SO! This is why I’m going to put all this on “pause.” I’m going to work on my ideas at my own pace. This is the reason I haven’t posted in a while, and so far I think it has helped since I’ve made good progress. Hopefully in a couple months time I will come out of my hole and have something to show that is complete and not just vague ideas.

Wish me luck and I’ll see you soon!

I’m no expert on this, not even close. My track record is anything but mediocre at best. But creating stories, characters and worlds has been an activity that I’ve enjoyed doing since I was a kid. I’m currently trying to develop stories for two potential personal projects. I had little problem coming up with the general ideas for both. In fact, I have several ideas that I like, many were started years before. The first problem was to narrow them down. In the end I decided on two ideas that seem interesting and fun and are also something that I think I can handle. I was even able to combine a couple ideas together to make them more layered.

I have plans for both of these ideas, but that’s not what I want to talk about here. I want to give some tips I’ve come up with to help me develop these ideas into full stories. So if, like me, you have your idea(s), you can picture it in your head, but it’s not a complete story, what next?

Characters

The most important thing for a story is to have compelling characters. So this is likely the next best place to start. We need to figure out whom or what will move the story forward. Who is the good guy and who or what will try to stop them. We need conflict. You’ve likely heard the phase, man versus man, man versus himself and man versus nature, these are the bases for story conflict. It doesn’t always have to be another person that’s causing the problem. So keep that in mind.

Usually when you have a story idea in mind, you will know, vaguely, who the characters will be, but they aren’t usually very fleshed out. We’ll work on that in later steps. The main thing is to have in mind who the characters are in the story. Don’t be afraid to add more characters or remove some and never be afraid to kill off a character if it will move the idea forward.

Also keep in mind relationships between the characters. Do they get along? Are they related? These things can be useful in developing more story ideas.

Scenes

The next thing is to try and drum up as many scene ideas as we can. Knowing the characters and the overall story idea, we should be able to think of some interesting scenes that we’d like to have in our story. Order is not important here. What we want to do is basically create a catalog of ideas. Don’t worry about how much they make sense. You might not use them in the end or you may merge some later on.

The trick here, and for any story development, is to keep asking, “what if?” What if the character runs away? What if they have an unknown brother? What if they get hit by a car? These kind of questions can easily spark scene ideas.

On of the most crucial scenes we need to think of here is the ending. This is something that may take a long time to develop. It is, after all, the crux of the whole story. We don’t even need to know how it happens yet, we just need to have an ending. If unsure, you can try to think of a couple endings. If you can’t come up with an ending then the next phase will likely help.

Work on both of these parts for a while. Let the ideas “cook” in your head. Give it a couple days or even weeks, each day try to add more ideas. When you get to a point that you just can’t come up with more ideas, move on to the next part.

Research

At this point we need some fresh ideas. It also doesn’t hurt to see how other stories are setup. So we should find some inspiration to get ideas. I’m not talking about stealing ideas here. That’s never a good idea. Get it? Ahem… Anyway, we can learn a lot from other sources and it will likely spark more ideas. Look at books, comics and movies etc. It’s likely that your original story idea was sparked from something you read or saw. Try to find stories that have elements similar to your idea. It doesn’t even have to be the same genre. We’re looking mainly for character development. What has a character in it in a situation similar to your character?

I like to watch TV shows and movies. This way I can see and more easily feel the character’s emotion. It’s also faster than reading a novel. Yes, I’m lazy. But the point is to, again, gather as many ideas as we can. I usually will write down little things, anything to spark more “what if” questions. For example, I saw a fight scene where someone got thrown out the window. I had no idea if I could use that, but it was an exciting and scary moment in the show, so I wrote it down.

I don’t just jot down scene ideas, I’ll also pick out character traits — “Likes animals” “Hates smoke” “Is afraid of heights.” I can use these to help flesh out my characters.

Again spend a couple days or weeks on this part of the process. I keep adding all these things to my “idea list” on my iPad. That way they are in one place an I don’t have to worry about losing papers etc.

Once you have collected a decent amount of fresh ideas, go to the next step.

