まろ’s writing classroom: [Practical Q&A] From conception to writing

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The author of this article まろ is the author of the light novel “Southern Cross”. He hopes to use his own experience to help more friends write good stories. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.

I often hear a saying recently: “Learning emphasizes quality rather than hours, and emphasizes output rather than input.” By holding a fan event for the first time, I directly communicated with fans about my creative experiences, allowing us to understand each other better about creation.

Recently, netizens have been asking me about “how to write good novels”. Therefore, I organized my experience in writing light novels into 34 themes, divided into three stages: [Preparation Assignment], [Plot Process] and [Writing Management].

Whether you want to write a novel, a biography, or a business history, these articles can help. No matter what your writing level is, I will help you complete a work in the two stages of [preparation] and [plot flow]!

The more questions you are aware of, the closer you are to the correct answer.

Hello everyone. This time it is a special episode. I held the first fan party at MYSBOXCoffeeBoard Game Hall on October 27th. Fans raised questions about the drama. In fact, if I answered each of their questions in detail, it would be enough to write a book.

Because it was an interactive Q&A, my reply might not be concise enough, so I wrote this condensed version to respond to you all. If you want to have a more complete understanding of the play, you can refer to the article “まろ’s writing classroom tag”.

Q1. Siying: “Where did the idea for the story come from?”

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(Copyright:KSS Oriental Light and Magic)

Like many creators, I started by imitating the works I liked. At first, I just happened to buy the “ToHeart” animation VCD produced by KSS and watch it. Unexpectedly, my classmates also liked it very much. Then a group of enthusiastic little guys wanted to create a similar game. I was originally responsible for the illustrations, but was forced to take over writing the script. After the script was finished, even my classmates who wrote the program stopped working, so I got angry and posted the entire script on the Internet. Unexpectedly, it caused a response.

The “Southern Cross” published now is actually the fourth generation version, and it is the first of four short stories. Its ancestor “The One and Only” is my tribute work imitating “ToHeart”. You will find that the hair colors of the heroines in these two works are exactly opposite. (laughing)

If you are currently new to playwriting, I have a practical suggestion, which is to “rewrite works you like.” But before you do it, you must first learn to “capture any unnatural aspects of the story.” Don’t accept it all just because it is a masterpiece in your mind.

Previously, I taught my friend how to create stories. Because she liked comics, I asked her to choose the first chapter of a comic she liked and then turn it into a novel. When I was done, I took her through the story for any unnatural places. If you don’t want to pick something, then let it go. There are quite a few to pick from, so much so that she has a little self-doubt.

Then we abide by the original setting of the story and find ways to make the story round again. The finished result looks like a brand new story. I would recommend that all novices try this way to at least ensure the quality of their first work.

After the first series of “The Only One” ended, many readers wrote in and wanted to see the sequel. At that time, I also made the same mistake as many creators/producers/editors. I just wanted to add more characters and settings, thinking that it would enrich the plot.

It was a summer afternoon. A group of friends and I were furiously trying to come up with a lot of elements that we thought were interesting, at least forty or fifty. The heroine Ayuha’s sister Satsuki and the hero Hikaru’s sister Ryuki were both born from that discussion. The second generation “Only This One” was finally created, and my editor friend said, “You just forced a lot of pieces together.”

Fortunately, readers accepted it at that time, and this version entered a competition and won an award. Looking back, it was a disaster. However, this “hard-wired” process really allowed me to understand how to “combine drama elements”.

The plot structure of the first episode of the current fourth generation “The One and Only” “Southern Cross” still follows the outline of the second generation, but it fills in all the gaps. The second and fourth generations of “The One and Only” are the same four short stories, written from the perspectives of the four heroines. The four stories of the second generation total more than 80,000 words, and the first episode of the fourth generation, “Southern Cross”, is 166,000 words long. It can be seen that back then it was just a bunch of stories, with no plot at all.

As for plot presentation, people have different preferences in different periods. When I was writing the fourth generation of “Only This One”, the work that had the deepest impact on me was “Tie Knots, Don’t Untie” (Japanese: むすんでひらいて) by Mr. Mizunase Mizuna. Therefore, the shadow of “ToHeart” can no longer be seen in “The Only One”.

Another important change is to understand that the number of character settings does not make a good work. Therefore, in the fourth generation of “The Only One”, a large number of fragmentary settings were removed, leaving only what is needed for the main axis of the story.

If you hope to become a full-time creator, when it comes to getting inspiration, I would recommend that you “read everything except the really unacceptable themes.” If you can divide the time you spend reading and appreciating works into three equal parts, you can use two equal parts on topics that you are already interested in, and the remaining one part can be used to read topics recommended by friends but not your favorite.

