Interesting Tool: Manniquin

I do have the secret desire to make a visual novel one of these days. I also have the desire to have a visual representation of some of my characters on file. The problem? I’m bad at drawing people. The solution I found? A digital tool called “Mannequin”.
There are several of my creations throughout this post. Enjoy them!

“Mannequin” is still in early access on Steam and itch.io, so there are bugs and problems that can arise. I’ve experienced a couple of them, but most are avoidable once you know what you’re getting yourself into. Save early, safe often — if you keep that in mind, things won’t get too bad. That, however, is something which can happen with every piece of software in early access (and these days also with other pieces of software, if we’re being honest here).
I had to force the program to shut down a few times and the clothing department is lacking some stuff I’d love to have (everything outside of a school, office, or beach setting), such as something that can double as military fatigues (for two characters from the Knight Agency I made). That is very specific, though, and I doubt many people will miss it.
Yet, it is early access and more stuff will most likely come — with the Steam Workshop, if not in other ways. It’s already possible to make quite a range of different characters, so it’s fine. All of them will look like they’re right out of an anime, but that’s what this tool is about.

 

[Jane]

Apart from the growing pains and still limited content, the tool is excellent. I bought it and jumped in, finding it easy to work with it. Yes, there are a few things I discovered more or less by accident, but I got the main parts figured out easily enough. Accessibility is a big thing when it comes to software — if you have to spend hours upon hours learning how to use a tool (as you might have with a complex and powerful one like CC3+), it’s going to put quite some people off that tool. In addition, the tool does have online documentation which can be called up from within the program, so you can access your manual when you need it.
“Mannequin” doesn’t fall into the trap of too much complexity, it provides easy access and you see changes immediately. The instant feedback makes it easy to understand how the program works and to do things at will with it. Character creation is quick and easy and once you’ve got a character, you can save it within the program, then export pictures in three different formats to use them elsewhere, changing the poses and the facial expressions as you want and need.

 

[Steven]

Like this, making a set of characters for a visual novel — a plan I am following at the moment —, isn’t hard at all. You can copy and past colour hex-codes to make sure the school uniforms of all your characters have the same colour scheme and you have free choice of colours. There are presets, such as hair and skin colours, you can use, but nothing stops you from choosing your own colours for that. Like this, a fish girl or a fire demon are not impossible at all — especially with different ear types beyond the human one (including cat, dog, bunny, and fox ears).
Using “Mannequin”, which is made by only one person, hence the slow development, I’m also wondering why the “Visual Novel Maker” I bought a long while ago doesn’t have a similar tool, as the same company which sells it also does sell the “RPG Maker” which has something not too unlike it to make sprites and faces for characters.

[Cynthia]

For me, “Mannequin” is a great tool to use. I can add character pictures to my series, reminding me at one glance of the look of my characters (although Isadora and Gabrielle, who are both on the androgynous side, might be a bit of a challenge and I can’t give Gabrielle’s cousin Abigail appropriate clothing). I can finally make a visual novel (I’m already in the planning process for it).
I also do generally like to play around with such programs to figure out new characters or just have some fun.

I hope that the program will get more content through the Steam Workshop (such as more different body types and clothing) and I hope that it will be finished at some point, even if it takes a while. It’s a one-person project, so not something that might be done in a hurry. Yet, I have hopes when it comes to this one and it is useful for me already.

The Use of Bad Stories

Every book on writing will tell you to consume good stories to learn from them — about your preferred genres, about word-craft, about plotting. It’s a very valid writing advice, too — by studying the works of others, you can learn a lot, especially in a trade that’s mostly based on soft skills which are harder to teach than hard ones. There’s one more aspect to  ‘learning from other people’s work,’ though: learning from bad stories. At first, this might seem weird. If a story is definitely bad, what can you learn from it?