Chapters

With all our ideas gathered it’s time to test ourselves. We came up with as many ideas as we could and we did research. So let’s see how far we’ve come. At this point we should create a list. I will usually start with a numbered list of, say, 10 or 12 chapters and then test myself to see how many chapters I can fill in. I figure that the first two chapters are the introductions, where we learn about the character(s) and are met with the first challenge that sets the stage for the rest of the story. Then I go to the bottom of the list and put the ending. Then I’ll fill in a couple chapters before the ending. These are the lead-in chapters, the build up to the final conflict.

With that in place I’ll have a few chapters left over to fill in. Here is where all those ideas come into play. We can start to figure out where some of those idea can play into the overall story. Can some of them lead into other ideas? Can we make connections between scene ideas? Do we need a new character to move things along?

If we can’t fill in all those chapters then we need to go back and find more ideas or try to combine some of the ones we have. You can repeat this process until you have all the chapters filled in. The ideal situation is to have more ideas than chapters slots on the list, when you feel like you need more room. Now you don’t want to add too many unneeded chapters. So going from 10 chapters to 100 is likely not a good sign. You should always make sure that each chapter and each scene moves the story forward. If it doesn’t, and it’s just fluff, then you should remove it or merge it with a scene that does move things forward.

By this point we should have a decent idea of what’s going on in our story. We should have a very basic outline. From here we need to refine and add detail.

The basic process here overall is to start with very broad strokes and then slowly narrow things down to the details. This way we never get overwhelmed with the details from the start. We work towards that slowly so that we can always see the whole picture. This is actually true for drawing too.

If you get stuck then either something is preventing the story from taking shape or, more likely, there is an idea that’s blocking other ideas from connecting. Something else you can try is to take all the ideas you gathered, place them on index cards and try to jumble them around to see what ideas crop up. Place a couple cards in random order and see what you get. You may be surprised. It’s all about sparking an idea.

And finally, talk to others. By talking to friends and family about your ideas you may find that ideas just jump out at you in the process of explaining it. Or they may ask you a question that forces you to think of an answer. If the idea sounds bad while you explain it, it’s likely that you’ll need to keep working on it.

Always write down ideas. Don’t let them slip your mind. An iPad is great for that nighttime idea that you think of as you are trying to fall asleep. Just be sure the glowing screen doesn’t bother others.

Of course, there are many other ways to develop a story. This is just a method that seems to work for me.

]]> http://www.georgepanella.com/creating-worlds/feed/ 0 http://www.georgepanella.com/in-my-spare-spare-time/ http://www.georgepanella.com/in-my-spare-spare-time/#comments Sun, 06 Jan 2013 04:18:36 +0000 admin http://www.georgepanella.com/?p=163 Continued]]> When I’m not spending my spare time working on a creative project, I spend some more spare time on one of my many hobbies. I think hobbies provide another outlet for inspiration as well as a chance to relax. Who am I kidding, I’m just lazy.

Like most people, I love music and movies. I can’t work without some sort of music playing. My current music favorites range from Dance, Dubstep and Symphonic Metal all the way to Jazz and Rock. I like a little bit of everything. I also enjoy some cartoons and anime. Of course, I have my small collection of comics that I like to look at for inspiration as well. Something that’s been a part of my life since I was fairly young. Most of my favorite comics are near my desk, while the rest are boxed away. I’ve amassed a medium-sized collection, a couple boxes worth, along with many #1 issues from the beginning of the Image Comics era.

Beyond those fairly average interests, I have two other defining hobbies, one a little more uncommon than the other.

Where I tend to waste most of my spare spare time, and the one hobby I’m probably most obsessed with, is gaming (video games), primarily MMORPGs. I started playing video games back with the Sega Master System in the late ’80s. Today I don’t play many console games, my primary gaming system of choice is the PC. In recent years I found an addiction for games that provide me with a vast open world that I can freely explore. For single-player games I gravitate to open-world games such as Oblivion, Skyrim, GTA, Saints Row and the likes. I may enjoy a good RPG now and then as well like Mass Effect, Persona, Fable or the occasional Final Fantasy. And going back all the way to my first computer game on the Amiga, I still love a good racing game, my favorites including Test Drive Unlimited and Forza Horizon.

