Transcript for:
Writing Tips and Lessons from Arcane

are we still sisters nothing is ever going to change that I always knew you'd come back what's going on make her go away please okay I want to start this with a real true fact about Arcane that should be incredibly encouraging to all writers there's a giant misconception that whenever you start learning anything you're basically starting at the bottom of a mountain and you've got this long long journey ahead of you you are a white belt and the way it works is that maybe after years and years of hard work and confusion and suffering you'll progress through all the other belts and maybe finally earn your black belt and the thing that's crazy about arcan is that these guys had never written a story before of course they had experience with other types of media but Arcane was the first full narrative that Christian link and Alexi had ever worked on in terms of Storytelling itself they were beginners just like me just like you and they went from white belt straight to Black Belt they just got to the mountain and teleported right to the top and it goes to show that as much as experience is undoubtedly important it is still possible to get there just by making really really smart decisions it is possible for the first star you ever write to be on the level Something Like Arcane so not to get your hopes up this doesn't make it any less hard but I think it's worth keeping in mind that is possible so let's look into this let's see what some of these super duper smart decisions were this is going to be a video of writing tips and lessons and tools as usual but I am only using quotations from these three people Christian link and Alex Z the two creators and head writers of Arcane and Amanda Overton another main writer they hired and I say I'm only using quotations that's not entirely true cuz my goal is to mine these gems of writing wisdom for every last drop of value I can get out of them so it's going to be quotes plus my own extrapolations deductions inductions Etc going to play a quote talk about it play a quote talk about it that's going to be the plan here here are the major topics if you want to skip around and I'll leave time stamps for the individual lessons themselves all so first I'm going to start with what I think is the most important piece of advice if you're looking to hear the Arcane creators explain one storytelling element that sums up the writing in the show listen to this comment from Christian Link in the AMA good story in my mind is all about hard choices I think Alex and I gravitate towards stories that leave characters with costly or even impossible choices and man Overton said in the same AMA answering the question how they wrot the finale to encapsulate so much emotion and meaning she said I think of this in terms of what a character hopes and fears you have to know what these are and make sure the audience knows too and use them to tug a character towards impossible decisions so that is lesson number one give your characters impossible decisions kind of the basic piece of advice to deal often here is give your characters a goal something they want more than anything else and then conflict comes from throwing obstacles in the way of that and that can work but what the Arcane writers are saying is to take the next step here give your characters impossible decisions meaning give your characters two things they want want more than anything else or give them two sets of consequences that they fear more than anything else and have the narrative guide them to a Crossroads where they must choose between those two things am I powder or am I Jinx do I choose to be alone or do I choose my enemy do I choose my daughter or my city or alternatively do I choose my daughter or my city and you can make it way more complex as well VI isn't just choosing between her sister and her girlfriend she's choosing whether or not to give up on her sister she's choosing whether or not to accept that her sister is gone forever Mel isn't just deciding whether to support Jace or not she's deciding between two parts of her own identity the ruthless Marda as defined and trained by her mother or the merciful little girl who valued peace and you can go through every main character and you can see how they all got these two prong decisions that pitted thems against thems two things I want or two sets of things that I don't want two sets of dire consequences and this is a huge part of what makes Arcane so character driven that is climaxes don't just come down to moments that mean something for the character no instead we get moments where characters are really defining who they are by their decisions and on that note Christian said about Silo at the end of the season he realizes far too late what it's like to have something to lose just like Vander radical Notions begin to stumble when your loved ones are threatened by your ideology so our second lesson here find complexity in the character's relationship to change development and change is something which is necessary for great characters but it doesn't need to stop there characters don't need to realize that they've changed they can resist it they can be ignorant of it they can realize but too late they can oppose the change they see in other characters or they can deny that change or fight others over that change and that too can be a rich source of conflict and to just combine these first two lessons we now have such a perfect model of how to set up these impossible decisions that results in a complex relationship to change what we see with VI with Vander with sule with Mel with Heimerdinger is that the character starts out with one goal and they fight so hard for that goal that they become a different person and that person secretly develops another goal that the character isn't even aware of until it's threatened and then they have to choose between it and their first goal and we see other characters becoming hostile to that deviation it's a great template another beautiful stated version of this impossible Choice phenomenon to use as a template listen to this quote all for V and for Jinx the central question is can you ever forgive a monster how far are you willing to go for your sibling is there a line where you just can't go for your sibling and you just have to say sorry but this is where I have to leave you he was talking specifically about the sister's relationship but it's terrific advice in general to ask this question what is the line your character won't Cross or even more broadly what is a line that some people will not cross you can build a character around that you can build an arc around that you can build a cast of characters with a variety of arcs around that and with that looks like it's not the big goal with the obstacles thrown in the way it's a plot that pushes characters further and further to that line and we have the characters trying to find ways not to cross that line and circumstances will stop those efforts and other characters will also try to stop those efforts but inevitably they are brought right to that line they cannot stop themselves from having to face that decision and then we just get to see what happens see what the character decides and on the same note on top of how to frame these uncrossable lines these decisions Christian said characters like Jinx and CLE constantly murder and manipulate can an audience still root for them speed of a dance between their many risky actions and choices the finale of episode 3 was scary because both VI and powder really mess up and make terrible decisions at the same time we didn't want these choices to alienate them entirely and man added a character making terrible decisions is so much more forgivable if you too have felt what they're feeling I always say I love characters that do the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons everything else is boring so Lesson Four use empathy to prevent characters flaws and mistakes from alienating your audience actually sure you've all had the experience of watching a horror movie and screaming at the screen don't go in there you idiot and writers excuse this by saying no it's good for characters to be flawed and to make mistakes but when characters are just making mistakes to drive the plot forward that's when you alienate them from the audience meaning it undermines why the audience connected in the first place horror movie characters are the audience standings we identify with them they are us experiencing the story through their eyes but once they make decisions we wouldn't make that's it I cannot connect anymore and there's something in Latin okay do not read the Latin read it what the read it out delore no no no arcane's characters make so many mistakes but we're always on board because it never contradicts the reason we connect on the contrary it's always in line with it's caused by the reason we connect these mistakes are often the most relatable things about the characters and even whether or not even when we disagree and we would never do that there still always something there that makes us go I totally get the underlying emotion even if I wouldn't make that particular decision continuing on the topic of character templates to build your characters around here are two that are kind of connected during the early phases of development we always talked about everyone's chip on their shoulder suos was being the dirty little thing never being enough always having topside look down on him he could never quite get past it and even if it would take his life to escape that existence so be it he had nothing to lose and Amanda said Jinx and powder before her was always desperate to prove herself worthy worthy of her sister 's faith in her worthy of soo's faith in her we shouldn't have to prove ourselves worthy of love but that is a struggle we all face in so many different ways so these are two more qualities to build a character around give them a chip on their shoulder or give them something to prove to dig into these a little bit the first one a chip on your shoulder it's an interesting idiom the official definition is a deeply ingrained grievance or feeling of resentment often deriving from a sense of inferiority and marked by aggressive behavior and you can see it's kind of the flip side of our second category here I think the main difference being that something to prove doesn't necessarily have resentment either yet or at all and doesn't have as overt of a sense of inferiority probably has some of that under the service but not necessarily I think you can look at Jason you can see a primary example of that so whichever aspect you want to focus on the positive or the negative give your character this kind of motivator I want to prove that I am worthy of love I want to prove that there's science to Magic I want to prove I'm not just the family Outcast or that I'm not just a dirty little nobody from the unders City who will never impact this world I think it's such an effective template because it tells you exactly what this character needs to do it guides individual interactions and also tells you what aspect of your central conflict to use to kind of rope this character into the main conflict don't just make war between pil over and z and have the characters reacting to that shape that conflict in a way that hurts Mel's dignity shape it in a way that makes sickle feel weak shape it in a way that makes Jinx feel unloved okay so still on the topic of character creation I just want to go through a bunch of the starting points that the Arcane writers talk about using cuz there really are a lot and they're all good listen to Christian talking about Jinx it's sprung from a question that we just as audience members and players had you know like there things that are pretty easy to declare on the surface level right she's a loud chaotic dangerous character she's a weapons Tinker she is kind of you know Larger than Life personality but when it gets to like the why is she the way you know she is like that there's that's where we ended up with some pretty different theories and and I think that just felt like people want to answer that you know like that was she the same when she was younger was she very different you know was she shy was she really out to kind of prove her own worth and that kind of stuff what was the thing that happened uh that really broke you know little powder into pieces and and um let her kind of grow into Jinx so once you're acquainted with their character their personalities their goals Etc ask questions about their life why are they like this were they always like this what changed them what were their childhood goals these are all great and also just more generally just find the most interesting questions to ask about your characters construct your