First of all, you can learn what not to do. Sometimes, it’s just that easy. If a movie, novel, TV series, or other piece of media does everything wrong, that’s a lot of stuff you can avoid doing in your own work. Most of the time, though, some things work out. Some parts of the media work, but others do not. That is when you can see what exactly has gone wrong.
I’ve recently dipped into Dark Corners Reviews where they regularly do bad movies reviews which are both short (so I can watch them at my leisure) and fun. If you want to, give them a look as well — I feel this channel is criminally underrated.
One important aspect of a review of a bad movie is to see where it went wrong. Where are the problems with this one? Is it a half-baked story relying too much on sex? Are all characters horrid and you can’t connect to any of them? Is the setting or theme at odds with the story? There is a lot which can go wrong with a story and it pays to look into stories where something did go wrong to see where it went off the rails.
Let’s look at different aspects and how they could go wrong.

Is the story half-baked? This is more often a problem of movies or TV episodes than of full books, but it can happen with those, too. Sometimes, a story relies too much on novelty or suchlike (like sexy women in few clothes from the 70s onwards) and doesn’t put in enough work when it comes to the plot.
A story needs at least one plot which goes from beginning to end. Most stories above a short story have more than that, though. If the plot is lacking, you get a story where people wonder at some point what’s happening. Sometimes, solutions for problems come out of nowhere. Sometimes, there’s several setups for a plot and all of them peter out without being really finished properly. Sometimes, the motivations of the characters are at odds with the stakes presented or the overall plot.

Are the characters unlikable? This can be a problem in all types of media, but it is less problematic in games and suchlike, where the main character is controlled by the player to a degree and story usually doesn’t play the most important role. Still, it can become a problem even there, especially when the likeability problem comes out while you can’t control the main character or when everyone is just unlikable.
Some characters have no redeeming features — which is fine when it’s a villain you don’t want to see redeemed (fans will still write fan-fiction about it, trust me) —, others do things that cannot be forgiven. Some characters are cardboard cut-outs with no real character to them, which makes them boring to watch and doesn’t get the audience interested, either. Some seem to have no impact on the plot, but are given too much screen time.
This is also where internal plots come up. There are external and internal plots. External ones are driving the story as a such — they’re based around the conflict and help raise the stakes and push the tension. Internal ones are driving the characters’ development — they’re based around character flaws which the characters must overcome to win or fail to overcome to lose in the end. If an internal plot arc doesn’t work, it is hard to see why the character wins or loses at the end.

Setting and theme are another thing where a story can go horribly wrong. The setting and the genre usually define the expectations of the audience. Recently, I wrote about a cosy mystery I read which didn’t deliver on the ‘mystery’ part. In a mystery, people expect a major crime. In a western, I want that ‘high noon shoot-out’ the genre promises. We all know what to expect from our favourite genres and stories which fail to deliver it usually fail as stories.
If a story uses a specific historical period, but it is clear that whoever wrote the story or produced the visual bit of media has no idea what that period is about, it’s going to be a let-down. If a story sets up as a ‘high school’ story, but then goes in a completely different direction, ignoring the rules of a high-school setting, it’s going to make the audience lift their brows and vote the story down in some way.
Theme, when existing, is another thing which can go wrong. A theme is an aesthetic thing most of the time, but it can also go much deeper, into philosophical territory. A lot of people didn’t like the sequels to the original “Matrix” movie. They felt that “Matrix” had promised philosophical discourse on which the sequels didn’t deliver. So if you promise a deep look into the nature of man or the reason why humans are violent only to throw it out later, the audience will not be happy.
That is the gist of it.

Watch good movies, read good novels, play good games, but also leave yourself room for the opposite. While it pays to ask yourself why you liked a piece of media, it also pays to ask yourself why you didn’t like a piece of media.
Sometimes, that’s actually going to give you more insight into storytelling than a good piece of media might. It might be hard to understand how all aspects of a great story really fit together, because it’s like it always should be. It is often easier to understand how aspects of a bad story refuse to properly work together, even if some might be fine on their own.
When you look at a bad movie — and there are many lists circulating with bad movies you might pick from your favourite genre —, you are looking at a movie which failed to do some aspect right. Sometimes, it’s a question of money, but there are movies on a shoestring budget which still manage to be good, if not great. More often, it’s a question of getting an aspect of storytelling wrong, be it plot, characters, or setting/theme. Sometimes, the aspects are even at war with each other.
The same goes for other bad stories. When you really can’t get through a novel from a genre you normally like, ask yourself what keeps you from enjoying it. What is missing or lacking for you? Where did the enjoyment go? That will show you where the storytelling failed and help you understand the process better.

