"Ai No Kon" or "The Love Con"

[hancookie]

I need some help with my storyline. I have a basic idea for most of the story, but I'm missing (arguably) the most important part--the ending! Any help or suggestions are appreciated!
Basically, it's a school romance/DEFINITELY DRAMA story. Super creative, I know. I've been drawing my characters for years but now I really want to take the scenes and ideas and turn them into a real story. I've set down a couple of "character bios" that are sort of a plot outline from different perspectives. Please read them and help me end my story well!


Miyu (MC) - After living a life almost entirely estranged from her father for reasons she does not know, Miyu is used to being different and not having friends, but all that changes in high school when she meets two good friends, Kimi and Yumi. At first jealous of their friendship, Miyu soon finds herself receiving it, and to make matters worse, she begins to fall in love with Yumi, whom she once hated. Enlisting the help of her now best friend Kimi, Miyu sets out to make Yumi fall head-over-heels for her and succeeds, only to find out that her best friend was actually a girl, and Yumi’s first love! Betrayed, Miyu feels as though she has to choose between her best friend and her boyfriend. (At this point I don’t know how to end the story. Yumi and Miyu will end up together but there has to be a struggle from both ends before a satisfying resolution)


Yumi - Yumi grew up in a very rich household, with a lot of expectations thrust upon him from a young age, so Yumi became bitter and rebellious and refused to go to a prestigious private junior high school, against his parents’ wishes. Still, he was afraid that people in public school would treat him differently because of his status, until he met a girl who genuinely wanted to be his friend. Her name was Kimi, and they grew very close after he stood up to the other kids who were bullying her, and he eventually asked her out on a date. Kimi never showed up, even though he waited for hours, and he never saw her again. That is, until high school, when Kimi’s “brother” is in his class, and with a little coaxing, promises to set them up again. Yumi is excited to meet his first love again, but he soon finds himself falling for another girl, Miyu. Yumi feels bad leaving Kimi in the dust after only just being reunited, but he ends up dating Miyu without his parents’ knowledge. When they find out, Yumi’s parents are furious, and try to separate the two of them, but nothing they do will convince Yumi to let go of his love just to save their image. (This is as far as I got here, sorry this one’s so long. I haven’t gotten to the point where I can condense it further. Yumi either has to get his parents’ consent or he elopes with Miyu I can’t decide. Please help me find an ending!)

Kimi - Kimi and Yumi were each other’s first love in middle school, but they were separated. As if by fate, they meet each other again in high school, but this time Kimi is disguised as a boy, and Kimi’s best friend Miyu has her sights set on Yumi, as do all the other girls at school. Kimi ends up stepping back to let her best friend have the boy, despite the heartbreak she feels. When her brother dies, she even ends up forgoing school altogether, falling into depression. Her friends visit her, and convince her to come back and at least finish the school year. After the year is finished, she transfers schools and cuts ties with Yumi and Miyu, and tries to start over, vowing never again to give up the things she cares about.


These are basically the three people my story rotates around. Like I said, I'm having trouble formulating where I want my story to go from here. Any advice or suggestions help! Thanks so much!

[Forlorn Serpent]

I haven't read all the character bios yet but... I think I can help you out. Just answer the next questions so I can help you better.

All these questions will help to figure out the ending.
Do you want this to be novel or manga?

You have some drama bombs in the story, how dramatic do you want your story to be?

Try to condense a summary to 25 words. You can write a couple so we can get a better summary. You can follow this format. Main character wants something, something or somebody is stopping them, how the MC has to overcome it. You don't need the ending planned out for the summary/ pitch line. You can look up Loglines on Google to help you out with this.

Do you mind if I write a rough chapter in script format for you? Or do you prefer prose? If you agree, I can see if the tone is right. If you have the tone, you can chose what ending route you want that best fits the story.

[MahluaandMilk]

Try to condense a summary to 25 words. You can write a couple so we can get a better summary. You can follow this format. Main character wants something, something or somebody is stopping them, how the MC has to overcome it. You don't need the ending planned out for the summary/ pitch line.

I'm going to agree with this here. I find it very helpful as a writer to take my ideas and try to explain them in as little words as possible. It helps shave away unnecessary details that often lead to distractions. Keeping things relatively simple for yourself and your readers can bring out the best in your story.

As for character bios, and this may just be my rather unpopular opinion: their backstory really doesn't matter unless it is a crucial plot element. What matters for a character mostly is how they take their past and view their present because of it. It's usually best to focus on the character's raison d'être, or their main reason for living, and it tends to get easier to start with a purpose and build a personality off it than to start with a personality and backstory and build a reason out of it.

[hancookie]

I realize that my post may be confusing, and a lot of (maybe unnecessary) information but what I did was basically copy/paste all the notes I had, in case someone wanted to help me with them, or maybe get an idea of what I want to do. I know it's not very concise, but it's pretty much everything I had in my head typed out. Sorry it's so long-winded.

