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Thanks so much for your advice. On average how many episodes will there be for audio dramas? I have to give credit to my friend Usagi who gave me the idea. Think of it as Ouran High School set in a college in America. The story is somewhat darker than what’s presented here, but I just wanted to give a taste. And I’m aware that Daisuke is typically used as a boy’s name, but as with most of my placeholder names, it just stuck. As I was thinking about this, it may or may not work for an audio drama, but hopefully the idea is there and with some further tweaking it could work. Here is the pitch:
A.C.E.S.
Daisuke, a smart, yet socially awkward creative writing student, receives a full ride scholarship to the school of her dreams. When her overprotective parents sabotage her dreams by hiding her acceptance letter and financial aid award, Daisuke loses her scholarship and is forced to attend Arts College, the local junior college. Daisuke is determined to make it on her own after her parents’ betrayal but finds that she knows nothing about the “real world” and how it works.Arisa, an infamous socialite and former reality show star, is left with nothing after the cancellation of her family’s reality show. Determined to get a fresh start and get back on track, Arisa enrolls at Arts College to major in journalism. A closeted anime and manga nerd, Arisa gets an idea to start her own host club from the manga Doki Doki!!! Host in Love!!
Daisuke and Arisa are thrown together as roommates, but when various personal problems threaten to jeopardize their school funding, Daisuke reluctantly teams up with Arisa to start a host club. At first, auditions go terribly. Since host clubs aren’t well known in America, Arisa decides to call the club the Arts College Escort Service (A.C.E.S.) to attract a wider clientele. Arisa has already had tryouts and narrowed the group down to a few guys chosen only for their looks, not their personalities. Kouji is chosen as the strong and silent type. Celebrity twins, Jet and Rocket are the ‘little devil’ type. Ian is the cool type, and Saito is the Prince. These are hardly their natural personalities though.
Unbeknownst to Daisuke, Arisa’s put Daisuke’s virginity up for grabs, claiming that who can ever bed the girl first can win the ‘consulting fee’, a percentage of every sale that is being used in this bet. Needless to say, this makes the A.C.E.S. and Daisuke very popular. However, the first few months fail epically. Seeing this, Daisuke restructures the group and lets the guys be themselves. Daisuke adds herself to the roster as the Nerd Girl type, going with guys as their “girlfriends” cosplaying and going to different conventions. Hijinks ensue.
What sorts of genres work well for audio? Are there some genres to avoid altogether? Are there any genres or topics that the staff at Sparkler are just dying to see come into their inboxes? Also it was mentioned that Awake was originally made to be a comic, but it also made for a great audio drama. Can you talk about the process of converting something that is visual to audio or if it can even be done without being clunky or containing a lot of clunky exposition (i.e. infodumping)
@Lianne, That’s definitely good advice. I’m starting to learn that when something is not going right what can I do to keep the momentum going. I was just working on a scene where it was starting to lose momentum and changing dialogue, not making the easy choices for characters really helps stretch my brain as you said.
Beyond Beauty has been done since last year (my friend and I were having a 6 month writing challenge), but I’ve been giving the chapters to Scotty in chunks. Everything except ch 4, which has to be rewritten because I have no idea where it went. I think what worked for me is deciding the overall arc of the story and how long I needed to tell the story I wanted to tell. The story is 8 chapters long and it hasn’t really deviated too much from it’s outline, which is also a first.
I was really lucky to find Scotty and I think the writing and the art work well because we are both passionate about the story. I don’t write in panels and I suppose my graphic novel scripts are more like scripts for plays without stage directions (or correct formatting) so they allow the artist more freedom to play around with layout and storyboarding. Scotty has an amazing body of work and I trust her judgment went it comes to the layout and her artwork has only enhanced what I originally saw in my head. I think it also works because I trust Scotty’s judgment when it comes to comic related things. I really wish I had more to say, but it really is just that easy. I write the script and Scotty draws it and I’m always blown away by how beautiful it is and how smooth the translation between words and art is.
@doreibo: That role–>setting—>character take is interesting. My writing process seems to be different, but similar. It seems that theme guides the story from there. I think mine might be “scenario/twist—>character—>important scene(s)”. So for something like Beyond Beauty (this formula probably works better for the fairytale retellings that I’m doing, moreso than the original stuff) It was “What if the genders in Beauty and the Beast were flipped?”, then the characters came out from there, and then there were 3 important scenes, one of which being the first chapter. Then everything else just spread organically from that. Beyond Beauty is the first story that I’ve ever finished because usually this formula doesn’t have enough to carry it from major scene to major scene. And maybe that’s why I get frustrated when I try to write is because I’m too focused on the glue that holds these pieces together instead of the pieces themselves.
@Lianne: I liked the advice you posted writing, especially setting and POV. These are things I tend to neglect. I think my strongest points are character and dialogue, but when I read the comments in that post, I noticed a really bad habit that started creeping up again which I realized I had mentioned. In the comments, you stated that when you were younger you just wrote the cool bits and not the boring bits, which I totally used to do. I realized that I still do this. I had an outline for the story I’m writing now, but my external hard drive crashed and I can only remember a few scenes, none of which were all that important. Using an outline helped extremely with Beyond Beauty and I think that “cool scenes” writing method only works if you have an outline that always has something happening and very little downtime.
I love those 3am inspiration sessions, unless I have to be awake at 5, then it sucks. I usually don’t even try to sleep at at that point.
Thanks for this. I used to have so many problems with people just talking in space and not filling in the details around them.
I have a couple questions about prose. I was also wondering if you have an example of an outline. If the creators were up for it, I’m curious to know how they structured their outline and whether they find it easier or harder to stay on track writing in a serial format.
Maybe you can have an monthly anthology of short stories centered around a theme. I really liked The Maiden and the Fish. I was hoping there would be more short stories, it would be cool to have something to fill in the gaps when other series have to unexpectedly take a hiatus.
I like this far. I was waiting for so long to see how the audio drama played out and it’s superb. It mentioned that it was going to be a comic,but I think it works very nicely as an audio drama, it sets it apart from the pack.
I’ve never played Bioshock,but I get that Alice in Wonderland vibe too. A dark and grittier version, for sure.