Generally speaking, consume media. If you want to write stories, no matter what medium you want to write in, consume that medium beforehand. Learn from those who’ve already done it, the ones who did it right and, especially, the ones who did it wrong. Failure can always teach us something — it’s good to keep that in mind.

Eight Sequences

 Last week, I posted a blog post about the four quarters, now I’m making good on my promise to also let you have a look at the eight sequences. Again, all of this comes from two books by Paul Tomlinson, “Plot Basics” and “Mystery — How to Write Traditional & Cosy Whodunits”. This is my take on the principle and how and why I found it useful.

A short recap first — the four quarters are important to understand the eight sequences, so I want to go over them again for a moment. The four quarters split the three-act structure into four, adding a split in the middle of the second act. The first quarter is the introduction, ending with the ‘call to adventure,’ the second quarter represents the first try to solve the conflict, ending with the midpoint twist, the third quarter represents the second try to solve the conflict, ending with the dark moment, and the fourth quarter includes the climax and a wind-down to reach ‘normal’ again (or a new ‘normal’).
This is what the eight sequences build up on.

The eight sequences split the four quarters up again, each quarter is split into two sequences, giving you a few more twist moments to include.
The first and second sequence make up the beginning of the story. The first sequence introduces the setting and the main characters. It may also feature a suggestion of the conflict and the hero’s flaw (if there will be an internal plot arc). Those are on the forefront for the second sequence when the conflict is fully introduced and the hero usually must be forced to face it (some heroes, especially serialized ones, don’t need that push, they will happily go forth and be heroic).
The third sequence is about the hero gearing up to face the conflict — this is when they might seek out a mentor or try to find another easy solution to their problem. The third sequence ends when the hero thinks they’re on the right path (hint: they never are). The fourth sequence is all about the hero implementing the solution they have found — to find in the midpoint twist that they were wrong and are back in square one (perhaps it’s more square two — they now know that one solution won’t work).
The fifth sequence is the hero analysing what went wrong with their first solution to figure out what the real one could be. The sixth sequence is then them implementing that second solution — only to be plunged into the dark moment where all seems lost.
In the fourth or sixth sequence, the character flaw should be the reason why the solution fails if you have a character flaw for the hero which needs to be overcome.
The seventh sequence is where the climax takes place — the hero overcomes their flaw (if it plays a role) and implements the final solution, either winning or losing for good. The eighth sequence is then a return to normal, a way to tie up a few lose ends and bring the hero back home or to a new normal for them, depending on the story. If you want to implement a plot hook for a sequel, this would be where to do it.

As mentioned with the four quarters already, the content of the eight sequences varies between genres. In a classic crime mystery, you will have the murder either before the end of sequence two or at the end of sequence four or beginning of sequence five, depending whether you want to start with a murder (and have a second one or something similarly severe at the midpoint) or whether you want a midpoint murder. In an espionage story, sequence three and four are usually the hero getting in place, following the villain, trying to get to the MacGuffin, before they’re captured at midpoint, changing their focus to escape in sequence five and return to the focus on the MacGuffin in sequence six (or withstanding torture in sequence five and escaping in sequence six) before they’re recaptured or scheduled for execution in the dark moment. If you write a genre you’re familiar with, though, you should have no problem knowing what happens at which point of the story. If you write a genre you’re not familiar with, you should ask yourself why you’re trying, read a good stack of books from that genre, and try again.
As also mentioned with the four quarters, the sequences are not mathematical. You don’t divide your word-goal into eight and only write that number of words per sequence (or split your scenes or chapters up equally). The sequences help you to keep balance, not going overboard with your introduction, for instance (sequence one, two, seven, and eight can be a bit on the shorter side, compared to three, four, five, and six). If one of the sequences is much longer than the others, it pays to look into it and ask yourself whether there’s stuff which belongs elsewhere in the story or whether you’ve gone off on a tangent or whether you’ve put in too much of the back story of your characters (wish Austin Grossman had done that in “Soon I Will Be Invincible”).

