Observations to include in Writing

I can't remember where I read it, but a sound advice given for writing characters is to pay attention to real people. It's not only good for personal growth, but also for writing compelling stories and realistic dialogue. Here are a few things I have noticed that I think are good to incorporate into writing.

1. People often do not know when they have offended
2. A common flaw is actually a person's strength applied in the wrong situation
3. People can have more than one emotion at a time and they may not know how to cope
4. People carry emotions from other things longer than we give them credit for. This is why we think they are overreacting and maybe even bi-polar
5. We often don't fully develop or understand or philosophy until we see a challenge
6. Some focus more on logic while others focus more on the emotion
7. It’s normal to fall in love based off physical attraction
8. Some people are more interested in loving than being loved. And others are more focused on being loved than giving love.
1. Quick Theory: Those who have been in many relationships might be more interested in being loved because they have been broken multiple times. Those who have not been in a relationship on the other hand may be more inclined towards loving

What observations have you noticed that should be on this list? Share in the comments and if I notice something, I'll update the list.

J. D. Nyle

My approach toward writing

I like telling stories. My guess is you like telling stories too or at least like consuming them. Will any of our stories be perfect? That's a relative question in which the answer is always no or potentially yes. If you mean everyone loves it and it's a textbook example of what to do, no. If it's something that can be enjoyed, then that's very much possible. For this essay, I'm going to focus on the latter and how I think is a good way to go about writing.

Step 1: What do you want to tell?
If we don't have a story to tell, then we will undoubtedly encounter writer's block. At the same time, it will be hard to convince people to consume our story of we cannot give a reason for telling it.

Step 2: flexibly plot
Some people write going with the flow and others plot everything. I think the best approach is down the middle. Related to step one, we need to have a reason to tell your story and having a plot helps us identify it. If we just go with the flow of sounds good at the moment, we may end up like The Last Jedi where it's emotionally good and had some great scenes, but also is very incoherent and messes up the Star Wars universe.

However, if we plot everything, then we can fall into the trap where we write around the plot and not what should happen naturally. The Last Jedi also failed here with some scenes, but perhaps not as bad as the Star Wars prequel trilogy. For example, we knew Anakin had to convert to the dark side, but it was not convincing why he did what he did. Why kill children without hesitation instead of having the join him? At the same time, perhaps what critics really attack is the dialogue does not feel real.

Step 3: feel the right emotion
A good storyteller makes the story feel alive. A good writer best enables the storyteller in the mind of the reader.

We need to remember that for characters to feel alive, we need to focus on the emotions and the moment. This is perhaps the core of “show more, tell less.” If people simply wanted to know what happened, they would be satisfied with SparkNotes or Wikipedia. People want stories for the emotions. Therefore it's important that the reader feels part of the story. In some cases, it's fine to summarize a series of events, but in general, engagement is key.

An important way to engage the reader is through our word choice. Words have emotional pull and that is what poetry hinges on. Certain words can trigger certain emotions. At the same time, words can also reflect our current emotions. If you are bored while writing, you might write boringly and then the reader will likely be bored when reading. However, if you are excited while writing an action scene, the reader will likely feel the same.

Step 4: repeat steps 2 and 3 until completion
We are likely to encounter situations where we cannot naturally progress to our plot points. In these cases, we may want to try a few tactics. Rearrange the plot points; remove some scenes; tell the story from a different perspective. Just make sure we continue this all the way through the ending because that’s the sentiment that the audience leaves with.

Also feel free to work on a different story. The creative process we work there can help us progress in our current story. Sometimes we just need to change our focus to find inspiration.

Step 5: read the story on a different device
A read on a Kindle can help us catch many typos or other weird things. I bought my Kindle used for $20 and it had worked out nicely. We can email docs and PDFs directly to the Kindle device, and if we use Kindle Direct Publishing, we can even send a Kindle formatted version.

Step 6: find proofreaders
These people can help us catch more typos and mistakes. At the same time, they can provide feedback about how it reads. An issue with editing is we sometimes remove critical information. This is a chance to catch those absences. Also pay attention if they received the correct impression we were aiming for. If you provided important information inside a large paragraph, it was probably missed.

I have found some beta readers using the #betareaders and #writingcommunity on Twitter.  Friends and family members can also give good feedback.

If we have a publisher willing to pay for a professional editor, that would be good to utilize as well. If we are self-publishing, then I have yet to justify the price I paid createspace for their services. It was helpful, but not more than my friends and father.

Step 7: edit and repeat until ready to stop.
At some point, we need to stop for our own sanity. Our creative will always think of ways to “improve” but at some point, we'll start making things worse and hate our creation. I think it's fair to accept a good state and save the new ideas for adaptations or new stories.

Step Anytime: ask others how to grow your audience
Considering my Twitter follower count only just reached 100, I am not the person to ask for growing audience.

