One of the hardest things to do when creating something is not just learning the skills, taking the time, or the assets and polish. Rather, starting it and finishing it is what is the hardest thing to do. However, there can be many qualities that determine a "finished" or "incomplete" project. If you were to write an essay with a missing paragraph in the middle, but had a strong introduction and conclusion, would that be a completed essay? If you were to complete an art piece but not add any value to it, would that be completed?

Instead of questioning the value of completion, it's better to know what yields the best result for yourself as a goal. To reach that goal and achieve it satisfactorily, and to know that your best effort went into it, doing it without any regret... That is what you can consider complete. It isn't bad to have incomplete projects, but completing a project and allowing it to rest is great. It becomes wholesome, and can reach out to many.

Now, creating something good and refreshing in this day and age requires something new and original, but that becomes harder and harder to do. How do you be creative and original, without scaring away the audience, or confusing yourself? Particularly, the most important things are to stay away from what is normally done, and / or execute it differently. But how do you do that?

First off, creativity is something that you create yourself, a spawn of your ideas to share. This doesn't necessarily have to be original, but happens without a consideration of outside influence. Originality is where you stray away from other successful tropes and cliches, and try something that people either don't expect or don't know what to expect when going into it. The former will tend to cause some to stray away from new, unknown material, while the latter, will innovate old things through new ideas. The best of both worlds would contain both original content with creative execution.

Considering this, we have general formulas that stories, manga, and anime tend to follow these days. These patterns become so recognizable, that they have even coined a term for them, as "flags". For example, a death flag would be an event that happens in the story that causes or gives reason that the character would die. For example:

Girl 1: I've finally realized it! What Boy 1 was telling me all along!

Boy 2 "So you've finally realized it?"

Girl 1: Boy 1.. likes me!

Boy 2: Heh.. you finally get it.

Girl 1: I must go tell him now!

Boy 2: Hold on, it's a bit late for..

[Girl 1 has already left]

Boy 2: Oh boy..  [turns on weather channel]

TV: It seems storms are coming to town. Please seek shelter as soon as possible! It is expected that a high risk of death will happen.

Boy 2: Oh..

 

Now, this pattern suggests that (with a bit of exaggeration with the weather event) the girl had finally realized it, but this certain event tells us that there won't be a full on realization between boy 1 and girl 1 just yet, and there may even be some tragic event coming up. This creates a reader to tighten up their guard for the incoming, which allows the writer to manipulate the reader. Usually there is no manipulation to satisfy the readers. But with proper usage of these flags and more subtle hints in progression, you can throw events that would either surprise or become unexpected, rather than predictable and boring.

If you were to set up for a boring event to come forth and instead present an exciting development, that would instill far more excitement than if it was consistently set up to throw out exciting events on every odd chapter. It's the same feeling of discovering something for the first time and uncovering a new aspect in something you thought you knew. But, this is all a part of execution. Even if you can set up original and creative situations that betray the reader's expectations in a good way, it still must be contained in an immersive and reasonable state to happen within the story. Either way, this is all a part of understanding the balance within a story, shifting from event to event and giving the reader a shifting progression instead of constant. If it's constant, it is static, it is boring. Playing these event right is what creates a good story and makes it interesting.

Playing into this with outside elements is also important in appeal, to appear as original and creative as can be. In the age of anime and manga about school, action, harems, and self-insert fantasies, having something outside that circle is unexpected and exciting in itself. A wave of new and old comes along slowly, just like progression within a story.

But that's for another time

thanks for reading!

ceroblitz