Writing

Jojo’s Bizarre Aesthetic

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Aesthetic, that artistic and thematic sense of creative work, is vital to things like writing, art, and video games. Sadly we forget this fact as we’re deep into code or plot outlines or arguments about Pantone. To help bring us home to this importance, I’d like to talk about musical jokes and psychic powers.

Specifically, I want to discuss Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure, often referred to as “JJBA.” JJBA is a continuing manga and anime series that helped me understand the importance of aesthetics. If you’re familiar with Jojo, you’re nodding, if not, read on.

Summing up JJBA is difficult, but it starts with fighting vampires, then becomes a generation adventure with psychic powers. Most characters are musical references, the art looks like Tom of Finland saw Cirque Du Solei, and elaborate outfits abound. It is in every way “its own thing.”

To say it has continuity or worldbuilding would be off – the author clearly and joyfully incorporates whatever works. What it has, however, is a theme, a feel – an aesthetic. The series in all its forms is about theme and feeling first.

When I saw a discussion about the aesthetics-first approach of JJBA, it got me thinking of other places aesthetics were important.

Games require aesthetics. Two of the foundational “Forged in the Dark” RPGs, “Blades in the Dark” and “Scum and Villainy,” contain information on “example media” to understand the settings. My friend Ewen, an indie game developer, also focuses heavily on aesthetics and outright gives thematic ideas in some of his works like a D&D parody and High School weirdness. Getting the feel of a game is necessary to play it – and make it.

After looking at the idea that JJBA is “aesthetic first,” after thinking over these games, I realized any creative work needs an aesthetic. Including yours.

After this realization, I asked myself what my aesthetic is for my current fictional work, A School of Many Futures. Set in a world where a fantasy planet evolved into the space age, it’s a place of technology, sorcery, and internet-using gods. Thinking of it aesthetically helped me understand it better and made my writing better. When you know what something should “feel” like, you can create it easier.

For instance, I realized that the setting was one where the normal contained the weird (in a world of magic anti-counterfeiting is challenging), and the strange contained the normal (gods send email). Just this small realization helped the world come to life further in my latest edits.

So I want to challenge you to find the aesthetic of your current works – fiction or not. Here are a few ideas I’ve gotten from various sources:

  • Are there any books, comics, or films that have a similar aesthetic?
  • What music fits your setting? Can you assemble a playlist?
  • Are there any significant artistic rules? In JJBA, most characters dress strangely, and in my setting colorful robes are commonplace.
  • Are there any emotional or intellectual elements that are prominent?
  • List five outstanding aesthetic rules of your current work to see if you can quantify the “feel” of what you’re doing.
  • If your work was adapted into other formats, what would not change, and what would be essential to avoid changing?

So I challenge you to find your aesthetic. Go on, explore it, write it down, share it. It’s a new way to look at your work. It certainly helped me with my own, helping me find a kind of intellectual-emotional guide.

Besides, who knows, finding your aesthetic might inspire you to further greatness. After all, if I told you a major international comic and anime sensation was about musical jokes and buff guys fighting with psychic doubles, would you believe me?

Steven Savage

It’s Pitches All The Way Dow

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Ever seen a good book pitch? Something like “A wizard with a deadly disease tries to reconcile with his past. Before he dies, can he make peace with supernatural entities and his own family?” The idea of a wizard facing mortality is my jam, so I’m for this.

Have you started watching a show based on a great episode pitch, or seen one on a wiki that you used to expose someone else to a show? I love those, there’s an art to something like “The mismatched trio faces a murder mystery on a floating city that might explain the past of two – and the future of another!”

These are great. They’re basically elevator pitches for books and shows, episodes and comics. Sure, some can be BS, but others have that excitement you can feel, where the person making them was into it. Sure they may be into a summary, but they’re into it and you feel it.

As I’ve worked on A School of Many Futures, I thought about so many of these pitches sounded exciting. Many is the time I’d see a pitch and think “is my book going to be that exciting?”

This also got me thinking about Randy Ingermanson’s book on Snowflake plotting a scene. Though it’s best to read the book (it leads by example), he notes the importance of engaging scenes.

I realized an engaging scene should have an engaging pitch.

And wouldn’t an interesting chapter (like an episode) have an engaging pitch?

Then I realized, no, I should look at the chapter, at the scene, and make a pitch for it to help me write it. If I wanted an exciting or interesting chapter or scene, make a summary that sounds interesting to guide you.

This (with my Deplotting work) really helped me with the novel, especially as I’ve been working to get back on track after a complicated summer. Each chapter was more engaging. Each scene was a mini-story packed with things happening – even when characters were arguing (they argue a lot). Thinking in pitches made sure I kept things interesting and kept me exciting.

