Literature - Concept Evolution - 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.

To improve your story, to evolve it past the basics and/or tedium, you need to take the basic ideas you made in the Concept stage and advance them further.

The best way to do this is to focus on each scene individually. Not all of the scenes you create in this stage will stay the same when written, some may never get written at all or might be replaced with new ideas. However by evolving each of your planned scenes, you can get a much better idea of the emotions and direction a particular character/characters are taking. It's important to note that you won't have every scene in your mind right now, nor will you have until you've finished writing. However you will have crucial scenes that play a major part in the direction of the storyline.

I'll give you an example by taking a basic scene setup and then improving on that scene alone. It'll give you an idea on how to do your own scenes, this will be written in Author format, but you can do the same thing in script (In fact I'd advise you to).

Basic Concept
Sonic pushed himself to his maximum speed, trying to outrun the little fox following behind. To his amazement, the little fox had kept up, using his tails as a propeller and flying over gaps that Sonic had to navigate. He just couldnt' shake him. Sonic decided that enough was enough, he skidded to a halt and turned to face the fox following him. The fox stopped and skidded in front of Sonic.
"What's the big idea, following me around?" Sonic asked
"My name is Tails. You're my biggest fan, ever since I was little I wanted to go as fast as you." Tails replied
"That's just swell, but I got things to do. I can't have you slowin' me down." Sonic huffed
"I wouldnt slow you down, I'm as fast as you are." Tails shot back
"Yeah, well sorry kid. I don't carry baggage anywhere. Just stop followin' me around." Sonic told him
"Please, I just want to follow you around for a while. I just want someone to be around." Tails whimpered
"Well..." Sonic stopped, memories of his own lonely childhood flooding back to him as he looked at the whimpering young fox boy in front of him.
"Please..." Tails pleaded
"Aww, alright. you can tag along. Just try to keep out of my way." Sonic told him, giving in. He then turned and sped off, leaving the young fox to try and catch up.

Now the scene I just wrote will likely be familiar in quality and style to the majority of fan-fiction out there. I wrote it as it came to me and left it without a rewrite. Now the scene has alot of emotional potential, alot of tension between the two characters and an emotional reaction from Sonic to Tails' outburst. How many people genuinely read this excerpt and felt emotionally moved by it?
I'm guessing not alot. The reason is because while the scene has an excellent potential, the first draft of writing it will be like this. No writer gets it perfect first time, every major book has been rewritten and altered by the author several times, and scripts sometimes recieve major changes on a daily basis (Tho if this is the case, it will either become bad - Like Super Mario Bros The Movie did - or it will work to the show's advantage - Like Red Dwarf or South Park).

Evolved Concept
Sonic surged the power through his legs, pushing himself to his maximum speed, desperate to outmove the flying mammal currently chasing him. Despite his efforts to escape, every time he turned he could still see the two-tailed fox following him, his tails spinning rapidly as a propeller. Sonic felt the acid working in his legs, burning at his muscles and tiring them out. No matter what Sonic tried, the fox was still right behind him, and Sonic couldn't hold the continuous pace much longer. Coming to a small verge, he stopped running and ground his heels into the ground to come to a stop and waited. He could see the fox coming towards him, slowing down rapidly and narrowly avoided bumping into Sonic. "Would you just quit following me!" Sonic complained at the young fox, the fox was visibly hurt by the reaction
"I just wanted you to see I could keep up with you..." Tails murmured, pulling on his eyes firmly to stop himself from crying.
"Sorry kid, I got things to do." Sonic huffed, turning round to speed off again
"I'm as fast as you are!" Tails shot at him quickly, hoping for a reaction, Sonic paused for a brief moment before deciding to keep moving away, "Please... I've got nowhere else to go. I've never had a family, any friends. Just the hopes of keeping up with you for one day..." Sonic stopped and clenched his eyes tightly as memories of his own lonely childhood flooded back to him, causing his fists to clench and his teeth to grit. All he'd ever wanted was one person to notice him, and now he was about to abandon this boy the same way he'd been abandoned. He sucked his emotions back in and turned back to face Tails.
"Alright, you can tag along." Sonic told him, sighing. He helped the young boy onto his feet and smiled slightly, "Just keep up."
Sonic revved his feet against the ground and exploded into a Sonic Boom to full running speed. Tails smiled widely and charged up his tails, beginning his run and leaping into a full fly. He was going to show Sonic that he could keep up, he wasn't going to disappoint him, even if it took all his strength.

This is the example of the evolved concept, which will have more detail in the Drafting sections of Literature. As you can see the scene is primarily the same, same beginning, same end and same sequence of events taking it from start to finish. However it's the subtlety that makes this rewrite much better.
Both versions are identical in terms of storyline, but it's how the storyline is approached and how it's realised. For example, alot of the writing of Tails pleading to tag along have been removed, but they're not missing from the rewrite. This is because the actual speech has been strengthened by only being the bare bones of what the character is trying to say, and the rest of his meaning is made up by his actions, posing and emotions. Tails doesn't need to verbally beg to tag along because the fact he's there and how he reacts to Sonic's aggression already show that he is begging.
The same goes for alot of Sonic's lines on Tails slowing him down, the fact Sonic is eager to rush off already implies that Sonic feels weighted down by Tails' presence as it is, to repeatedly have Sonic state that Tails will weight him down becomes pointless.

If you focus on strengthening each of your main scenes before writing, you can effectively create a much better scene after several drafts. On top of this, you can consider adding elements into it, for example I could always add in a short paragraph of Sonic remembering what it felt like to BE alone as a child, rather than just mention it as a description. Or this scene might inspire you to write out the journey Tails took to find Sonic (As a guess, you'd likely have had this as an introduction of Tails in your concept, but might decide to describe his journey if you felt it necessary).
The possibilities of adding more emotional weight and strength to this scene are pretty much endless, but alot of it you may not have thought of if you hadn't spent the time thinking the scene through to come up with the most dramatic version you can. And remember that while this may be the most dramatic version of the story you can THINK of, when you put it onto paper you may find inspiration to add to it even more at that stage.