story a way that asks those questions and then answers them in meaningful ways here's a major example this that Alex explains and I think this is a really interesting idea it's it's really kind of a blessing I guess when you when you can start out with sort of a built-in question like vi vi was introduced first and Jinx comes later and Jinx is this enemy of VI and she's got you know this this ax to grind you know with VI but you you really don't have a lot of idea why you know like when when she joined the league uh we did we had a lot of uh a lot of like I guess promotional efforts where which were sort of like this mysterious character is coming at like you know out of nowhere and really just sort of sabotaging uh or feels like she's gunning for Vi like the one of the things that I thought was really creative um for the for the you know the web team was that they uh they took VI's uh biography page the one that shows her abilities both actually and sort of like had the sort of spray spray paint graffiti over it uh that suddenly appeared you know when Jinx was coming out and so uh you know like you but but we never told anyone you know exactly what it was that went down between the two of them um and you know I think there was this this big question from the beginning like are they sisters are they related and what went on and so you know like Christian said that was that was the question to unpack start with a really strong emotion strong enough that the audience becomes curious about it or alternatively start with a really defined relationship and then find the interesting story that leads us there Alex continues uh you know we really asked ourselves in the beginning was you know like people know these characters as Champions when they're grown up up but like will it will it matter will it resonate to them um you know the fact that they've been separated if we don't if we can't understand you know the the the the the reason you know that Jinx would like what what emotional background would make it that Jinx can be so uh so fixated and so obsessed with VI and so you know ultimately we we decided you know that like in order to in order for them being sisters to matter at all we have to see where it began and we have to see why that relationship is so significant made such an impression on Jinx and so you know that really really was the focus in the very beginning was saying like we need them to be as close as possible we need this relationship to matter as much as possible um you know in order to in order to I guess justify uh the the desire to see them um or rather the the the pain of seeing them split apart and the desire to see them come back for the strong emotion to be meaningful where do we need to start what progression gets us there what are all the steps what do we feel at each juncture what scenes come can we build around those steps and those feelings this is my favorite type of brainstorming because it's not just starting with Standalone independent ideas I think the best ideas of the stage are ideas that generate other ideas once we have something like hatred that tells the whole story and tells us a structure for that story next very similar listen to this Christian clip there's definitely something about an authentic feeling of what it feels like to be VI or Jinx you know in the game I mean if you play VI in be of Legends you know that if there's a fight you go in first you know and you don't make it out life um and so you don't know that when you just look up a page about the character you just kind of have to play her to know that based on her like gameplay kit on her abilities and that kind of stuff and so it's definitely something that I think we want to respect because you know this is how this feels also offending to her audience and by the way it is worth admitting that Arcane was starting ahead of most of us with all these character creation things cuz they had the set of characters who already fleshed out in a different medium but honestly I don't really think that matters too much even without all that with new characters you've just just made ask how does it feel to be this character or what is the momentto moment experience of this character and pay attention to how he talks about the feeling he doesn't just say exciting or Fearless he's looking for descriptions of feelings that translate to behavior okay moving on on a similar note they're always in this one map you know in this one environment and you start to wonder like where do they sleep what do they eat what is their normal life like you know like what kind of families would they have so you got your crazy dangerous Doom girl character and what is she doing all day well she's going to be at her workbench she's going to be cracking up the rock and roll making explosives she's going to be doing experiments that fail in explosive fashion she's going to be antagonizing henchmen who are on her own side she'll be hosting maab tea parties with mannequins of dead family members and also just you know freaking out a lot having paranoid arguments with herself talking to her holis Nations throwing tantrum missing her sister the reason why I think this step is so important whether you consciously stop to think about it or just let it flow it's is that there's such a great distance between like the character profile info and what you actually write I can have all that stuff figured out the central conflict the central goals the core personality traits the backstory the flaws the strengths how do we go from that to a scene it's all these little details about who a character is that will populate your scenes this is the stuff that's going to give you material to use in translating that structure into words on a page okay next on a similar note here you know I think one of the things that they they did really early on that that helped us quite a bit with um you know working on story and sort of developing these characters was we had pretty much from the outset of the uh of the writer room these the sort of individual themes for all of the different characters and those those themes had you know basically they were like two or three minutes and they had their own sort of Journey right sort of tracking the uh the Arc of the character and it's it's really stunning how when someone manages to capture that uh that Essence in in music right and and with the right instrument how how it uh I don't know it it infuses you I guess as you're sort of working um you know it was I think I think many of the writers would it's like what you listen to in your headphones right as you're as you're staring at a blank page wondering why you ever committed to this profession uh this is a well-known Tarantino ISM so I've heard he apparently starts with the soundtrack he finds very early on the music that will characterize his scenes his big moments his characters music that puts him into the mood the mindset of these people so he can write them better I think what this is about is that there's always this undefinable aspect to who a character is it's a feeling that you can't capture on like the profile sheet but just because it's undefinable that doesn't mean it's worth ignoring find media that expresses that quality and use that to guide you and this can be something like music but it can also be like an aesthetic Could Be Fashion it could be clips of other media it could be a color palette whatever it is find it use it okay next also in a similar vein listen to the samanda clip you're like always trying to get into the heads of your characters in any way you can I did have one of the right ERS teach me how to shoot a gun like a sniper gun right before I was going to write Caitlyn's episode last year I would prefer not to have a punching bag in my living room but that's just what we do right now so I actually never thought about how my Kung Fu translates to learning how advise a fighter this is partially again about getting into that mode that mindset but it's also about more than that do things your characters do live a day in their life and see how you feel see what you think about when you're doing the things they do actively trying out something like sparring or shooting a gun it's going to give you all these little details and emotions that fill out the picture painting and make things feel authentic or it could even do way more than that it could change the way you think about the character entirely it could change the whole fi to a character it could even change where their story goes okay this next quote is from a different mental move but still in the same general ballpark Alex said in the AMA for me the best moments come from characters when they surprise you it's easy to feel nipotent or omnicient when you're a Storyteller you're usually one step ahead but sometimes as you brainstorm all the ways a character might handle a situation or argue a point they say or do something you hadn't considered in the best instances it knocks you off kilter as much as their opponent in the scene SL story I guess this is all to say try to make your characters clever than you so basically forget where you want a story or scene to go what the characters need to do and adopt a mindset of letting your characters write their own story let them tell you how a scene is going to play out let them write their own character profile sheet let them fill in their own little details okay next this one is a bit of a season 2 spoiler if you're not a league player and don't know the lore of specific Champions I'm going to mute the name and description here that's kind of spoiler but I have it subtitled on screen if you do want to know who Christian is talking about you know remember when we put out put out for example certain stories were released how there was kind of an outcry you know and like what kind of nuance there is um among you know the perception of her audience so I think a lot of it was just really trying to get a good idea of like what what is it that makes these characters special in you know the eyes of our audience and and trying to respect that and then finding I think um what we have to say with with the story that we're going to craft but so this is just a fantastic question to ask where is the Nuance so let say you got your manic Pixie Girl where is the Nuance here what makes them feel like a real person is it something about their past is it something about their relationship something about what they suffer from or how they suffer and this other question he's asking is also what gets you to the Nuance fine this is an archetype we know we're familiar with it but what do we have to say about it the action girl we want to tell a story about how this character struggles when she's confronted by problems she can't hit we want to tell a story about how this character is settle to avoidance we want to tell a story about the sexuality and romantic life of a character like this okay now coming at this from a totally different direction from the adaptation angle listen to this fascinating way Alex describes the situation that he and Christian were in at the start of all this the characters that you see in the game are like the most embellished version of themselves you have the sense of who these people are in their most extreme moments and in the most dire situations and of course in combat uh and so really the work for us was you know honoring those Highs but then finding the lows find the lows that respect the highs or more generally find the other side of your character and again I think this applies Way Beyond just the situation of adapting a video game the beginning of characters generally so often is built from these highes that he's talking about the idealized mode you come up with an Adventure character a daring Rogue an ambitious dreamer whatever it is or you begin with some idealized low whether it's mood-wise a brooding character beset by all these woses and traumas or low activity wise have a slice of Life hangout Vibe story and you come up with these Slice of Life hangout Vibe characters and you know what they're like in the Cal parts of your story but when things get more serious and higher six at that point you don't know how to write them anymore you don't know who they are in that mode and chances are you're going to need to develop that so your characters feel like real human beings and so their arcs feel like real human stories now Alex is not addressing here how to find that other side of the coin for characters sounds like there's a lot of options that they were considering and that is a process I would absolutely love to hear them talk about but once you do figure out here's what he says is important Jinx in particular her Mania her wildness you know was so much the signature of her in the game and you know certainly something