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Posted By: gottgen Dec 11, 2003 - 12:51 am

I'm an artist with a goal to self-publish sometime next year...hopefully in the next month or two.

Problem is, I have SO MANY little ideas for characters, settings, races, genres...and NOTHING CONCRETE to draw! My mind is a seething mass of little ideas, but they all either seem stupid to me, or unoriginal.

For instance, I have thought about doing a fantasy comic...steam-punk to be specific. I want NO involvement with traditional races, and actually have 20+ races sketched out from my own brain...with the exception of humans of course. Didn't make those up.

My problem there is that I only like a few of the races as original creations. Several of the others are just derivative of earth animals...you know..."frog men", "salamander men", "lizard men", "bear men"...ad nausium. I like their looks, but I can't reconcile them with my need for original content. I have several races from other projects, but they are totally ALIEN and I don't think they would anthropomorphize well enough for a fantasy setting.

I basically have a horrible time making up my mind...and shutting up. Please help with advice on sticking to a plot and making it work? Shutting up now.

Posted By: Briq Dec 13, 2003 - 07:59 am

Heh. Aint that one of the most terrifying situations to find yourself in... too many ideas.

Hm, let's see.
First of, I think you're working from the wrong point of view here... It seems you're making your goal to publish something so soon (!) your main drive to come up with something.
That sure would bring me into a writer's block right away!

Don't you think things would flow much more easily if you work from the idea to actually have fun creating something you like, without setting such a deadline for yourself to begin with?

Next then, stop thinking about what races to use and how to make them original.
Rather start with outlining a story/plot-concept you'd like to work out. This can be just a basic idea or a rough direction to head to.
Then gradually make up characters/races you think will fit in.
Don't worry too much about coming up with something original to begin with.
Just make sure they're aiding your plotline(s) and are really integrated. Along the way you always can juggle and change elements of their nature, looks, history etc. to make them more specific if your not content with something.

This helping?

Posted By: gottgen Dec 13, 2003 - 07:29 pm

Thanks for responding!

Actually, I've been working on this storyline for a long time, as an RPG session. The idea for publishing it in comic form just came up recently when I started reading up on mini comics and POD printing and such. I've pretty much had the problem with story for a few months. LOL

I see what you're saying about story first, races to fit...I just seem to be one of those people who can't TELL a story unless I'm immersed in the world...I have to know my setting.

Any ideas for a compromise with these two approaches?

Posted By: Briq Dec 15, 2003 - 02:08 pm

Well I think it already works like a compromise between the two approaches most of the time.
If you start making up a world, sooner or later you have somekind of outline in mind for a story to go with it, don't you? Your world will ask for a purpose at some point, so to say. And visa versa. At least that is how it works for me.

If you're having trouble coming up with a concrete direction just yet, keep playing with your fragmented details. Toss them around adding bits and pieces to it. And, from aside, keep your mind open for a way to use them. Then your story will build itself (kind of).
If you're stuck in creating the setting/characters, shift your focus on ways to use what you have so far. Etc.
It's all a cyclus not a straight road.

One more note about creating races for your story:
When playing with details to build up your world (or races) just add things as you like things to be, not to come up with some mindblowing original new race right away. Originality is in details and in how you put things to work. It is perfectly fine to have a 'frogman' or even yet another Troll or something, it is how you 'use' them and put them together that will make up orginality. You know, things like their history, nature or relation to their environment. Or even in the individual characters.
Like, maybe your frogman grows out from another lifeform (a larva?) which doesn't have a clue about this next stage. For them being larva is their whole existence. Instead of the frogman, you could have your first character in the story to be such a 'larva'.
And look! Legions of possible plots to work out from here...

I hope you have some sort of idea of what I'm rambeling about here...
Maybe your mind just works completely different from mine. In that case all of this probably sounds completely alien to you.
In which case I probably don't have any more suggestions to offer you.

Speaking of loosing eachother: Something confuses me. You say you're working from the storyline of an RPG session?
Then why have you difficulties drawing concrete stuff? Isn't it all there already? Or maybe you don't want to/aren't allowed to use the setting and storylines...

Anyway, good luck and most of all have fun!

Posted By: gottgen Dec 15, 2003 - 04:19 pm

No, no, it makes perfect sense. It's just hard for my brain to work that way...mostly, I feel I'm just too anal with details. I am my own worst critic, like most artists, and this carries through into my writing.

As far as the RPG plot goes, I meant that this storyline and world I am working on was originally going to be just an RPG campaign. But, for lack of better ideas, and the fact that I really like some of the races and ideas I've come up with so far, I decided to just use the same storyline for my comic...once I get it finalized. I'm hoping my gamers will be able to script some of the plot FOR me, like Martin did with the Wildcards series.

Posted By: Aldan Feb 28, 2004 - 02:16 pm

One thing you may wish to try is to just try to think of some stories which you've read that really "speak to you". Then try to figure out WHY they do. This method may help you to learn what it is that attracts you to writing, and, thus, will help you to see what you can use from those stories to start to build a world - not a story, but a world. Once you have a world-setting, then you'll be able to begin to figure out the character backgrounds for these different char's (where do they come from, why are they where they are now, what are their racial traits and tendencies, what animals could you compare them to - try to avoid using, for example, a black-spotted, light yellow lean feline figure with a high rate of movement be tied to the cheetah, but rather you could have something huge and extremely strong be a pacifist, and thus be more comparable to a mouse, for example. This sort of tool will help you to avoid creating things that fit neatly inside of the proverbial box. Once you've come up with comparable animals, then you could use that to create tensions and even prey/predator relationships you can use, by finding which animals dine on which. In the case of the huge guy, you could have his "cat-like" nemesis be not much larger than, oh, a midget human, thus making it less obvious as to WHY they would have such a relationship.
And on and on...
I LOVE building worlds and societies. It's fun!