Happy writing,
J. D. Nyle

Examining Deaths in Star Wars

I've seen some posts talking about writing death scenes. Some tips sound good like, go ahead if it advances the plot or motivates others. These are good things to keep in mind, but I think perhaps most important is this: the death needs to have the emotional weight corresponding to the audience's investment in the character. To explore this idea, let's look at some deaths in Star Wars. Good and Bad ones. (Obviously spoiler alert for various Star Wars movies) Let's start with a good example. What was our investment in Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars movie? When he dies, Luke shouts out "No!" which was an appropriate response for him. However, the audience's reaction was not like Luke's in this scene. Instead, we are more like Darth Vader because our investment in Obi-Wan was in his mystery. His death scene corresponds perfectly to this investment as not only are his final words mysterious, but then he disappears! Darth Vader is confused like we are. This is further reinforced when we hear Obi-Wan speak to Luke in the final scenes. To be fair, if we watched the prequel trilogy first, we might have different emotions, but for storytelling, the way it was done in the original movie was good. Now let's compare with a bad example. Han Solo in The Force Awakens. What is our investment of the character? Not that of a father, and the movie does nothing to seriously reconcile that issue as it tries to make him a mentor instead. However, we were already heavily invested in him as a war hero and a friend. It would be more fitting for him to go down either in a ship in action, or as someone saving someone we know he is close to. Since there was no investment in the relationship with his son, his death did not carry the right weight. Even if it was saving Rey or Finn, that would have worked. But for him to try to emotionally save his son that he spent no time with on screen? No. And it did not help that his death was telegraphed for so long, filling the audience more with dread than with the proper emotion. Finally, let's look at Luke in The Last Jedi. This one the audience probably expected due to The Force Awakens, but it was beautifully done. Sure, we would have liked to see Luke be an epic action star, but what was our real investment in the character both throughout the series and in the movie? He was not a great lightsaber duelist but more like a pacifist. Instead we wanted to see him restore the Jedi order. While we did not see that directly, we see him show off an awesome new force technique and restore hope. Not only that, but his death scene mirrors one of the first scenes we see him in, including the beautiful music. We see him in peace after seeing him suffer for so long. Finally, he vanishes like his mentor (Did you notice the lightsaber strike being roughly the same position as well?). While we would have liked to see more from him alive, his death as a Jedi was perfectly fitting. I hope that helps with better understanding how to write good death scenes. It has at least helped me finally understand why I hated The Force Awakens death scene but loved The Last Jedi's ending. It also has provided me some new things to seriously consider when writing the death scenes for Neostriker. J. D. Nyle

Plan for Neostriker Sabre

Happy New Year!

Over the course of the New Year holidays, I published my short story Intent to Join on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. It's approximately a 30 minute read and only $1. While it's not the first story I wrote for SABRE, it was one that I felt like was in good shape and a good story that would convey my intentions for the series. (Sample with first scene below)


SABRE is indeed set after Neostriker: Shining, but I'm also trying to make it not necessary to read the novel. This is helped by the facts that the main cast is not the same and it's set in the future.

One thing I wanted to do with Shining is to make each episode like an episode of the TV shows I grew up watching. Arguably this was before arcs started to be a main thing. What I liked was this meant each episode pretty much stood on its own with only a quick explanation about maybe an event or character required. This was also important because I would miss a lot of episodes and reruns were not always in order. At the same time, I liked being able to know which episode I liked so that I could re-watch it as much as I liked. As my son has been watching Thomas and Friends, I have greatly grown to appreciate this stand-alone structure more.

In the end, I made partial success in my goal for Shining. Each episode was pretty much unique and could be enjoyed at least partially if not mostly on its own. This is in part because Shining is a complete story and a novel. SABRE, on the other hand, was always intended to be serialized like Sherlock Holmes stories. I did plan a couple of novels to bookend SABRE, but I think I'll toss that out. As a result, SABRE may resemble more like Detective Conan where many episodes and cases are stand-alone, but there are a few arcs scattered around.

Now let me explain the tone idea I have for SABRE. The way I view Shining is that it's like the original Star Wars movie. It's mostly light-hearted and fun, establishes the core of Neostriker, and I think can be enjoyed by a large age range. My youngest reader was in middle school and oldest non-biased reader is late-twenties/early thirties. If it was animated or in comic form, I think even 4 year-olds would have fun, just like they would with the original Digimon series.

In contrast, I intend SABRE to be more like Empire Strikes Back and the 90's Batman the Animated Series and the Spectacular Spider-man TV series. What I hope this means is that it can be enjoyed by younger audiences, but I also don't intend to talk down. Occasionally there may be a dark scene or episode that covers more mature topics, but I plan for the stories to be more of platforms for allowing kids to talk to their parents about them and potentially propose a solution to dealing with an issue. To that end, I think Intent to Join is a fair representation of how I plan to go about.