[hancookie]

I haven't read all the character bios yet but... I think I can help you out. Just answer the next questions so I can help you better.

All these questions will help to figure out the ending.
Do you want this to be novel or manga?

You have some drama bombs in the story, how dramatic do you want your story to be?

Try to condense a summary to 25 words. You can write a couple so we can get a better summary. You can follow this format. Main character wants something, something or somebody is stopping them, how the MC has to overcome it. You don't need the ending planned out for the summary/ pitch line. You can look up Loglines on Google to help you out with this.

Do you mind if I write a rough chapter in script format for you? Or do you prefer prose? If you agree, I can see if the tone is right. If you have the tone, you can chose what ending route you want that best fits the story.

It is supposed to be a manga, although it might turn out to be a long one. Like I said, I've been drawing scenes and characters for years, but I really want to put them all into a final product. That's a main reason there are such long descriptions of things.
It's definitely a drama/romance sort of thing, I will admit, but the bombs will be more spaced out in the actual manga.
If you want to write a chapter, you can. I know I have my first chapter or two (of the part in middle school) hand-drawn, but it's in storage and I haven't been able to get to it.
I'll add a shorter, less detailed story summary to my post.

Thanks so much for your input!

[Forlorn Serpent]

Did you get rid of Kimi and Yumi eloping?

Well, after you posted the plot summary, you really went deep on making mistakes in one's life.

Do you have any anime series that helped you shape your idea or one that you want to resemble. I don't mean copy of course.

A ways, I think you have your ending if Kimi is your MC. It's a bummer ending but it works. All you need are the plot points that take her where she is ends up. If Fate exists, they should end up together if they meet 3 times!  But that just highlights the tragedy of your story.

[hancookie]

Did you get rid of Kimi and Yumi eloping?

Well, after you posted the plot summary, you really went deep on making mistakes in one's life.

Do you have any anime series that helped you shape your idea or one that you want to resemble. I don't mean copy of course.

A ways, I think you have your ending if Kimi is your MC. It's a bummer ending but it works. All you need are the plot points that take her where she is ends up. If Fate exists, they should end up together if they meet 3 times!  But that just highlights the tragedy of your story.

It was Yumi and Miyu who end up eloping.

Kimi does sort of end up meeting Yumi and Miyu again (So for her and Yumi it would be a third time) during her college years, but that's sort of an epilogue thing that I don't know if I'll end up adding because I don't want it to drag on for no reason.

I'm not sure about any anime/manga that have really influenced this story specifically except perhaps Hana Kimi (but that's more art style influence).

[Forlorn Serpent]

I got everyones name confused, i just reread everything again. Sorry about that. I have no idea why i thought the A- character was a girl and was with Yumi.

if you keep with the this story line, you have only two issues that have to be addressed.  First one is why should we care about your MC's problems. The second, you overly Romanticized a situation that almost seems impossible, and you beat the audience with the head with how depressing everything turns out. I know stories can go this route but you need to give the audience something to hold on to. You can't have low points without high points. Try to add some to your character bios.

Also, since you already did some illustrations for your story, can you post an outline of what you remember of your first chapter?

I just noticed that you wrote, "[Kimi] makes a lot of stupid mistakes because she’s only human, and maybe her story will convince someone not to make the same ones I/she did." Is she an avatar for you? I won't make fun of you if she is, i notice a lot of female writers do this. i took a Women's Literature course in college. This was one of only a few differences between male and female writers that i observed. I just worry that if this situation kind of happened to you, that you keep an objective mindset when writing. What has Kimi learned from this experience and what do you want to tell the audience? It might seem like a good idea to just have the audience observe the outcome and learn from it but stories are meant to be somewhat didactic.   

[hancookie]

It's ok, it's a lot to process. And thank you so much for your input, it means a lot.

Originally, Yumi and Miyu were supposed to be the main characters, and it's only because I like drawing Kimi so much that the manga seems to rotate around her at this point. The story/chapters I wrote previously were for a manga short story competition, and it was a "different perspective" of the story I was writing, which I suppose is another reason I got used to that perspective. Unfortunately, it was so long ago that I don't really remember the details of it past the first couple of pages (which I redrew a lot since I was still settling on a drawing style).

It's actually quite frustrating because I have a lot of my original plot ideas, character sketches and bios, and even some chapters written out or blocked, but they're all in notebooks in storage and I haven't been able to get to them. I feel like I could explain things a lot better if I had my files.

Kimi is only vaguely similar to me, and makes a few of the mistakes I did, but I would say all of the characters have a piece of me in them. Maybe that's just me trying to make them more relatable. As my friends helped me create the other characters, she's probably one of the few characters that I created completely by myself, and I think because of her personality I relate to her a lot better. That is an interesting observation about female writers, though, I never thought about that before.

