WIP
What is the status of my current projects: progress made, length of time on the backburner?
Active
Grobug Series – Next actions to publish: make text descriptions and thumbnail sketched for all 32 pages.
I think I am on the 4th draft of the manuscript
Back Burner
MTM – Breastfeeding Book for big brothers and sisters
MTM – Next actions to publish: make text descriptions and thumbnail sketched for all 32 pages
Fantasy Dragon Book – Manuscript may need revision. On hold
Completed Works
What did I accomplish this week as a storyteller?
-No writing this week-
-No drawings this week-
I analyzed the following shows:
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers 30 Analysis – Is This Show Stupid or Brilliant? |SSS 030
Fuuto PI 09 Analysis – Can a Broken Memory Work? |HB 09
Kamen Rider Geats 04 Analysis – When Does Failure Start?
Lessons Learned
What did I learn from the world of story this week?
- Do not tie yourself so tightly to the format of your genre that it becomes stifling. Entertainment is more important than form. At least they need to be balanced. [Fuuto PI 09]
- As long as the message is naturally coming from the setting, characters and plot, even a cheesy message like “you have to give it your all in life” can come off as relevant, cool and a little inspiring. Takahashi used a battle royale, a nihilistic young man and a young woman being abused by her mother to convey that [Geats 04]
- Toshiki Inoue is showing me there is a fine line between writing a subversive story and one that is a fresh and novel approach to the genre or subject matter. [Donbrothers 30]
Fabula Ex Machina
Part brainstorm, part drafting out loud.
The idea: What if there were guardian angels in the form of magical talking bugs sent out from Heaven to help kids?
Explanation: That is the core idea behind the Grobug series. The first Grobug books are inspired by the popular tokusatsu franchise Godzilla. I am a big fan of tokusatsu, or toku, and while I know Gozilla least well of more prolific toku franchises I wanted to make my first book an homage to the King of the Monsters.
How can this idea be a cohesive universe unto itself and how can it fit into a larger fictional universe full of super heroes all given power from Heaven?
To hear my creative process, listen to the audio above!
Results
Honestly, this turned into a huge mess. The bottom line is, I am fully embracing the fact that I want to have a sprawling, multigenerational transmedia epic that can be described as a cross between the Chronicles of Narnia and Marvel Comics. I would like to have children’s picture books, middle-grade books, comic books, (pulp) novels and audio dramas all taking place in a single Universe with one vision and mostly one voice uniting them all.
Mentioned
My daughter, the up and coming author
Star Wars
How WELL MADE the Star Wars Original Trilogy is
How much I LOVE the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Red Panda by Gregg Taylor
Kamen Rider and it’s many iterations
The Grobugs are from the “Holy Heroes” Universe
Godzilla
Ultraman
Kamen Rider
Super Sentai
Hideaki Anno and his Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider
Theme is the most important thing
Capitalism is the tool to get my message to the people
The same story can be a Board Book, a Picture Book, a Chapter Book and a Novel. Why not?
MJ Muñoz 