that you feel like is the aspect of jinx that players uh uh appeal to finding that quiet Human Side Right the thoughtful side the emotional side in in so many ways you're always asking yourself if I was going to look at this and be like Jinx wouldn't do that Jinx would just say something wild and blow something up but I think it it it really is just sort of like playing with that balance and finding a way to make it feel like the transitions between those two states are authentic and believable I love the way he puts that even if you're not sure whether the thing you found is the absolute best fit ever what can make it feel right and feel like it fits is the transition between the low's and highs if the transition is Justified if that feels organic and realistic then there's a good chance we'll just accept the whole bundle when you look at the lows they did find for Jinx for powder with her feelings of isolation The Bullying the trauma and obviously her extreme attachment to VI and similarly when you look at the they found for a VI the way she looks up to Vander her sense of loyalty her love for her siblings the leadership position she has with them her playfulness her romantic side it's also easy to see how one side translates directly into the other the justifications are just so welld developed here okay and the all-encompassing metal lesson from all these character creation methods is that the Arcane writers used all of them and this applies equally to other aspects of the story listen to this I'm pretty sure we explored every format and way to write a Bible and season tracking document I would be surprised if we has we if we had less than 20 or 30 so use all your tools don't just pick one and use that and try to get everything you can out of it the arane Raiders picked everyone they picked 30 they did everything they could to develop these characters everything they could to develop the arcs the plot everything any little thing that could possibly help any possible New Angle whatever they need to do they did that and I'm not saying you need to use each one I'm saying just definitely don't be shy about how many tools you're using from your toolbox it is your toolbx the tools AR meant to be used all of them you make your tools happier when you use them so use them all if you need to if it's helpful okay let's switch gears here and talk about plot and Arcane is so character- driven that a lot of what we already said about character is about developing plot especially the impossible decision stuff the lining won't cross Etc and I think in light of that especially it's pretty bizarre to hear Alex talk about early drafts like this I think the biggest change from the way that we were looking at it before was it was very plot heavy right it's very focused on kind of like what's the problem that has to get solved who's going to fight who so what does it mean for something to be plot heavy I think there's a pretty common problem with beginner writers and experienced writers I think there's just a thing that happens with writing that you plan out a story that's really interesting we got Intrigue and fight scenes and Mysteries we're building this series of events is going to lead us to some big thing but in the end when you look back at it it feels like that's all it is just a series of events like Alex said it's just introducing problems and then the problems being solved the way I've heard other people put this is like the story has no soul now does every story need a Soul no I don't think so we here at sh headquarters work on the full cup model of Storytelling you can fill your cup with lots of different things you can put in more character and less plot more plot and less character big themes in World building and then pretty basic plot and character one super fun character and pretty standard fun adventure story don't try to over stuff your cup don't fill it with anything rotten but more or less if the cup is full you've got a good story a series of events that's really compelling on its own may not need anything else and with this early plot heavy draft of Arcane season 1 it's hard to know exactly what was lacking but from the way episode of beyond the Riff is talking about this we can speculate it sounds like what happened is that they had events that were in line with character motivations on paper but it wasn't coming across in the story it felt like here's the character look at the character and the personalities okay now here's the problem here's the solution here's the problem here's the solution here's event number one okay now we're moving to event number two and that's going to bring us to event number three but it was all separated for that initial character focus and then seems like having people like Amanda on board helped write the character back into the story it gave voice to the character conflicts and needs and wants underlying the general plot points bringing that to the Forefront through runting good dialogue like this line Amanda has a really honest voice in Her dialogue that is just really grounded emotionally I remember this moment when Alex and I were really wrestling with the last words that Jinx was saying to VI in season 1 and then like Amanda took the script and solved it in like I don't know an hour I thought maybe you could love me like you used to even though I'm different but you changed too so here's to the new us and man I just wrote that and Alex were just like yep that's that's it also ranging the moving parts of scenes that more character elements were brought to the Forefront in those scenes kind of like the little touch Amanda is talking about here yes I would love to bring by back back into Caitlyn's mind in this episode in some way I wrote like something about missing VI also arranging the scenes themselves arranging the moving parts of the entire season in a way that focused the character power at the heart of the narrative I'm quite proud of the cold open to the like whole beginning of the season with the bridge dear the cold open used to be the cold open from episode 3 when Sil was drowning I sort of went out on a limb being like so guys I know you h ired me to help out with the show and whatever but you need to change the Pilot that's a lovely poetic image right but it wasn't telling the story of the series which is these two sisters being torn apart so that's the concrete advice here if your story feels soulless like a dry series of events breathe life into it by bringing character elements to the Forefront every step of the way this point that Christian talks about in the AMA and in lots of interviews is another huge part of this process many writers talk about being character driven without actually writing character driven stories if you ask your hero whether or not they will help save the world from an alien invasion the answer is always yes duh thus the character doesn't really have a decision to make the sole question that remains is how are they going to overcome their obstacle which is entertaining but doesn't drive the story forward with full autonomy so I think this is another huge thing that addresses soullessness create a chain of events where it's only character choice that drives the storry forward this term full autonomy that means arranging the series of events so that they're not automatic they're not based on Circ irance use stakes and consequences and personal conflicts to make it so that characters repeatedly find themselves standing at actual moments of agency with the story could realistically go the other way and the decision of what to do is left entirely to the character and let me just say I would absolutely give my left eyeball and a kidney and a lung to get my hands in early drafts of Arcane season 1 I would so love to see that without that a lot of this is just speculation on what the problem was and how they fixed it but from what we have I think this is a pretty reasonable picture to paint that kind of concretized Christian's last Point even more listen to what he says here in the the AMA we didn't use one system to map the character arcs but rather focus on them individually and then mapped them against the world plot in other words we considered the world around the characters as its own entity with an arc except that it only moved forward based on character choices that way it feels like Stakes are higher and it truly feels like their actions have consequences that put the entire city at risk that is a really really interesting system again I think this is a way of putting that last tip into practice but what this emphasizes is how to make the story feel like it has weight it's not just a bunch of people squabbling and having heart to hearts and ly punching each other know everything that happens matters I see clear cause and effect at every step of the story I think this formulation also helps you bring the setting to life it's not just where things take place it's dynamic in all these ways it pushes and pulls as a result of character action on a similar note still on this topic of soullessness here's another Christian quote from the AMA crafting the episodes and scenes in a fashion that builds the right tension over time and tracks all the parallel stories wasn't clicking yet at the time so Alex and I getting help from the outside and learning more about how to break an episode really unlock the episodes to be stronger so just to focus on the first part of this quote I think it's worth pointing out that he talks about not just tracking the character arcs not just tracking the series of events what happens next and what happens after that Etc he's saying it's important to track the buildup of tension throughout your story track that aspect of the audience experience as its own thing cuz you can have a series of events that have a clear chain of causality and progression and still somehow it feels like there's just no tension at all so what do you actually do how do you make sure there is tension what is this feeling we're calling tension so I mean tension is one thing pulling on another so we can build that in the form of a comp ition between two parties Vander versus silo or Z versus piltover or two values responsibility versus progress the individual versus society or two possibilities will they won't they will VI win or will she lose which identity will Jinx pick or just a general question where we don't know the possibilities what happens now what happened to VI Post Time skip how does such a sweet little girl become this Maniac you're not just taking the audience to what happens next you're posing questions and making them feel the question you're using parts of the story to pull the audience along to EXP experience the next part of the story that's a separate framework it's a type of big picture to construct and emphasize separate from like the actual events okay now going to the second half of what he said he used this interesting term break an episode this is industry lingo some of you lowly beginners may not be familiar with it I know what it is because of my vast reading experience and not at all because Alex D kindly explained it to me when I asked hey what does that term mean on Reddit but anyway yes let's read Alex's explanation breaking an episode at least in as much as we've been exposed to it is an industry ter for essentially figuring out the bones of its story in the case of Arcane sltv this is generally something The Writer's room will do together as a group it struck me as weird initially since it feels more like you're assembling it than breaking it we usually use it to refer to when we're rolling up our sleeves make sure that section of story is structured well enough to move to outline script where a writer will fill out the finer details specifics of action blocking potential environment prop details dialogue so Alex is describing a whole writing process here figure out the bones of your story first and work your way outwards this is almost definitely worth making a whole video about at some point but when he talks about finding the bones of a story thing he's saying is that it's not a process of like starting at a and then going to B and then writing C and then D until we get all the way to Z instead it's like okay here are the five main things in this episode and the process of assembling it and also what happens afterwards in the writer room involves piecing together story around those main elements what is the best configuration of scenes that will frame that bone in all of its Glory what is the best connected tissue to get from this to that was the best foundation for all of it to stand on and then only after that can you find the best in scene details to support that I think that's what this means your starting point is not the first scene of the story the first scene of an