For example, my sister will recommend a suspense movie that I am not interested in, but as long as she says, “This movie is really good,” I will watch it. In this way, I can get a completely different stimulation. So I also told the editor that I was willing to try all except mystery and sensual themes. I think this is very important for commercial creators.

Q2. Minhui: “Want to know how to create a heroine?”

This is such a classic question that even Teacher Elton present added, “Which character do you project the most on?”

I think the character “Yoriji Amakusa” will be a classic in my creative career. It can almost be said that she is a reflection of my inner self, but externally I say that I am an ordinary character “Tetsu Sahara”. Whenever I write about Yizhi’s appearance, her emotions are almost 100% transmitted to me.

In the first generation of “The One and Only”, she was just a follower next to the heroine Ayuya, a complete flowerpot role. But when we were preparing for the second generation of “The One and Only”, we seriously discussed why she wanted to stay with Ayuha and why she didn’t pursue her own happiness. The answer is actually very simple, because her prototype, the second heroine Shiho of “ToHeart”, is like this, I just copied it.

This doubt continued to ferment in the subsequent creative process, and she became more and more like a living person. For a while, I really felt that she often appeared in the corner of my eye, flashing around the corner of the stairwell and corridor. Therefore, in the second generation “The Only One”, she is no longer Ayuya’s follower. Even in the fourth generation, he has become Ayuye’s opponent. In the first half of the story of “Southern Cross”, he beat Ayuye unable to parry.

In February this year, it was noon the day before the International Book Fair. When I came to the exhibition and saw her human form standing up for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel so emotional.

[](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtdVZry8BzTDkY4lBsWcECB2do_rDMGc-NaJS7e8Zp7qYPF-WblOG5PKnZmaF2w2-98c7Zeit83u66axXD0Xn7q n2mWoCsRbNqVW6Y5ykLqyL3QyOL4e56e5lVIGWgnRzSnsvffgc-Ipc/s1600/%25E7%2581%25A B%25E7%258B%2590%25E6%2588%25AA%25E5%259B%25BE_2018-10-28T16-06-06.584Z.png) From a technical point of view, in addition to choosing a cute artist which is a big bonus (laughing), the key to the success of this character is that I used positive and negative discussions to create the entanglement and dilemma of this character, and at the same time, it captured the hearts of all readers.

[](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrLjyPraj433O8HQ9DWp_b3xBUdRF377h5eYkEPzl1ZQB_gMtb36FriajVgKL2fmTxev80jpvihRWY59cm ZAlqipIQydoRLXE-DTFgRq_lELjspIU5Ldxx5kkbIFlHb_TtnD0nBHaZPzo/s1600/%25E4%2 5BE%259D%25E7%25A8%259A%25E7%259A%2584%25E5%2585%25A9%25E9%259B%25A3.jpg)

Although this result was partly due to luck, her life was still carefully planned by me. It was only after deciding the goals and dilemmas that Yizhi pursued that she created her life experience. To put it in detail, this is the process:

2. The follower next to the heroine is named “Berry”, he is ordinary and his family background is unknown. (first generation)

3. For unknown reasons, I like my classmate Tetsuya Sahara but dare not confess. (second generation)

4. The aforementioned unknown reason is that she seems to be burdened with some kind of fate and destined to die a violent death.

5. The person implicated in the aforementioned fate is Hikaru Ryuzenji.

6. She disappeared from the world until Sahara found her at the lighthouse on the southern island and remembered the promise of the Southern Cross.

7. The mission given by her family made Ryuzenji Hikaru feel indebted to her. (third generation)

8. She and Ryuzenji Hikaru represent rival families.

9. Establishing that she is from the Sopranos.

10. Ryuzenji Hikaru changed from being indebted to her to liking her.

11. I met Tetsu Sahara on a small island in the south when I was five years old. His real name is Yizhi. (Fourth generation)

12. Why did she stick to the agreement with Zuo Yuan for 13 years?

13. Because he is from a yakuza family and has no friends, he keeps recalling the promise he made with Sahara.

14. Faced with Ryuzenji Hikaru’s feelings, he admitted that he already has someone he likes.

15. Ryuzenji Hikaru believed that he was better than Sawara, so he brought Yizhi to Maple Town.

16. She therefore adopted the pseudonym “Strawberry” and reunited with Sahara.

The key 11th journey determines her origin and experience in order to reasonably push her into this tangled story.

Therefore, the idea of ​​​​a story definitely does not start from the details of the characters or world view, but from “what story do you want to say?” Therefore, even if Yizhi is not set to be a beautiful girl, it will not diminish the charm of this character. On the contrary, her beautiful girl appearance only intensified her pain.

You have to be very clear about what story you want to tell, because about a third of the way into the story, your character starts to really come to life and fight against you as the author. At that time, you will not be able to control your characters at will and can only coordinate the development of the story with them. This sounds mysterious, but you will understand it after writing for a long time.

