Ok. So you've read a lot of manga and watched a lot of anime. You’re tired of the high school hero boy or girl spiel and you've decided that you want to write your own magical adventure story. You break out your MS Word, you have the characters, the plot, the theme, but what about the setting?
You think about it, and you've decided against your character travelling because coming up with new towns every chapter makes your head hurt. So your hero will be in stationary location and occasionally go into other locations within a city.
As this will be an adventure story, lots of magical beings that appear, lots of crazy characters to confront our hero. You start thinking about it. You realize that your location has to be somewhere that a lot of people pass through. You begin your list:
- A bar
- A hospital
- A police station
- A family house
- A station of some sort (bus or train)
- A school (doh!)
Since this is manga, and you're writing a magical adventure story, you realize that your target audience is most likely young adults. You cross off the bar from your list.
In quick succession, you throw out a hospital and a police station because you realize that you have no idea how they work.
A family house you realize is a bit restricting. Are there really enough people in your family that's in conflict with your hero to sustain a series when your idea gets famous? You cross out the family house.
A train station looks intriguing. Lots of people go in an out daily. You rack your brain to find out why you don't seem to have ever read a manga set at a train station. After some thought you realize its that it's too public for magical happenings and because no one ever comes back. They just pass through.
You come to the last option with dread. How did this happen? Aren't you going to be the original? The one who ditched the school setting? But as you tick of your requirements: for young readers, stationary magical adventure, a place you actually know something about, and semi-private with re-occurring characters, you realize that you're pretty much defeated.
A school it is. *doh!*
6 comments:
Trudat! I guess manga-ka have to stay within the status quo if they want money.
*lol* It's less about the status quo and more about practicality and time constraints,
If a mangaka is drawing about 20 pages per week, a school is a perfect setting to keep meeting up with new characters, run into old ones, yet not worry about drawing new locations every time.
"...As this will be an adventure story, lots of magical beings that appear, lots of crazy characters to confront our hero. You start thinking about it. You realize that your location has to be somewhere that a lot of people pass through. You begin your list:
- A bar
- A hospital
- A police station
- A family house
- A station of some sort (bus or train)
- A school (doh!)"
Wait a minute...
"After some thought you realize its that it's too public for magical happenings and because no one ever comes back. They just pass through."
Lots of people come back. They're the ones who *work at* the train station.
Compared to bars, hospitals, police stations, train stations, etc., schools actually don't get a lot of people passing through. Usually it's the same students and workers who commute back and forth every weekday - they don't have customers, patients, witnesses, travelers, etc. dropping in all the time.
In terms of the # of people passing through, I'd find a school more comparable to an office building or a factory. Outsiders do show up sometimes, but the place doesn't need to have them come in every day to keep the place running.
Hi Anonymous,
You are right that lots of people come back. I was thinking it from the perspective of the main character being younger..and therefore unlikely to be hanging around a train or bus station for any length of time to run into and get into enough trouble for the reoccurring characters that pass through daily.
Though, you're right I suppose that the main character could simply show up everyday at the same time and meet the same people on their way to and from somewhere.
"...the reoccurring characters that pass through daily..."
Some characters recur even more! *They* don't pass through the same transit station daily, they *work shifts* at the same transit station daily - ticket sellers, cops or security guards, custodians, vendors who have kiosks in the station, buskers, etc.
*lol* I live in a city that has no one at a train station (skytrain). No cops, no vendors, no one selling tickets, buskers, etc
So that setting isn't what i'd choose simply because from my experience, a station is a dead place.
From your experience , it seems to be a busier place, so perhaps you'd have better luck with that as your setting.
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