STORY WRITING the JAPANESE WAY｜3 Ways to START Your MANGA｜漫画のストーリーを作る方法【起承転結】
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 сер 2016
- GIANT Robots. Magical Girls, Ninjas! You may have plenty of ideas, but how to do turn them into a STORY? We explore 3 ways to create a story out of ANY idea and Wolf explains 'Ki Sho Ten Ketsu', the classic Japanese way to write Manga Stories!
Click/tap on the top right of the screen to access the related videos and playlists.
関連動画やプレイリストの確認は、画面の右上をクリックしてください。
Click here to see more 'Foreigners Sell Manga In Japan' Playlist → • Foreigners Sell Manga ...
Click here to see 'Yazuki Wolf' Channel → / okamichamploo
【WAO✦RYU! TV｜Broadcasting Japanese Subculture】
▼KAWAII♡PATEEN
Kawaii Makeup Tutorials｜日本の「カワイイ」を発信
/ kawaiipateen
▼WAO✦RYU GAMES
Let's play video games with Japanese｜外国人と一緒にゲーム実況
/ @letsplayjapan
▼DoKiDoKi Drawing
Anime & Manga Drawing Tutorials｜イラスト＆アニメの絵かき講座
/ dokidokidrawing
▼ONLY in JAPAN
Funny & Amazing Japanese culture｜外国人から見た日本を紹介
/ waoryuonlyinjapan
▼ASK JAPANESE
Japanese people voices｜日本人の生の声をお届けする
/ askjapanese
■FACEBOOK
/ waoryujapan
/ tokyo.street.fashion.k...
■TWITTER
/ waoryujapan
■Official site
waoryu.jp - Розваги
10:35 it's called "feature creep"
*My story writing tips*
#1. Make sure your character has at least one quirk or feature or background detail that makes them unique and easily identifiable; your character can be a garbage man but if you give them something simple like some tech background then suddenly it's a much more interesting and memorable character. Rule of thumb: can your characters be identified even if you never give them a name? if yes it's probably good enough (note: your readers often forget names).
#2. _More of a tip for novel writing..._ You don't have to answer all the questions, you don't have to even give names to every single character or thing in the world.
Learn to write in a way that asks questions just as much as it gives answer, if not more. Especially if your writing a story that's intended only to be read (ie. a novel), giving people room to fill in the blanks with their imagination is much better then filling it in for them. For one it saves a lot of exposition some of your readers might find boring, but more importantly... let's say your story about dragons, if you don't ever describe the dragon in too much pointless detail then a person reading it in the west might imagine western dragons, while a person reading it in the east might imagine asian dragons. That's an obvious case but you can have a LOT of these small little details that the reader fills in himself (a "super steep mountain" is perfectly steep in the readers mind, but if you give them actual degrees of steepness then some readers will be underwhelmed-sometimes ambiguity is the only way to evoke the emotional response, any real value just wont cut it); cumulatively they make a big difference. Most people reading a non-wester novel will still imagine western characters even if they know the characters are supposed to be asian. Just as say, anime characters don't look "japanese" to most people, they just get auto-corrected mentally to whatever nationality the viewer is most comfortable with them being. Sometimes they get auto-corrected to nothing, they exist in the readers psyche as just the entity that satisfies the ambiguity places on them, which can be incredibly great thing for you as the writer! So don't fear ambiguity, it's many times your friend.
#3. Tropes are often confused with cliches; good stories are 70% stuff that's known to work (tropes), 20% personalized touch (your spin on the tropes and usual frameworks), 10% completely original. Don't be afraid to use stuff that works, the key is how well you execute it, not how original it is (badly executed original ideas are just your own personal form of bullshit as far as the reader is concerned). Start humble, bend tropes so it's familiar but very different, use super original ideas carefully, sparingly and make sure you ease the reader/viewer into them (remember, they are not you!).
Also, keep this in the back of your mind when writing: your super original super creative idea.... probably already been done, already failed, or isn't easily digested by anyone but yourself. Like I keep repeating and can't stree enough, execution is vital! stuff that's known to be good and work is your bread and butter and your friend, not your enemy! A good story is more then just "all originality" and I find it's a much more fulfilling experience not to ignore "good things" just because people like say critics like to nag on them. Remember, critics couldn't probably write a chapter, much less a story.
