Alright, so, I just wanted to share a couple of things with you story telling hopefuls out there. Haha, just kidding. I'm sure most of you are not guilty of the mistakes I'm going to be talking about today, or rather won't be needing the corrections for mistakes, but I nevertheless want to get them off my chest because it's bothering me

First off all, let me start off by giving you the reason why I'm writing this. I told you all a few journal entries ago that I was drawing a song comic, which was true, but now I've stopped and the reason it quite simply that I was enjoying it. What, kaazi? That doesn't make sense! Well wait a second and I'll explain it to you. You see, I was enjoying drawing the comic, but I was getting bored of the song. Once I'd been working with it for a while I realized that it wasn't funny anymore after the second or third chorus so I let it go. But, I still wanted to do a comic

That said, I didn't really want to have to think of anything. I didn't want to create a whole new story with new characters and I didn't want to go back to working on Chickens because there's still hope that I'll finish the first book of MI before the end of the summer. I don't want anything to distract me by making me plot out and plan a whole other story on top of MI. So, I decided that I was going to find someone else to write the entire story for me and do all of the character designs and everything that requires effort so I could just mindlessly draw a comic

I went to a couple different websites such as Gaia Online and Smackjeeves looking for script writers who needed an artist. I posted here and there in the forums and within the hour I had people sending me their pitches. I spent the majority of the past two days reading over these story ideas, examples, designs, and what have you that people sent me. The only result of which, was me getting very fed up and irritated

First thing I would like to address is the pitch. Many people may debate what kind of format to send your ideas in when sharing them with someone like a potential artist for your works. So, I'm not going to tell you what format to send them in. But, generally speaking, here are a few tips:

1. Do not start off with: "Please let me know if you hate this so I don't sit here waiting for a message that's never going to come," or: "It's crap, I know, but it's the best I can do," or anything along those lines. The idea is to sell yourself. You want your idea to sound good. If the first thing you say is "it sucks, you're not going to like it" then that's all I'm going to be thinking when I read it over. I, or whoever it is that you're trying to get to work with you, wants you to be confident with your work. They want to know that you like what you have. If you don't enjoy it, how are we going to?

2. DO NOT SEND PEOPLE 10 PAGES WORTH OF TEXT. THEY WILL NOT READ IT (probably.) Send them a few sentences to give them an idea of your story. If you want to include characters, give names and some brief information. If you strike their interest, they will ask you to send more. Then you may send them a wall of text (unless they ask for specific info, then only send them what they asked for)

3. Don't over-do the above rule. If you're too brief and generalized when you give that first little blip of your story, the person who reads it will not be interested. The idea is to catch their attention. In addition, if you do spark their interest, reel it in. Don't continue sending them generalized little blips. They've already said they like your idea, time to sell it. I should not have to prompt you 8 times to find out, to any detail, who your main character is

4. Have something actually prepared. Saying "I kind of want to do something sci fi but I don't have anything planned out yet" won't get you anywhere. If your story is rough and unfinished, most of the time the person you're sending it to will be understanding. I had a few people with decent ideas who hadn't written them down and that was fine. But at least know something. If you don't even have a main character, chances are you're not ready for an artist or doing a comic at all

5. The person you're pitching to might ask for examples. HAVE SOME. I do this. If I like a story, I want to read some of it. You might have a perfectly good story and awesome characters, but you can easily mess that up by having no story telling skills at all. I want to know that it's not the case with you. Others will too. Be able to give at least one example. If you don't have it fully written, be able to explain it

6. If you feel like you're ranting, you probably are

7. USE GOOD GRAMMAR! The world won't end if you have a couple typos, but you're sending someone something literary, don't type it like a text message to your 8 year old buddy

Alright, I think that's all I have to say on that subject. The more important thing I wanted to address here is story telling itself. Now... where to begin. There's a lot of ground to cover here. After hearing story after story after story, there's just so much I realized is wrong with a lot of "story tellers" out there. So, since I already did this with the above, I'll make tips out of it:

1. Stories must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you story is just a bunch of random events happening, guess what? It's not a story. Know where you're going with what you write. Sometimes writing does take you to places you weren't expecting to go, but still have that predetermined destination in your head before you start

2. Sex, drugs, and violence are not a basis for a story. If you want to write something, be it a comic script, a movie script, a book, or otherwise, and all you know is that you want there to be drugs, sex, and violence in it: STOP. You've already failed

