The following is adapted from a post that originally appeared on the Something Awful forums.
What is visual storytelling?
Toriyama, already an industry veteran by the time he began creating Dragonball, is a master of visual storytelling. What I mean by that is that Toriyama uses his art to do more than just show us what nonverbal events are happening in any given scene. The art reveals to us details about the setting we are in, the mood we should be feeling, and who the characters really are.
Forget “Show, Don’t Tell,” Remember the destination
Anyone who has ever had instruction in creative writing or who has read any kind of pop culture criticism has heard the rule “Show, Don’t Tell.” The point is that when we’re consuming some work of fiction it’s boring and not fun to have a bunch of details of supposedly interesting things spoon-fed to us when it would be more interesting to actually see those things instead. In my experience, however, this “rule” is an axiom cooked up in response to the fact that nobody likes an exposition dump, but it doesn’t do a good job of explaining why “telling” is bad.
Lajos Egri, in The Art of Dramatic Writing, points out that when you’re telling any kind of story you don’t have to know how it will end when you actually start writing it, but you HAVE to know the premise, which usually just a brief set of words that sum up the message of the story, such as “bravery leads to victory” or “selfishness leads to ruin.” Egri says that people who start writing a story without a premise are like someone who takes off running in a random direction who doesn’t know where they’re going but will decide when they get there. (He goes so far as to say they’re lunatics; clearly jogging was not all the rage in 1942 Hungary.) We like most stories to play out like a scientist proving a thesis – a story is a stand-in for real life. We want the story to say “If someone is like this in this circumstance, then the result is this.”
So to put it very simply, while you don’t have to know exactly how your story ends you have to know the purpose of your story and the direction in which it’s going. So you need to include the things that will take your audience there …and ideally? NOTHING ELSE.
But that’s crazy talk, Xibanya! How limiting! How can you say that?! Sorry, it’s true. This is one of the things that is SO hard for a beginner to creative writing to grasp. If something does not carry the audience in the direction of the premise, it has no business being in your story. Speaking as someone who has had their work of fiction accepted on the condition that severe cuts be made to it, it can be a difficult and emotional for the writer to identify what stays and what goes.
Sometimes, Tell, Don’t Show?
In fiction, what actually drives the story forward and demonstrates your premise is the cast. The setting exists to provide the circumstances that allow the characters to prove your point. Egri writes that a character must have no choice but to act in the way they do. He doesn’t mean that a character shouldn’t be faced with choices (actually most good narratives demand the character be faced with dilemmas) but that given the character’s personality and experiences, they must only behave in a way that is true to who they really are. From the audience’s point of view, we decide what a character’s personality and experiences are by observing what they do and putting it together like a puzzle.
If a character shows up and they verbally narrate their life story all at once without ever being interrupted by the main cast, that tells us that this new character is experiencing some kind of unusual inner pressure that compels them to reveal the intimate details of their life, that they don’t care who is listening, and that they’re probably so inwardly focused that they may not be in an emotional state that renders them capable of really listening to others. This can be fine if done on purpose (ie, Forrest Gump‘s framing device) but if we suspect that this isn’t the way the author intends us to understand this character, then we’re taken out of the story because the character isn’t acting “the way they would really act.” If a character is a tough guy who doesn’t give a shit about what other people think, they will tell the other characters so – by acting like a tough guy who doesn’t give a shit about what other people think. How did he get that way? Let the reader fill in the gaps – the character probably had a rough childhood or something.
But what if you want the audience to know the character’s entire detailed life story down to very specific events? You could show it in flashback or tell it in narration, but you risk boring the reader, since if you set up the rest of your story properly, they want to find out what happens next. This generally only works if the flashback or narration is very brief and is a detail we HAVE to know but can’t have explained to us by the character themselves for some reason, like that they’re not the kind of person that would just start telling people they barely know about their tragic past. But what if you need more than just a panel or two to explain this character’s very very important backstory? If those events in the past are so important, why not start the story there (or story arc, in the case of an ongoing series)? If that’s a bad idea because that’s not where the story that actually follows your premise really begins, maybe you should reconsider including this character’s sob story.
But let’s consider the approach from a different angle.
Goku is tracking down his grandfather’s four star dragonball. We know that he wants it very badly because he is trudging through a snowstorm in pursuit of it. He is eventually overwhelmed by the cold and collapses. A girl about his age finds him and takes him back to her home. The girl, named Sono, and her mother give him blankets and warm liquids and he soon recovers. They ask him why he was out in the cold and Goku explains that he’s looking for the four star dragonball. Sono becomes afraid and tells him that an army of mercenary thugs have been terrorizing their town on the pretense that they’re looking for dragonballs. The army has enslaved Sono’s father and her neighbors and is forcing them to search for the dragonballs; they have also imprisoned the village chief and will kill him if they don’t comply. After hearing this, Goku cheerfully tells the girl and her mother that he’ll take care of the problem for them.
Hey! We just “told” Sono’s sob story instead of “showing” it! I didn’t get a flashback! I feel gypped! But let’s think about this. The overarching premise of Dragonball is that a guy who is so pure-hearted that he only cares about fighting will always succeed. What is important here is not understanding the fear and pain the girl felt when her father was taken away or the anxiety she feels about what will become of the village. What’s important is seeing how the main character (Goku) reacts when confronted with this situation.
