Writing Tips and Reviews

How Long Does it Take to Write This?

For me, over four months. And that four months plus is not spent on "is this idea original?" No, those four plus months are spent on characters, story, locations, organizations, development, scenes for reference, scenes to go into the story, and help from friends. About five minutes goes into the base idea of a story. The rest is what really matters.

To me, it's important to figure out how to write the story than what is being written about. The two do coincide as the story can't not be about the base idea. And ideas can change, a simple idea like people getting sucked into the gaming world is done over three times and that's just what I know of.

I have an idea, whether it's original or not is not important, then I get into more about the characters and world. The idea can change over time. I've had plenty of ideas inspired from the series I like and over time those ideas have drastically changed. I have a book of old ideas and looking at them now, I see how different those idea are then compared to how they are now. The brain works in different ways for everyone, watch a movie with your friends and then write a story based off it. You'll see that your stories are all different despite them sharing the same routes.

Spend time focusing on your writing skills than the style. Your writing will grow and change as you become more familiar with the practice. It's like art. People spend time using a style that they like and that style changes over time. It's not going to happen over night, stories don't write themselves. They take time to create. For some people, they just write down what's on their mind without an outline, for people like me, we make an outline before we even start on chapters.

My outlines are about ten to twenty pages long. That itself took about two months to do. Then development takes place and that takes even longer. I have everything figured out before the story is released. It's like making a game, just making a game is fine, but without an outline to keep everything consistent and not have too much fluff, the game won't be that good.

Even taking time to read through the chapter before it's released is a good idea. Make sure there's no typos and that sentences make sense, even make sure that there aren't any contradictions. "She is the smartest person in the world and is well educated but can't do a simple test and flunked high school" does that make sense? I could say the "being the smartest person the world" is just her own thoughts, but you need to specify that. I could go on and on about contradictions but I won't. Keep contradictions like that out unless it's a point such as "the character thinks this way" or "they are told to be that way but can't be". That's much better than outright lying to the reader.

What's the most time consuming part of writing? For me, it's not the chapters themselves, I can actually do an entire chapter in an hour. No, it's the development that goes into the story before it's released. The time I spend on just the development of the story and characters is insane. I've been called crazy for doing all this. The biggest title I have is Crest of Aspira, with more than 40 characters all who have their own story, and a plot that is insane to figure out, it's going to be maybe a year or two before I can have it released. Hopefully not that long.

Let's bring up the first title in my series. Tales of Eylisia. The story board behind it took about three months, it was a small game. The game itself took a year to make, the new storyboard for the novel took another three months. A year and six months in total. My second title, Crystal of Fantasia. Also supposed to be a game but never happened. It's storyboard took about two years and that's why it was released after Wonders of Mysteria. Speaking of which, the third title to my series. October of 2017 I believe, just when I got into Tales of the Rays and it's second arc was announced. (Stupid catchy song). It's release date was about March. Five months, and with help from my massive team, I got a lot done.

I think you get the picture. Writing takes a long time. It's not something that can be done in two seconds. Even those who don't have outlines as detailed as mine still need at least something. Who characters are, what they're relationships are, motivations, places, terms, background to the world. All this needs to be thought about before making a story. Because if you don't do it, it becomes a mess. Even those who can write then and there usually read the previous chapters to make sure the recent ones are consistent.

This is why I say don't focus on the originality of an idea. Because if you spend too much time there, then you won't be putting the same effort into what matters. You can tire yourself out before you even start. This is why I've seen many stories fail.

I was part of a group who did that, the creator let the writer do whatever but the writer was so focused on the idea being original that everything else was thrown to the side. Characters weren't developed and the story was a mess. There was no real story at all, it was an idea that had been done before and two paragraphs written. There wasn't time to make new characters so the writer took characters from somewhere else. There were places but they had no purpose, there were organizations but they had no purpose. It seemed like making everything "purely original" created nothing. Nothing was original to this project and three months were wasted that could have been used to make a real story.

Also nothing is original anymore. Onwards!

What I'm saying, is that do whatever you want in your way. Make the story yours and use your time wisely. Use that story writing time to figure it all out. Don't focus on something minor. Focus on what matters. If it's not copied and pasted from someone else then it is original to you. Your writing style is what makes it "original". I didn't spend over three years writing just for an "original idea". And Kingdom Hearts is the definition of "not original ideas" but people still love it because of its execution. It's a fun game that tells a great story with Disney stuff in between.