The eight sequences allow you to split up your story even more when you’re plotting or pre-plotting (as I usually am). You can see what belongs where, you can cut out excess or move scenes before you sit down and write the whole thing.
I recently plotted my own version of the Dark Universe, a project called “Creatures United”, and I used the eight sequences for the full story (seven short stories which come together) and then the four quarters in every story to plot the story as a such. For a short story, I usually don’t use the sequences, but only the quarters. For a novel or novella, however, the eight sequences are very useful, because they allow for you to pre-plot what will happen in more detail, so you can see if some part is lacking earlier, too.
Another use of the eight sequences is to look into a manuscript or plotted outline which feels off and see whether you have made one of the sequences very long or very short. Then you can look into that sequence and see where the problem is, what needs to be moved, cut, or added.

As the four quarters, the eight sequences can be a helpful tool for plotting a story. If you’re a plotter, you might want to look into them and see if you can work with them — or use them as a tool when something about your manuscript or outline feels off to you. I know I’ve been making good use of them and it’s made my plotting easier than it was before.

Four Quarters

Through “Plot Basics” and “Mystery — How to Write Traditional & Cosy Whodunits”, both by Paul Tomlinson, I learned about the four quarters (and the eight sequences, but those will get their own blog post) and I’ve been playing around with them and finding them very useful. What are the ‘four quarters,’ though?

They are a structure to superimpose on your story in order to plot it or check the plot when it feels like it is dragging somewhere. What exactly is in each quarter differs from genre to genre and book to book, but they can help you find the right place for a twist (at the end of each quarter, safe for the last) and to see whether your beginning or end are too long or a part of your middle is too short.
Let’s have a look at this from the very beginning, though, and start with the three-act structure.

I admit I’ve met the three-act structure late. When I was studying literature in Germany, my professors were more likely to tell us about the five-act structure (which, admittedly, is not really better), but I have heard about it once I started to read English texts about writing.
The three-act structure essentially tells you that a story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. While this is completely correct, it is not very helpful for a writer. People who sit down to write a story are usually aware that they need to start somewhere, have a story to tell, and stop somewhere when the story is done.

What the four quarters do, is split the second act of the three-act structure. Instead of having this very long act without any further suggestions, the four quarters give you two quarters which form the second act. The structure is then beginning (first quarter), middle (second and third quarter), and end (fourth quarter).
At the end of the first quarter, you usually have the ‘call to adventure’ — the hero has more or less accepted their mission and is leaving their regular life behind. At the end of the second quarter, you have the midpoint — at this point, there’s usually a twist, showing that the hero has not yet understood how to solve their problem. At the end of the third quarter, you have the dark moment — a severe failure which makes it seem impossible to win. At the end of the fourth quarter, the story ends.
The midpoint is a very important part of the story, as it were — it helps to keep the plot moving and to keep the tension up, as it is a twist and the audience loves twists. It is a way to structure the story better and keep the middle from dragging — which is a well-known problem for many writers.
At this point, I should also mention that this is not a mathematical middle. You don’t have to make all four quarters the same length in words, scenes, or chapters. Generally speaking, beginning and end tend to be a little shorter than the two middle quarters. Yet, if your beginning is longer than your first middle quarter or your second middle quarter is very short, you usually have a problem with your plotting. If the middle quarters are about equal in length, the middle is usually fine. If your beginning is very long, you might want to check whether you’ve added stuff that could and should be put in later. The same goes for your end, which could include stuff that belongs earlier in the story. Chances are you did make those mistakes if the quarters are too different in length.
What does belong into the four quarters, though?

