What do you usually do when you decide on writing a new story? Do you first write a list of the events happening in it, or do you just start writing the story?
Music inspires me and I think of random stories with characters I already know to help me fall asleep at night. The latter spawned the Until See You Again series. I’m not the type of person to sit down with pen and paper and use valuable daytime staring into space. Concerning music; with every song I hear I ask myself what it could be used for. If I can imagine a music video or fake TV intro for it, then the song is gud. I’ll bother with an actual story depending on the characters I see starring in these. I can try to describe a thought process I had recently.In the bus, I was listening to the “Atomic“ cover by Party Animals for the one millionth time, and I guess it only then hit me how fun it would be as an intro song. Based on the melody and tone, this “show“ had to be grand and playful, so that was my starting point. At first I imagined a person transforming into something, Sailor Moon-style, but that’s not a story. The lyrics also had to be considered, but there weren’t many lines to work with. The men shout “Atomic!“ and the lady who replaces Blondie.. the same dribble about giving her a good night. And the one compliment to her man that his “hair is beautiful”. So alright, this main character needed nice hair and have it be a point of focus. Giving yourself such a demand is silly, but it worked out in the end.Anyway, because the name of the song is a specific word that gets repeated, it became a restriction; and “Atomic” had to be the title of the show. There're only two genres out there that could make a title like this work, namely science-fiction and superhero content. In short, I chose to make the main character a superhero, calling himself “Atomic“. I didn’t think it was the best name out there, though. It’s an adjective and hardly relevant to the powers I ended up giving him, but I guess animes would get away with it, so why not me. In order to excuse it further, I decided to do a misheard lyrics thing and make this character’s real name sound similar to it. A self-proclaimed hero would be this lazy. “Anton” was the first name I could think of, and with that I confirmed the character’s gender and roots. Back home I looked up Asian surnames that sounded like “mik“, since I already pondered whether the art style for this should be manga and the character partially Japanese. Because of the bad superhero name and earlier Sailor Moon thought and all that. Ended up going for an original art style.Anton is a German name, so I looked up what the largest population of Asians in Germany is, which are the Vietnamese. Not many Vietnamese last names have been shared on the internet, but the combination “Anton Mạch” sounded pretty close according to the Vietnamese Google Translate robot. Now this superhero needed a backstory. I already imagined a spaceship floating about in the intro, so he was going to be an astronaut. Or rather, a government test subject who spent his entire life alone in outer space, only for him to get killed by the first interesting thing he comes across in 80 years.You know how intensive space exploration is difficult for humans, because we don’t live long enough to reach new places, and I often wondered if we’d ever go as far as sending a colony of some sort, that would ensure new life is born and trained to control the spaceship and bring everyone further into this never-ending environment. It'd be a horrible reality that'd force these humans to live a restricted existence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it became a reality one day. I used this idea for Anton, who’s a lonesome orphan in a spaceship built by his dead parents, equipped to raise and teach a child. After the many years of nothing, he finds a light that destroys his ship and causes his death, then resurrects him again and basically gives him a second chance of life. This is more or less where the funny comes in, because I’m a sicko that likes tragedy and humor. And so does everyone else, otherwise Sans from Undertale would’ve never become this popular.Now that the character has a name and a backstory, thanks to this one boppin’ song, I had to think of the general plot and give description of Anton as a hero. You have to bring something new to the table here, otherwise what’s the point. It’s pretty hard to think of original powers and story arcs, since the superhero genre is enormous and the most idiotic characters that shouldn’t exist have their own comic book. I settled for a simple black bodysuit with white sleeves and high collar as his costume. The only reason we accept Spiderman’s clown suit is because we’re used to it, not because it looks cool. The hair thing from the song also had to be included, of course. The light’s explosion infused Anton’s once grey hair with some kind of mirror particles that reach so far, it shows the image of space in it. It was the easiest way for me to make his hair “beautiful“. Settling with this look meant his superpowers had to be related to space as well, but fine, I needed a theme. The environment of outer space is more or less his set of powers, like spawning comets, black holes, erasing oxygen, inflicting freezing cold, all that is highly unsuitable to use against normal human beings. Having that said, the story wrote itself and is about Anton’s Atomic character making a name for himself and people pretending to be content and obedient in his presence, as to refrain him from playing a hero.In short, I don’t write anything down. I think of stories at the most useless moments of the day, and if I still remember what I came up with by the time I place myself in front of a computer, I’ll make a drawing or write a Wiki page about it.If I don’t remember, then arguably my idea wasn’t good enough to remember.
