Manga story structure

[telophase]

If you don't read the manga blogs, right now you're missing a go-round on story structure and books vs. serials sparked by a post by Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading and Christopher Butcher's review of tentopet's Fool's Gold.

Chronologically:

1. Johanna Draper Carlson's essay about reviewing serialized chapters, in response to someone challenging her reading of Mail Order Ninja.
2. Christopher Butcher's review of Fool's Gold.
3. Queenie Chan is asked by Newsarama to write a bit on the state of OEL/global manga, and responds to the above two by detailing the story structure she followed in The Dreaming.
4. Butcher responds, challenging Chan's perception of the three-act structure she used.
5. Heidi Macdonald at The Beat jumps in also.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I agree with Butcher that just because a story is told in three volumes does not dictate what goes in what volume, regardless of whether the first volume must come to some sort of satisfying conclusion or not. However, I found Queenie Chan's essay a little hard to follow, and I'm not sure she was actually saying that Act I must be in volume 1 and Act II in volume 2, or if she did, what she meant by it.

I also seriously doubt that the vast majority of readers of manga in the western world judge OEL volumes differently from Japanese volumes based on their knowledge of first publication by chapter vs. first publication by volume. For one thing, I am not so sure that most of them are even aware of that; for another, I think it's putting the cart before the horse. The pacing and structure is different partly because of the writer's knowledge of how it will come out: it's not being interpreted differently by readers because of the readers' knowledge of chapter vs. tankoubon.

Finally, I do think that a lot of OEL first volumes have much less plot and pay-off, and more set-up that Japanese first volumes, but a) it is also a frequent problem with Japanese manga, b) that is a common beginner's mistake in many media. Read a lot of novel manuscripts, and you frequently find that the story actually begins on page 10, or 40, or 112.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Queenie Chan's complaints about having to split her story into three books reminded me of Edward Reardon's complaints in New Grub Street. (Reardon blames this "artificial format" for his writer's block, drives himself crazy trying to produce for it, falls into poverty, is abandoned by his wife, goes insane and...yeah.)

The second volume ought to have been much easier work than the first; it proved far harder. Messieurs and Madames and critics are wont to point out the weaknesses of second volumes; they are generally right, simply because a story which would have made a tolerable book refuses to fill three books. Reardon's story was in itself weak, and this second volume had to consist almost entirely of laborious padding. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0375761101/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-7621768-8851001#) (Search for "three volume"; the quote is on page 123.)

A note at the back of my copy says that the three-volume format was standard for most of the 19th century. It was popular with lending libraries because they could charge a separate fee for each volume, but "abruptly fell out of favor" at the turn of the century. XD.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I should mention that the reason this is so hilarious is that New Grub Street was originally published in three volumes and a lot of it is, in fact, laborious padding. XDXDXD

(I love this book, Reardon is always saying things like, "It is no use, I shall simply have to write" before seating himself at desk in an anguish of misery.)

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

how interesting! (i find that perhaps i am the only person intrigued by steady beat enough to own it. possibly it is the hint of gay i sense? that and east coast rising are the only OEL releases from tokyo pop that i'm interested in, really.)

i think christopher butcher has an especially good point when he says that they need better editors. seriously, the first chapter of naruto has you totally introduced to everyone and into the story in twenty pages; that kind of pacing is necessary.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yeah... contrary to that very peculiar digression on TV pilots, in fact one of the things you learn if you write for TV is how to get a story going very quickly. (Which tends to give me the opposite problem, which is trying to cram 300 pages of story into 150 and having moments go by too quickly, as opposed to the more common one of spending 148 pages slowly and carefully setting everything up, and then beginning the actual plot two pages before the end of the first volume.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, I bought Scott McCloud's Making Comics the other day. I'm still reading the introduction, and I already highly recommend it. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Tina Anderson and I have been talking about critics etc over on the manga_talk entry. :)


And what this whole thing has really been making me want to do is to fit a Shakespearean five-act structure into a three-book series. Or to pull a Boogiepop Phantom and tell the entire thing completely out of sequence as if it were Slaughterhouse-5.