starts happening is that the secret base Flake stole the chip from finds him and sends out 4 robot generals to capture him. These robot generals join forces with Lurid in conquering the forest. So Flake wants to right the wrongs he committed and set things right.
.....writing this all down is actually helping me right now, wow. Writing is fucking awesome.
Anyways, one of my biggest beefs is at the very beggining, should I go ahead and tell the story of how and why Flake went about building his turtles? Like how he stole the chip and was bullied into doing so? I was going to use that in a flashback to build emotion later in the story, but the flashback wouldn't occur till much much later in the story, so mabye it would still pack the emotion that it needs? I'm starting to think it would with what I have planned out.
WOW, writing is really helping! This is the first time I've wrote this down. I can see why now its encouraged.
Anyhoo, I need more internal conflict with Flake and Berb, or something, gah, I dunno, critique what I have so far please. any ideas at all would be much appreciated.
Side note. I need to write what I know, and from experience. The way this story is sounding is like something from Fern gully, Avatar, and Hayo Miyazaki Movies. Mans dominating the forest. Which is something I do attest to, just I don't know much about it.
I dunno, I'm trying to dig deep to get a good story together, and only I can write what I know, you guys can't really tell me what I know. But any food for thought would eaten like a starving hobo.
--
Asking for help is so hard for me to do.
Ray gun and sharpies.
J-P on
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Apologies but I haven't read any of your post, merely commented on the first things that I noticed.
Because I'm a bit lazy today.
Thanks Grenn, I understand.
I think I just found Flakes internal conflict.
Well, it seems that you already sort of know what your main problem is:
You don't know who your characters are.
Knowing what they look like and what their special pokemon abilities are or whatever is not a description of character. What their background is, what their personality is, what their motivations are, why they do what they do, what aspects of themselves are likely to draw the greatest amount of conflict, that's character.
What it seems like you've done as far as plot goes is come up with a lot of ideas that you think would be fun to draw, or things that you've come up with in a sort of stream of consciousness way, but don't come as a natural or logical result of the character's internally motivated actions, and as a result you're left trying to shoehorn in a characterization that would justify the existence of the set-pieces you've predetermined.
That's ok for a starting off point, if you can then draw back and figure out the character, and then go back and reevaluate the plot taking the character into consideration.
To give an example, you've established that the mushroom guy is kind of an inventor/engineer/mechanic, but one who doesn't necessarily think things through- you could say that he's got a narcissistic streak, that he's created a whole new person just to have an audience to show off his creations to. Why does he have to do that? He's out in a forest- has he been exiled, shunned by others, either misunderstood or as a consequence of his actions? Has he stormed off away from people, who don't recognize his 'talent'- a bumbling mad scientist type?
This is the sort of thing that you'd figure out by doing what Coleman suggested. Another way I've heard of trying to flesh out a character is to just sit your characters down at a table in a restaurant and have them talk to each other- just writing down page after page and seeing what topics they focus on, what their reactions are, how they behave, who dominates the conversation, who is more passive- in short, what their character is. This is why so many Quentin Tarantino movies feature scenes of characters at restaurants, as a result of doing this writing exercise to figure his characters out. Usually this is the sort of thing people leave out of the script once they know their character well enough to know who they are dealing with, though- it's not necessary for the audience to see it, it's for your own benefit.
From there you can design a conflict that makes sense- ok, you've got a villain conquering the forest- what's the mushroom guy's reason to fight them? From the character traits I've just made up, I could say that he could fight them using his inventions in an attempt to get back in with whatever society he's on the outs with, to be seen as a 'hero'. This way the plot is designed in a way to challenge and show off the specific attributes of the character. If you made the guy instead a Don Juan hero/romancer type, he might not do anything to confront such a villain directly- even if he were more competently equipped to do so- until it threatened what he cared about, like close friends or his ability to get tail, so the conflict would as a result have to be modified to make sure those things happen so a story can be told.
There's a couple of things in your plot description that hint at character motivation- "wants to right his wrongs" and "has trouble asking for help", but you haven't described why those things are the case as a result of his character. I don't know why he sees what he's done as wrong, and I don't see anyone that he could ask for help but doesn't, and if I did I wouldn't know why he doesn't, so the result is his actions appear arbitrary, being forced along by the demands of a predetermined "plot".
You might want to pick up a book on play or screenwriting- Robert McKee's Story is probably the most popular.
At this point I'd suggest holding off on drawing up more pages until you've done a lot more writing on the script and characters, so you don't get 10 pages in and go, "man this doesn't make any sense" and have to throw them all out and start over.
EDIT: Disclaimer: My advice on writing probably should be taken with a grain of salt, because after reading a few books on it I was like, "man this looks really hard" and as a result I haven't actually done much of it.
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I'm actually going to start over and tell the story of Flake before he made Berb. To flesh him out a bit more, and to show the reason why he had to build him (dead turtle shell.) I guess I started at a middle point in my story and wanted to make it the beginning.
Anyhoo, I feel I've been annoying people for way to long. I need to recalibrate and grow up.
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