Jul 04, 2022
To:swagmc
Oh okay, then this is really unfortunate 😅
But the contest will surely return next year. You can simply try it then! 😊
The reality is often disappointing in that point: almost all story based mediums have a kind of novel at the beginning. For movies and video games it’s the screenplay and storyboard, for Manga or Comic a Story Outline and Storyboard. So they can already figure that out and move things around before drawing what they keep and what not. But there surely are people who don’t outline beforehand but find their way directly 😅
Hmm … Yeah, you won’t get completely rid of the problem if you want to keep the general entry structure. I could imagine a prolog-like chapter beforehand, that shows how everyone gets the invitations to the first club meeting might work. If you execute this with immense care for the characterization, you might be able to dampen the effect strongly enough. Show the characters in an environment that is unique and already characterizes them. Glenn for example could be working out.
In the first moment refer to them without using their name (maybe in dialogue if you want), but instead concentrate on painting their characteristic traits. Shove them into clishés that are already well known and don’t be afraid to make them appear like wandering tropes. Humans love reference points. For example make Sosui Battle against ten other people at chess simultaneously. He is the smart guy and so the reader should know. And you can also drop visual clues invetween. What about hair color or eye color? Or the wristband of Va is also a good identification point as well. Do not flood the reader with too much information though. Be selective about very few unique traits and appearances.
When you painted a clear picture of their character, start using their name and use it connected with the beforementioned trait or visual clue. Once this connection is done, it gets easier.
And especially in the start of the novel still use the name and characteristic traits together. Then this connection gets molded into the readers brain and they make the connections: Sosui -> smart guy, Glenn -> Jock and so on. When this is done you can start transitioning to use just their name. But it does not hurt to drop anything during the story from here and there to remind the readers who have left the story for a few weeks and return after forgetting half of it.
All the detailed characterization after that just lifts the characters out of their cliché and really shapes their personalities.
Yes, this won’t be easy, especially in a reasonably long chapter and for so many characters. But it certainly is possible.
I don’t know if it helps but in the next chapter of my novel that will be released tomorrow I introduce three characters all at once. It surely is another ballpark, but I use this techniques there. So maybe you can take it as an inspiration 😅
Don’t say that! You don’t need to know what other people like and dislike, but it is more important to verbalize what you like and not like. And you surely had a point there I had more or less overlooked. So I went over the chapter and improved it in that regard, while still maintaining the overall structure. That is how you improve texts: Reading, noticing an aspect and reworking it. It is just another view on the things and it will never change the whole structure unless it is a bigger, structural problem and has to be reworked 😁