However my biggest gaming addiction is MMORPGs, online role-playing games. These provide me a “fix” for my love of a vast open world to explore with a wider variety than you typically get in single-player games. This obsession was started with an innocent little invite to play Anarchy Online with some friends. Since then I’ve played nearly every major MMO released. Like many, I spent many years in World of Warcraft and leveled several characters to the level cap. I also seem to have a soft spot for imported MMOs from Korea and Japan. My second most played MMO is probably Lineage 2, a Korean MMO.

While these days I don’t play them as obsessively as I used to, I still find time every couple nights a week to hop into one of my current favorite MMOs such as Guild Wars 2, The Secret World and Tera Online.

Guild Wars 2 is an all around decent MMO that tried to break the standard MMO formula. I think one of the highlight of this game is the sense of camaraderie you get when it’s essential that other players you are not even grouped with help each other out to accomplish a goal. They also lovingly crafted a world with many little hidden nooks to find.

The Secret World is another MMO that tried to break from convention, but the thing I love about it most is its setting. It’s set on our everyday earth where the secret societies and all the monsters of legend are true. This is the kind of idea I love to incorporate into my own stories, the mundane with the fantastical.

Tera Online is probably the MMO I’m currently most attached to. While it’s far from perfect and in fact sub-par by most standards, a lot of its quarks are part of its charm. Most importantly to me is the vast, seamless open world that is just so fantastical, beautiful and memorizing that I just enjoy exploring almost more than actually playing. On top of that, like most Korean MMOs, the designs are just so unique. The armor and clothes have so much detail and flare and are just damn sexy, something many western MMOs seem to miss out on. For many it’s just -too- over the top, but for me it’s pretty awesome.

It doesn’t end there, though, as an avid reader of MMO news, I have several upcoming “distractions” that I’m looking forward to, namely the reboot of Final Fantasy XIV and Blade & Soul, both of which also happen to be from Asia.

Finally my second, and somewhat uncommon, hobby, which also happens to hail from Asia, is Ball-Jointed Dolls or BJDs. These are a class of doll made typically out of resin plastic and are strung together utilizing ball joints to allow movement. They greatly range in style and size and are typically made to order or sold as limited editions.

Many collect BJDs because they can be completely customized and are a great beautiful form for photography. Some BJDs can truly be considered works of art. Personally, the best thing about them for me is the customization. It allows you to create your own character in a physical form. When I learned about these dolls I became really intrigued. There is a large community built around them along with a large variety of little items that are in themselves amazing. I currently own two BJDs. They are both SD sized, which is about 2 feet tall. They both have names and may potentially represent characters in my future projects.

So that about sums up my hobbies, some fairly average, while others are a bit unique. I think hobbies really say a lot about a person. What are some of you unique hobbies?

As far as I can remember, I was never one of those kids that wanted to be a fireman or a doctor. As a child of the ’80s, I fell in love with all the great cartoons and comics of the time. They really helped introduce me to a variety of imaginative worlds. When I was very young I remember asking my father to draw characters for me and I was so amazed at watching him draw. My father wasn’t an artist, but he did well enough that I would ask him to draw many things. This lead me to try and draw on my own.

During grade school my friends and I were all big fans of Transformers. We would spend our lunch break drawing our own Transformers. I built up a whole collection of images. Drawing big robots actually helps you learn about perspective, especially when you try to draw them so they look tall and towering.

I didn’t stop there, though. So enthralled to create my own robots, I actually made my own out of poster board in complete three dimension and with the ability to transform. I was doing “paper craft” without even knowing it. I believe this gave me a good understanding of 3D.

During my years in middle school I was exposed to many new creative avenues. I think this time was the most pivotal for me. I was very much into superhero comic books by this point. My free time was often spent drawing new characters and coming up with my own superheroes. A friend of mine actually paid me to draw him superhero images. These were my first commissions. Soon I found myself being approached by a variety of girls in the school asking for a portrait sketch of themselves. Imagine my eagerness to please my new clients.