#4. Sometimes when starting it's a good idea to have somewhat of a point of reference of the world. It's both a set of a mood/rythm kind of thing (like the music suggestion in the video), as well as a way to kickstart your imagination. I find throwing background story irrelevant traits into a (for lack of better wording) "side board" as well as just going on the internet and finding images that "fit" with the story I want and then grouping and organizing them, so as to build a mini "reference" bank works great, especially for more fantasy like stories. It's hard to visualize a world that takes 10 pages just to make a summary but visual stimulation can really help-though typically you end up with more "ideas" then you can even write down.
#5. "Just write." If it's bad, no problem, write revisions, or scrap it and write it again entirely (keeping in mind what didnt work). Everyone's first iteration sucks, don't even be surprised when it happens. The more you practice the less iterations you will take next time. "Keeping it all in your head" is just as practical as the so called "multi-tasking"-so physically impossible even though we typically think of it as "we can do it if we really wanted to" (no you cant!)
#6. Sadly I don't have any great tips for revisions, I just do what I feel works at the time. One thing that helps is spliting the writing into "logical" chunks. These don't have to be things you actually mark out to the read in the final version (the final version may very well just look like one continous piece), however for the purpose of writing it's really helpful for making changes to have everything split into tiny bits. It gives you points of reference and you can also easily navigate though your notes and other details. Typically I go for: books, titles, arcs, events, summaries, chapters, paragraphs. I sprinkle ocasional "info dumps" for myself. Usually at least half the stuff is things I force myself to be true for reference when writing but may never be directly revelealed; it's good to write things down that are important even if they're not things you can ever write down directly in the chapter, so long as you know then the info will "trikle" down into other details of the story indirectly and allow everything to have good structure. For your own good, start a glossary of terms and character details early.
#7. ALWAYS start from the top down. It's very very easy to write "short" timespans (chapters, paragraphs, etc). BUT, it's hard to glue things togherer, it's hard to make something that makes sense, it's hard to give structure and purpose. So if you focus too early too hard on short timespan you'll generally end up with a lot of work leading to a big mess.
Don't be too strict with your structure either. It's very fun to read a very "loose" story where things just happen out of the blue sometimes. But don't be completely with out purpose-your characters should have an objective that is true, even when they forget about it or don't mention it in layman terms every chance they get. Like I mentioned before I split things into logical bits (it's simpler to go with known sectioning terms like chapter, arcs, etc, but you can really do anything), when you have an "idea" think of it like this: "if this was several books, what would the books be" (always force yourself to think of at least 3, trilogies have good synergy), then choose one book and choose a framework. Hero's journey is always a good (easy) one; just give it your own personal touch if you're feeling its not good enough, dont be too weird, your readers do have some expectations! Playing with the expectations is better then giving them a complete oddball. Write with either titles or very short paragraphs (2-3 lines at most) the general arcs, then go in and write titles, chapter titles and so on.
*Do not be afraid to leave blanks!* Nobody is perfect, got a great idea for part 1/5 and part 3/5 and nothing else, no biggie, just figure out how much time you need to fill in later inbetween and leave yourself some notes and write your good ideas of the later parts now. Because your splitting everything into bits, holes are really just missing bits, it's very easy therefore to focus on the parts you know and defer them to later or the "sleep on it" strategy. When you get to summaries, stop until you get everything from summaries up to the arc level complete. The actual chapters are after all details, get a solid foundation then everything will come naturally in place. Knowing future events, character development direction and so on is also immensely helpful and makes the busy work that much easier and quality that much better (less risk of writing something that makes sense only to yourself for the split second you put the words down). By knowing the future direction you can add cameos, hints, foreshadowing etc but most importantly, you can avoid completely writing things that have no future relevance. You can do this blind too of course, but I find that's a double edge sword with your blood already on it. It's essentially like saying "I'm gonna cut myself now in hopes this is still sharp later", don't do it. If you're that determined to make the "cut" then just go up in the structure, build up the thing you're going to foreshadown, then go back and write with confidence.
