Someone could say this:
“So what does movie production have to do with solving a writing slump?”
A perfectly reasonable question, so I will provide the answer around here.
The human brain has excellent plasticity. Meaning, if you repeat a specific action, the functions related to that action become stronger.
This brain plasticity peaks until around age thirty, then maintains itself at a slightly lower level afterward. And in creative fields, the better your brain plasticity, the more advantageous it is.
Creativity uses the brain in ways there is rarely any need to use in everyday life. In other words, you need to remodel the brain for creative work.
Then the question becomes this.
What exactly is creativity?
I had reached my own conclusion on that.
The work of warp-linking two unrelated pieces of information. That was the essence of creativity.
Therefore, if you wanted to become good at creating things, you needed to make your brain soft and flexible…
Did you know?
When humans do something new, the brain stretches on its own.
All the humans who did not work that way starved to death back in the hunting days, so it was only natural.
In other words.
If I do something new, my brain will be stimulated on its own, and my slump will probably get better too… That was my reason for attempting movie production.
Well, that was not the only reason.
Just.
There were just some things I wanted to experiment with.
Anyway.
And so, after thinking for several days, I wrote a movie scenario.
That scenario.
Now receiving its grand public reveal…!
“Hiiragi. Are you sane?”
A cold voice stabbed into my ears. When I lifted my head, Yukimura’s gaze, just as cold as her voice, stabbed into me.
I opened my mouth calmly.
“Is it not good?”
“Yeah. It’s not good.”
That could not be true.
My whole-soul scenario being not good? Physically impossible.
I whipped my head around in search of someone who would judge it properly.
Kano’s eyes met mine, and she tilted her head.
“Touji. I don’t understand what this is saying.”
I had not expected anything from Kano.
But if it was Riku, my soul friend…!
“Uh… Touji, is this that? An art film?”
“It’s a film aiming for ten million admissions.”
“Uh… um…”
Life was originally a lonely thing.
Trying to be understood was itself arrogance.
But I’m a commercial writer who will starve to death if I’m not understood?
No wonder my royalties have been getting smaller and smaller in my account lately…
“Specifically, which part is not good?”
At my question, every member of the movie production group answered in unison.
“It’s boring.”
“I suppose so.”
Boring. There were few impressions as clear and clean as that one.
I lowered my head and stared at the A4 pages on the table.
The scenario I had spent several days thinking over and writing went as follows.
The lead was a female first-year high school student. Since Yukimura was going to play the lead, there could essentially be nothing else.
And we were high school students. We were not in a position to use flashy CG or hire a large number of extras.
Because of that, the genres we could produce were limited to three.
Youth, comedy, and mystery. Those three.
For reference, romance fell under the subcategory of youth, and horror fell under the subcategory of mystery, so do not go looking for them.
The three genres I just mentioned had films progress against an everyday background, so they did not require special props, and therefore they did not require CG, and therefore there was a possibility of producing a masterpiece through direction and screenplay alone.
There was a reason those were beloved genres in countries where film had just begun.
And because I knew that, I naturally chose one of the three genres above.
Youth.
Youth stories.
They were a genre about characters in their late teens and early twenties searching for their own talent.
Identity exploration, self-discovery, friendship, love, career paths, children becoming adults, and so on are also part of youth stories?
You can do those things elsewhere.
Crying out about effort and talent only works in youth stories.
That was my summary of the youth genre.
Therefore, the youth story I wrote also followed the above theory.
Every character had no talent in their respective field and failed at everything they did, and in the end, because they had no talent, they failed at the very end too. Ending.
That was the scenario I had just shown the members of the movie production group.
Summarized in writing, it sounded like a fairly depressing scenario, but that was because it was being viewed through writing.
In truth, that kind of content in film? Extremely common.
Because movies were a playground for tragedy addicts.
There was no method as effective as a bad ending when it came to remaining in people’s memories. Beyond that, if it was not a bad ending in the first place, it did not remain in their memories. There was no creator who did not know this.
However, writing it well was difficult.
Because if a bad ending was not written well, it only felt filthy.
Think about it.
A work you followed every day for a whole year ends with the entire main cast dying?
No matter how elegant and logical the process was, it would be hard to accept.
Because there was time sunk into it.
It was a natural human psychology to want the end of that time to feel good.