Around this time I also fell in love with a Little Mermaid, which spurred a great interest in animation. I started to read books about animation and its history and dreamt up my own animated cartoons.

But most importantly, also around this time, my father was working for a local TV station, which was eventually sold to another network. During the transition he had the station mostly to himself. Together we spent a lot of time there learning and playing with the equipment. We made our own skits, à la SNL. But it wasn’t all fun and games, he had to produce local commercials and I would often help him out. Since my father was a technician by trade, our home always had a bevy of electronics, so I was no stranger to camcorders and the like.

My experience at the TV station lead me to one piece of equipment that changed the future of my creative ventures forever. It was a little known computer called the Amiga. At the station it was used to create a variety of graphics, usually titles. I spent a lot of time playing with that machine, especially in my first paint program, Deluxe Paint. With this I created my first digital images and animations, even some that were used in commercials.

By the time I started high school I had a fair amount of experience under my belt with drawing and computer graphics, but I didn’t stop there. I took classes in Photography, Print, Art and Video Production. I even tired my hand in Airbrushing on the side. Image Comics were an obsession of mine around this time and my desire to draw comics was stronger than ever. I even teamed up with a friend to draw our own, much to the disdain of our art teacher.

Windows computers were becoming much more powerful around this time and the internet was starting to take shape. I started to learn 3D graphics with Imagine 3D and in school I was learning Photoshop on our Macintosh computers, coloring in my comic drawings.

Our high school had a pretty extensive video production class. We made our own morning news show for the whole school. There they had a little marvel of a computer called the Video Toaster by Newtek, which just happened to be bundled with a 3D animation program called Lightwave. No one in the class knew how to use it, not even the teachers. I spent many hours after school hunkered over the large manual learning the program on my own. I was eventually producing 3D animated titles for the school’s programs. It was a really exciting time for me.

By the mid 90′s Toy Story had hit the theaters, “anime” was exploding on US TV and Netscape was the browser of choice. My love of 3D had kept growing and Pixar certainly helped motivate me even more. Lightwave became a standalone program and I was eager to use it on my personal computer at home. I was working in several creative odd jobs as well, such as a local print TV guide and a clothing embroidery shop. With the fast-paced growth of the internet I became intrigued to create my own website. I printed out a large “how-to” for coding your own website in HTML and got to work with a text editor and a paint program.

Not long after I found myself working in web design. At the time web designers were in short supply so work was easy to come by in my local town.

By the end of high school I was looking at various colleges. My life up to this point was filled with creative endeavors. It was clear that I needed a school that catered to that. I was set on becoming a creative professional. I eventually attended Full Sail University in Florida. I went to Full Sail mainly to start a career in 3D animation. Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

When I graduated, web design was the place to be, and with my experience doing that since high school, it was much easier to find work. That didn’t stop me from continuing to create my characters and stories in my free time as I always had. After work I spent time developing new stories, which lead me to create a couple online comics for a few years.

The rest is pretty much history. I had found my love of creating characters and worlds from a pretty young age. Growing up in the ’80s with amazing cartoons and comics certainly seemed to help enchant my creative young mind to learn to draw. My early exposure to computer graphics and later 3D and web design seemed to really help me hit my creative stride to where I am today.

What will happen next? Hopefully this fresh new site will help answer that. It has been several years since my last personal creative project. There are still many characters and worlds I’d like to explore and share. Hopefully I can finally get some of them off the ground. Who knows were it may lead.

To be continued.

For the last several years I’ve been spending a lot of time planning and scheming creative ideas. Well, more like wasting time in online games, but my love of creating stories and characters has still led me in a variety of directions. Some threw me way off to left field, while others I revisited time and again. I’m finding, looking back, that I haven’t really made much progress.

So here is to fresh starts and new beginnings. I’m not going to make any promises this time. I certainly have goals and plans in mind, but I think it will be more interesting to see how things pan out as they happen.

For now this site is a mere shell, waiting to be filled with new and exciting visions.

I hope you join me on this new journey. Let me know if you are also making plans for your creative endeavors in the new year.

Happy New Year!

[Photo by Jon Sullivan]