Another big reason to write with structure first, details second is the issue of getting side-tracked. It happens. Most of the time its a good thing, nice spark of the imagination forcing you to write some good scenes. But, there's a limit. And that limit is when it starts to mess with the structure that's in place. You can plan for a title of a chapter but write 10 chapters where you initially intended for one, that's not a problem. But if you write a chapter and it veers off course of the structure, or just doesn't tie back in all too nicely, that's a problem. Maybe it's a structure problem, if it is go and fix that instead but either way set yourself some limits watch out for when things dont go as planned, it's a check that somethings not quite right.
No one said thanks to you? well,thanks!
this comment is actually 700x better than the video itself, for a start it actually talks about the writting aspect :)
thank you
This was enlightening comment, thanks!
damn I’m copying this comment, print it, and pin it on my wall so I don’t forget about it when writing. You couldn’t be more precise and helpful cause it’s perfect that way.
Hero's Journey isn't just a Japanese way. Is a humanity way!
4:28 *girl in the back*
Wait, what's going on? Oh, recording, need to leave!
XD yup. i saw her too.
When that Japanese lady walked around the corner and spotted the camera she was out of there quick af
2:44 yo this girl just explained the plotline of miraculous 😂
Lmao frl
Attack on titan's story based on Ki-sho-ten-ketsu ❤️
Thank you very much for sharing video! 😊🇯🇵🌸
Ah brilliant! Great to see people realising the power of Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu. It really is foundation of everything in Japanese manga.
All three ideas sounds pretty useful.
For one of my stories I thought of it as recreating a datalouge like what they have in Final Fantasy. I am always amazed on how much information and dedication the creators and designers put into making their own world and it also gives me the impression of a real life world.
4:25 lol that girl be like "shit, gtg"
Excellent upload. My brain has learned stuff (doesn't happen often).
I'm writing a manga with my brother and so far we already have a story and main protagonist and antagonist
How did that go?
2020 now... How far are you now? I started in 2017 too But I'm still rewriting the first arc and I'm not really good at drawing...
Only half way through but got all the characters and plot done. Still working on it and started drawing some of the characters out
@@lazygamer2995 and now?
I love this series.
Those are some interesting methods to create your stories and expand them to something great.
For one of the stories I've been trying to build, I've taken a typical genre (the magical girl genre for example) and I've tried to think about some what ifs that no one's thought of (what if the main protagonist doesn't want to save the world, what if they just wanted to live an ordinary life). I have a fantastic character I want to use but it's just trying to come up with an original problem/adversary to overcome.
I think everyone has this kind of problem with their story. Because the story/genre itself doesn't _have_ to be original (for example: a hero goes on an adventure, a story about revenge etc.) but it's the _execution_ that makes it interesting.
If you already have an interesting character then I'd say half of the story is going to be good (because how many animes have you seen where the protagonist is useless or overly energetic who ruined the good concept of the story... I'm dying for something new).
But don't get discouraged. An original problem/adversary is not the only good point in storytelling. As far as I know, there are 4 different things you should consider for a good manga:
-setup (when, where, who, why, what and how),
-story (the kishotenketsu that was explained in the video),
-characters (you said you have a good idea of your new character so I'll leave that to you)
-and episodes (the little stories that make up a chapter. I can only come up with one manga that does it distinctively, namely Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun. Basically every page builds up to the climatic final page, for example a funny misunderstanding, however every single page is also a story on their own like....hmmm It's like every page is a new funny story, except that it's only funny if you've read the previous one. The misunderstanding is building up and at the climax you solve it all. I'm sorry I'm really bad at this, just read the manga and save yourself the headache).
If you're going to post you story online, people are generally very forgiving when it comes to originality of problem solving/adversary. Just make sure that the "episodes" leave a good impression on others. If your story has only one big climax pro chapter, it's going to bore the readers before they even reach it. But if you have a few little ones in between - that's what makes a manga more enjoyable.
Do I even make sense? Sorry for my rambling haha
Thank you so much for your assistance 🙏💕
0:26 this is the same stock sample used in "Interspecies Reviewers" (異異種族レビュアーズ) end credits
you guys are nerds. i lov u.
Tanks guys you helped me a lot : )
Amazing channel ! Suscribed
great video! Please make more like this ^ ^
That's exactly what I do, and I go a step further: I write my own songs for it.
( Plus being able to write poetry helps captioning later. )
Joseph Cambell...the monomyth... awesome.
