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Is making all of this worth it?

AuraSoul93

Future Frontier Brain
Joined
May 29, 2010
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I'm really confused & distressed about what I should be doing with my stories at this point. Let's see if I can keep everything as short as possible.

I wanted to write fanfics for a bunch of things that I really enjoy (Digimon, Kamen Rider, Naruto, etc.) but found that rather than just working with the available material us fans like using I just ended up making my own. Different characters, different mechanics, different settings; it all just felt like I was rewriting the franchise. So then I thought about just create my own thing. My own franchise, if you will. It would be a manga-style webcomic, that I would hope get turned into an anime, about characters that, through various means, obtain power in the form of a mon-type creature that they have to bond with in order to transform into an armored warrior. Very common, yes. But I wanted to try making a bunch of different themes that would with them. Ex: Native American-based suit with changeable animal-style armor, Spartan-based suit with changeable sports-style armor, etc. I really enjoy these ideas & greatly wish to see them come to fruition.

As much fun as that has been the past few months it's lead to a bunch of concerns now that I don't really know can even be addressed properly. As much as I tried I don't feel like drawing them out is something I can accomplish. I'm no artist, nor have I ever had a desire to being one. My sister, who's a very good young manga-style artist, says I just need to keep trying & that these things happen. My problem here is that actual artists have passion for what they make, I don't. I can make the worst or greatest picture ever & it would mean nothing to me. I just saw it as a job requirement since I wanted to control everything for making my story because I'm afraid other people that I could potentially work with will not comprehend my thoughts & what I wanna see.

That's another issue. How would this get out into the public? Well I can't do the webcomic idea since I really don't have the heart for drawing & working with other artists would be nothing but conflict after conflict. Webcomics are released based on the time & ability of the artist alone. I hate having to make someone add a time-consuming job with no reward in sight to their schedules. Plus they might not like things I have planned for the characters & plots, so they don't enjoy what they draw for me but they feel obligated to continue doing so because I'm relying on them. That's pressure that I don't wanna inflict on someone.

Finally, there's this major problem; companies. I doubt anyone would want to make what I'm creating an official anime with me working on the actual big project. They'd probably just see my stuff, file some garbage lawsuit about likeness or some junk like that & then I have to pay a bunch of money that I don't have & they get all my ideas to make money off of as they please. And I can honestly see it happening. I reluctantly discovered the PreCure franchise recently & discovered that, while not the exact same thing, it's very similar to my idea. So that's not exactly added to my confidence. Then I thought about merchandise & how difficult some things could be. (Apparently there's this big gripe within the writing community about trying to sell toys with stories people make & I don't get the negativity. Yeah, it doesn't always work. But the merchandise adds to the experience of connecting with the fiction. It's fun making adventures of your own with toys of your favorite thing & I really want whatever I make to have a successful toyline. Sorry if this seems random, just my thoughts on the matter.) Obviously, figures would be easy since the characters are pretty much superheroes. The issue is the role-play stuff like transformation gear & weapons. I mean, I have the mon-type creatures transform into the equipment ala Ditto from Pokémon. How can that be made into something? And the quality of the toys might deter people from them since not every toy company can be Hasbro (at least when it comes to Marvel Legends). Also, when (not if, but when) the suits in these companies decide to change things around is gonna suck hard. Altering plots & characters because they think certain things can't be seen by children when the stuff I make is totally harmless & safe for kids. I want kids to see it the most, but if Nickelodeon was hesitant to greenlight Korra just because she was a female protagonist then what other stupid stuff can go down with these executives, you know?

Sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense. Guess I couldn't keep everything as short as possible. ^^; I'm just overall upset at the situation and wanted some outside opinions on the matter. Please ask if there's anything that you don't understand or if I didn't elaborate on something earlier. Thanks in advanced!
 
There's two things I think you need to accept. The first, and most obvious, is that original fiction is hard. Yes, you're right in that if you're deriving most of your ideas from another franchise then you do risk stepping on toes. Honestly, if you wanted to make it a full time thing at all - that is, something you did for a living - then you'd be best off starting from scratch.

The second thing is that you need to fundamentally enjoy the creative process. It doesn't matter what medium you're using, if you don't enjoy the process of creating it for its own sake then you won't have the motivation to stick it out and make it as something you do for a living
 
I think, reading your issues, one of the easiest things you could do is just write it up as a fan fiction/original fiction if you cannot draw/do not want to draw/do not want to work with other artists. In that field, I do not think there is very much else you can do to help yourself or the situation. I think it is a wise decision not to collaborate for the reasons you stated, and forcing yourself to draw if you are not a fan of drawing would be silly.

