Weekly report

One page then another.

What have I done?

This week I have made only a small amount of progress on Brightspirit chapter 4, so I will keep this short. Chapter 4 contains lots of scenes of dancing. This is important to the characters and the plot, but it tricky to draw and has presented me with a lot of apprehension and stress.

It's not really the dancing that is stressful, that's just a fancy pose. I can draw them all day in isolation. The issue is that there is a crowd of fairies watching the dancing, and dancing themselves.

It's this variety of poses and different characters that has been intimidating me and putting me off drawing. Now, this is partly due to needing a little break from drawing, but it's mostly from these two panels where there are lots of extra characters to draw.

As it stands I've spent the last week drawing one panel. Sad I know but sometimes that's how it goes. Just now before typing this up I have finished the panel that was weighing most heavily on me. Now I plan to finish the next. The rest of the chapter should be plain sailing. But I'll save that for next week.

Storytelling secrets.

This week I have a final tip for you regarding the 5th character.

Lending a hand. Occasionally, the setting can take an active part in the story, and this is where the setting is a participating character rather than a passive one. Doing this is tricky, and should be done delicately, because you may end up in Deus Ex Machina territory, which is never a good thing and will switch audiences off from your story. The setting lending a hand in the story can be done in a couple of ways. Either, you have a sentient location that knows what is going on, or you have things in the location that are guided to help out.

An example of the first one is in Moana, where the ocean literally helps her out as she travels with Maui. The water pucks her up, puts her on the boat, protects her and even interacts with her. This takes the setting and makes it a literal character in the story, with goals, humour and presence in the scenes. This is not always easy to do, and you have to be careful not to make this too ham fisted or over powered or else you will be relying on your setting to rescue your heroes every time they get in trouble.

If you are going to have the setting guide the characters or send animals, elements or plants to help you, you need to make sure it is used in the correct circumstances. A great example of this is Harry Potter, where the castle of Hogwarts changes all the time to help the characters out. The staircases, paintings and woods are all example of where the environment responds to the needs of characters and intervenes in a more passive way. However, there is one way the castle actively helps Harry, and that is with the room of requirement, a room which the kids use to train and learn to fight using magic. The room appears when it’s needed, with no explanation or reason other than they needed somewhere to go. If your location is going to help out your characters in this way, it should be in a way with specific limitations and rules.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on Monday for more Silverstar!

Tioraidh an-dràsta!