Nice
I'd write a novel about my story before I put it into planning and creation
Looking through google images at Nature and beautiful villages.
Hero's Journey was popularised by Joseph Campbell in his Hero With A Thousand Face. It's an anthropology/social culture study, the creative story telling aspect was popularised with George Lucas and Star War.
Hello! Can you give me a tip because I really wanted to make a story where the setting of it will be in japan.
Ki sho ten ketsu is good for shonnen like attack of titans
like the other methods too
Can colourful mangas be published or just black and white mangas?
ki sho ten kestu is the same as the hero's journey
one thing i learned from this video. Makeup was not made for Japanese onna.
.... i feel like the kishotenketsu guy..........described freytag's pyramid instead- a western method. ...? i've been researching kishotenketsu a lot, but... the ten is specifically a "twist", not a challenge per se.
the examples of ki sho ten ketsu that i found, always put it as the twist being completely UNRELATED to previous eventts, it's something new, it's meant to be strange and "how does this relate!?" and then the conclusion explains how it related. Or else for longer narratives, the Ten then is answered by more development (Sho) and another Ten happens etc until conclusion......
His sounded like standard westren narrative formatting.. it was just a challenge not a twist... .. ??
i can't find the source but someone drew a comic describing it.
Ki; girl at vending machine.
Sho: girl getting drink out of vending machine.
Ten: some dude's sitting on a wall observing the garden.
Ketsu: girl brings the dude a drink.
(this form doesn't even need a conflict, actually, to tell the story. but the Ten, the twist, is meant to be seemingly unrelated)
The guys said, "but something unexpected happens"
I am afraid I have to respond to this 4 year old comment and do a little, It's not something "completely unrelated", pretentious correction. Pardon!
Four part structure is actually a repeating 2 part structure. Introduction-Development-Twist-Conclusion are the English terms used to describe the process, this however is not how it works, and merely the result of a lack of proper research, academic focus, and western biases.
To better understand kishotengo, you have to dive deeper into Eastern thought and culture, as well as history. Watch more chinese movies, korean, indonesian, etc. As well as literature that has been translated properly (which can be hard to discover). Within these works of fiction the underlying philosophy will slowly reveal itself, and revealing itself it does quite literally by outright stating it's philosophy. That is to say, a mix of Daoism, Confusicam, Buddhist Sects, Shintoism, etc. To quote a little Lao Tzu:
"To be learned,
we gain daily;
but for the 道 (Dao/Tao),
we loose daily"
And if you apply what you've learned earlier (起承転結)
起 = To be learned (or: to learn)
承 = we gain daily (or: to gain.
転 = but for the 道 (or: to learn)
結 = we loose daily" (or: to loose).
Keep the contradiction and confusion in the back of your mind as you read further. Because this logic is "felt" not "reasoned" and hence English lacks the necessary vocabulary to describe it properly since western thought tends to categorize and isolate ideas, but the 道 can not be isolated and categorized as any attempt to do so renders it from infinite to absolute. Don't believe in magic now though, it's simply put an internal awareness of a fundemental aspect within human cognition and on that basis does not lend itself at all to a world view in which science attempts to find absolute truth on the nature of human brains beings as adaptable and does incapable of being strictly defined.
________________________________________________________________________________
(intermission)
Here are two quotes that put it better:
"Within the framework of Chinese thought, no notion may attain such a degree of abstraction from empirical data as to correspond perfectly to one of our modern universal concepts. Nevertheless, the term qi/ki comes as close as possible to constituting a generic designation equivalent to our word "energy". When Chinese thinkers are unwilling or unable to fix the quality of an energetic phenomenon, the character qi/ki (氣) inevitably flows from their brushes."
- Manfred Porkert
"In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi explains that the Tao is not a name for a thing, but the underlying natural order of the universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe because it is non-conceptual yet evident in one's being of aliveness. The Tao is "eternally nameless" and should be distinguished from the countless named things that are considered to be its manifestations, the reality of life before its descriptions of it"
__________________________________________________________________________________
(Back to kishotenketsu.)
"Spring Dawn" by Meng Haoran, translated by David Hinton.
(起) In spring sleep, dawn arrives unnoticed.
(承) Suddenly, all around, I hear birds in song.
