Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga by Araki Hirohiko

Author:Araki, Hirohiko
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-421-59847-5
Publisher: VIZ Media
Published: 2017-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Learn Storytelling from Hemingway

Your story will be created by your character’s action, but it’s important that they not try to explain the story.

Say I were to start a Rohan Kishibe one-shot with Rohan expounding, “I am a mangaka, and I’m thinking about going out to find material for a new story. There’s something that’s really caught my interest, and it is…” Not only would that be clunky, it’s not something I want to do. I believe that the story must be revealed organically through your characters’ actions, natural conversations, mannerisms, locations, and so on.

A perfect example of this “show, don’t tell” approach can be found in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Killers.” The story begins with a scene where two men enter a lunchroom and order their meals. The kind of men they are is revealed not through direct descriptions, but through the things the two men say. I’ll pull an excerpt from the beginning to illustrate:

“I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes,” the first man said.

“It isn’t ready yet.”

“What the hell do you put it on the card for?”

“That’s the dinner,” George explained. “You can get that at six o’clock.”

George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

“It’s five o’clock.”

“The clock says twenty minutes past five,” the second man said.

“It’s twenty minutes fast.”

“Oh, to hell with the clock,” the first man said. “What have you got to eat?”

“I can give you any kind of sandwiches,” George said. “You can have ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver and bacon, or a steak.”

“Give me chicken croquettes with green peas and cream sauce and mashed potatoes.”

“That’s the dinner.”

“Everything we want’s the dinner, eh? That’s the way you work it.”

Without writing, “The two men have killed before,” or “They have guns,” or “They are hired killers,” or anything of that sort, the back-and-forth dialogue creates a vivid image that these two are not average men, and are some sort of criminals.

The short story continues, almost entirely using dialogue to paint the scenes, and that’s all it needs to flesh out the characters and setting. The story is a good example for showing you exactly how to write, and its strong influence can be felt in the tough back-and-forth dialogue of hardboiled detective fiction, in Quentin Tarantino’s movies, and beyond.

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