Demon Soul the making of part 3: surprise characters

En français

On the last part of the making of, I introduced the notion of surprise characters. Now I think I should explain a bit more about them. As you start writing the story, you have few characters’ lives evolving in a certain environment. Of course they are going to encounter other people and react to them, they will become enemies or friends. As you start writing a paragraph, either you have planed it a long time ago or you know the character really well, either the character is a stranger.

It is a bit like in real life when you meet your friend’s friend and you already have the feeling that you know him because your friend has been talking about that guy for month or you arrive to a new place and someone start talking to you.

When Sahel has to go to the demon world, I was already prepared to make him meet the bad guys. That was the obvious thing to do, my bad guys were all ready and I knew them so well, the one that appear just for a minute but could have become important if needed or the one that were already there to make trouble. What I didn’t realize at first was that I was going to create a new world call the demon world and that it needed to be as diversified as the world where Sahel was coming from. When Sahel takes his first look at this world, some of the people present are just as foreign to me as they are to him and I will call them "surprise characters". Some will stay basic and never interact with him, in that case he is just observant and the characters aren’t really developed. Some will start interacting with him and in these cases I just have to go back to my questions and lists to build them up while Sahel was discovering them.

Those characters are a surprise for me, they are something that the story is giving me because they need to be there and I didn’t realize while planning. The main reason why you can’t realize everything while planning is because the part that the characters decide to bring to the story is their own and even if it follows the main line of the plot, all the details can only be worked out while actually writing the story. That is a good thing because if you already knew everything about the future of your characters, the little drop of mystery that makes the story interesting would be lost.

Get "Demon Soul" here or on amazon

Japan : Disney Sea

En français
The week-end after I went back to Japan, I went to Disney Sea with some friends. When Disney Land seems to be more about the cute Disney characters and Disney princesses stories (I still have to see that by myself), Disney Sea is more about the movies, Indiana Jones, Travel to the center of Earth... It's a bit like a travel around the world, starting in Italy, going to India or Baghdad and even under the sea.
We had a nice weather even though it was supposed to be raining, we did some attractions and some failed on us at the last minute giving us the chance to get priority tickets so that we could try them again a bit later. That was really nice.
Compared to Fuji Q highland, the roller-coaster felt very quiet but the main thing about them is the decoration all around. I think my favorite was "Travel to the center of Earth" that we almost missed. I also like Jules Vern a lot so that was maybe one of the reason why I liked it the best.
I also really liked the "Tower of fear" that was one of the coolest attractions.

Here is a little video to show you the atmosphere there.

Travel table of content

NaNoWriMo 2010, Vampire Heart

So today is the first of November and who says November first says the start of NaNoWriMo and I'm starting it again this year with my usual team of crazy writer and a lot more of crazy writer than usual actually, which probably mean that the writing fever is propagating. As planed on the last writing project post, I started to write "Vampire Heart" today.
So you will have a lot to read about it in the coming month, starting tonight. I decided to put the word goal a little bit higher than the standard NaNoWriMo word goal so I will be normally writing 2000 words a day which should allow me to stay on track if I get into crazy adventure and can't write for a day or two.

Also as I'm doing really well with timeboxing at the moment. I decided to write at least 500 words of "Demon and Fairy" during NaNoWriMo as well. Of course they are not going to enter in the NaNoWriMo word count but my characters really deserve an ending and Brownie is probably going to kill me if I let Sahel stuck in the fairy world anyway. I wrote more that 1000 of that today so I'm really happy about my productivity. I'll upload it for you a little later.

I also started to edit Attic Mirror, I started that several times already but never get really far. This time it's a bit different as I decided to edit 5 pages everyday so that I could be finished on time. The main goal is to be able to have the first proof copy by the end of January if not by the end of the year. I know that if I managed to do that it will make some people happy.
All Novels Drafts 

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Go to Vampire part 2

And I also plan to start vloging a bit. I'm not really feeling that comfortable in front of the camera yet but here is the first video of the blog.

America : Konza Prairie

En français 
One Sunday in September, when I was still in Kansas we had a barbecue in a park and then decided to go take a walk in Konza Prairie. Konza Prairie is a biological station for the preservation of Kansas natural wild life such as tall grass. The Prairie offers beautiful scenery and trail to go up the hills allowing to see the all area around. We find some interesting mushrooms and met the local faun, butterflies and deers.We went there in the evening so we could observe the sunset.
Travel table of content

クローズZERO (Crows Zero)

En français

クローズZERO is a Japanese movie by 三池 崇史 (Miike Takashi) taken from the manga "Crows" by 高橋 ヒロシ (Hiroshi Takahashi). 三池 崇史 also made a lot of movies including 殺し屋1 (Ichi the killer) and 着信アリ (One miss call).