[hancookie]

So I've put a bit more thought and effort in, and I re-vamped my original post. Hopefully now it's more manageable and easier to understand, plus I returned my main characters back to their rightful places. Sorry it was so confusing before, I needed to get my own ideas straightened out before I could present them clearly.

Thank you for your patience and input so far! It's been really helpful!

[passerby]

Your story for each character is rather stagnate and lack any real concrete order.  I can see why you are having problems creating an ending because right now, with what's given, your story has too many possible, multiple direction with no real clear indication.  You have to ask yourself, "How do you want it to end?".  What is the main theme that you would want someone to take after it's all been done and over with.  Heartbreak(s), love & loss, togetherness, etc. 

Miyu
So how does Miyu not know that her best friend, Kimi, is actually a girl and not a boy.  How long is this ploy?  Is it merely momentarily or over a long period of time.  I don't see how they can be best friends if she doesn't even know the gender of her "best friend". 

Why did Miyu ask Kimi for help of all people?  This would be important because if Kimi(girl) secretly still loves Yumi, then why help her?  If Kimi(boy) discovered Miyu's crush then it would be plausible that she could help Miyu.  But nonetheless, why?  What are Kimi's intention for agreeing to help Miyu.

Yumi
How does he never see Kimi again?  Didn't they go to school together in middle school?  How long did they know each other?  By chance, he met Kimi's brother in class, who agreed to set Yumi & Kimi back together again only to find that Yumi suddenly was love struck the moment he laid eyes on Miyu.  Was this incident only over the course of a day?  Or are you making Kimi's brother secretly Kimi?

He's got the guts to defy his parents and go to a public school but is "worry" about finding a solution to justify his reason to date Miyu.  Just keep him mentally tough and you'll eventually find a way for it to happen. 

Kimi
She seems really incomplete.  How did she manage to fool everyone that she was a boy and how did she accomplish it?  If she still loves Yumi then why did she stood him up and why is she playing a different identity right now?  Why did she choose to cut off the whole world after her brother's death?  What is her overall role in this story.


I would advise that you figure out an overall conclusion that involves all three, instead of working on individual endings and then trying to tie them together.  Else, you focus just on your main character, Miyu.  I would forgo Yumi, as he seems the least important, and try to figure out Miyu's and Kimi's scenario.  Once you solve that, it would leave a direct path to how you would solve Miyu's & Yumi's problem.  Then it would lead to the sole, uncontrollable outcome of Yumi's & Kimi's relation.

[MahluaandMilk]

Yes, thank and bless you passerby. I was wondering for a long while how I should reply to this thread after the author's edits, but you put it in words for me.

I mentioned before that it's easier for me to write characters who are purpose-based, and I know it can be hard coming up with an ending once you have so many ideas. My suggestion would be to write out a list of different endings, since as passerby says, you could really take this just about anywhere, and figure out which one just feels the most right to you and your characters. Once you have an end in mind, it'll be much easier to bring the early points together and get things moving. Maybe take one of your characters' individual endings as a basis for "okay, how do I get from point A to point Z with this?"

[hancookie]

First of all, thank you both for your help and advice!

It seems I went from too much information to not enough information at this point. I do have more details as far as the characters' motivations and logistically what happens and doesn't happen to create the situations, I was just trying to keep it short and to-the-point.

I do have most of the story worked out, like I've said, my main problem is the ending. Maybe I'm not understanding your questions, but the way I want it to end is that Yumi and Miyu end up together, and Kimi tries to start over. What I'm not sure how to bring about is how exactly Yumi and Miyu actually do end up together. Whether they elope or whether they actually do get permission from his parents. Either one would be possible, but if I chose the latter, I don't know how to change the parents' minds.

[passerby]

Without more precise information, I or anyone cannot possible give you a accurate way to end your ending.  I could give you numerous endings of the bat, but it would be a waste of time to consistently "trial and error" and pinpoint one near to your liking.  At the moment, we can only offer an attractive, suggestive solution to you.  Seeing as only you know your story to the full detail, only you can find the final piece.

You are looking at this too linear.  If Yumi and Miyu are to be together then what is it that drove them to be together.  They're both outcast in their own way and have found the courage to overcome their set troubles.  But now when it comes to the simple outcome of staying together, they seem to be stuck at a standstill.  What do they gain if they run away, besides having each other?  What would their lives be afterwards?  Why do they even bother with needing permission from Yumi's parents?  Yumi defies his parents in many ways already, but now he wants to be a good boy and get his parents permission.  What do you want them to do?  Do you want them to overcome hardship, or have faith in themselves and believe they will achieve their ultimate goal in the end.