This month, Lon and Alicia join JP and Crys for another book club, this time reading How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson. They discuss hot takes, useful advice, and how they will incorporate this book’s lessons into their publishing process.
Show Notes
How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson
How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels by RA Paterson
Story or Die by Lisa Cron
Transcript
Crys: Hello friends. Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. I’m Crys Cain. This is episode 58 and we are back with book club. This month we are discussing How to Write Manga by RA Paterson. And with me I have my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: And our special guests…
Alicia: Alicia McCalla
Lon: Lon Varnadore.
Crys: Excellent. Thank you guys for joining us. So I would like to know what is your quick take on this book.
Lon: I thought it was good. I thought it had a lot of information that was pretty good.
Alicia: Yeah. For me, I felt like it gave me a great layout in terms of like how to create manga characters. I enjoyed it. I seem to like RA Paterson though.
Crys: Yeah, agreed. JP?
JP: I really liked it. I have been in love with Japanese storytelling and Eastern storytelling forever. And he broke down a piece of it so wonderfully so I loved it.
Crys: I was super surprised at how in depth he went into the basics of writing. And I loved that, first of all, because I also think he did it a lot better than a lot of people do it. One of the key pieces that I’m sure we’ll get into later that I really liked is he touched on the use of exaggeration in fiction versus real life which is a topic that I’ve been thinking on a lot but haven’t like cohesively put my thoughts together, and I definitely want to return to that section and pull my thoughts out more. And this conversation may be part of that.
Like we said, the way the book is structured is the first part it’s just how to write a story, I would say. And so I think that regardless of what medium you are writing for, if you’ve never picked up a writing book this is a great book to pick up, regardless of whether you want to write manga or not. And even if you have written before, he has a bit different takes on things like the MICE quotient and some other standard forms of storytelling, possibly because of his influence of Japanese and Asian or Eastern storytelling styles. But I think it’s really useful for people who are already familiar with those patterns.
JP: Yeah I really liked the setup that he had for this because looking back, it was very much an introduction to just straight up storytelling so that you get your feet comfortable. You’re aware of what to expect. And then he starts to introduce those sorts of Eastern ideologies and beliefs like the Ki Sho Ten Ketsu was just like a fantastic piece which is all about introduction, development, twist, and then a resolution in a story. So it uses this sort of four act structure and just like those pieces, and then diving even deeper into the different styles of manga and pulling out those examples. I just loved even the setup of it.
Alicia: Yeah, he did a good set up and I think this was a second edition. Yeah, a revised edition. I thought the way they revised it was very good. I loved all his discussions. Actually, you would think after all these years you could be really bored with reading about like the different acts and the structure and that kind of thing. But surprisingly enough, he did that very well. I like the idea too because he wrote that the light novels book and I thought, oh I’m not going to need to read a bunch of stuff because I read the other one. But this one was sufficiently different and so I enjoy reading his take on different things.
Crys: I almost would recommend that you read this one before you read his How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels if you were going to pick an order in which to read these books.
JP: Fun fact. That’s also how he wrote them.
Crys: Yeah, I assumed so. Because now that I’ve read this one, I’m like, oh the other one just jumped in full force, How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels. And he was definitely building upon the storytelling basics that he set up in this.
Alicia: Crys, I do want to talk about the exaggeration part because I took a lot of notes on that section.
Crys: I do want to come back to that. Let me hit up Lon first as our resident anti plotter just to see what he thinks of the beginning section.
Lon: And the thing is, once again, I don’t plot but I have to say that it’s interesting to see the different way that he set it up with the four-act structure. And I have it written down, I can’t remember the name of it, the four parts, but it’s interesting how he broke it up and how it’s a very different set than the normal plot outline that you usually get. And that was actually something like this could be interesting to work with.
Crys: The fourth section or act structure that Lon’s referring to is the Japanese structure, and he defines it by letters. And they do have a different structure than our rising act, like introduction, rising action, falling action or climax, and then resolution. It’s different than that, but same format if you will, like same split.