episode your starting point is the bones the main elements of the story are the main scenes in a story and then you're writing the story using those as a guiding principle instead of just what comes next as an example what it could mean again this is speculation but take episode three the bones might be the destruction of the sister's relationship the birth of jinx Jason Victor succeed that's our starting point or the bones are scenes themselves we got the vi fight scene we got the soo Vander scene the monkey bomb scene the powder Soo Co scene the hexx scene we Define those we figure out the best configuration for them and then we work outward and fill all of that out something like that I think I think it's so worth framing all this as part of the discussion of mitigating soullessness because what this is doing is really channeling everything through your most powerful scenes the moments you're most passionate about the moments you believe are most important the ones that get to the deepest most human emotions your story explores ideally if it's good those are the things which already have soul which already have life so if you can gear the more lifeless elements towards that there a way of kind of infusing the rest of your story with the power of those scenes okay and last note on this topic I think part of this characterization of soullessness or plot heaviness part of that is about the story not feeling human and real like we've talked about but I think part of it is also about the story not having identity and aside from just the story itself there's another aspect here that is crucial to giving a story that identity in the AMA a redditor asked how do you decide on the tone for Arcane it has adult themes and topics but presents them with such maturity despite being seemingly High fantasy was the tone decided from the beginning Alex answered tone was the original looming question we decided we needed to see VI and Jinx in their younger years as sisters in order to feel the loss and yearning as they struggled to reconnect but this also made the show feel more Kitty I remember calling Christian after having an epiphany that her tone could be more like that of the edge your anime I appreciated growing up no idea why this didn't occur sooner just hadn't felt as much like League at the time for me anime straddle that toneal line unlike anything else at the time the bridge from childhood to adulthood once that locked into place it got easier for me to find the story so find tone that will breathe life into your stories that's the lesson here an obvious first question what is tone especially if it's not story not plot not characters what is it exactly so I think tone is just an emotion but it's an emotion you find in four areas it's in the background of the story it's between beats of the story it's in how stuff happens it's presented as a secondary characteristic of most or all of the main elements of a story and for arain what was the specific tone that locked everything into place so Christian uses the word grimal as in Grim plus Whimsical you can find this emotional color of grim plus Whimsical in the backdrop of the story overall the setting of these twin steam cities you can find find it in all the little moments between beats either in little moments here or there that are not beats themselves or just in the ways that characters are acting you can find it in how scenes happen and you can definitely find in each major element every character design there's elements of grimness and of Whimsy in the Aesthetics and the character traits and character Back stories and major plot points to the monkey bombs the tea parties the scientific Mystique Etc and if you're thinking about the character of this tone the edgier feel that brought it into that adolescent level of maturity you can find that level of maturity in these four elements as well the settings the backdrop is carefully regulated to feel ser ious and mature but also still free and a Beat full of humor when it's not being serious the sties between beats keep the scenes feeling that way as well and the way things happen too and the characteristics of major plot and character elements it all has that edge sh while still being young and what effect does all this have it provides a compelling background layer of emotion that keeps events from feeling empty that emotion is always there to keep scenes feeling alive and human not just dry Starry structure and it also provides the sense of identity for the show which is something that kind of brings the whole story to life independent of what's actually happening so tone hugely important topic probably another topic that's worth its own video but we'll leave it here for now and these are all big overarching ideas about this goal of bring life to the story but to focus on the small picture here's a little checklist that was mentioned in the AMA it's a little paper they had in the writing room that spelled out criteria for a successful scene we have how did the scene develop character how did the scene further the plot how does the scene teach the audience something new about the world mix of General Basics and the specific ideas we just talked about all in three convenient little bullet points it's concise it's actionable very handy okay next I want to Circle back to a detail we just talked about I think is worth isolating as its own little tip this little sequence with Amanda once again that's a lovely poetic image right but it wasn't telling the story of the series which is these two sisters being torn apart it's not an overly complex point about openings but it's also just so easy to lose sight of use your opening as an opportunity to frame your whole story your first scene does should will communicate what this whole thing is and that's something that you should use you should be purposeful in that it is really important for your audience to know what to focus on from Moment One and that's even if you're going to surprise them with what it's actually about later on you can still do that but in the meantime direct their attention that's helpful to them that feels good to the audience it feels good to see okay the sisters this is about the sisters even if you don't know this is about identity and Science and monsters and Bunny and whatever you don't need to communicate a theme just what to focus on the sisters is what you should be focusing on feeling lost or feeling like a narrative is aimless for the first 50 pages of a novel or the first 20 minutes of a movie it's just a terrible star experience you should be actively trying to avoid as a writer and best audience is bored at worst they're frustrated but if I have a focus then I can feel like I'm building an understanding I'm following something I'm on a road going somewhere that's great I'm engaged okay another comment with regard to plot and organizing your plot organizing your scenes it's really half a comment this wasn't intended as writing advice but when you do think of it as advice it just speaks volumes someone in the amae ended their comment by saying also poor poor powder to which Alex responded Yes poor powder imagine if things went slightly differently so the lesson here make things so close to working out before they fail and this isn't just a point about how to write the climax there's an entire writing approach that's implied here in detail outline your story towards a point that's not just coherent but expected meanwhile you hide another much more meaningful Arc in there that's leading somewhere totally unexpected and just when the audience is sure it's going to go one way oh my God it goes the other way this is like the plot version of some of the character stuff I talked about in my moral ambiguity video where you have two characters layered on top of each other or two complete ways of understanding a character there's a superficial mold that they kind of seem to fit into before we become Ed with a much more complex understanding of who they are here you're writing a good compelling plot line that's just not going to happen and then there's another plot line out there that's really different and even more coherent and thematic or whatever and then pick your perfect moment where it's all going to switch and then you know watch your audience's jaws drop to the floor and a lot of the way you get to this a lot of the way you do it has to do with characters making imperfect decisions this something Christian mentions explicitly we wanted all of our characters to be real and thus making perfect decisions in a logical World in a perfect world you have X happening 100 % of the time and that's really our two plot lines we got people making perfect decisions and then we got the little imperfections of humanity creeping in and leading to imperfect decisions which leads to everything we fear and that's the other way of breaking this down one plot line is the optimistic one the other is realistic or pessimistic it's everything we fear we expect the first and try not to see the second because we like to be hopeful and positive but by the time the second one shows itself we kind of already knew it was there so to formulate the advice use perfect decision- making to set up an optimistic plotline and use human imperfection to lay the ground work for your inevitable realistic plotline okay now we're getting to a pretty crucial point which is going to be the last major writing technique topic to talk about before we move on to a slightly different category of topic and the sad thing is that most people kind of want to Breeze past this part of the process even though it seems like this is what really separates the good writers from the great writers so at this point you're writing all these arcs these characters these themes you're incorporating all this advice and there's a high likelihood that it's all starting to get out of control it's become a tangled mess you're juggling too many characters too many subplots too many through lines what happened how did it come to this when did it all get so messy what did I do wrong and the brilliantly simple answer from the Arcane writers in short is probably nothing uh I I don't know that there was any uh method of note taking or documenting that ever made it easier to think about it always just feels like this uh you know like that ball of wires behind the computer it is going to be a mess 100% And Alex's advice or at least his nerc reaction when asked how to deal with that mess is is this um I mean there was having messy Minds so messy mind what does he mean by that and granted this is a throwaway answer he talks about other stuff after this but I still think it's a very perceptive way to talk about the topic this is meta advice part of preparing for being a writer is preparing for when things go wrong because things going wrong isn't just something that happens sometimes it is part of the process every time with every story in one way or another and the way to deal with it isn't some specific tip or strategy it's having a mind which is comfortable with this kind of messiness which I think both includes just like naturally your temperament how you you think but also includes actively preparing an arsenal of strategies to deal with this mess and that's something which is more in your control and that's exactly what the Arcane writers did um and then at some point I think we just needed to become as structured as we can be you know like so let's talk about that here's probably the most important thing from the answers that they talk about but uh I think separating especially plot and character arcs to clarify I guess what we're really trying to do with the characters I think that that was key so I'm guessing he's referencing the idea we talked about a little bit earlier this idea over here about separate in character and World plot but I think it's interesting to take that advice that model and combine it with the subscription Alex has of how it feels to put that model into practice I I would definitely say that one of the hardest things in my mind about building a show that vast in terms of characters is finding finding some way to play traffic cop uh with all of their stories so imagine this scenario it's not just any traffic cop situation it's like there's a tsunami and you're evacuating people and you got to make individual decisions of who goes where at each intersection and also the sum total of all of your traffic opop decisions needs to move the population as a whole towards a few evacuation routes in most efficient way possible comparing that to the process of writing a story you're not just managing the pace of the story on a small scale each unit of the small scale is also building towards bigger story goals and you have to arrange how that happens and the thing you're juggling is