Literature - Concept Formulating - Roareye Black

Welcome to the Literature Tutorials. This tutorial will give you key notes in how to formulate a unique concept for a story.
Please Note that you should never edit Literature works that have been created by other Artists, nor their original characters, only use original characters and/or characters from within commercially released games (As long as you're not writing for profit). This tutorial has been created by Roareye Black and is copyright to him.

Alot of people skip the key startups of Literature writing, which lead to alot of samey and unfocussed literature works running through the community. Alot of key problems with these stories can be rectified straight from the original concept. With a little time and thought, even commercially copyrighted characters such as Sonic can be given a different edge in your story. We all have a different way of seeing characters afterall, one person's hero is another person's villain.

Your first step should be to consider what type of story you want to put across. Do you want a romance, an action, a thriller? The genre shouldn't typecast your creativity, but should hopefully be a reminder of the direction your writing should take. If you're writing a romance and find yourself writing alot of fight scenes and dark murders then you know you've clearly strayed from the original purpose of the story. That's not to say these aspects can't be in a romance story, but while your story can include these aspects, they should never over-ride the key purpose of the story which is to be a romantic story.

With your key genre chosen, you must now select characters, or create some, and choose their purpose within your story. Remember that at this time, you'll only have one basic storyline (i.e. Beat the bad guy - Sonic beating Eggman) which is quite simple and unimaginative. That is fine at this stage, you're still formulating the story.

Now you have your basic story set out, you need to choose your main character. For the sake of this being a Sonic site, I've chosen Sonic to be the main character. You will probably do this in more detail, however I've set out five of his characteristics. NEVER assume "Well it's Sonic, so it's obvious". This isn't just Sonic, this is your interpretation of him. The way you view a character will be a unique one, and as such you'll need to do this.

Now look at his characteristics. Your job here is to list the positive and negative aspects of each of those traits. So for the five ones I have here;
Attitude: While giving him a cocky attitude gives Sonic his edge of cool, it undoubtably makes him a lonely and unappreciated person. How many people would go out of their way to try and get past his cocky attitude to really get to know him personally? Not many, I would imagine. While he'd be respected for being a hero, he'd undoubtably be hailed as an egotistical person and would have very few to no close friends.

Fast: While his speed is his main strength and weapon in his fight against Robotnik, it also makes Sonic a dangerous person to work with. His self-centered and impatient nature make him a danger to any team he might ever become a part of, and his carefree attitude would be an annoyance to many people. He's not someone who works well with others.

Independant: Possibly stemming from his attitude and lack of team playing, Sonic is a very independant person. This in turn goes full circle and feuls his spirit in being as carefree and full of attitude as he is. However it's also possible that his independance was born from necessity, with so few people willing to trust him or care for him as a person, he now chooses to remain alone out of a subconcious dislike for society, despite his continuous work to save them. His heroism therefore could be a way of him gaining the attention he craves and never gets any other way.

You can see where I'm going with this. I've taken only three of the five words I've written for Sonic's personality and already analysed him deeply. While this may not directly influence the main story (Sonic will be beating Robotnik despite these factors), it will help to create and influence sub-stories and the atmosphere in the scenes Sonic will be involved in. Sonic is not invincible, despite his showboating, and you'll often find that having a strong amount of negative aspects to a character will only help create a better story and more loveable character in the end. Afterall, what's a story without obstacles to overcome, even emotional obstacles?
Of course this is how I've analysed Sonic. You might not see him this way, and have a completely different way of analysing his attitude and behaviour. Neither is particularly "correct" as neither of our opinions will be in the Sonic canon storyline. It will, however, influence your view of your own Sonic character, since by putting him in your story you take personal ownership of the character's personality for that artwork.

To avoid influencing you or spoiling the name of a loved character here, I'm going to use one of my own character's traits to show you that you can use the same method in creating in-depth characters from scratch.
Now Reginold Phelps is a hero character of mine from my own story series, however as you can easily see from the image above, he's got bad issues that will influence and make his story much more interesting to read. You'll also notice that I've got a few strong and sensitive issues in there. you shouldn't be afraid to do stories that maybe touch on a sensitive issue, but you should handle such issues delicately. There is a difference between using a sensitive issue as a story driving concept, and abusing it.

Convincing: This is something that is crucial to his character (His character being an undercover cop in a crime syndicate). His believability gives him the edge in gaining confidence in the underground organisation he's working his way into. However why is he so convincing? I created him with the mind that even those who don't commit crime have criminal instincts built into them, and this believability stems from a self-built romance for criminal activity. This sort of mindset can cause friction for his job (To be straight, despite his situation) and to not get confused by the emotional drain that developing a relationship with terrorists can have on him.

Opinionated: Being extremely opinionated (Which also goes into his third point - racism) helps Phelps' faked aggression towards the state seem more real and convincing, as he knows where to put power behind his words and come off totally firm in his arguements. However it also can cause problems if his opinions differ from the terrorist groups', as well as if he finds his opinions being manipulated to agree with the terrorist activity.

Racism: Here we come to delicate subjects, which is specifically why I chose this character and not my more recurring ones. Racism has a huge sensitivity to it, and alot of people (i.e. African Americans) have such a deep history on racism that you must be aware not to abuse it. It's fine to have a racist black person for example (Tho Phelps is white), as long as you don't make it seem that this racism is felt by all of one group (As in all black people suffer from aggression problems, for example). How you should use such delicate subjects is by taking on board both the negative and the positive aspects of that mindset. The positive is that being such a strong racist, Phelps has become an opinionated and therefore convincing person. The negative aspects of the racism he enjoys comes from a deep rooted problem from his past, giving you more character to look into, as well as giving him strain from the terrorist group (Who's work in my story is actually to end racism). It's fine to have the character act and say racist comments, as long as it is clear that the feelings expressed by the character are considered as a negative and aren't actually a reflection of your own personal feelings.

This is my own character, so please don't use him, however it gives you an idea of how to create, or even evolve an existing character. My mindset in storywriting is particularly dark, however, and it's perfectly possible to do the same with much lighter subjects such as the strain of a marriage in a romance story and such.

Okay, so now you've set your characters, worked out all their traits. Now you want to start planning the story out. Cool. But don't nosedive into writing just yet. What you want to do, with your new knowledge of all your main characters, is basically plan out when and where certain events will occur. For example, it's most likely that Sonic defeating Eggman will be right at the end of the story. However how will he defeat Robotnik? Will it be his usualy way, or will the emotion of the story require him to force himself into being a team player in order to defeat his foe?

Also, consider that I've analysed Tails to be a person who's been isolated from society in his chase for Sonic, and with no-one (As Sonic is too independant) to show him morals and attention, he's become a recluse. Put him with the already analysed idea of Sonic and you already have the makings of a few intense scenes. You could use the character's feelings and situation to create a side-plot where Sonic feels he must try and make Tails less reclusive, and as a by-product of that effort Sonic slowly lets more of his attitude and defensive barrier down to become closer to Tails. That in itself could be a very good scene with emotions sparking off from character to character until Sonic realises that he's just as reclusive and alone as Tails is, leading to a renewed friendship.

So now you have a beginning, introducing the different characters with all their well known character traits, a middle where the characters all begin to realise their own lives and the way they react and make others feel, and the end where they all overcome the problems and defeat Robotnik. By now you'll have some specific ideas for some scenes, and you'll have a basic story. However your story if written at this stage and not worked upon, will still be basic.