The Art of Balance

If you're reading this then you probably know I write a kaiju story in comic form called Kodoja.

But no story out there is just one type of story, you know? More so, what makes everyone's story unique are the little things that make that story *yours*. Individual stories within the same franchise have individual flavors because of the storytellers: Godzilla (the original) is entirely different than Godzilla vs Hedorah to fans of the genre.

To that extent, every story you tell is more than a story: it's a balancing act of all the individual stories you're weaving into the whole.

Kodoja is of course mainly a Giant Monster story, but for me it's a balancing act: there's a political element, a character interaction element and a Lovecraftian element (I say this to anyone who will listen at conventions - it's not all the way there yet, but it'll reveal itself a bit more as we go along). Maybe this isn't the case for other people, but for me it can be a struggle to get the balance and the calibration of the parts right. I might write for a little bit and really get into the Lovecraft angle and before you know it I've written a mini-Lovecraft story.  Which is super-cool (tentacles and sh*t!), except this is a story that's centered around giant monsters! The goal is to keep the Giant Monster as the main driver of the story and if I veer off too much in one direction I may change the flavor of the story entirely.

I view stories as one of those carpenter levels you use for Home improvement tasks: you have to balance things on three different angles, and only when you do it are things on the level. There are times when I think that balancing act is harder than any amount of smarts or detail you can put in a story (similar to how I think it's harder to write a tight, incredible pop song than it is to endlessly noodle around on an instrument for 4 minutes). I don't want a political story, I don't want a Lovecraft story, and I don't want a character interaction story: I want a Kaiju story that incorporates those three elements equally. And I'll devote tons of energy (and rewrites) to get that balance right.