There are some emotions of the characters that not even the author, the god in the story, can interfere with. As I mentioned in [Lesson 3: Character Setting (Part 1)], at the end of each paragraph of Southern Cross, there is often the sentence “In the faint scent of lavender, there is the bitter taste of sea water.” This sentence represents that the character Yizhi is stubborn enough to resist the author’s will. In the world of the story, she truly lives.

In addition, when conceiving a story, it is not the first character that is thought of that should be the protagonist. In a long story, the character with the greatest growth span should be the protagonist. The fourth generation of “The Only One” is composed of four stories in parallel worlds. The events that happened on the day of the summer festival determine the future direction.

The reason why Yizhi is the heroine in the first episode “Southern Cross” is because she has a long growth span. However, in the final episode of “Memories of Maple”, Ayuha has a larger growth span, so she serves as the heroine. Of course, this is a special arrangement. Although I often say that “there is no male protagonist in “The One and Only”, Tetsu Sahara is the one with the longest growth span among the protagonists, so he is the male protagonist in name. If Hikaru Ryuzenji had been the male protagonist, because he is so perfect, I don’t know what else to write besides flashes, and “Southern Cross” would probably be over in four chapters.

**Q3. Ying Ying: “How to start the transition between the beginning and the end of the novel and the beginning of each paragraph.” In fact, Yingying’s problem is the same as “how to write a novel as a genre.” (laughing)

She said that she had studied composition, but writing novels seemed different from composition. I first confirmed with her that the so-called beginnings, transitions, and transitions were not really divided into 25% of the page count, and then I explained the three-act play to her.

But this is not because most classical plays adopt the structure of a three-act play, but based on the anthropologist Van Genner’s theory of rites of passage, which are divided into three stages: “isolation”, “transition” and “integration”. In the “isolation” stage, there must be a strong enough reason to drive the character out of the comfort zone. Secondly, in the “transition” stage, the character’s body and mind face drastic changes to adapt to the impact of the events in the story. Finally, the character can “integrate” the previous experience and return to the starting point.

So we know that your story must complete these three stages through characters. You must first grasp the general content of the entire story before you can separate these three stages. To be more complicated, there can be two “transitions” and “integrations”. Commercial films in recent years have this structure.

If you already have the outline of the story, then you can choose the plot of each stage. For example, in the opening scene of Southern Cross, Tetsu Sahara waited for a phone call until he fell asleep. Since he was waiting for a phone call, there must be a “promise to wait for the phone call.” By analogy, you can push the beginning of the story all the way to the moment when Tetsu Sahara was born, but that’s not important at all.

This is where novels differ from biographies and chronicles.

The novel only focuses on the key points, and can use flashbacks and interludes to carry out important reviews. Therefore, you only need to start recording from the moment when the character starts to interpret the main axis of the story, and use narration to focus on what happened before.

Well, if you look at it from a chronological perspective, from the birth of the character to the beginning of “Southern Cross” it probably looks like this:

2. In a certain year, the four main characters were all born, but the miserable Yizhi was abandoned.

3. When they were five years old, Tetsu Sahara and Yizhi met on a small island in the south.

4. When he was eight years old, Tetsu Sahara moved to Maple Town and met Ayuha.

5. At the age of 15, Yizhi was injured in a duel with Ryuzenji Hikaru.

6. On the eve of the summer vacation when he was 18 years old, Tetsu Sahara finally asked Ayuha.

7. At the beginning of the summer vacation, Tetsu Sahara and Ayuha each went back to their hometowns to help.

8. A week before the summer festival, Ayuha went back to Maple Town and met Yichi who had just moved here.

9. On the day of the summer festival, Tetsu Sahara waited for a call until he fell asleep, and later confirmed that Ayuha could not go to the festival.

10. Tetsu Sahara went to the summer festival alone and reunited with Yizhi. It’s not that you can’t write like this, it’s just that the reader will fall asleep before getting to the point. Because our focus is on “the turning point of Tetsu Sahara’s love journey”, I chose to “fast forward” to when he was waiting for the call and fell asleep. If you can write a wonderful story about Tetsu Sahara and Yuya Yuha, you can also choose to start on the eve of summer vacation. But Tetsu Sahara is not good at pursuing girls, so I chose to start by waiting for the call. So the whole process becomes like this:

11. One summer day, the boy waited for a call until he fell asleep.

12. I answered the phone excitedly, but unfortunately it was bad news. I couldn’t go to the festival with my childhood sweetheart Ayuha.

13. The boy began to recall memories related to Ayuha.

14. The narrator states the vast difference between the two.

15. Tetsu Sahara went to the summer festival alone and reunited with Yizhi.

16. Then use interludes in each paragraph to complete the events before the beginning.

Technically speaking, this is a variation of the “inverted pyramid”. I think it looks more like an hourglass with a wider base. The key point is to break the theme and attract readers with medium-intensity foreshadowing, then explain the causes and consequences of the foreshadowing, and then immediately move to a high-intensity event to end.