the double identity the double function of each unit in your whole every beat in your story is both a character beat and a plot beat and you're organizing that so it's all compelling moment to moment scene to scene small picture and also so that it satisfies your big picture goals you can really see how this traffic cop thing gets Arcane so many of these moments that serve so many functions at once for example we have a big plle of jinx building a hex weapon and using that to start a war against piltover so how do we get there so place to start our first step here let's take a beat of soo's choosing between Zan and my daughter character Arc let's combine that with a character beat of jinx Swan to prove herself worthy of his love add those two together we get a plot beat of jinx stealing the hex Crystal and then now we can take that combine that with progress day that's what gets Jace involved we can have Kate witness it that moves her into position to meet up with VI and then let's also move Ekko into position here right at the beginning that'll lay the groundwork for him to get involved later on moving right along when VI and Jinx meet up we can connect that to this hex Crystal Heist thing use that to drive a wedge between them and once they're separated let's call Ekko back into the picture at this point we can give him the hex crystal that's perfect that's what we're going to use to set up this Jinx Ekko fight later on you can really feel the traffic cop nature of it okay you wait here you come forward now it's your turn okay wait a second not you not yet okay now you go and now you you see what Alex meant earlier by assembling the story okay next method of confronting the mess this is a two-parter listen to this we wanted the show to have an aggressive Pace every single show that we love definitely has those episodes where we all go y that episode kind of was bit of a you know uh bit of a Down a or just nothing happened or so I think we just didn't want that we were willingly going into this thing of like hey let's yeah let's have packed episodes and let's move things four in the story every episode and here's the second part we especially over time got to grasp okay how many story beats can we have for episode kind of also measuring okay like which how many scenes can we have in there you know and how much can one character get so I think usually we knew we would have about 12 to 14 kind of story beats that would fit into the length of our episode you know plus minus a few I would say so this is advice we've all heard before cut the fat if your story is a mess well you can start by getting rid of a bunch of extra stuff fewer wires means less Tangled and what can help you with that is figure out how many wires you need figure out how much space you're working with now granted not everyone has a clear answer to that question not everyone's going to have a TV show or a movie that usually works with generally accepted size ranges which you can then use to translate into a number of scenes a number of Beats and or not everyone is working with an animation company that can tell you this is our output capacity deal with it but that said you can figure out how fast you want your pacing to be and you can estimate how long you feel like your story should be if you want a novel to feel like a Brandon Sanders toome or like a ya a length story if you want it to feel episodic or if you want it to feel like one big long journey and you can look at stories with pasting you like and you can count the scenes and count the beats in those or alternatively you can just set a size goal just out of nowhere just something arbitrary to help you make cuts and whatever the case I think it will be helpful to commit to that number very seriously at first and then ease up very seriously also later on if you need to with the idea being that the more of these decisions you have the more you decide to cut it's going to give you a better idea of just what your story is that's the entangling that we're talking about here and once that happens you can and should adjust your initial size range even if that means making it longer and either way work with a range not like an actual number even Alex here is saying 12 to 14 scenes however you do it as long as it's forcing you to cut your weakest scenes it's going to be good for the story you'll cut down in the mess and the whole picture should become clear next we got another option here something to consider but something that probably won't work for every story something that we did kind of halfway through our season writing experiences that we started to hone in on okay who really really who really really owns an episode you know that that that character usually has a flashback in the beginning of the episode you know so you really have like one character was really driving forward one episode at a time um I can't remember exactly we came up with that but it it definitely helped with structure and committing you know really saying okay this is going to be the episode of character XS find an organizing principle a tangle of wires is all going to point different directions if you have most of them pointing in One Direction or you figure out a direction a lot of them are already pointing in and then point more them in that direction would be a great way of just simplifying Your Story one of my favorite examples of this if anyone remembers a TV show called skins each series followed a group of friends and each episode of each series use a single character's perspective so even though we did have a pretty complex story with a lot of moving Parts this structure made it feel drastically less messy and character episodes by the way are just one option there's lots of different ways of doing this you had like The Last of Us season one which organized each episode roughly around a location and its people we'd see like the bill and Frank episode and their location we got Kansas City Etc you can do this with themes also you can do it with colors and side note with any of these methods sometimes it's not going to help you actually entangle the mess it'll just give the story a facade of things being more organized than they are and a lot of times that's kind of enough if the audience is getting this big loud message up front this is the echo episode that itself is going to satisfy a lot of feelings that this should be organized and audence won't even notice that there's a ton of random like Kemar scenes in this episode as well okay next listen to this I would say that we really kind of started to understand the structure as we you know approached the end of season one and and um could really track I think also our individual characters you know where where they came from where a had it on the Practical level is a fairly common piece of advice prioritize finishing a draft but I like this framing of the topic in the context of mess meaning finish the draft so you can understand what you need to cut and or reorganize it's the end of a story that really ties everything together and you'll often see oh this wire there's a real way to tie that up so let's get rid of it or this one over here this isn't as important as I thought it was so let's spend less time on it or this one okay this one is more important especially if it's pushed more in this way this one becomes one of the main wires in the middle so the end isn't just a culmination it's an organizing principle it's a level of understanding you can reach and then use as a tool another topic that can be helpful to think about at this point which I don't really hear people talking about as like its own thing to think about listen to this I feel like we all sign up for different things based on kind of who makes the thing right if I watch John Wick I just kind of want him see be a badass you know I don't go to de being like well what is the essential question here and the philosophical angle I'm like doesn't matter what kind of gun is he is he shooting um you know I think I think you kind of also need to understand a little bit like what what is the quality of The Story You're crafting where does it come from you know we had the theory and and uh you know hopefully now a bit of the proof that we couldn't just do another kind of fight porn project where it's just about superheroes you know clubbing each other over the head in the beginning that you know a state that we put in the ground um that we just really didn't want this to be just another you know superhero Thing If you will figure out what type of story you want to write and what type of story you don't want to write I love the way Christian approaches this topic cuz he makes it clear that it's not just about what genre or what subject matter so what type of relationship do I want my audience to have to my story like listen to how he talks about Jace here yeah I mean was the best outcome right afterwards when whatever you know Reddit wherever you go and and people are like J sucks you know and someone else will go on you know and just be like wait a minute you know like here's what he actually did is that really so bad you know I think I think I think that was kind of the goal once we have this relationship in mind we can ask what type of star gets me to that relationship and that gives you a goal in the form of specific thoughts or specific feelings or mental activity in this case he wants his audience to ask questions that already tells us a lot about what characters to write what type of decisions we want them to make and then now when we get to those Crossroad movements we have a lot more guidance in terms of how we want those decisions to turn out and then also with this way of talking about it you also get a model meaning I can't always be thinking about these big overarching functions but if my story starts looking too much like a Marvel movie like a John Wick movie that's when I know to remember my goal and readjust helpful to have both of these aspects in mind early on and granted of course it can change but if you're starting to pick up on the general pattern here main idea is to just have lots and lots of different kinds of organizing principles to help you be decisive without feeling confined so next let's talk about trust I would say the the only other thing was to to trust the audience right like I think there are a lot of places where we took risks uh where the the risks involved saying I think they'll understand or I think they'll see what we're what we're going for here or I think they can handle this much right um in places where you know it really felt like we were we were going out on a limb uh with those types of assumptions this didn't immediately seem to be about the topic of messiness but the the more I thought about it the more I realize that's exactly what it's about at least in relation to Arcane we're talking here about trusting your audience to deal with complexity to deal with some level of messiness and it can't be any level of messiness there's a point where they just won't be able to deal with it it'll be too much obviously you still definitely need an underlying structure underlying logic to everything but the point is that messiness itself is not a deal breaker if and it's a big if if your story is really really good if your story sucks don't trust your audience to deal with complexity okay last mess related strategy we'll talk about another two-parter and this first part may seem pretty straightforward but it's worth talking about just why it needs to be said the interviewer is asking how they mapped out so many different character arcs and here's Christian's response I mean that there was a there was a certain amount of just Brute Force trial and error you know that had to happen sometimes the only way to solve a problem is trial and error it's a very straightforward point but I think it's worth talking about just why it needs to be said cuz the truth is is that we are often looking for that secret formula we're looking for the magic little writing tip we're looking for the one Technique we didn't know and sometimes yeah you'll find something that can help you a lot but a lot of the time you just got to untangle your mess by looking at each wire and trying to untie each one individually no matter how long it takes and that doesn't mean the story is not working that is what working looks like I think at Edison and the light bulb seems pretty inefficient to test out 6,000 different filaments but sometimes the most efficient way of solving a problem is just to actually try every single possible solution ever and then yeah you'll probably find one that works and on a personal note this is a psychological block that I have that's very hard for me to get past feels like each new thing I try that fails just digs me into an even deeper hole the problem