JP: Pulling it directly from the book, they have introduction, development, activity, and resolution. And this is your Ki Sho Ten Ketsu and really quick just reference to it. So Ki, the Archer stands and faces the target. Sho, development, the Archer inserts in arrow and draws it back the bow, taking aim. Ten, activity, the arrow is loosed and strikes the target. And then Ketsu, resolution, the Archer lowers the bow and checks his score.
Crys: Yep. And so I would say that the key difference right there between Eastern and Western is that specifically in the resolution, there would have been a triumph over someone or something. And Japanese, or Eastern storytelling in general, doesn’t always have that and most often does not, according to Paterson.
JP: That was like my biggest takeaway from this because I know this from watching so much Japanese storytelling, but it wasn’t until he wrote it up for me that I was like, ah. But he writes here that Japanese worldview is a cooperative one. Culturally, they don’t see the world as an adversarial place like Westerners do, but instead they see the world as a cooperative system where different parts have a role to play and everything interacts.
He then references how we learned structure, at least I learned structure in school, it was very much man versus man, man versus self, man versus nature, man versus society. He then says in Japanese storytelling, instead of versus it’s meets. And that’s the focal difference, and I just was like, ah I love this part, this is what I needed.
Crys: Yeah. And I think that it isn’t the same but it marries very well with those of us who really like the heroine’s journey style stories of cooperative success versus hero style stories of solo success. This style of storytelling can marry very well with that, but it isn’t the same.
Alicia: Yeah. I took a note here on one of the pages it says the American story is a man conquers a mountain and climbs to the top, and then the Japanese story is a man learns how to work with the mountain’s terrain and nature and reaches the top. It was a very different way of looking at story.
Crys: Let’s jump sideways to this exaggeration aspect that we were really interested in. And this is one he put it in his engaging your audience section and he said that there were a few ways to engage your audience attention. The top three were sympathy, which is the one that Americans are taught the most through the Save the Cat principle. But we’re taught to do it very superficially and in a way that doesn’t really work for me. But we’ve had that conversation with our Save the Cat book club.
The second is surprise. The third is exaggerations, and we’re going to focus on that. And then the less used were surprise and change. So what were your thoughts on the exaggeration element, Alicia?
Alicia: So I love the exaggeration part and I was thinking to myself, as many manga and anime shows that I has watched, I was like oh there it is man. I didn’t realize that it was there. And it seemed legitimate. I was fascinated with exaggeration from the idea of being the best or worst at something, and how as an author that just allows you or helps you to set up some very interesting unique characters So I’m looking at my notes here, so I wrote down that manga lead characters are exaggerated, surprising, sympathetic, motivated, heroic, uniquely strong, have a cheat, the right person for the job, is memorable, and they’re the ideal man and woman.
And I liked this because it felt almost like his twister. You take that and you start twisting it around. And sometimes I can go too far with things, in that I have a certain character and I’m like way off in left field. What I liked about this is okay you just pick one thing to exaggerate and then the next thing can be connected and it can be surprising. So for me it could be they’re the best at killing but like surprising they’re like a shaman or something or a pacifist. It was like what. But I feel like that is all the kinds of things that we’ve seen in manga, that they have those kind of twisty opposing concepts. Maybe it’s just me though.
Crys: Yeah. I struggled with exaggeration in the past because I think when you’re a new writer sometimes you go too far with exaggeration and everything is exaggerated. You don’t choose. Because one of the things he says is exaggeration equals attention. Exaggeration should be put on those things that you want to draw attention to. And so I have sometimes gone too far in the opposite direction and everything just becomes blah and bland. But whenever I see something about exaggeration I think of the small stories that I really enjoy, the quiet stories that I really enjoy. And my first thought was like not all stories have exaggeration, but I think all the good stories do have exaggeration.