As mentioned above, the four quarters are not the same for every story. Depending on the genre, they will differ greatly. I’ll give you a general overview first, then two examples for simple four-quarter plans with a midpoint added.
The first quarter is usually very much the same in principle every time. You introduce the setting, the characters, the conflict, and the main character’s flaw (if you wish to have an internal plot arc as well). Once this is done and all is in place, your hero will accept that they have to do something about the conflict and sally forth to do so. This is the end of the first quarter, sometimes referred to in books on writing as the ‘call to adventure.’
The second quarter represents the first try of the hero to resolve the conflict. Usually, they are not quite sure about how to do it or they might be too certain they can do it. What happens here is down to the genre.
The midpoint twist is the result of the first solution sought. Most of the time, it’s a failure, teaching the main character that their approach was wrong. In romance stories, though, it might be when the hero and the love interest get together (which qualifies as success), before the dark moment at the end of the third quarter rips them apart again.
The third quarter represents the second try of the hero to resolve the conflict. They have analysed what went wrong the first time and try a different approach. (In the aforementioned romance novel, the hero and the love interest have a good time until the dark moment, which is brought about through a third party such as parents who forbid the relationship or a misunderstanding which makes them break up.) The second approach will fail as well in the dark moment where the hero is at their lowest. At this point, the internal flaw will come in (if there’s an internal arc) and the hero will realize they need to overcome their flaw to succeed.
The fourth quarter includes the climax of the story where the conflict is resolved for good — usually as a success for the hero, but some genres (especially horror) also allow for a final failure. After the climax, there is time to tie up some minor plot threads and show the hero return to their normal life or reach a new normal, depending on the story.

The examples:

James Bond story:
1. James Bond gets his mission and the villain is introduced.
2. James Bond begins his work on the mission.
3. (Midpoint twist) James Bond is captured.
4. James Bond is tortured and a try to kill him is made.
5. James Bond escapes the villain and saves the day.

classic mystery story (midpoint murder):
1. Characters are introduced with a focus on the future victim.
2. The detective does another investigation (minor crime etc.).
3. (Midpoint twist) the victim is killed.
4. The detective investigates the murder, using information from 2.
5. The murder is solved.
(There is also the classic mystery with a first-act murder where the victim is either killed before the story starts or is dead by the end of the first quarter. In this one, the midpoint twist is often a second murder or attempted murder.)

As you can see, it’s mostly the second and third quarter which differ, as mentioned earlier. The eight sequences, about which I will write in another post, split up the quarters again, giving you a place for minor plot twists, but I’ve already found the four quarters very useful.
I use the four quarters for short stories, as they don’t need that much detail in pre-plotting as novellas and novels do. I write down what should dominate the quarters and set a midpoint, then I do the actual plotting scene by scene in Scrivener.
For novellas and novels, I first do the quarters (plus midpoint), then I go into more details for the sequences, then I pre-plot, looking at the sequences, and then I do the final plotting in Scrivener. All pre-plotting is done in Scapple, because it works best for me that way.

Take a look at the four quarters and see if they can help you. I find them useful for keeping my middle from dragging and they do also help with seeing whether something is in the wrong place. They’re more helpful than the three-act structure (due to giving more structure to the middle) and you might get quite a bit of use out of them.

There Must Be A Body

 This is my first blog post written in Scrivener.

I didn’t appreciate S. S. van Dine’s claim that ‘there must be a body, the deader the better’ from the twenty rules. While most crime stories do include at least one body, I thought that other crimes might do as well, provided they were important enough. To a degree, I still hold on to the belief that every capital crime might do. Yet, “Welcome to Spicetown” showed me that there definitely needs to be a serious crime (and murder is the most serious of them all, of course).