I hope you take a look at Intent to Join and enjoy it. I'm also trying out a few new things and storytelling tactics so I would love to get some feedback. And if you enjoy that, I hope you would also take a look at Neostriker: Shining.

Dream on!

J. D. Nyle

What is Neostriker

What if combat was based off the combatants' spirits? This is the core of Neostriker.

Neostriker is a series where combatants wear an armor-representation of their spirit. As a result, this creates a dynamic where the fights are generally for art and fun while the story may focus on character growth or be philosophical.

How this dynamic plays out is based off the story. For example, in Neostriker: Shining, it is primarily for fun but ideas and light discussions are naturally woven throughout the story such as why men may refuse fighting women.

If I were to place it in a genre, I guess since I would classify Digimon and superhero comics as fantasy, Neostriker would be fantasy as well. You may not see elves, wizards, orcs, etc., but there are elements of fantasy such as special powers, monsters, and idealogies.

Core to the philosophy of the Neostriker stories is promoting good such as honor, respect, friendship, justice, and love. At the same time, I will try my best to not dehumanize my villains who are also human. Since Neostriker is about inner growth, my evil archetypes can simply be evil spirits which means I have flexibility to focus that the human "oppositions" have more complex motives that can still be clearly wrong, but understandable.

I hope to have your support as I write these stories. I foresee it will be a long journey, but I hope that not only will we have fun and enjoy the results, but also that we will grow to be better human beings. These are the kind of stories I would like my children to enjoy.

Dream on!
J. D. Nyle

eBook version coming soon!

Greetings!

I am pleased to announce that it looks like Neostriker: Shining will be able to get a kindle version after all! While there are some complications, it looks doable and possibly can release within the month. This will be great since it also opens the possibility of reaching markets beyond what I had access to before.

It's a bit confusing for me, but what this means is a few things. First, the earlier draft I had uploaded four years ago needed to be taken down, though the first chapter can still be available. This is to satisfy the exclusivity requirements. Second, the cover I used for the printed copy wasn't compatible for Kindle so there is a difference in covers.

Now for pricing: I currently intend to hold at the target $10 price as promised before. However, to celebrate the launch, I intend to discount it to $7 for a period of time. At the same time, from how I understand the model, I'll also make the eBook version free for those who buy the physical copy for a while. I hope this action also works retroactively and allows those who bought the printed copy within the last year to also redeem a free kindle version.

I hope you all will use this opportunity to read my novel.

Dream On!
J. D. Nyle

What Neostriker is about

What is Neostriker about? It's been awhile since I last posted an update concerning the stories, but I just got inspired for my next story after watching the first episode of 24. I don't know when I will get to write it, but I think it'd be good to address a topic that it may raise.

The theme of this story would be peer pressure. While I will likely write multiple stories on this topic, in this case I want to cover where sexual attraction is a main force. However, this will mean that the main fight will end up being between a boy and a girl, something seemingly in our media culture only allowed if the girl wins. My guess for this restriction is prevent violence against women. This topic is briefly addressed in Shining as the theme for one episode and that is where I think we can see established what Neostriker is about.

In that episode, David said he would not fight a girl but duels Emily anyway. When asked about this, he says that it's okay due to the nature of Neostriker. That nature is that Neostriker is not about violence. The combat is for art and fun and where injury is very uncommon, but the underlying nature of Neostriker is spirit, particularly in the realm of logic and ideals. The focus is not to care about the gender of the combatants, but rather the debates they have or the inner growth of a character. When it comes to the rules of philosophical debates, gender plays no role and that is what David was referring to. I certainly oppose violence against women, but since the underlying focus of Neostriker is on debate and ideals, there is no reason to segregate.

Neostriker was of course originally developed with an action mindset, but like all good things, it grew to have depth as well, similar to the TV shows, movies, and games that inspired it. The action and character design were hooks, but there was real value to glean as well. I hope that Neostriker is seen that way as well, especially in the realm of heroes. It should always promote good values and propose how to properly deal with some situations. I have learned that this is important when there came a trial for me, but I was inspired to make the good choice by David in a similar situation I had in my earlier drafts.

As far as I can recall, Neostriker has almost always had philosophical elements to it. And once I decided that the central force of Neostriker was spirit, it began to take center stage. Shining was the turning point where the action and philosophy were about equal in content though arguably slightly more on the philosophical side. And even though I don't plan to include a story in the game I'm working on, a driving force of it is the philosophical idea that games should be fun and not frustrating, as opposed to many mobile games where they frustrate to the point you might pay. 

I hope this blog post helps explain my ideals behind Neostriker and I certainly hope to have your support in growing it.

Dream on!

J. D. Nyle