Of course, if you make the tone of the work bleak from beginning to end and let the reader know there is a bad ending at the end of it, even readers who followed it for a long time will accept it.
But if you do that, the work becomes needlessly heavy, so most of them are not fun.
Maybe because of that, most works suddenly shift atmosphere instead.
But they should know by now.
That they are serialized works.
Film was now the only medium where that kind of writing method was accepted.
Even if every character who had been laughing and chatting happily suddenly died at the ending, the only reaction it received was something like, “That was so shocking.”
Despite that level of density, it only took about two hours of the consumer’s time. A medium with the strongest cost-effectiveness.
There was a reason film directors became tragedy addicts.
Since the structure allowed them to use tragedy without consumers rejecting it, the medium evolved in a way that remained in people’s memories as much as possible.
Therefore, the scenario I had written, if viewed not as writing but as film, had a good ending that would make consumers fall into deep thought.
Meaning, there was no problem with the plot.
However.
It seemed an error had occurred in the details.
I said, “You can’t sympathize with the protagonist’s way of thinking, right?”
“That too, but what are the characters in the end? Do these people even know each other? Why don’t they get involved with each other?”
“Because effort is lonely by nature.”
It was Yukimura’s opinion, but seeing as no one else said much, they seemed to agree.
Kano muttered, “He’s the same type as Touji, but what he does is completely different.”
“That’s because he’s the protagonist. Not me.”
People occasionally misunderstand this, but the author and the protagonist are different.
Even if a few elements may appear similar, a protagonist who has been modified this way and that to fit the story cannot be the same as an author living in reality.
In my view, even in essays, the protagonist and the author were different.
I smacked my lips.
There was clear behavioral logic in the protagonist of my youth scenario. There was also clear behavioral logic in the characters.
This behavioral logic created consistency, and that consistency created fun.
At least, I felt fun there.
So this scenario was extremely fun to me.
Looks like it was only fun to me again.
Apparently, because the characters were not connected by incidents and the story progressed in an omnibus format through each of their separate lives, interest had dropped sharply.
I thought this was the arrangement that best contrasted effort, but they said it was boring, didn’t they?
Boldly revising at a time like this was the virtue of a commercial writer.
“And so, the second movie scenario I spent several days thinking over and writing. Grand public reveal.”
“Hey, Touji. How many did you write?”
“Grand public reveal.”
Next up.
Youth story.
But with a generous amount of romance added.
Everyone quickly read the scenario I handed them.
This time, unlike before, everyone’s expressions were good.
Riku read the scenario and exclaimed in admiration.
“Touji, you can write this kind of thing too?”
“My hit work is a college youth love comedy, and the last work I wrote was also a high school youth love comedy.”
Riku, did this guy really read my novels?
You skimmed a few reviews and pretended you read them, didn’t you?
Confess honestly, right now.
“Uh… what was it? The protagonist’s thoughts? They’re normal in this.”
No. He had read them properly.
I told you Riku was my greatest friend.
I nodded.
“I put some effort into it.”
“I think this is fun. What about you guys?”
At Riku’s words, Kano, who was in the middle of reading the scenario, immediately responded.
“Yeah. I think it’s fun too. Since it’s you, Touji, I figured you could do it, obviously.”
“I see. Yukimura?”
“…I think it’s okay too.”
Hm.
That reaction was the kind that had something caught in it.
“Is it not fun?”
“Fun… if we’re only talking about fun, I think it is.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
When I pressed her because I did not understand, Yukimura’s lips parted slightly.
Then she whispered quietly.
“This… so who is the male lead?”
“Either me or Riku.”
“…”
Yukimura went quiet. The moment I blinked at that strange reaction—
Bang.
Kano, who had finally finished reading the scenario, slammed the scenario down as if striking the table.
Kano raised the corners of her mouth.
“Touji. What’s with the kiss scene at the end?”
“It is the ending of a universal youth romance film.”
“Who did you say the actors were? Yukimura and Touji?”
“Riku is also a candidate…”
Thump. Someone kicked me.
This feeling was Riku.
Aha.
Confirmed.
I took a new set of A4 pages out of my bag.
“And so, the third movie scenario I spent several days thinking over and writing. Mystery film grand public reveal.”
“Touji, you really wrote a ridiculous amount, huh?”
Thank you.