This story may not be widely known but there’s a movie that I adore, it’s like a B British movie and it’s called Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. And I’m going to spoil it to for anyone who hasn’t watched it but I highly recommend it If you do like quieter stories. It is this older woman, she moves to kind of an adult living situation in London to be closer to her grandson. And she keeps telling everyone about her grandson. She’s so proud of him. He’s going to come visit her, and he never comes to visit her. He makes excuse after excuse and she’s getting really embarrassed because the other residents had started teasing her about her grandson and that she’s made him all up in a very mildly British teasing way. Like it’s not huge. It’s not big. There’s no exaggeration so far.
And then she one day, in this cute little scene, she’s coming back from the library and it starts to storm and they make it extremely dramatic because she’s an old lady who she’s shuffling and her little feet like start to hurry up as it starts to storm and then she falls. And they make this very delightfully small dramatic exaggeration because of how dangerous it is for her to be somewhere that is slippery and wet in a situation that would not at all be dangerous for a younger person.
She happens to fall in front of this young man’s house. He takes care of her but she accidentally leaves her book. When he returns it to her, everyone thinks he’s the grandson and the exaggeration in her story is that she pretends that he is. And she gets him to buy into the lie and so they exaggerate the situation of making him pretend to be her grandson. And it is the cutest platonic romance I’ve ever seen in my life about the relationship that builds up between this old woman and this young man who basically becomes her grandson. And the exaggeration is that lie. Like when she gets the chance to tell the truth or just feed everybody’s expectations, she exaggerates their relationship. Yes, he’s my grandson. Oh, he’s finally visited. And so even like the small quiet stories have that exaggeration.
Alicia: Yeah. Something that makes it intriguing. I think something that evokes that the feeling like hmm, and I guess you can do it in a quiet way or you can do it in a thrilling action-packed way. But I like the idea of just having them because then you can look at your characters and just come up with a little bit of one line about how is this character exaggerated. And I guess if you do it the right way they do become memorable.
Crys: Yeah. I think another way I’d phrase it is, what are they more or less than the normal of humanity?
Alicia: Yeah. But he had a really good discussion there too about boring characters. And I think a lot of times we go, why does somebody read that or why is everybody in love with this book? It’s terrible prose. It’s written so poorly. Excellent storytelling, it has this incredible characters doing these things. And yeah, we don’t want to like look at the bad grammar or whatever it is, but you keep reading because of these incredible characters. And so I think that’s the hunt for most authors. How do you create engaging intriguing characters that people just get involved and interested in?
Crys: Yeah. Here’s the list of his short things that he says should be exaggerated. Locations should be the most interesting places you can think of. Characters should have larger than life traits that make them compelling. Situations should be ones that don’t happen every day. Emotions should be pushed to the limit. Actions should be the most interesting ones that characters can take. Reactions should be the most interesting and unexpected. Dialogue should be what people wish they could talk if only they were wittier. Details should vividly describe the Story world. Ideas should be taken to their extremes to find their limits and potentials. Themes should be written in the sky in big letters.
And I think that can be done in “normal” ways. I think of the importance of being earnest. It takes place in the countryside, but that’s interesting because you have a bunch of city people in the countryside, not in their normal place of being, which is the city. And the reason why they’re there is one of them has a fake relative that he visits to escape unwanted engagements.
I keep thinking through what is the moderation on this? Because my tendency is to go either all one way or all another. All exaggerated or nothing exaggerated. And thinking about what do those exaggerations actually look like in stories that I think don’t have exaggeration. The stories that I like, the stories that I enjoy.
JP: I think too, like one of the genres that he talks about that occurs more often in Eastern storytelling, a slice of life, which doesn’t necessarily happen as much in Western because we don’t care for the average mundane things happening. But even then, as he writes it, we’re looking at the mundane aspects of life but we look at them through new and interesting ways. Usually by having interesting characters in ordinary situations or putting ordinary characters in extraordinary situations. So it’s finding that balance on what to exaggerate and to turn it on its head just a little bit. We’ll make the camera angle tilt just a little so that things seem just a little off to unbalance the audience.
Alicia: I don’t know, maybe that’s the yin and yang part. Right?
Crys: Definitely. Definitely part of that culture, for sure. One of the comments he says, if everything is exaggerated then nothing is because that’s the standard. And I think that’s really important.
