So... I decided to play Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

Being stuck at home because of the coronavirus means that I have more free time than what I know what to do with. So... I ended up looking at some old games that I wanted to play when I was a kid but never had the chance to.

One of those games is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest; the game has a poor reputation in the RPG circles, but now that I've been playing it I really don't know why. Sure, the game is rather easy and from what I can tell I'm already on the final dungeon after about a weekend of playing, but this game is fun, the music is great, the graphics are colorful and bright and the story, while simple, is interesting with likeable characters.

It's really a very nice little game, I don't regret playing it at all and I honestly can't understand its bad reputation.

If you're curious about it, here's the soundtrack:

My writing process, part 4

Now that we have talked about the previous step, it is time to talk about the last one: the Final Review.

This step is both very simple and very tricky, as it consist on letting the chapter or the full story sit for a couple of days before reading it again to look for typos, grammar mistakes, plot holes and other details that were overlooked in previous steps.

Something to note here is that if the story does not feel right or it has too many mistakes or issues with how it reads, then it may be necessary to drop some of it, most of it, or all of it and start it all over again.

To illustrate this point, I'll share my experience with the story Preludes to tragedy: Cheetara which is a side story/prequel to Embracing Dark Desires. The point of this prequel was to show important information that would help develop some elements from the main story, but at the same time it had to be a completely optional read. When I was doing the Final Review, before sending it to my beta reader, I decided the story was both too long and that it didn't work the way I wanted it to; because of this, I was forced to cut several scenes to make it shorter, and to alter the rest so that it would fit with the main story the way it was intended to.

But once the corrections were made, the story was streamlined and made shorter, during the second Final Review, I was satisfied with it and decided it was adequately doing what I needed. Only then I sent it to my beta reader and when I got it back I was able to publish it.

So there you have it, that's the way I usually write my stories, I hope this helped you out at least a little.

My writing process 3

Last time we talked about the plot drafting.

In this entry I will talk about the third step of my writing process, which is the Story Draft, and this is the step where the heavy writing and production really starts. It may sound difficult or taxing, but it's actually the simplest one, however it is also the one that takes the most effort to complete.

The main difference between the plot draft and the story draft is that the former is just a series of ideas and events that make the base for the story you want to write; the latter is the actual draft for the story, and it includes scenes and dialogue.

To explain this point, I'll talk a little about the creation process of the story draft for my Castlevania fanfic Story of two souls. The idea for this one came after I played Dawn of Sorrows and it was basically a slice of life type of story between the monsters living in the castle.

After I did the plot draft and was satisfied with it, I began the process of drafting the actual story. First, I decided on the scenes and their definitive locations; this was easy because I only had to limit the location based on where the monsters from the game could be found. After that I started working on the dialogues; since the story is dialogue heavy, this took a while, as I had to write down who said what and with what emotion.

Once that was done, I had a very streamlined three scene (or three acts) story that used dialogues adequately for my purposes. After that, the next part of this step could start, and that is the actual writing before the final review. With this I mean that after deciding on the scenes and dialogues based on the plot draft, I could start writing the story itself, detailing the scenes and the lines of dialogues between the characters as I had planned beforehand.

When that was completed, the story was ready for the last step of this process: The final review.

Music and writing 2

A couple of weeks ago a friend invited me to watch as he and his friends played Dungeons & Dragons, hoping that I would decide to join. I am not really that big of a fan of RPGs, but the experience was interesting, I was impressed by how creative the session was.

One thing that helped improve the mood and the experience was that they had a soundtrack ready for their game. I was curious about it because it was unexpected and in the end I enjoyed the musc they had selected even more than the game.

I was told the music they used was Dungeon Synth, and that it was not that strange for people to use music of that genre during D&D sessions.

I thought the music would be good to listening to while I wrote, and I found it worked quite well to help set the mood. I've been listening to a few Dungeon Synth albums recently, and it's been a nice surprise so far.

My favorite out of the albums I've found until now is this one, by Midnight Syndicate:

 Give it a try, you may enjoy this as much as I did.

My writing process, part 2.

In the previous post I explained how I do canon research before I start writing a story; so now it's time to talk about the second step, which is drafting the plot of the story.

As I said, it all starts with an idea, but in order to write the idea well, it is important to have a plot ready. The plot is the skeleton that supports the actual story, and it is here where you can go crazy and include all the options that you could think of. It's the thinking heavy part of the process, I believe.