Takiya Genji enters Suzuran high school also known as the school of crows to conquer it. This will allow him  to success his father as the leader of the Yakuza clan. Suzuran high school is a under the law of gang, and Genji has to conquer small classes first to be able to get enough people to defeat the largest gang leaded by Serizawa.
Serizawa's men will beat up the people rallying to Genji one by one to counter him. In the meantime, Genji is helped by Ken from the yakuza clan opposing Genji's father.



This movie is really violent. I wonder if the people standing after beaten each other up in a way that would have killed a dinosaur is a metaphor for human will power or if it's just for the fun of it. Anyway that was fun to watch. I like the part where the movie goes ridiculous as well. There is some similitude with 殺し屋1 even though it's not as insane. Start watching here.

Casting : 

小栗 旬 as Genji Takaya (花より男子 returns, 花より男子 season 1)
山田孝之 as Tamao Serizawa (タイヨウのうた (Midnight Sun))
やべきょうすけ as Ken Katagiri
高岡蒼佑 as Shun Izaki (バトル・ロワイアル)
黒木 メイサ as Ruka

Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Amsterdam, end of the travel

En français
We arrived in Brussels early morning and took the first train to Amsterdam. The first thing we did arriving in Amsterdam would be to get our train ticket to go back to France. The trip in your own country is not included in the interrail pass. Then we started exploring. Amsterdam is a lot like Venezia with a lot of canal everywhere, so a lot of water and boats. We walked along the canal Damrak until the famous, Mme Tussaud's (wax museum) and Paleis op de Dam (Royal Palace). We continued to the city center and visit a market of flower and seeds. We walked in the pedestrian streets and went to see the Rembrandt museum celebrating the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt Harmenszoon von Rijn's birth. Rembrandt was a painter who contributed to a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. He is famous for his self portrait. We then took our train to go back to Brussels which is a bit late making us worry about catching the others but we still made it.
We soon realized on the way back that we have been living a memorable adventure during 30 days all over Europe and I will recommend to everyone to try it.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content

Demon Soul, the making of part 2: Creation of the characters

En français

I always start creating a story with a quick idea that will later give the beginning. Here that was Brownie staying alone when Yue left. As this is the start of the story you can imagine that at this particular point I was supposed to go further and to start writing what follows. Of course I will but I still had a little bit of something to do first and that was creating my main character Brownie. That for, I use questions and lists.
Questions are really basics first and tend to get more complicated. For instance you can ask yourself what is the favorite color or food of the characters so that it will determine the environment around them like the decoration in their bedrooms, how they react to the meals. And also give some basic characteristic about them, like for example what they look like. The look was easier a bit as I use a game so I could basically see their pictures.
And here, I also had to wonder what happened between Yue and Brownie, why they felt in love? Why they separated? Why Brownie was behaving the way she did? For each answer I write a little paragraph that would eventually appear or not in the story. For example some of what happens between Brownie and Yue appears as flashback or memories.
I also said that I use lists. That is main qualities and main default of the characters. Also a bit of what they like and dislike and for each of those I also write a little paragraph. It is really easy to give a list of quality and default. Writing a paragraph about how the character gets it will allow you to have a consistent behavior and to make sure that the characters doesn’t behave contractor to themselves. The list doesn’t have to be long. You can start with 5 qualities and 5 defaults, you can always add more as the story progresses.
So here was the birth of Brownie and of her relationship Yue. I also created Yue in the same way. He would of course stay a lot less developed than Brownie as he appears only through her.
The other characters will be created as they appear. I have a all bunch of very basic characters just ready to be developed, for example when I first needed Gideon, I knew he was a wizard and really good with his magic wand but that was about it. I had to start with the questions and lists to built him a past and see how he was going to develop in the story and how the story was going to develop around him. And that is valid for every character in the story even insignificant ones. You never really know when a character is going to do something remarkable so you need to be prepare when this day come, but as I said before as the relationship between the characters and the story is very narrow, you don’t need to prepare them all before the story you can create them during the story. That allows you to take a break from the plot and especially you can always introduce surprise characters like the twins, Taram and Torin or Seti.

Get "Demon Soul" here or on amazon