(転) A loud night. Wind and rain came, tearing...
(結) ...blossoms down. Who knows, few or many?
Did you notice it yet? How Introduction and development are repeated twice, giving off the appearance of a "twist" (in my opinion "surprise" would fit better, but even then not entirely).
It goes from sleeping through the nigh in spring (establishing) to the development (hearing birds sing a song) to then speak about the thing that happened earlier (the storm throughout the night) and about it's development (whether or not it had done a lot of damage to the flowers). We have two contrasting elements because our mind thinks in contrasting natures. When we have calm, we require that which is not calm to create a need for the sensation of calm to exist. Same goes for Dark and night, good and evil, loud and quite, introverted and extroverted, western and eastern, real life and virtual life, thinking and feeling, heart and mind, foot and hand, animal and man, nature and machine, wealth and poverty, mental illness and mental health, kindness and narcissism, love and hate, science and religion, individual and collective, dead and life, matter and anit-matter, zero and one, everything and nothing, and so on, and so on, until it's all gone, until it's all fun, yin and yang and their relationship make them one and two at the same time (or as math puts it 1=0.99999... while still having 1=1; aka there are TWO types of infinities and within these infinities is an infinite infinities. [Left this mathematical nugget here in case you are curious about researching this on you own, since it's a rather interesting subject matter). Anyway, too many examples from my side, but hopefully this gets the mood across.
For the four-part-structure (ki-sho-ten-ketsu; 起承転結) to be applied properly, you require this understanding of the Cosmos as well as having practiced it's applicableness within the mundane, day to day life. (When we speak of Cosmos, we do not speak of an ultimate Truth. We speak of our individual perspective of the Cosmos, does we speak of "this understanding of the Cosmos" and not of "one understanding of...."). The 4-way structure gives you the cognitive basis by which you can make sense of the internal and external relationships between thoughts and observation, between logic and emotion, and so on. It conditions you against biases and rhetorical nonsense because it requires you to sit still for some seconds, observe, then think about your thinking and thus find the oppositional counterpart to your emotional observation within your own minds pool of associations.
It is this meditative nature, that causes the twist to only be a twist within the minds of readers who are unware(temporarily unconscious of it, not uneducated of it) of the reciprocal nature of things around them within the moment. If you are already aware of it, then the the third part is more equal to being described as "surprise, fun, anticipation, curiosity, etc", even though it is still simply an introduction and hence the 4th part is not so much a Conclusion(usually a word reserved for when an Ending (be it story or argument or conjecture or calculation, etc) is based on a rational argumentation of 1 + 1 is 2.), but more so a unification or "knotting/tying things back together".
This is why you find this principle not just within Manga or story telling, but poetry, humor, daily conversations, argumentations, scientific papers, art and literature, rituals, and so on and so on. Japan took the Chinese basis and pushed it to it's purest application (so to say). And as I was saying, you see this even being reflected within the highly contextual nature of the Japanese language itself and why their way of thinking is so difficult to grasp for western people but not the other way around.
Whether or not this makes sense to you, will be up to you and whether or not anyone finds this applicable will be up to them. My words were definitely not the most smooth, as I tried to condense as much information as possible while also writing this message at 1AM, please forgive me for the inconveniences caused by this. Thanks for reading!
------------------
On a side note, lets rework your example from 4 years ago with this understanding (though to be frank, your example was already an accurate application, but one that focused only a functional interaction without any emotions)
(起) A Girl at a vending machine, buying a drink from it.
(承) Someone accidentally ran into the girl as they were rushing around the corner, causing her can to be flung into the air.
(転) A Guy sitting on a wall while looking into the many streets of his metropolitan city, it's raining
(結) because he didn't intended to have pushed that girl into ongoing intercity traffic.
Hope this helped someone, somewhat. Thank you for reading, I'll be now sleeping!
Am i the only one who thinks that girl's look like Reira-Trapnest from Nana anime..? lol
لماذا عنوان الفيديو بالعربي ولا يوجد ترجمه للعربي ،ما هاذا الاحتيال
3:28 whys this guy shaking its making me anxious too lol
Cathy cat what r u doing here?💁
Hola
Annays Plaza x2 jaja
Is that shia labeaouf ?
I can’t draw...