Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 2

KiShoTenKetsu in Manga Revisited

Recently I read The Shonen Jump Guide to Making Manga, and while the book itself was underwhelming for what it claimed to be, I did find a few little tidbits of information that made it worth reading. One of these nuggets was tucked into Promised Neverland writer Kaiu Shirai’s final survey entry on page 93 of the print edition:

Q: Is there anything you reference when creating your one-shots?

A: No literature, really. Instead, I read every one-shot and Weekly Shonen Jump first chapter from the gr...

Review – The Shonen JUMP Guide to Making Manga

The other day I was poking around Amazon, and to my surprise discovered that VIZ had just dropped The Shonen JUMP Guide to Making Manga. This is a book which was published last year in Japanese, and now was available in English for all to enjoy.

I couldn’t hit that “Buy Now” button fast enough, and within 24 hours my copy arrived on my doorstep.

So, did it live up to my expectations?

Well, first let’s look at the blurb for the book:

The people who make the World’s Most Popular Manga share their...

The Importance of Dead Simple Goals in Manga

One of the things that the top selling manga have in common is that their lead characters are almost all working towards some overall arching goal. Accomplishing this goal will be the main arc and driver of the overall story, and the series will usually kick off by introducing a character with this goal and it will finish when the character has accomplished their objective. (Or the editors can it, whichever comes first.)

However, one of the most common mistakes that aspiring writers make is tha...

Paul Chato’s Rules for Writing Manga?

I recently posted Paul Chato’s rules for writing sitcoms, which is an excellent discussion of the topic by someone who spent years in the trenches producing sitcoms. However, reading through Paul’s “rules” I can’t help but think many of these apply to shonen manga as well. So, I thought I’d comment on how they apply to manga and anime in general, and shonen manga specifically.

 

Location – Have an interesting home base or “container” where the story happens.

Can you easily imagine and l...

Paul Chato’s Rules for Writing a Sitcom

Canadian writer, comedian, and “Former Network Executive” Paul Chato recently released a video about how to write his favorite form of television – the Classic Sitcom. It’s a fascinating video because it’s one born from experience and not theory. Also, I think there’s a lot to unpack here that I’ll talk about in some other follow-up posts, but before I do, here is the video, followed by my summary of his rules.

 

Paul’s “Rules”:

(See the video for details and examples.)

Location – Have an inte...

Manga Mondays: Delicious in Dungeon

[This is a running series where I share my thoughts on a different comic most Mondays, sometimes Manga, sometimes American, Chinese, Korean or UK comics. I read a huge amount of comics and thought I’d start to highlight some of the more interesting ones.]

Series Name: Delicious in Dungeon (aka Dungeon Meishi

Author: Ryoko Kui

Artist:  Ryoko Kui

Tags: Fantasy, Exploratory Manga, Cooking

Target Audience: General Audience, Fantasy Fans, Cooking Enthusiasts

MICE Quotient: Inquiry

Rob Rating: 9/10

R...

How I Script the Webtoon Lord of Goblins

Since a few people have requested it, I decided to make a video about the script format I use when I script the webtoon Lord of Goblins.

And here is the template I mention in the video in RTF format.

I hope this helps any creators who are confused about how to format a webtoon script!

Rob

Manga Monday: Heterogenia Linguistico: An Introduction to Interspecies Linguistics

[This is a running series where I share my thoughts on a different comic most Mondays, sometimes Manga, sometimes American, Chinese, Korean or UK comics. I read a huge amount of comics and thought I’d start to highlight some of the more interesting ones.]

Series Name: Heterogenia Linguistico: An Introduction to Interspecies Linguistics (aka Heterogeneous Linguistics)

Author: Seno Salt

Artist:  Seno Salt

Tags: Fantasy, Exploratory Manga, Linguistics,

Target Audience: University Students, Academi...

Manga Monday: Teenaged Mercenary

[This is a running series where I share my thoughts on a different comic each Monday, sometimes Manga, sometimes American, Chinese, Korean or UK comics. I read a huge amount of comics and thought I’d start to highlight some of the more interesting ones.]

Series Name: Teenaged Mercenary (aka Mercenary Enrollment)

Author: KC

Artist: Rakyeon

Tags: Action

Target Audience: Korean Teen Boys, Young Men

MICE Quotient: Event

Rob Rating: 8/10

Official Synopsis: At the age of eight, Ijin Yu lost his paren...

Writing Romantic Comedy Light Novels (For Men)

If you want to understand writing Romantic Comedy Light Novels (RCLN) you just need to picture a dance party in your head – a high school gym dance filled with awkward teens. Maybe it’s something you remember from your own experience, or maybe it’s like a what you saw in a video.

Can you picture it?

Now, in that party is your lead character. He’s leaning against a wall because he’s feeling awkward and has no confidence to ask his crush to dance. The reasons for his awkwardness are up to you, bu...