trying to solve is getting more and more unsolvable with each failure and that's just not true at all with trial and error the Slate wipes clean each and every time you can try all sorts of things to your heart's content and it's not costing you anything but time okay now part two in the same vein something you need while you're trialing and erroring listen to this and warning once again this could be a spoiler for season 2 if you're not a League of Legends player for the same reason as the last quasi spoiler and again I'm going to mute the part of the clip that has a spoiler I'm just going to put the text on screen then I'll unmute for the non-spoilery part you know some some characters we really had to take some big risks you know excuse me um was a character where you had to kind of capture the essence of by actually you know and like these things are just scary um especially when it comes to the origin story you know um but Alex's point it's uh I think respecting what's there but also understanding that it's not you know it's not our job to make exactly what people are asking for it's our job to kind of know better what they would like no better than your audience if you are in trial and error mode and you find a solution that you believe is good but it's a risk you're afraid of the reaction of your audience meaning not afraid that they won't like it but specifically that they'll be put off because it's too different from their expectations it's going to be jarring it's going to make them go wait a second that's not right those are the types of insecurities you need to take with a big grain of salt cuz he's right you do know better than your audience and if the thing you're doing really is good then your audience is going to go that's not right and then they're going to go never mind I get it you were right all along and that's if it is really really good it's if it all makes sense but once again you're the best judge of those questions as well put this back in the context of solving mess what often exacerbates the situation so much is that you have your mess and you've already deemed entire categories of solutions untenable because they're too far from audience expectations if you get over your fear of that kind of risk you will gain access to so many more solutions you can try out okay so this discussion has steadily been moving away from talking about stories to talking about you talking about mindset so let's continue in that direction let's see what the Arcane writers have to say about decisions that come prior to writing decisions about writing environment and good habits and the kinds of questions and strategies they found most useful at the early stages of the process so to start here at Square One how does a project like Arcane begin where do you start what's the most important thing to think about so listen to Alex and Christian here I think that was really the goal is to to find an expression of the IP that really feels like it's also made for you know ourselves if you will we we got to spend a lot of time thinking about just you know everything we'd want to see I guess in a show if anything I think it was just a a big commitment toward just following our own you know like what's the thing that we really want to exist not just saying hey this is something where we bend over backwards you know to make something that just kind of works for everybody but really also stay true what you know like the the nerd stuff that we like about this write the story you would fall in love with meaning as a viewer reader audience member it's super important to realize especially me talking as someone who makes this kind of writing advice content to be honest here this is a trap that I absolutely fall into in making these videos and definitely also in consuming content like this in storytelling there's what you love and there's how to effectively deliver that to your audience and those are two independent categories and all stuff about writing rules and tips and Analysis that that's there to help you figure out the second thing it cannot help you with the first what you like is what you like end of story and videos like mine may be watching them can help you articulate why you love something or they can open up a new perspective on something and you can love that new thing but it can't establish what is a good story for you that's something that comes from you and as a writer it's absolutely your most important Guiding Light cuz listen to this description of the alternative we didn't have to do this translation of saying like who is a player in League of Legends how can I reverse their psych ology and then make a show that fits that and to me I that I felt that when I would watch you know the the video game like shows or movies that didn't click for me where I'm like they're trying to figure me out and I can tell write the kind of story you would love and you'll have a much easier job approaching your own standard than trying to approximate some other standard of someone else that you'll have to guess at and this doesn't just apply on the macro it also applies to types of scenes and interactions as well listen to Amanda here there's a fight scene in episode 5 of season 1 which uh is the episode I wrote one of the things I'm like so proud of is it's like between two women with like a different body type different like both like really muscular they're doing moves that you haven't necessarily seen women do before on screen three women in a fight scene it'sing dope so if there's something that's meaningful to you chances are it's meaningful to other people and on a very similar note when it comes to rules this is something Alex and Christian talk about a lot across a lot of different interviews we were wondering like okay where are these like golden formulas you know that like the the people that work in TV have like how do you build a season you know how do you make sure the characters in The Plot actually stays interesting we we asked kind of everybody and their grandmother you know through Riot we had a great opportunity to talk to a lot of people but we just had to also learn that there really isn't one great process there really isn't the golden formula you kind of have to find your own process there's a lot of good advice you know but there's also a lot of rules that I think are are rules because they've been rules for for such a long time so you know we spent we spent a fair amount of time just sort of figuring out which which things were were shortcuts that would help us to to not reinvent every wheel and which things were places where we wanted to try something different there's no golden formula do learn from others but ultimately find your own way this is a process that every writer should go through when they're exposed to writing device of any kind doesn't matter if it's a random guy like me saying it or like a real writer as Stephen King a Brandon Sanderson or even Alexon Christian or if it's in a book or if it's well-known writing advice don't try to fit the story you want to tell into rules or into advice of any kind if it helps do it if it doesn't help ignore it you are the authority on your own story what is going to help you and what you want to make and what will not help you that is the only question that matters as we say on this channel tools not rules okay now that said listen to this this is Christian talking about one of the lowest moments in the writing process of season 1 at that point the idea was I had to replace myself as like the person in charge of figuring out the story of course you know was me and Alex but I was responsible we just knew we had to hire someone who's experienced as a showrunner and as writers and that kind of stuff and that's what we tried to do sometimes the decision you need to make as the number one Authority on your story is that your vision is not going to come into reality with your current level of skill and if you really care about what you're working on you need to be humble enough to make that determination so very simply be ready and willing to ask for help when your story needs it and that's not only scary cuz it's giving up control it's scary cuz there's no guarantee you can go through all the trouble in the world to fix your story and who knows if it's going to work and because of that I love the way that Christian words this next part to Alex's Point like you can't really plan magic but you can certainly make sure that you have a bunch of magicians in the room you know and um I think we did that and again this is another call out kind of to myself and to my channel it's kind of a call out to you too people who watch videos like this people who are trying to get better at writing are often trying to find the match they're trying to find the best advice out there the best ideas the best methods and that's fine but the other way to make magic happen is to find magicians I'm not talking about hiring professional writers like the Arcane team did there something that you'll hear universally whenever you try to get good at anything find people who are really good at what you want to be good at and make friends with them ideally find actual mentors but if you can't just do whatever you need to do to be around those kind of people cuz the most powerful resources to invest in are not ideas they're people make use of people writing groups writing Discord servers writing friends writing mentors if you find find yourself in a situation where you're the smallest fish in the pond that means you're doing something right that's exactly where you want to be okay now in your search for magicians in your search to find help for your story you could just be looking for great writers to help you but there's another category I think there were some people who just got it you know who understood why we want this to exist and I think those were the folks we try to surround ourselves with when you're reaching out for help prioritize people who get it you'll come across great writers you come across people who can teach you a lot about writing people who know all the writing rules people who've read all the books people who' have consulted for big Hol ollywood or whatever and that's great but the most important quality to look for is someone who gets it I.E someone who sees your vision someone who's on the same wavelength as you about that what is a good story question as it relates to your story if you reach out to more experienced writers but they don't get it or if you have a writing coach or an editor if you're a fan of me and you have me helping you and I don't get it I don't connect to your vision then all the stuff I have to offer is going to be of limited use because I'll probably be trying to turn it into what I think is good and then Chances Are by the end it's going to end up as some Abomination that's mixed of both our standards that neither of us are happy with okay another quality to look for when asking for help and this equally applies to you alone as a writer even without asking for help listen to this I think everybody on the project is out to prove something with what we're doing and I firmly believe that you need to find someone who's kind of willing to bleed for like this thing they're trying to make I don't think otherwise you're going to really be bold otherwise you're not going to really have anything you're going to risk something and I think you have to risk something in order to make to make something that that makes an impact creative work is complex if your expectation is that you're going to work on something creatively where you're going to have no pressure or or no feeling of like being overwhelmed at times then you're working on something the world is going to forget I think maybe my favorite thing above all of Arcane is that I am very confident in saying that there's many people who work on Arcane right now that feel like they're working on the most important thing of their lives like their careers I feel like people feel like they're challenged they're working on something that's going to matter they're going to look back to and say I'm yes like that's a proud moment of my life and I'm happy I worked on it and that to me is probably the most important thing it's important for the story to be important and if you're looking for a mentor or a coach or an adviser it's important to be able to connect on that level but especially if you're looking for a collaborator or an employee then it's one of the most important things to look for find people who are willing to undergo pain because of how important they think this is and as for why this is this is my speculation but it seems like there are just certain aspects of The Human Experience that when it comes to creativity are locked behind a gate made of pain I think that's