The first thing I do when I'm preparing a draft is to determine the goal and write it down as short as possible, three lines maximum. This helps me keep the central idea front and center. I'll use my Ranma 1/2 story A Nabiki mystery to illustrate this point.

When I first came up with the idea, the goal was clear and easy to summarize, if I remember correctly it was something like this:

"Nabiki solves a mystery that begins in the Kuno mansion, Kasumi helps her a little."

It's very simple and it can be expanded (or not) as needed, it also determines quite well what the story is going to be about and it gives the frame to work in properly.

Once I had the goal set, I did the first draft, which focused on the mystery itself and how the results affected the characters. This ended up being too long and tedious, and I thought it would not fit the tone of the series well, so I rewrote the draft again and it took a more silly approach to the central conflict. I remember that was better, but it would have been too description heavy and perhaps not funny enough. So I reworked it a third time, in that one the central conflict changed and ended up being worse than the previous one, so I went back to the second and worked on the problem I had with it, which was it relied heavily on description; a few tweaks later, I was able to shift the narrative so that it would be dialogue based, something I thought then would help keep the funny and light-hearted aspect of the story I wanted to convey.

Alright, to make this short, this is what I do when drafting a plot:

1. Identify the goal and write it clearly in no more than three sentences.
2. Write the events in the draft, don't fear moving them around.
3. If the draft strays from the original goal, revise and determine if it's worth it or not.
4. If the draft sticks to the goal, but it ends up being something difficult to narrate, revise.
5. Revise, revise, revise until you think the draft is good enough to work with.

As you can see, the most important aspect here is to lose your fear of revising a draft. It took me a while to lose this fear, but I eventually learned that this is what the draft is for, it's the place to throw and move ideas around, and where you can go wild with them; it is here where I can prepare the contents and the foundation and the advantage is that I don't have to worry about it being terrible, because I am the only one who will ever see this very early rough outline.

Next time we'll talk about the third step: The story draft.

My writing process, part 1

It starts with an idea. Everything always starts with an idea.

Sometimes it is something that can work and it flows great; others, it is an idea that could work, that may flow, but in the end it does not and it remains there for months until it is forgotten and discarded.

But what do I do with an idea that I think is good and has potential, but does not flow well?

That's what I'll talk about now.

When it comes to fanfiction, the way I write my stories follows a very straigthforward process.

This process I divide in four parts:

1. Canon research.
2. Plot draft.
3. Story draft.
4. Final review.

This time I'll talk about canon research.

While it should be self explanatory, I believe talking about how I do it may help me explain better what I'm talking about. For this I'll use my story Maniac Cop: Unfinished Business as an example.

This story is based on the Maniac Cop trilogy of action horror films, and I wrote it, first of all, because I wanted to, and second, because I wanted a conclusion to what the three movies presented. The idea for this story came to me after I rewatched the second film in the series, but since I didn't have a complete grasp of the full mythology of the universe, rewatching the three movies and taking notes ended up being necessary.
The first thing I did, then, was to watch each movie and finding out any suplementary material for the films I could. This wasn't really that difficult, as I was able to get Special Editions of each of the three movies, which came with loads of extra material, including cast interview, behind the scenes footage and scripts.
During the rewatching of the movies, I wrote notes about scenes that could help me build a solid background to the story I was planning to write, this worked also because it gave me things to reference in the story to better tie my writing with the original material.
I also paid attention to characterization, which fortunately, is pretty consistent in all three films, this was necessary because it allowed me to keep the character from acting in ways that would deviate from canon, something that would lessen the story's impact.
Another advantage of my research is that it helped me understand the way the universe of the franchise looks and feels, something that I used when it was necessary to duplicate it in my writing.
Finally, by watching the three films and the suplementary material, I was able to find information that helped reshape the final story I wrote. The initial plot draft I had ended up being completely different from the one I used to write the published story.

While this example is based on movie research, it also applies to other media, such as novels, manga, anime, comic books, board games, videogames, etcetera.

So, to sum it up, proper canon research means that you find as much about the universe you are going to write your fanfiction for, in order to better understand the characters, their overall story and characterization, the look and the rules of the universe, its story and particular details so that you have a nice pool of information to pull from when you are writing.

The reason why this matters is that it makes your work more authentic, and it helps your work approach something that "feels" like the original source better, and in the end, that is good for your own writing and for the readers.

Next time, we'll talk about the second step: the plot draft. 

Lost Together illustration 3

I had some free time last weekend, so I drew another illustration for the Ranma 1/2 story Lost Together that I've been writing with DaisukiFox (we recently updated, by the way). This scene is based on something that happens in chapter 8; a two parter arc involving Pantyhose Taro.

