The Guide to Email Success/AtionSong
From Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki
AtionSong's Guide to Email Success
Congradulations! You've gotten your brand new Other Character Email. Or Fake Character Email. Or Wiki User Email.
Or maybe you didn't. Maybe you got an abandoned Email Show. A show that already has an established fan audience or an already solid format. And a blockquote. That's import too.
Contents |
Starting Your Email Show
Your Character
If you have a character like Marazipan as your character, you are lucky. You already know how they speak, how they act, etc. If you have a less developed character, such as Old Timey Strong Bad, or especially a Fake Character Email, you have an extra step. You need to design a personality for your character. If you have a real character, build off what you know about the character so far, and figure out how that might affect the rest of that character's personality. If you have a fake character, think about how that character acts, their relationship with other characters, etc. One of the biggest problems I see with Email Shows is that the writer takes a poorly known character and just does the one gag we know about them over and over again. Try to avoid this at all costs.
SUMMARY: Develop your character.
GOOD EXAMPLE: Other Character Email Tampo
Other Characters
Different characters live in different worlds. For example, Free Country USA, 20X6 Time, and Peasantry just to name a few. If you have created a Fake Character Email, you have the task of deciding on a universe for your character to live in. Once you have your universe, decide on the relationship your character has with other characters in the same universe. It is a good idea to choose three or four characters that will be featured the most (besides your character) to give the show some familiarity between emails. If you feature too many or too few characters in your emails, people will have trouble distinguishing relationships between characters (too many) or lose interest in the emails (too few).
SUMMARY: A couple of regulars = Good
GOOD EXAMPLE: Other Character Email Lil' Brudder
Your Own Characters
While Email Shows are required to take place in the H*R universe, that doesn't mean that there are some characters that we just don't know about yet. It's a good idea to create some original characters for your email show, especially if it takes place in a universe where there aren't many characters to begin with. HOWEVER... if you have too many original characters, readers may feel like your show is too original. It could also confuse people who have only read a couple of emails, and haven't seen the development of the characters.
SUMMARY: Make a few characters of your own.
GOOD EXAMPLE: Other Character Email Strong Sad