the best way to describe it if you want to connect with people in a deep way through your art you're going to need to dig deep yourself you're going to need to push yourself to places you don't normally go you're going to need to push past a lot of protective barriers you set up around what is most important to you cuz that's how you get to the most honest real human elements of your own core human experience and that's going to be the basis on which you can connect most deeply with your audience your audience is not going to be able to get to those deep levels of connection if you're not bringing them there with you yourself it's just like a comedian you never spend time as a comedian coming up with jokes that aren't funny to yourself it doesn't even make sense it's a ree for failure if you want your stories to matter to your audience it's got to matter to you now I think there's another side of this that we need to devote some of this discussion to to put it very plainly it is a lot of work to make something you need to be able to handle the extremely large amount of work that is ahead of you and it's a topic that Alex and Christian talk about a lot being motivated by the importance of the work that's a huge part of this but even within that General reason there ways of relating to that importance there's a specific Nuance I want to talk about I played part of this clip a little while ago let's zero in on a specific phrase here if anything I think it was just a big commitment toward just what's the thing that we really want to exist it's a surprisingly impersonal way to talk about something you are the creative lead of they mention it again in this exchange what kept you going after being told sow um I would say it always came back to but it needs to exist I don't really know how else to say it it just didn't really it didn't it never really I think occurred to us to say like oh yeah maybe never mind you know it was just like yeah of course this needs to happen this quote really brings out why it's important to have this kind of selfless attitude if writing your story is about what you want then that's great for today and then tomorrow you may not want to write your story you need something that will drive you in a manner and in a time span consistent with the amount of work you have writing anything longer than a short story or noela takes a long time and you have to keep it up every day whether you like it or not listen to this I just always had this this this sense of obligation to the players you know it just felt like we we created these characters and and the players answered Us by spending so much time with them and loving them and it just felt like they deserved to have better stories we wanted to make sure the story that players got lived up to their expectations if we couldn't do that then we shouldn't do that I think that's the most useful formulation here be driven by a sense of obligation externalizing your creative Endeavor as a duty as something that's good for the world not just good for me and for the mood I'm in today that's going to force you to write every day it's going to force you to do whatever this project requires of you until the work is done and granted you can't force yourself to feel this emotion if you just don't feel it for the star you're working on but to share a little anecdote I remember one time I was complaining to a non-writer friend of mine about my writer block and I was saying that at the stage I'm at the problem I'm dealing with it's just hard to stay interested in writing this part of the story and my friend who was a very just straightforward guy told me if the problem is that it's not interesting you're the writer so can you just make it more interesting it was very perceptive advice and it's true for this too if your story doesn't make you feel any sense of obligation towards anyone if it's not something you think needs to exist in the world then find something that is important find something that does have those qualities that does make you feel a sense of obligation and write that instead okay now what complicates this topic is that being driven like this is a lot so a lot of stress it's a lot of pressure but that's not necessarily A Bad Thing listen to this there were definitely moments of being pretty overwhelmed for sure I mean um speaking for myself I'm I'm the kind of person I work actually well under stress except for when you have so many stressful things that you that you feel like you lose oversight if that makes sense so a little prely let me just put the formulation here don't be afraid of good stress it can be a powerful motivator but I want to understand the distinction he's making it sounds like he's talking about Good stress versus bad stress and when he's talking about that bad stress he's talking about the kind of pressure that makes him lose oversight so what does he mean by that oversight of what so I think the good stress he's talking about is stress that pushes you to exert more willpower and staying on task and reaching deeper within yourself for inspiration and the bad stress I think intuitively we all know that kind of stress that kind of leads you to make bad decisions without even realizing it he's describing that as feeling overwhelmed I think what being overwhelmed in this situation means is when there's so much pressure or so many things pressuring you that you feel like control over your life basically starts to slip and at that point you can try to manage those responsibilities with care and with your normal standards of quality but so much of your energy will get caught up in just desperately trying to regain control over your life that achieving that ASAP is going to overrule all your other priorities because that motivation that doesn't care about quality all it cares about is creating an experience of controlling things again whether that means clearing your to-do list as quickly as possible or just making a decision not even the best one cuz at this point any decision is going to feel like a good one cuz it's asserting control that's my read of what he's saying I could be wrong so when this does happen to the Arcane team when they are beset by this bad kind of stress and just like a lot of the other problems we've talked about this is not a situation of if it's when at the point in the process when this does happen once again they are not too proud to ask for help and so they bring in this very experienced TV person named Melinda and here's what happened yeah the team Health when I first started wasn't so great everyone was like I was like man this team they need some loveing they need some love in Mela was always someone that is extremely inspiring to the team and creating a team atmosphere where it's okay when things are tough as long as you just kind of believe in the team and have the right dream together I just came in and kind of rolled up my sleeves and went from Department by department just trying to get everybody together and get to know each individual on the team as a person and that's part of building team trust and then you can start to actually solve the problem problems so this is just a beautiful lesson because what the last point was saying essentially not to get too psychological jargony but it was saying that there's a type of good stress that assists the ey the ego the Creator me and then there's stress that destroys the ego and as a result you're going to get this wounded ego that's going to push ahead of any and all other priorities in order to repair itself cuz it's kind of hard to care about anything else when the self is at risk so what Melinda did by going around and basically treating the staff like human beings was finding a way to repair the ego so that that broken self would stop frantically trying to clear to-do list and making bold rational decisions she correctly understood that writers need to feel like people they need to feel a basic level of dignity to even be in a state to make good creative decisions again so this is the remedy even without a Belinda to personally come and help you repair your ego first and then power through when you feel the bad stress the destruction of ego kind of stress even if that feeling was triggered by the work the solution won't be found in going back to work address the problem directly address the eye directly repair your sense of dignity with self-care make yourself feel like a human being again restore the eye that you can rely on to make good creative decisions you can do that by whatever means is best for you individually as long as it's not the work and then come back to the work come back to the to-do list and the decisions with a stronger healthier ego that can withstand this level of pressure that can withstand this amount of work another element of this I want to talk about is this everyone was like what does she mean here when she does that so I think this is another impact of the bad kind of stress when you feel pressure to act to get through that to-do list it puts you in this mentality where you approach Creator problems with this very find rigid process almost feels like you're treating it like math what makes sensier what fits what works not thinking of what would be great what would blow my mind what would be exciting you're think of what fixes my problem so the implied advice here prioritize feeling free and open when it's time to create you need to be in a mindset where you're open to all kinds of ideas you need to feel like you can play around try new things have fun entertain yourself thrill yourself and finding that place of Freedom requires again for things to feel under control enough your ego needs to feel unthreatened enough that that can allow you to ease it momentarily under a to-do list and just let yourself play around and explore I think this is why the work environments in some really creative places get kind of crazy and chaotic you look at Pixar For example it's about keeping people in that free open playful mindset that's best for creativity next here's Alex talking about this workload energy situation from a totally different angle I think probably the relationship with fortish also helped I don't know bring that confidence because like the're when you know them right and you understand just how much they're capable of it uh I don't know you it it it definitely fills your sales and gives you you know gives you a sense that whatever it is that you come up with is going to look and feel amazing right that's just work that they will always do like he says this is partially about restoring confidence which I think relates to that rebuilding dignity idea it's about feeling like you have creative control creative power again but I think it's also about this recharge your batteries by reconnecting to the Creative Vision you originally fell in love with all the stuff we talked about before about feeling like your story is important that it needs to exist taking your whole career on it when your Viewpoint is filled with problems and struggles and things that make you just feel sad then that's what the whole project kind of becomes to you on an emotional level and that's not something you feel is important that's not something you think needs to exist it's definitely not something you want to stake your career on not when it feels like that so when you're in that mode when your view of the project has been consumed by an obstacle like that at that point you need to step out of the mouth of the obstacle and see the the whole fish that you originally fell in love with metaphor got weird and that will fill your sales again as Alex put it that's the why I'm seeing what he's describing here when he'd see forti bringing Arcane to life that snapped him back to the true Vision he had from the start and that is what he fell in love with that's what originally energized him and it's what can energize him again okay now granted not everyone has a fortish unfortunately but again it's about reconnecting to whatever it is that originally made you fall in love whatever that original inspiration is I think it will work similarly doesn't even have to be something that's part of your story for me I have this one piece montage that's my go-to in emergencies like this it's everything that inspired me to be a writer in the first place I have to use it sparingly so it won't lose its power but when I do need it when I do use it I Come Away with full sales each time okay there are three pieces of advice about mindset about the U that are much broader than everything we've talked about up until now the first one is yet another two-parter at one point when Alex is talking about Christian he says this you know Christian just had a history at the company of finding ways to turn projects into a reality and you hear Christian talking