(If you didn’t read my Deplotting column, basically I realized I write fiction best when I come up with arcs, place events in chapters, and treat chapters more as backlogs. Scenes emerge more easily for me.)

I think this is a great tool for any writer to improve your work or get you out of a funk. Take a look at that scene and make the pitch until it’s exciting – then write to the pitch! Look at that chapter you’re not sure of and ask what summary you’d want a fan to make – then write to that.

Make your novel or short story interesting stuff all the way down.

Of course I’ll let you know what further insights I have, but this was not just useful, it was a lot of fun.

Even when my characters argue, it’s a lot more fun when you have a good pitch about their petty B.S. It becomes interesting and fun B.S.

Steven Savage

Deplotting

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As I charge forward more or less on A School Of Many Futures, I find myself feeling constrained at times. I have these awful moments of feeling trapped in my work, weighed down.

You may recognize a similar experience in writing my first novel, where I talked about how Big Rocks, ideas I was afraid to abandon. This is a similar feeling, but more distributed, not quite as bad as last time. So what happened?

The more I looked it over the more I realized that this time around there were less big constraints, but a kind of feeling of being confined. It wasn’t that I was attached to anything particularly, but more that as I wrote I’d wonder if I should change something, or redo something. Every change made me worry more about six little things, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

So in true Steve Fashion I decided to analyze what was going on and apply (you got it) Agile methods.

I had a pretty good book outline, created iteratively (I applied a mix of my own methods, Agile, and the Snowflake Method that is slowly evolving into my own method). I had my arcs thought out, from big pictures to character trends, and it felt very “alive.” I could have written the thing as I plotted it and had and a decent book.

But as you know, writing always reveals changes and new trends and flaws. Even nonfiction results in discoveries, and fiction writing usually involves all sorts of surprises and inspirations. Writing is engaging and you don’t just find flaws – you find new ideas. Those still produced discomfort as I had to change things – but I wasn’t butting up against Big Rocks, more . . . the whole plot in general.

So Agile to the rescule.

A plot is essentially a backlog – which in most Agile practices is a prioritized list of “stuff to do.” In Agile practices you keep a backlog and take the most important things off the top and do them. At the time, you’re always reshuffling and modifying the backlog as you find things out.

There was my answer. I had “over-structured” the backlog, with scenes and elements locked down and I wasn’t willing to change or reshuffle them. I had them broken down pretty good (thus no Big Rocks), but I wasn’t ready to make changes. I was clinging to a structure, not parts of the structure.

So what I did was Deplot the novel, making the plot outline “lighter” and easier to shuffle and modify. Here’s what I did.

  1. As I had plotted the novel interatively, I had outlines of it at different levels. I took “one step back” from my master outline to an outline of arcs paced to chapters. Imagine a spreadsheet that has chapters listed horizontally, arcs vertically, and rough ideas of what happens for each arc in each chapter.
  2. I treated each chapter as a collection of elements to include, but did not plot individual scenes. I used my old full outline as a guide for ideas, but it was mostly “get from A to B within this chapter.”
  3. As I wrote a chapter, I would make notes on other chapters to look at in a second pass, and as things changed, I’d make notes and modify my various arcs.
  4. I made sure the scenes fulfilled certain purposes and arcs, and reviewed how well they did their job.

This was liberating. Last novel I escaped my “Big Rocks,” being dragged down by giant plot chunks I refused to modify. This novel I was stuck stepping on little plot bits here and wasn’t willing to reorder my big pile of small parts.

So simply, I deplotted my book. I made my goals a bit more abstract. I gave myself room.

This was really liberating. I started writing a lot faster. I had a good note system to review. I rethought major arcs easily. All I had to do was step back a bit more.

The big takeaway here, I think, is that you may indeed need detailed ideas and plans to write. But there’s a level of asking how much you need to plot out the order and sequence and elements. In my case I found that the book was best broken into chapters with arcs, and that would contain elements of other arcs – but as I wrote I’d find the best way and took notes on other insights for later.

So when you plot out your books and lay out your books, ask yourself when you stop defining the level of detail of your work. Leave yourself the room for discovery that you need. It may differ between different books (my nonfiction works far differently) but find what works for you when.

There are other insights to discuss later, but this is one I wanted to address.

P.S. An additional note, I also found certain scenes and elements were very definitely not changing when I stepped back – not so much Big Rocks but things that just felt “right.” When blocked I wrote them out of order to get my mind going – these were things that were “just right” and I probably ought to explore them more.

Steven Savage