The pencils for this one were actually far easier than the inking, which took a long time because of how many things I included here. The most difficult aspect was getting Ryoga and Ranko right, the hands and face expressions are very challenging to me, as well as the size and perspective, mainly because of the frame behind them that I included. I'm afraid I still can't do those things as well as I'd like.

I do like how it turned out, however; it's a bit more detailed than both the previous one and the first one I drew for the story, which was the main problem I had with them, the lack of a proper background always bothered me a little.

Short one-shots are liberating

You know what's something you can write quickly, with not many consequences, that will let you put any silly, serious, deep, funny or any kind of idea out there?

Short one shot stories.

Let's say you have an idea for a scene, but that it's not something that's worth expanding into a proper story that is multiple chapters long, or that even goes beyond ten pages. But you really like it, so you have then two choices:

One, you write a longer story around the scene, which can yield great results or kill the idea you initially had.
Two, you write a short story about it, adapting it to the scene so that you don't need to add anything else or giving it more chapters.

I find the second option the best one, and I've done it with good results, at least as far as getting the idea out there, is concerned.

So, should you try this strategy? I'm sure many of you already have, but if you haven't, consider it, you may be surprised by the results.

From the favorites list #3

Mismatched Love, by Evelyn CMB is, in my opinion the funniest romantic comedy in the He-Man category at fanfiction.net, and a story that I would recommend if you're interested in reading something funny this Valentine's Day.

The story is set in the 1980's universe (I think it wouldn't work in any other incarnation of the franchise) and it shows what would happen if, suddenly, Tee-La fell madly in love with main villain Skeletor, while at the same time, Evil-Lyn fell in love with main hero He-Man. The result is a great comedy where both ladies team up to capture/conquer their love interests, at least until they come back to their senses.

The question is, why did this happen? Well, the answer is explained at the end, so you'll have to read it to find out.

Well written and greatly narrated, Mismatched Love is without a doubt one of the best one shots by Evelyn CMB, who has crafted many other excellent stories for the Masters of the Universe franchise; I recommend giving her work a look, you may be surprised by it.

A truly inconvenient incident.

So, power failure today, my laptop fries my usb key, and that's where I had the updated notes for all my writing. The result? I lost them all, I don't have up to date backups, the notes for my upcoming chapters and my original writing are gone. Sure, I have copies on my hard drive, but they're from about three months ago.

Ok, I admit it is my fault for not doing regular backups, but that does not change the fact this stings. And I also lost formats, documents and data related to my actual job and redoing those is going to set me back weeks on the projects I'm working on.

It's very inconvenient and discouraging, but on the other hand, water under the bridge, what's happened, happened and all that. I guess this is a chance to do the notes again, I mean, I do remember most of what I wrote in them so I can probably rewrite it better than before.

I just don't know how long it will take, I mean I lost a lot of information, months worth of it.

Oh well, let's just be optimistic, and consider this as a chance to improve on what I already had planned.

Best to keep a positive attitude on things.

Music and writing

Sometimes when I want to write something I use music to help me get in the mood for the scene I'm writing, and while I know that some people can only write if they are listening to their favorite songs, I try to write in silence. The reason I do this is because music can be distracting; I remember this time I was trying to write a particularly important scene for one of my older stories, but I couldn't get it right because the song I was listening to distracted me, and I couldn't get it right until I stopped listening to it.

Now, I'm not saying you should avoid all music, after all, as I said above, it's really helpful to get in the mood for a scene or two. The trick in my case is that I need to listen to the song before I actually try to write something.

Anyway, I've discovered that different types of music help for different kind of scenes or chapters; if I'm going to write action, I try to listen to rock or metal beforehand; if I want to write romance or drama, I try to listen to instrumental or classical music, and for horror I try to listen to scary movie soundtracks.

But if I ever had to chose one soundtrack to listen to that for me personally helps me get in the mood to write anything I want, then that would be the Conan soundtrack. Why? Well, let's just say that it's arguably the best motion picture soundtrack ever made, and I could listen to it forever.

If you've never listened to this masterpiece, I'll share it below, perhaps after that you'll be able to see why I say it's great to get in the mood to write about anything.

Raditz fanart in color now!

I finally got that old Raditz fanart I got from an anon artist colorized. When I first received it, the drawing was only pencils so I ended up inking it and added the destroyed city behind. I asked around and just recently managed to find someone willing to color it.

I really liked the result, and you can see it below: