Writing 4 Real

I’m reading the Super manga. To be honest, I got turned off by super from the launch of Battle of Gods and haven’t really gotten into the anime since. Nothing major against it, I just wasn’t hooked by the first few episodes. The pacing of the anime was slow at a time where I was low on entertainment time and craving more high-octane storytelling, as well as craving more non-fiction.

Anyway, I’m reading DBS against the background of me thinking about what I should write next. I’m just coming back from a hiatus of a year without writing fiction, and I’m eager to get chipping at my next story, but I seem to be having trouble zoning in on what exactly said story should be about.

Part of me wants to pick up right where I left off, while another part wants to move on to new stories. To leave behind every single world, character, and story I’ve ever told and start fresh with new content, unburdened by legacy and ideas of the past.

Yes… yes, I should do that. I’m thinking as I write this, if you haven’t realized. That’s why this blog exists. As I wrote the last paragraph my doubt washed away. I took a gap year from writing so that I could achieve two things: grow as a person in the real world, and get some distance to reassess and break some of my bad writing habits.

The latter is much harder to do if after a year I went back to pick up the pieces of my previous broken stories. I can — and perhaps should — go read what I had been writing through my whole career, compare it to what I’m reading to see what mistakes I’ve been making.

However, writing in the same canon with the same characters is a recipe for falling back into old habits. So let’s switch things a bit.

I want to do something inspired by Dragon Ball, and super-hero stories. I want a good guy beating a villain and stopping crime with some interesting super-powered actions. But first of all, I should write myself an origin story. Or at least outline one; I understand we are sometimes introduced to the hero fist and the origin later.

So, I guess that’s my homework for now. Reading up on the super-hero genre. I want to start with something specific and steeped in tradition, and its also something I’m familiar with and have consumed a lot of. The hero stories I end up producing may not be the most original, but as long as I enjoy making them and they help me grow as a writer, being unoriginal is alright. It may be just what I need to make my more outlandish ideas work later on.

Hm. I’d usually check out YouTube videos on the topic at this point. But I blocked that site for the week as well, part of my pledge to change how I spend my hours. I guess I’ll need alternatives.

But hey, good news is: I can probably spend a whole month reading super-hero theory and not be bored, so that should be fun. I’ve long felt I had to get better at doing this sort of research if I wanted my writing to go anywhere. I want to get a better hang on the elements of fiction – action, drama, comedy – before I move on to anything more advanced or complex.

Speaking of analysis, I felt curious to take a look at the main types of villains we get in shows like Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto, and Hero Academia. I figure the main types are: criminals, unknown competitors, and friendly competitors. The goals will tend to be win, defend, and attain.

Current villain Moro is a criminal looking to get the Dragon Balls and who is now looting power across the universe. Both variations of “attain”. Kinda, I don’t know.

Criminals are suited to stop stories. Competitors are suited to win stories. The latter usually involves less killing. Tournament arcs are all about competition.

Something along those lines. This is a rough draft, I’ll work harder on defining these ideas later. For now, I’m going back to Super. I also have other duties to attend to.

Hello, Internet

It’s 23:44 down here in Brazil. Every single computer game in my hard-drive is being deleted right now. I’ve decided to stop gaming for at least a week, maybe longer.

A drastic move, maybe. But I realized after a day of shopping for computer parts that even though I don’t consider gaming to be a major part of my life, I act like it is. I blame inertia for that; finding good games is easier than finding good novels (for me), and I started gaming years before I started writing — which was what made the experience of reading novels a lot more engaging for me.

So I’ve decided to do a no-gaming diet. Here’s a tip if you’re planning on making a major sacrificer: start today. What’s easy can always be left for tomorrow, but there is no tomorrow for hard tasks. Postponing what you really don’t want to do even a second only makes it easier for you to keep pushing it forward, giving your future-self ample reason to resent you for not starting earlier.

Today is the only day to sacrifice, the only day to be brave, the only day to be strong. At least for the first step. We are so often impulsive to do what’s meaningless and dumb — impulsive to go for another dose of ice cream, another burger, to skip another day of gym. Why not flip that around and try to be impulsive with positive things as well?

Results may vary, but I’ve found that works well for me. So once I realized a purge was needed, I crawled out from under my bedsheets — I was already ready for sleep –, turned the computer on and got to work. The deletion is already 50% done. I also took the chance to do another thing I’ve been postponing for a while: start a blog. Which is what you’re reading right now! So hooray!

I’m going to lay out my goals for the near future here. I don’t have any readers yet, but writing in a “public” forum gives my words a deeper sense of weight behind them. It makes them feel more real than just writing into my journal.

First, regarding this blog. The purpose of this venue is to give me a place to discuss writing and record my reading history. I plan to do it in an unstructured way: sometimes you’ll get fallout educational posts, sometimes I’ll just discuss the last series of YouTube videos I’ve watched.

Don’t be fooled. This blog may appear to be here to benefit the general public, but it isn’t. This blog exists because writing about things is the best learning tool in my arsenal. The fact that the byproduct of that learning process will be a series of posts that may or may not help other writers is just a consequence, not the goal. My goal is to better myself as a writer and a person, plain and simple.

Second, regarding this week, my goal is to get bored. No, really. I haven’t been bored in ages, but that has been because I found a nice cocktail of old and new games, combined with YouTube channels and work, to keep me engaged. Which is great! But I want to get deeper into fiction, which means I’ll have to endure bouts of boredom and frustration as I figure out the best literature and general fiction diet to keep me engaged.

I’ll keep this blog updated with what I’ve been learning and what I’ve been doing regarding my fiction writing. Of course, as a fundamentally selfish endeavor, this blog will not have a schedule or regular updates; I’ll write as I feel the need based on what I have been learning. Years of journaling have made it so that I can “sense” when it’s time to write, kinda like a build-up of pressure behind my forehead that needs to be released through text. So I trust that finding out the right time to write for this blog won’t be hard.

That’s all for now. The games are almost done deleting too. Wish me luck, Internet! I’ll see you… tomorrow, probably.

— Tadeu Rezend, Freelance Writer Extraordinaire™

Writing 4 Real

I’ve Been Reading Dragon Ball Super

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