Starting iHoMM (sequel) and unifinished chapter NSFW chapter

Hello,

I want to apologize for not giving news for a long time.

About my retarded life

I was struggling with the heat and trying to find ways to not live without fridge. I tried using thermal cooker for botched perpetual stew but bacterial waste products started to accumulate after 3-4 days lol, now I'm thinking about canning with oil (preserved/comfit meat) because I can't find cooking pot that goes to 120°C/248°F. Let's pray that I don't die from botulism lol.

About NSFW chapter 39B

I couldn't find the motivation to finish the current chapter, which google doc is available there It's disjointed and there are planned parts that I haven't done yet.

Instead, my mind was pulled by the sequel iHoMM.

About Isekai Heroes of Memes and Maidens (1st chapter draft)

The weather started to cool down in my country, so I've been able to focus on my work with a sane mind.

This google slideshow contains the first chapter of the sequel (WIP)

It doesn't look like much lol...

Random ramblings about Storytelling

I have been using a neat software for diagrams to help me plan the story. Look at this! You can't read because it's full of spoiler, but it helps a lot to find the good ordering for deciding of the content of chapters.

My thinking about writing matured a bit from it. I've thought about what creates 'emotion', and the result was this deconstructed Hero's Journey:

Yoko Taro made a speech in GDC about his writing method, and explains that emotion comes from the friction between two context. For instance, the situation "a person dies" isn't enough to arouse emotion. The minimum requirement according to him is to have another context like "the person was a young girl".

I thought the core of his idea wasn't entirely conveyed through that example. The minimum to make "death" sad is the context of "not wanting to die" like "having a bright future", "being loved", "have made a lot of efforts that are not rewarded yet", "wanting to support children", etc. Yoko Taro further expand his example by adding "the person was a young bride in the day of her wedding" which implies all of that desire to live (made the effort to overcome the hurdles of romance, being loved, and promised to a bright future).

So, basic emotion comes from the friction between "circumstances" of the plot (a deadly event) and "desires". This creates empathy, the reader might feel bad for the character, but there is still a sense of distance.

"Sympathy" breaks this boundary and make the reader feels the same anxiety as the character. According to other writers, this occurs when the inner friction between "desires" and "fears" of a character is shared to the reader. It creates a sense of intimacy that helps the reader being invested in the character like a friend would do.

So I think the friction between "circumstances", "desires" and "fears" are the building blocks for emotion. Circumstances present an ordeal. Desires envision a good ending. Fears forces the a choice between two goods and two evils.

Then, the question that follows immediately after is "how do I resolve emotion?"

For that, I think there are two ways to go about it:

-the circumstances cannot be solved through action

-the circumstances can be solved through action

In the first case, the character will go through the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargain, depression, acceptance).

In the second case, the character can wander between the 4 stages of grief without landing on acceptance.

At some point, the character must create a dramatic reversal of the circumstances. That's when I realized that the "Hero's Journey" provides the ingredients to win in the beginning of the story as foreshadowing. The mentor provides the magical tool/sword to overcome the future trials, but the character isn't mature to fully wield it yet. The allies and enemies the character encounter will provide the seeds of wisdom that help the character grow.

All of these foreshadowed help are "forgotten" mid-story so they can fully bloom through a "last ditch effort" of the character to be "reborn" as someone else who can fully wield all their gifts and surpass the limits of the past self. This rebirth must be deeply meaningful and realistic for the character like overcoming a flaw, a fear, a desire, etc.

After the victory, the circumstances and the characters have changed, and the new manifestation of the friction creates a new emotion for the reader.

In the end, I haven't truly included all the steps of the Hero's Journey (besides they change according to the version).

From reading manga and LN, I think the bestowal of the "magical tool" must at least appear quickly because people like the feeling of being OP. Even if the story becomes full of hardship later on.

I hope all of this will help me to provide you with the best entertainment and smut.

See you, OwOtrucked