JP: There was another interesting note I saw about villains that I wanted to get all of your takes on. And that was that in manga, the villain doesn’t really show up until the end, until we’ve reached a point where the manga itself is completing. And that’s because manga is meant to be this long form in which we are not dealing with the big, main character. Because doing that indicates that we’re coming to an end of the story. I’m curious what you guys’ take was on that and if that’s something that you’re going to be applying to your fiction or not.
Crys: I am not super familiar with manga. And one of my questions, is the main villain threaded in early? So like that their footprints are in the sand early on with minor villains and such? Because that makes total sense to me. If he just appears in the end, and it’s not been hinted at any point beforehand, then that feels really awkward to me. But I don’t have that familiarity to know.
JP: I will defer to Lon, but I’m just going to jump in and say that the ones that I know, sometimes no.
So when I think of things like bleach, which is an anime, we have an idea as to what the main character is after it’s towards a group of people, but there may not be that head that’s always shown or may not be shown until like way later, the shadowy unseen figure. And there are a couple I’m just trying to think of, but blanking on, but more or less I don’t see that happening that often. But Lon…
Lon: It depends. Sometimes you have the minions that are the bad guys for a time. That they seem to be certain power and then they get taken out and, oh, someone else who’s bigger. They get taken out and up and up and up. But there are sometimes when you have something where, they’re going down this path and then suddenly at the very end, oh, it was the best friend all along. But for my own, I would definitely do more some hints somewhere. Because there’s one point I have wanted to make, which is, this is also about manga, which is essentially a comic book.
A lot of what this guy’s talking about to a large extent is, it’s more visual storytelling. Which granted as writers, we can still pull quite a bit from. But the idea of having some type of footprints in the sand type of thing is, as Crys said, for a villain is probably the easiest thing to do.
Alicia: Well, I kept looking at the villain part, and I went back and found this where he was talking about the types of main opponents. And he literally says vague organizations, endless enemies, story arc villains, and situational opponents. And I feel like that has a lot to do, and not just as a comic book, but is they’re also serialized stories.
And I hate to say it, but they’d probably get all the way up and go, okay, now it’s time to end this series. How are we going to do that? Oh, that is that person. That’s what it seems like to me. So I feel like there’s a part of the setting up where you’re purposely keeping it vague and open to whatever the writer might feel.
And then when it’s time to close, because I feel like now Ruto went on forever. So I mean, there’s an endless amount of possibilities.
Crys: I feel like for Western storytelling, there ought to be some sort of reflection between how the story starts and how the story ends and who the villain is. Like the villain doesn’t necessarily have to be introduced in the first, but they need not appear out of nowhere. And there has to be some link between the very beginning of the story, whatever kind of the emotional hole, but that the main character is facing. Even if they don’t know that’s what they’re facing that is healed in any kind of final conflict. Whether it is the more cohesive kind of Japanese storytelling of meeting versus like against, and like coming to final terms or conquering over an enemy. For the reader’s emotional satisfaction, there ought to be a link between them.
And then I glazed over a lot of the publishing aspects. Like just skimmed, not glazed over, but skimmed, because I’m not necessarily interested in publishing manga, but I was curious just to know like how that’s different.
I have been talking a lot lately about the free to paid pipeline. That’s what I’ve been calling it. And because it works in so many realms. Fiction indie authors do not often take advantage of and manga or web comics is one of them. When he mentions that exactly, starting a free web comic, and then moving to either trying to get traditionally published or making money through Kickstarters and merchandising afterward, which is a path I’m super interested in and really working toward.
Alicia: I would agree. Yeah. I skipped over some of that part too. And I was actually more intrigued with all the stuff that he had on a different plot. So I was like, oh, I love cheat sheets. I was like, oh, look at that. Look at this. Oh yeah. I can put that in there. Yeah.
