Gideon Zhi wrote:
I've been working over the LUNAR Walking School script for the last few weeks, and I always seem to hit a frustration roadblock because while the text there doesn't seem good, it seems, well, good enough. You know? Stuff that makes perfect sense, is fairly well-written, but just doesn't flow like it should. It can be a real effort to take that and transform it into something that fits, is well-written, and flows, while retaining as much of the original textual accuracy as possible.
There always seems something so permanent about a written line of text. Is this just me? :/
No, Gid, it's not you. Writing is hard work and writing well is very hard work and quite time consuming.
Even with training and background, I suffer through times when I disconnect from the subject matter, and each phrase and scene turns into
pick-and-shovel work, as Brian Keith once put it, describing another form of creative artistry, acting. (Brian was the dad in an old TV series called
Family Affair. He hated that role, preferring to shoot action movies such as
The Hallelujah Trail and gritty TV shows such as
Hardcastle and McCormick.)
Raw talent and aptitude are a start, but training and lots of practice build a writer's technical knowledge and skills. Here is some of the best advice I can offer a writer. Someone once asked a professor of creative writing at the University of Oklahoma (also a successful writer with 75 published novels, named Jack Bickham) what was the number one rule that facilitated good writing. The Professor said, "I can't name one single rule, but I can offer you three. These are rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite!!"
Heh, Bickham's final sentence says it all, I've learned over the years. Even under the best of circumstance with training, passion, and experience, all writers suffer blocks, except perhaps the late Louis L'Amour, who once said he would peck out a publishable western novel on an antique typewrite sitting in the intersection of Hollywood and Vine in Beverly Hills!
Finally, I would conduct lots of research on
Lunar in general, one of the beloved RPG series with plenty of resources to draw from. Absorb and live the part as Daniel Day-Lewis did in
Gangs of New York,
Last of the Mohicans, and other amazing movies he did.
In RPG storywriting, a line of well-formatted, accurately translated text doesn't need to remain permanent and immutable if it's not working. If it doesn't flow, rip out the whole scene and copy it to notepad. Outline the story elements in that scene, then rewrite it in a way that does flow. Rewrite it 5 or 10 times, then polish it. Then, put it back into the strings, reformat it, rewrite and polish it some more, and play through it a half dozen times. It doesn't need to follow Japanese syntax. You're telling a story that makes sense in English, not tracking the sometimes convoluted logic of an Eastern spellbinder.
Change the order of speakers, if necessary, to built dramatic effect the way the conversation would transpire in Western cultural circles. Then, when it sounds perfect to you, give it to a person who possesses high-level linguistic skills and a poet's soul (such as Red Soul), and let that person point out different viewpoints and technical elements that you may have overlooked, so you can weigh alternative approaches. Finally, let your beta testers ferret out the rest of the cats and dogs. If your style is consistent and it works for you, in the final analysis, be true to yourself.
The one thing you don't want is someone who muddies the water of a complicated plot by jumping on minutia before they've played the whole scene and possibly the entire game and had a chance to analyze how all of the pieces fit together. That sort of input just distracts a writer from staying on task and maintaining a death grip on the big picture. It slows production to a crawl when hobby time is limited and precious. It can kill the fun and enthusiasm of doing this work in a heartbeat, the very reason we do it in the first place. I'm not getting any younger. I don't want to take years and years any longer to finish a single work.
So, build one good scene at a time, then another and another. Link them all together and you have the raw makings of a successful work. Just be sure to rest when you need it, and take meaningful breaks when you get blocks! In other words, you need healthy diversions that clear and refresh your mind. Try to write at least a few hours each day to stay fresh with the action, never skipping more than a day or two at a time. If you don't like what you wrote today, sleep on it and rewrite it tomorrow.
Accept and act upon criticism that is credible and well-meaning. Not everyone will appreciate your writing style, but if someone knows how to write your story better, he or she is free to create his or her own translation. You'll quickly discern the difference between someone whose comments are thinly veiled insults that disrespect your work and others who know how to express differences of opinion and offer suggestions without sounding negative all the time and killing the fun.
Oh, and don't expect to create great work while drinking. My writing turns puerile and impaired under even a slight influence. Save your toddy for relaxation after you've knocked off work for the day. I could say more, but I'll stop here. Good luck!