about what that meant in detail here you know we were just kind of going hey let's explore it let's spend a little bit of money on some art and if that doesn't suck hey you know let's see if we can create like a 3D model based on that art that doesn't suck let's do little animation testing and he also talks about here in this comment in the AMA I found myself a showrunner because I had the trust of the leadership and a Clear Vision that I'm usually able to make tangible for the creatives who have to execute against it to me that's the most important responsibility for a creative leader everyone has ideas few know how to dissected into the individual crafts and lay it out so that all the different artists writer voice actor composer visual artist lighting artist sound designers Etc arrive at the same location so if you want to write then learn how to write that's it but if you want to make stuff you got to learn how to make stuff if you're a writer who dreams about actually making something like Arcane or even something smaller a web comic a self-published novel whatever it is if that's your goal and you only learn how to write you will still not know what you need to know to do what you want to do and you'll need to like become an artist to yourself or anything that's not what I'm saying but learn about the processes to get stuff done learn about all the different crafts that go into the type of product you want to make learn how to plan out a project in the way Christian is describing get good at finding people and hiring people and dictating things you can do to people who can and also learn about the financial side of all this that's probably the number one thing that stops people from actually executing on Creative projects artists just aren't good at money stuff so learn that stuff become good at it or find someone good to help you and probably most importantly cultivate good habits good work habits good communication habits good work ethic good organization skills good leadership skills so for an overall formulation being good at getting stuff done is a separate skill from everything creative treat it as such treat it as its own thing to get good at because you need to be good at that too and side note the example Christian talks about is actually a great model for what this looks like in practice a lot of getting stuff done is about breaking things into Parts into Stepping Stones a lot of it is about connecting with people who can help you it's about knowing how to get those people on board knowing what type of materials you need to inspire them to get on board and then making that priority getting that stuff done first don't just try to get by on hard work and on winging it that's a bad plan it's probably not going to work and on that note within this General Endeavor at getting good at whatever need to get good at here's what Christian thinks is the most important part of that it it isn't the vast experience that we had that made Arcane work out I think it was our ability to just learn really fast you know like make a mistake once learn from it really fast and and you know don't do it again something that really annoys me in general about a lot of mindset advice is this way people almost seem to glorify failure and I get where they're coming from you need to fail in order to learn from it Etc but slogans like fail as fast as you can that is horribly worded makes it sound like your goal is to fail Christian's formulation is the right formulation learn as fast as you can something doesn't work figure out the mistake don't do that thing again and either try again but the time without the mistake or abandon the method and try a new one so to break that down that means learning how to identify mistakes being humble enough to admit mistakes and cultivating assertiveness and decisiveness and making judgment calls about when it's time to move on and another thing the failure glorification leaves out you should get fast at the skill of learning new things at smoothly adopting new ways of thinking at effectively communicating with someone who's training you in something new get better at iterating only a few times on something new to get comfortable with it get better at casting aside beginner feelings of awkwardness hesitant stubbornness this is all stuff you can consciously work on and get better at okay and this last point is a quote that itself is about something we touched on before but there's an extrapolation I think is so important and so broad listen to Alex talking about pacing and not having any filler I've definitely had more and more the experience that Christian is describing where I'm watching something and I'm like I understand where you're going I see I see what you're trying to lay out let's get to the next plot Point uh and you know I think I think it may just be our our shortening attention spans uh or if you want to look at it from the plus side our widening capability to uh to to intake information did you catch the move he made there he identified an obstacle and then immediately reframed it as opportunity this actually almost like a move from my own methodology video it's an ask what not why kind of thing instead of saying why do people have such bad attention spans nowadays oh it's the Tik Tok it's uh it's the screens the technology it's all the Western consumerism but just stop for a second and ask what is going on here let the phenomenon itself speak to you Alex looked at the experience of people's attention spans running out in stories and he asked what is that experience the form it usually takes is I know what's happening I know what's going to happen next it's not people getting bored of the information and not wanting to absorb it they're absorbing too much information too fast in relation to the pacing and once you realize that then oh that's cool that means I can increase the pacing that means I can fit more into my story than I originally thought it means I can ramp up the complexity and the audience can probably keep up so whenever you encounter an obstacle that should ideally be your way of thinking about it always be looking for opportunity in whatever seems like an obstacle get in that habit wherever possible I don't even necessarily know if that's the way Alex is really thinking about these things but I expect he is it seems so natural the way he said it okay final tip I think this is brilliant but it didn't really fit into any category so I figured I just put it here at the end it's a specific point about improving in a specific way and this comes from the Q&A part of an interview where the question was how do I get better at writing voice and here was Christian's answer when we create champions for our game you like basically there's like 160 characters now 160 different Champions right and they're all supposed to be you know unique that's how they get developed they should have their own voice and so but for the game you have to write like a pick me line and like a ban line and like a a whatever laning phase lines and like learning how to say the same thing in 160 different ways because all these characters basically have to same have to say the same thing with these different lines um probably was a master class in you know dialogue Explorations and voices because obviously that's what all about right it's like how do people say these things that are often grounded in like I need to move the plot forward and I need to say a certain thing but how do they do it individually now so this is just a fantastic exercise and you don't need League champions to do this make up characters find characters use your favorite characters and use this template to kind of just give yourself a creative workout if this character was a League champion what would their voice lines be and you can take it even further if you want to how would they act in this scene what would they say in this scene but I think just the basic exercise might be even better so get better at writing character Voice by using using League champions and voice lines as a model I don't have much more to add than that okay so what have we learned today what's the final word here this is going to be the true finale there's a lot of advice it's a lot to take in how can I possibly go into my next story trying to apply all these different lessons kind of seems daunting so now that we've gotten to this point in the video I want you to forget everything we've talked about and listen to this this is one last little moment here that I think is just perfect as a takeaway the interviewer is asking Alex and Christian about their decision to headline the show with female characters he's asking about the the cultural impact of that and where this decision came from was the plan all along was it something you really cared about doing here's what they said I would say that the way we kind of chose the characters was very organic we just thought they were cool creis and I very much were trying to make a show that we would love as opposed to trying to make a show that would make any kind of a statement one could break down all the gender stuff into these little intricate tips and steps and categories and methods one could do that but that is not where it's all ultimately coming from Accord according to the Arcane writers you heard it yourselves ultimately this is what it's all about write what you think is cool write a story you would love that's everything that's all of Arcane the rest is commentary go and learn subscribe happy second Arcane anniversary to everyone and happy second Channel anniversary to me to Alex Christian Amanda Riot people if you're out there thank you all so much on behalf of everyone here when you were making Arcane when you were making this masterpiece you're probably aware that you were creating this incredible piece of art people would fall in love with but I don't know if you realize that you were also trailblazing such a vital path for artists to follow in your footsteps and learn from you there's going to be a generation of storytellers who will be asked about what inspired them and their answer is going to be it all came back to Arcane it all came back to what you gave us so thank you and also please hire me I'll do anything I'll pour coffee for you I'll work in the mail room okay to all the viewers I hope this was helpful personally I found this so helpful to make I learned so much from going through all these interview is and isolating all these little pieces of advice and also I'll say it was an absolute nightmare to make this it was a lot of work but yeah life-changing without a doubt The Impossible decision thing is probably still my favorite lesson from the whole 50 and the best part is that there's only going to be more there's more interviews out there that I didn't even include in this heck there's even so much more from these interviews I did use and by the way I'll link what I can in the description but yeah there's going to be even more interviews when season 2 comes and obviously more Arcane itself to learn from so we shall reconvene next November couple quick Channel announcements first the one I'm most excited about Studio jibli content is coming that is the next little era of this Channel at least the next few videos and it's also coming as a result of like 10 hours of discussions with my patrons about jibli movies and also a big discussion I had with local another YouTuber you might know so stay tuned for that I am incredibly excited second I am looking for an editor email me if you're interested let me know about any experience you have working on other channels anything like that and in response I'll send you a link with part of the audio of an Arcane video I haven't uploaded and you can send a link of your edited version back to me and if I like the job you did I'll send you the full audio and we'll talk further kind of rough plan here is that I've been doing this for 2 years and I've learned so much and I have not had any time to write and that's a problem I've only had time to make videos about writing but I haven't actually been able to you know anyway so my goal is to have something that I can share with you guys by the time Arcane season 2 comes out something like a novel a web serial a web comic something like that so I need to make myself some time to do creative stuff and editor is hopefully going to be a big part of that so see so I'll keep you guys updated about that in the meantime support the channel on patreon if you wish Eternal thanks to everyone there if you look for Community to join a people who love Arcane and great art both consuming and producing it consider joining us $2 gets you into our Discord server and that's all I have for now see you in the coming weeks with the new Miyazaki content hope you all enjoyed and thanks for watching