Crys: So yeah, with the KSTK and the three cycles, I had this question because this was one of the things he skipped until the very end of his plot pattern section. I was like, are these for full stories or are these for episodes? And they definitely seemed more episode oriented. Though, like three-story method, they can be extrapolated to the larger scale of here’s a season or an arc. And then here’s the full arc. That it’s very fractal. You can take it down to the scene level. You can bring it up to the meta full story level. And I feel like he skipped that description at the beginning of going into the different types of plot structures that are often used in manga. But he did talk about that the very end. So something that would have been easily missed if you weren’t like me going, oh, what about this?
JP: Yeah. I definitely picked up on that too. Yeah. I think they work really well as both. And they were such fantastic little cheat sheets and when I was reading through them, like I remember seeing these play out in so many Japanese storytelling, from that my micro to macro chasm different versions of the genre, and even like your crazy battle ones have a few romance side plots. And I think that this all just married well together.
Alicia: I was trying to figure out how did he break this down?
Crys: The way that it read, I bet that these are spot structures that are talked about in Japanese literary circles. The way that we talk about the three-story method and all the other ways, the snowflake method, like all of these Western English language style structures we have, these seemed like structures that are well-established in Japanese literature.
JP: Yeah. I took a sneak at his bio. Not only is he a teacher, but he loves Asian culture and even wrote in the genre being one of the first English language, it’s a Chinese version of fantasy novels. So a guy clearly has a passion for this. So I think it was pretty easy for him to break it down.
Alicia: I think in general, I did like this one. But I know that I’m not ready to write anything manga right now. But I think as far as serialized fiction for me, I learned a lot from this. Just like I did from the Writing Web Novel. So I got some good kernels of information out of this one, so I really enjoyed it.
Crys: I almost feel like you need to read both books if you’re going to read one. If the manga art and publishing aspect is not a realm where you’re at right now, then read up to that point in this book and then move over How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels. Specifically, if you’re interested in serialized storytelling because I feel like How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels built so much on the knowledge of this one. And I got so much out of Light Novels and Webnovels without having read this. But I feel like I need to go reread Light Novels and Webnovels now that I have read this one.
Lon: I feel the same because I did read How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels and got a lot out of it. And then seeing this one and seeing some of the stuff talked about and mentioned and parsed out in a different way. So I need to go back and read that other book now again.
JP: Yeah. Same as everyone. And especially working on Kindle Vella stuff and just trying to play out what that serialized fiction looks like, I found this super valuable because in my mind, I want to create something that is very close to this Japanese style storytelling and/or like more of that heroine’s journey. And I felt like these two just were the pieces that I was missing. So this was fantastic.
Crys: Yeah. I feel like the meets and learns to live with struggle versus the conquer struggle is so much more useful for serialized fiction than our Western like we’ve got to beat this. They do both. He does discuss the issue with, as your character grows, they at some point will reach the level where they are overpowered. Like they are stronger than anyone else. Really there’s not much more you can throw at them. And the story will get boring after that point. So both Western and Eastern have that issue. And often that’s where your story ends. He also did discuss ways that authors of different works, Superman included, have taken an overpowered character and continue to deliver conflicts and learning points that still kept them interesting.
Alicia: Yeah, I think all of that’s really super important. Maybe even if you don’t want necessarily the base of your serial to be an Asian spine, it’s okay though, because I think just getting the idea of how you create that open story is super important.
And oftentimes, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m in several Kindle Vella groups. And so I just see people out there like, I just took my novel and chopped it up. And I’m like, no, no. So I feel like these two books are so helpful in understanding the nature of what serialized fiction could or should be and how it can continuously become engaging no matter what you want the spine of it to be. Because I think there’s some tenants of it that are very useful in that way.
Crys: Yeah. And one of the things I really like about discussing other forms of storytelling that aren’t strict Western is just how much space we can have to explore. And there is always the discussion of, is it financially viable to explore different kinds of storytelling depending on the platforms you’re selling on. And I think that for those of us who are really leaning more towards that dedicated reader, who is dedicated to our specific style, our specific kind of experimentation, especially when we’re focused on direct sales and having freedom from other platforms, that we are building or attempting to build a financial structure that allows us to focus on story and not necessarily on what is the maximum salability.