Some books consider this writing method to be a flashback, but I personally think it is just an application of narrative. Since we are not studying linguistics, the point is just to understand how to use it. If you want to learn more about narration and flashback, you can read [Lesson 6: Narrative Methods and Storyboards (Part 1)].

However, don’t go too fast. Generally speaking, characters should appear from a place that is meaningful to the event. For example, at the beginning of the second chapter of “Southern Cross”, Yizhi put on a coat in her house and went out. I skipped the trivial processes like her getting up and went directly to the “isolation” stage. But it would be a bit strange if Yizhi was jogging on the road at the beginning. Some suspenseful works will use this technique to deliberately create atmosphere, but I generally recommend adhering to the concept of “moving from meaningful place A to place B.”

When it comes to the matter of “conversion”, whether it is the succession and transition of Tang poetry or the Western classical three-act play, its narrative is progressive. For example, it is not like a ladder. The first level is isolation, the second level is transition, and the third level is integration. If we can quantify the emotional intensity between the protagonists, the entire story is actually a continuous curve that keeps swinging up and down.

The cognition of crossing the stage varies from person to person, but I think that once the character realizes that he “can’t go back”, it means that he has crossed this stage. If we insist that the hero and heroine will not take advantage of it casually or be separated casually, then when the character feels that this relationship “cannot come back”, it really cannot come back. But in the real world, it is difficult for us to say that we have experienced the feeling of “can’t go back” many times in our lives, but at most we just have to cancel it and start over.

For example, because I have set that Yizhi will never let go of his feelings for Zuo Yuan no matter what, so whether Yizhi breaks up with him or disappears from the world again, in the end we can be sure that Zuo Yuan’s efforts will be rewarded. However, this reward may not be the result he wants most.

As long as the author does not change the direction of the story indiscriminately, as the emotions between the characters accumulate, there will be a turning point of “no return”, which I think is the dividing point of the story stages.

Then we have to look at the development of the story on a more detailed scale, and that unit is “dialogue”. Although we say that the entire story is composed of three stages: isolation, transition, and integration, in fact, these stages are still many, many conversations.

Before the event, I did not expect to discuss such a detailed project. Dialogue is as basic and important to novels as ingredients are to cooking. Everyone knows that character dialogue cannot be written casually, but specifically, what is the definition of “cannot be written casually”?

If we think of dialogue as a one-on-one game of toss and catch between characters, we need to first define the game. For example, in the toss-and-catch game of “Southern Cross”, the final score is to compare the scores of “Yizhi vs. Sahara” and “Yizhi vs. Aguang”. During the game, there will be situations where someone cannot catch the ball, doesn’t want to catch it, or can’t find the ball for a while, etc. Occasionally, there will be a very beautiful throw and catch, as if he shot a three-pointer as soon as he passed the center line. The score of each round, either positive or negative, is the accumulated emotions of the characters, so the rules must be set up first. For example, if you are playing against Yizuki, you must catch the ball well, wipe it clean and wax it, and then throw it back gently, otherwise points will be deducted. However, if you are playing against Ayuuki, it will become a wild throw contest. You must be careful not to be hit by the ball she throws, and it is best to dodge far away before rolling the ball back on the ground. If you think of “dialogue” as a game process, you may be able to better understand how the dialogue proceeds. Because novels are a condensed version of life, it can almost be said that even the nonsense between characters usually becomes foreshadowing, which is completely different from your daily conversations with others.

Being able to grasp the key point of “almost every dialogue between characters is to deepen the relationship**” should allow you to realize that the emotional intensity of dialogue in novels is much higher than that of our daily dialogues. Perhaps without noticing this, novices often write dialogues that are extremely lengthy and turn into daily notes.

After this event, I think I should add a new lesson [Dialogue] to the [Plot Process] stage, bringing the total number of lessons to 35 lessons… (wry smile)

Finally, I would like to thank Teacher Elton for taking the initiative to write his experience. The content is really touching my heart.

Tonight I heard a creator’s passion, persistence, and even obsession with the play! If you want a story to be great, you have to make the character come alive, rather than setting him up and trying to control him. Let him talk to you, lend your hand, and write down his thoughts, sights, and whereabouts. At the same time, tolerate that he will have some things that he does not want to reveal to others. It will not be easy for readers to notice, and even you yourself will not know.

I hope you are as obsessed with creating stories as I am, and then you really have to write the exercises in Lesson 7. We are going to embark on an adventure with the second-generation owner who wants to save his own ramen shop and his sailor friends for the cold cabbage from the far east!

Next time, [Lesson 7: Prologue (Practice)] Goodbye!

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Further reading

• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 2)
• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 2)
• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 1)

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