Writing update (6/15/2020)

Back to the grind. No personal updates for today, so let’s talk writing.

Burning Sky

Got a bit of outlining done today in a meeting with Sharlenne. Normally we have full team meetings to go over stuff related to Burning Sky. But while Bob and I were waiting for Sharlenne, his internet went out. So that was fun… then mine went out, shortly after Sharlenne showed up. But I fixed mine so we worked a little on one of the titles she’s going to be spearheading. It was productive. Got three or four episodes figured out. Basically wrapped a full chapter we’d started a while ago.

EXTRA

I’ve made a bit more progress on Chapter 4 of EXTRA. It’s really interesting to me the rituals I’ve developed while writing it. I always wind up listening to music that’s either dark or has a really dark sound when I’m working on it. It’s appropriate, I suppose, given the story’s overall mood. At least in those early chapters. We’ll see if the tune changes, over time as I figure the story out. I’ve already been contemplating some pretty massive changes to my long-term plans with it. We’ll see what I do. Who knows? I may decide on something completely different with it from what I’ve already got in my head to do. That does tend to happen.

Bulletoon

I just got finished writing that sort of side episode I mentioned before. It was a pretty easy process. The script’s sent off now. Though given the nature of the episode, I’m not really sure when it’s going to come out. With that in mind, I haven’t actually begun the writing for the Noragami episode yet. I’m still in the early concept and outlining phase. For those who want to know my process, it’s pretty straightforward, from a writing perspective. I decide on a show I want to cover, come up with a concept, then do the teaser. After that, I work on outlining the script with the points I want to make. Sort of like outlining an essay or a book report for school. I format the show like a thesis paper, in essence. From there it usually takes about a day or two to transition from outlining to scripting. So the script will probably be done tomorrow or Wednesday. And with that in mind, the episode itself will probably come out on next Monday or Tuesday unless I get these lines fast. We’ll see. Luckily, I’ve got all the footage already. So that’s a blessing. That’s what was holding me back in the first place. I am concerned about how I’m going to do the episode for The World God Only Knows because getting the footage for that one has proven… challenging. Otherwise I’d probably have done that episode already. And the issue I had with the manga spotlights on SPY X FAMILY have made me leery about the Kumagawa episode. We’ll… we’ll see what I can do.

Other Projects?

I did mention a little while ago that I was maybe interested in getting back into my superhero writing with some short stories or something. Not really sure what I want to do with that yet. Perhaps just kind of dip into the universe I already created with some contextless One-Shots. “Here’s a superhero and a problem they have to solve.” Stuff like that. I have tons of characters to pull from. But I’ve been working on figuring out exactly which ones I still even want to use.

Meanwhile, on another front, we have this one project we were working on before Burning Sky. We’ll probably talk about it at length at some point. It was sort of a Shounen Action High School series with Harem Comedy shenanigans and an emphasis on character development over fan-service. Something recently compelled me to just start looking back over that project and it really bums me out that we had to put a hard pause on it. The short version of what happened is that the artist we had on it ghosted us. Given the money we’d already spent, starting over would’ve been an enormous money drain, so we decided to freeze the project for the time being and work on Burning Sky, which is a bit more cost effective to produce. But part of me is wondering if we couldn’t possibly handle that project in the web novel route as well. We probably won’t because of the sheer volume of work we’re already putting in on Burning Sky. Plus I’ve got EXTRA, Bulletoon, maybe some superhero short stories… I keep busy. But I dunno. It sucks seeing all this work we’ve already got done on that project just… sitting there.

Closing Time

Well, that’s it. Not really a whole lot to report. Just more of my writing woes. Ah well. As per usual, thanks for reading. Stay safe, Stay healthy, Stay Awesome!

Voyager