I bought “Welcome to Spicetown”, the first book in a cosy mystery series, at the same time as “The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels” (which I’ve already reviewed) and actually started to read it first. Yet, the deeper into the book I got, the more I felt that it was missing something. I put it aside and started reading about the Wisteria Society, which I happily finished, and then still had to almost force myself to finish this book.
The problem wasn’t the writing, which is very good. The problem weren’t the characters, who are interesting. The problem wasn’t the setting, as Spicetown seemed a nice place to be at with enough potential for a series. As a matter of fact, having the town’s mayor as the amateur sleuth might save it from one of the biggest problems of cosy mystery series: justifying why an amateur would be drawn back to crime investigation several times. With the mayor as the amateur sleuth, it would be easier to justify, as it’s her town and she wants to protect its name (especially as Spicetown is a tourist destination).
What was the problem, then? To make it short: the missing body. To make it longer: that it didn’t really give the characters any stakes to work with. The biggest crime in the story is the theft of a fireworks display. It’s not even the town’s fireworks display! The display is from the next town over and has been organized and, presumably, paid for by the Sheriff there.

When the book started, there was this elderly guy who came in on New Year’s Eve, right before closing time, and demanded the replacement of a stolen traffic sign, elongating the mayor’s work day. I assumed that he would probably be the victim of the story. He was clearly a busybody and thus could easily have annoyed someone or seen something he shouldn’t have seen. Yet, he lived (as did everyone else — no body in this story). I waited until well after midpoint for a body to turn up, but was bitterly disappointed.
It’s not just that, though. The theft itself is not really investigated (although the crime should be at least fifty-one percent of the story). Much more energy and space is put into a romantic sub-plot between two side characters (the mayor’s assistant and a guy who owns a tree farm) and into a sub-plot about a store selling impure essential oils as pure — two things which are even less interesting than a theft to a mystery fan. The romance sub-plot is told well and sweet to watch, but I bought a cosy mystery novel, not a romance novel. I expected a major crime. I got theft and impure oils.

What’s even worse than the fact that there’s no murder, is how the theft is dealt with.
First of all, none of the main characters has any personal investment in this. The fireworks display, as mentioned, is from Paxton, the next town over. The Sheriff wants to solve this himself (although he won’t), so Spicetown’s police chief is only asked to look out for a car with which the fireworks were probably transported. He finds the trailer in a nearby lake and that would be the end of his official involvement. The mayor has even less involvement than that. She has none, as the fireworks display has nothing to do with her town, didn’t come out of her budget, and she didn’t even attend it and was disappointed when it didn’t happen.
There is a suspicious individual which is seen in town and, especially, in the store with the impure oils, but that’s not really something people would wonder about in a tourist town. There is, as mentioned, that sub-plot about the impure oils from the store, but that is an even minor misdemeanour than stealing something. There is mention that there have been more thefts lately, too. Yet, none of this amounts to a real crime investigation with personal stakes for those involved.
In addition, why steal a fireworks display? It wasn’t done to spite the Sheriff, but, presumably, to make money with it. Yet, as far as I know, there’s two days in the American calendar when fireworks are commonly used — New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. New Year’s Eve is the day on which the story starts, so they could hardly hope to sell the fireworks right away. Were they going to play musical chairs with the display for six months until they could sell it for the Fourth of July? It just makes no sense.
Finally, the book sets up a ‘mastermind’ behind the thefts. When they were first mentioned, I thought it would be the owner of the store with the essential oils — she did have contact with the thief, she was in financial strains (hence the diluted oils to make more money with them), and she could have kept the loot in the back of her store. Yet, it was not to be her, she was just a team member. The ‘mastermind’ (who had someone steal loot that couldn’t be sold for another six months — what a mastermind) turned out to be a person who was in three short scenes over the entire book, only mentioned in the first half and only introduced personally in the second. The mastermind was pulled out of a hat, nothing more, nothing less.

My overall impression of the story was that the author got carried away with the romantic sub-plot, which is by far the most detailed part of the book, and then remembered she was going to write a cosy mystery, so she put the parts of that mysterious theft around it. Obviously, that didn’t work very well and weaned me off the series. Even if it should get better later, how am I ever going to trust her again?

“Welcome to Spicetown” has taught me that there must indeed be a body — or at least a capital crime — in a crime story. The crime must also take precedent, even in a cosy mystery. Personal stuff can be almost as strong, but it must be fifty-one to forty-nine at least, not the other way around. The main characters also must be invested in the case, otherwise especially a cosy mystery with an amateur sleuth makes no sense.