Now, if we were leaning more towards the Eastern markets, then you know, we’d lean more towards these stories hard core. But I think that those of us in this discussion aren’t necessarily leaning towards any particular area of storytelling but developing our own particular style and drawing the people who want that style.
JP: I think there’s a level in this one and then A Heroine’s Journey of compromise as the result, as opposed to when you hit such a heavy this versus this, it’s clear that there’s either going to be a winner or loser or some strange tie, and there’s just going to be this constant tension. And I think allowing space for that gray ambiguity, where people have to come to a compromise, they have to deal with the current situation. And then over time you didn’t kill this character off so you can bring them back. There can be a new reason for them to exist for them to face off against this other character and come to a new compromise.
And I think that’s the storytelling I want to dig my fingers into. And it sits really well with serialized fiction, which really exploded in the Eastern market. And now it’s coming more over into Western and it’s having to basically fit into this mold of Western storytelling that may not necessarily work.
So I think mixing in between the two, kind of finding that gray space in between the two, helps just bring that idea, bring that concept more present in the space.
Crys: And the way you started describing that, I was like, yeah, that’s how we want to run our businesses. But you like took them the storytelling lane, but that’s also very true for the kind of businesses that we’ve been talking about building is not the conquering type of businesses that are like, we’re going to grab the most sales possible from everyone. No, we’re going to work with the mountain and find the paths and ways that actually work for us and compromise like giving up those massive sales for a gentler and more cohesive way of living and writing.
Alicia: But also there’s this other side of me that is like, no, we have to take over the world. I’m going to be the best writer.
But yeah, I definitely think just picking those pieces and finding those parts that resonate with you are super important and it gives you so much opportunity creatively to know that there’s a structure that you’re using that, it may not be Western, but it’s still a storytelling mode that works. And has worked for a very long time. I enjoy the idea of the freedom of being able to have these different options to tell the story.
Crys: Going back to the business side again, because something you said sparked this, another thing that stories teach us, that’s what’s stories are about, they teach us how we want to interact with the world, how we can interact with the world, and in imaginary ways that we wish could be true. And then we take those pieces subconsciously often and apply them to our lives. So taking what we’re learning about storytelling and that success doesn’t have to be aggressive. That we can often take over the world or succeed and crest that mountain through a less aggressive, less destructive approach.
Alicia: But it could be a cooperative group that we all have and you too can be a billionaire.
Crys: Come join me write words, and then I’ll get 10% of your words and then you get somebody else and you’ll get 10% of their words. This is how you get 10,000 words a day. You just need 500 writers under you. I’m doing the Write Away writers’ group, MLM edition. Things we will not be doing.
Alicia: But this was cool. I would love to personally, at some point in my life if I could do a comic series, I would love to do something comic. But like I keep repeating, this is just good just for writing purposes, just to give you some options and some choices.
Crys: Yeah. Highly recommend this book. We have soundless nods.
Lon: Fully agree with that. Yeah. This book is definitely something that a lot of people should probably pick up just if they want to be a writer.
JP: I’m just really happy that we got a book that we all really liked.
Crys: I’m normally Grump Meister in the corner. Lon’s normally like grumpy when we’re all happy.
Alicia: I wouldn’t say a fun read, but definitely the concept of it, it doesn’t speak as like your normal Save the Cat or something like that. Something that you’ve heard of a lot of times.
Crys: Yeah. He doesn’t spend too long going over the same ground that we’ve heard a million times.
Alrighty. Thank you guys so much for joining us this month. Dear friends who are listening, if you would like to join us for our next recording, we will be reading Story or Die by Lisa Cron. And you can check out more information about that on our Patreon. The link will be in the show notes. And before we go, Alicia, I would like you to share where our listeners can find you.
Alicia: You can find me at www.aliciamccalla.com to find some kick ass black women’s super heroes.
Lon: Unfortunately, my website is not working properly at the moment. So I’m sending people to my Instagram, which is @dragolite36.
Crys: And we will also have links to those in the show notes.
Leave a Reply