3. Writing out long exaggerated sentences with ridiculously long and/or complex words (that everyone knows you looked up in a thesaurus because no normal human being has a vocabulary that includes words like "flocinaucinihilipiliphication") DOES NOT MAKE YOU A GOOD WRITER. As poetic or articulate as you think you might be, people should not have to read a paragraph you've written multiple times to get an idea of what you were trying to say. If you actually are writing a poem, then great, nice work, but writing narrative, especially in script form, should be more straight forward. Writing "his head painfully hit the floor as he fell backwards" can be just as effective as writing "his cranium collided overwhelmingly with the balustrade as his feet entangled around one another and he found himself helplessly tumbling downwards, unable to reach the wall that could have rescued him from his unfortunate fall." Which brings me to my next tip

4. Sentences should work together. Using the same example as above, one could write. "He wasn't sure how it happened, but his feet had become entangled. He reached out, but his arm wasn't long enough to catch himself on the wall. There was nothing the poor man could do to keep his balance and, sure enough, his head painfully hit the floor as he fell backwards." Though how you go about it depends entirely on your style, it is a wise choice to break long sentences down into multiple ones. There is no sense in telling an entire story in one sentence, let them build on one another

5. Your brain comes with this amazing feature called "imagination." Try using it. Think for yourself. Work things out in your mind. Even if you story takes place on modern day earth, create yourself a whole new world. (Sorry if any of you now have that song from Aladdin stuck in your head.) You need to be able to do this to create a good story. You just do. It's too easy to tell when a writer is just making stuff up as they go without -thinking through- anything or is just going along with the newest hip trend

6. Conflict is important. Since I think most of you have gone through the English lessons of internal and external conflict and all that fun stuff I'll spare you, but you HAVE to be aware of the conflict in your story and handle it effectively. This kind of goes hand in hand with tip no. 1. Want some help handling conflict effectively? Watch Ni Hao, Kai Lan (my personal favourite), Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, or nearly any other show intended for younger children. And I'm not kidding or being sarcastic. This will help you. These shows teach valuable lessons about conflict, and not just to little kids about dealing with it, but how to proceed when presenting it to an audience

-First, a problem is created

-Then the characters become aware of the problem

-The problem is made completely clear to the audience. (Seriously. They'll turn to the screen and ask the audience if they know what the problem is and then blatantly point it out)

-Based on information previously gathered from earlier in the episode, they decipher a solution

-The solution is made completely clear to the audience. (Usually they're even asked if they agree with the solution. This may seem silly to do in a story like one you'd be working on, but it's no less important to make sure the audience has whatever time and information they need to decide if the solution is going to work or even if they agree with it. The audience has this right.)

-The solution is carried out. If it doesn't work, this usually presents a new problem or repeats the old one and the cycle starts again

This is a perfectly good way to handle every conflict in your story. Do you have to make it as incredibly obvious and straight forward as they do in these shows? Hell no. But they are nevertheless an almost exact guide to conflict in a story varying from physical conflict, emotional conflict, conflict with other characters, and anything else you could think of

7. Touching base with something mentioned in the previous tip, you must be able to interact with your audience. Not directly as I mentioned, but you have to be able to effectively communicate ideas with the person you're telling the story to. Remember that they're a living person who can think for themselves; you must let them do this. However, the skilled writer can manipulate their audience into thinking certain things. If you can do that, excellent, very good form, just remember that your audience -can- think

Once again, kid shows can help you to understand this. In Ni Hao, Kai Lan for example, they frequently point things out like character emotions and expect the audience to be able to tell how a character is feeling based on facial expressions or body language. If one of your characters turned to the audience and asked "How is this character feeling? Are they happy or sad?" Would your audience be able to tell?

8. A story with morals, a theme, and a message is much more effective, memorable, and interesting than a story without them. Do they need to be shoved into the audience's face? No. But it's probably a good idea to have them there. Even if you can't fully explain what they are, just having a feeling you would like to convey to the audience is a good idea. This can be anything from anti-war, to freedom, to pain, to overcoming pain, etc. Just have these feelings and these ideals; it will breath life into what you're creating

9. Humour people! Humour! Throw some spice in your story. I'm all for the dramatic story, you can have your story be as tragic as you like, but do have humour in there somewhere. No one likes to read page after page of bad thing after bad thing, droning on and on about all these terrible events. Even if you only have a single character who occasionally throws out the smartassy remark, you're good to go. But your story must contain comic relief or a light-heartedness of some kind, somewhere, somehow

10. There are more genres out there than goth and yaoi and there are broader age ranges than 16-21

Well, I supposed that all I've got to say... about that... Like I said way back up there at the top, I know most of you here on dA don't even need this, but maybe you got something helpful out of it