If you just wrote it up and posted it to a site such as FictionPress or on here, or made your own site to carry it, no matter the similarities I am sure that big companies would not come looking for you and suing you. I think that some of the companies will have more important things to do than shut down every small time project that potentially slightly infringes on their rights.
If your trying to make a living out of this, then that is an entirely different story. You would have to track down anime companies and pitch to them if you wanted them to make your project.

Really, I think you are planning way too far ahead for your work and its potential success. Thinking about toys and merchandise and stuff, to me, seems like a very intense thing to be thinking about for something you have not started publishing yet. I admit I am not familiar with the wider internet writing community, but the idea of releasing merchandise on your stories seems a bit over the top unless it was getting millions of hits every day. I think if you tried starting small and focussed on building a solid fan base first, then you can start thinking about the future and what yo can do with it. If you go running head first into this with merchandise and stuff planned and that fails, I think that would be more of a confidence crusher than anything else.

Just don't be afraid to start small is all I can really say :)
 
Thanks to both of you for the advice. Means a lot since nowhere else I post this question has given me any responses. Yeah, I'm planning far ahead. And the main reason for that is I hate not being prepared for the future. I do wanna make this a career in the future. Yes, too far in advanced. But that's why I need to plan ahead; to have things that I know big companies would want to do already, i.e. merch. So to build up my skill as a writer I wanted to do fanfics of my favorite things, however I kept changing things up that lead to my own thing. Is there something I can do to keep myself more grounded in that specific universe? I feel like OCs are a quick way out of them so maybe I should cut them out & save them for future use. Anything else?
 
Planning far ahead in advance is a good plan for the future and with long term goals, but you need to focus on what you are actually writing about first, and no matter what plans you make, if you sold the idea to a bigger company or got them to help you, they are going to want a very big say in things and would probably create their own merchandise and such. The key thing you should be looking at now is what you are going to write and making a good idea first.
And changing things in fan fiction is what you should be doing as a fan fiction author, not just taking what they give you and merely rewriting little bits. If you want to do develop your skills, write the fan fiction you want to write however you want to write it and get feedback on how to improve. You need to have a story and the skills to write it before you can go selling ideas to companies.
 
Absolutely. For the fanfics themselves I feel as though I should start with existing material (canon characters & settings) & go from there. I hate to just copy things so I'll enter the mindset of say the people who make the movies & games for many things like Marvel & FMA; they keep everyone they've used before but put them in new situations with interactions they haven't had yet in a setting they themselves haven't entered but others have. Fairy Tail Ex: Natsu, Levy, Elfman & Bixlow (characters that don't interact with each other much in existing media) all go on a mission together to 8 Island (a restaurant that only Natsu has officially been to) to work for the weekend. The story would focus on their job, their relationships with each other & how the latter affects the former.

At least that feels the most comfortable to me, as I avoid any of the pitfalls that lead me to original creations. Does that sound like a proper starting point?
 
Hi. Here's a snarky flowchart.

1) Are you in high school? If so, you have time to plan your life later. The fact that you already know what you want to do in general terms is putting you ahead of the curve.
2) Are you in university? If so, talk to your professors about how people get into writing.
3) Are you out of schooling in general? If so, find someone smarter than I am who knows more about the industry. I don't think anyone here is actually published so this probably isn't the best place to ask.
4) Are you not yet in high school? If so, seriously don't worry about it. You have a lot of time left.

I don't think you mentioned it in your post, but really you don't have to have anything planned in specifics until you get into university. Once you're there you have people paid to know about the industry and teach students about it. I also don't think many of the people here can answer the questions you want answered with the specificity you probably want.

But, unless you're writing for Star Trek or Star Wars, making a living on fan fiction is a long shot. You're best off doing original fiction and maybe writing a fan fic here or there to test out a concept before using it for real.

Hope this non-answer helps.
 
It does. And I do wanna create original fiction in the future, I just wanted to write fanfics as a way to improve my skills. And yeah, I'm going back to college in January for Electronic Media Arts. I'm not sure if that has any significance to my posts, but I'm going. ^^; Thanks for the input. Not sure why you seem to think there was snark in your post, since I didn't think there was. Thanks again.
 
Well to be honest, if I'm understanding right I assume you mean that you want to make something out of an original idea and that's not bad, but like how Rediamond said you should probably calm down ad think about all those types of things later. I myself don't know about any authors who've had a franchise so big they've made figurines out of it...okay there's a lot xD but anyways creating your own story isn't bad! You're not forced to start off with fanfiction, hell I myself wish I could actually write down and dedicate to all my story ideas. Also don't worry abouth whether if what you're doing has been done before, all you need to add to things is your own spin, nothing more.

Also if you really wanna become big I suggest you shoot for movies or hopefully a tv series or a series lika Avatar at least..you know, western. Anime maybe be a particular style but ifyou're talking about the Japanese anime then that's pretty much impossible to break into unless you're Japanese, they're not very willing to adapt western material (unless it's like a classic fairy tale or something like that)
 
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