Goku actually only shows the faintest shred of sympathy and it’s not really clear that Goku is cognizant of how scared and unhappy the girl and her mother are. We make fun of movies where characters barely react to being told awful things because it shows the characters to be low-empathy weirdos (Anakin: “They’re animals and I slaughtered them like animals! Even the women and children!” Padme: “eh.” Um, Padme is supposed to be a perceptive and kindhearted person. But she doesn’t seem that concerned about the pain and guilt Anakin feels about snapping and murdering the fuck out of a bunch of people nor does she seem appalled on behalf of, you know, the people who got murdered?) but in this case Goku’s low emotional intelligence is entirely intentional. All Goku is thinking about is decking more guys in the schnoz.
Interviewer: What is Son Goku to Toriyama-sensei?
Toriyama: At any rate, I wanted him to have the sense of being that rare guy who seeks only “to become stronger than before”, so much so that it feels like “there’s no one as pure as this person”. And while he does end up saving everyone as a result of that, he himself at least has a very pure sincerity about “wanting to become stronger”. What I wanted to depict the most was the sense that he might not be a good guy at all, although he does do good things as a result.
Nozawa: A strong person like this would absolutely show off that “I’m strong”, wouldn’t they? But [Goku] would absolutely not come out with that, would he? I’m always saying this to everyone, but the world would be an incredibly nice place if it were full of people like Goku.
Toriyama: I have a feeling that the world wouldn’t operate very well. (laughs)
Nozawa: (laughs)
(from Kanzenshuu)
Sono’s a plot device and only has to have enough characterization to pass muster as an actual human instead of a cardboard cutout. Contrary to what you might think based on the Star Wars expanded universe or Tolkein’s works, that’s good. If a character forms part of your central premise, they should be real people with real emotions, wants, and needs. But if they aren’t? Fuck ’em. They’re furniture. A Potempkin village of plot. A bad writer focuses on fleshing out the complex motives of characters who don’t advance the story’s premise. Why does an intelligent woman like Mai work for Pilaf? I hate to say “who cares” because it’s fun to discuss, but as far as the plot is concerned, how realistic her motives are don’t matter because she is just an extension of Pilaf’s character. The story needed to show that Pilaf was on some level aware that his plans were not good. In real life such a person might have nagging inner doubts. As explained in a previous entry, visual storytelling requires exaggeration, so Pilaf needs minions for him to talk to.
Plot, Subplot
Wait one gosh darn minute! Toriyama gives us a visual flashback of Nam’s village! We see that his village has no water and that they’re doomed unless they get some. Why doesn’t Nam just say “I have to win so that I can get the prize money to bring water back to my village?” (Actually, he says that too.) What gives? Well while Dragonball’s premise is “a guy who is so pure-hearted that he only cares about fighting will always succeed” the Tenkaichi Budokai arc has a different but complementary premise, which I would sum up as something like “Putting all of yourself into something will give you a better result than just aiming for the material benefits of success.” Goku fights until he collapses, but he still loses the tournament. However, outside of fame and official recognition, Goku’s just as well off as if he had actually won first place – Roshi ends up spending all the prize money on Goku’s dinner, so Goku effectively won the prize anyway.
We see a parallel in Nam’s story. Nam gives it his all, but he still loses his match with Goku. But Roshi is so impressed by his pure motives and fighting spirit that he provides Nam with all the water he would have spent his prize money on. Nam too is just as well off as if he had won first place. Nam’s story is the tournamen arc’s subplot, and it’s generally a good idea to have the subplot’s premise be the same as that of the main plot, as it strengthens the premise to show that it can be applied in different contexts. We are shown flashbacks of Nam’s village because we ARE meant to empathize with Nam and understand the emotions that drive him to fight. Nam is a supporting character in the main plot, but he’s the main character in this subplot. And look at the other tournament fighters – Ranfan and Bacterian are presented as dirty (haw haw) fighters who are relying on tricks instead of skill to win. Neither of them get a particularly dignified exit.
Dual Purpose
With that in mind, more is always better. More worldbuilding! More characterization! More reveals of backstories! It makes the story feel richer and the premise more solid. But how can you cram in more when you’re not supposed to have a bunch of narration boxes full of exposition or a bunch or flashbacks or characters saying things they wouldn’t actually say? Well, nobody said you can’t do more than one thing at a time. The best way to show more is to take a character-based approach. Show us more of the world by having the characters interact with it while advancing the story. Show us more of the characters by having them dress the way their characters would choose to dress themselves and do things they would choose to do. Exclude everything else. And if you’re in a visual medium, do even more. Ideally everything in a panel or frame will not only advance the story, and reveal character, it will also provide visual pointers to direct the flow of the reader’s gaze, become part of a clear and pleasing composition, and indicate a scenes intensity and duration.
Here are the pages I reference. Sorry they’re Spanish scanslations I’m translating on the fly, I’m too lazy to scan my Viz copies.
Sono’s Sob Story
Sono: That’s a Dragonball?
Goku: It sure is!
Goku: My grandpa’s Dragonball looks like this but it has four stars.
Goku: In total there are seven Dragonballs and if you join them all you can summon Shenlong and he will grant you a wish!
Note how we get a long horizontal panel here with Shenlong in the background. We’re meant to bathe in Goku’s wonderment at how cool it is that there’s a fukkin’ dragon that grants wishes.
Sono’s mom: Now I understand! They want to use them to conquer the world! That’s why they’re so desperate for them!
Goku: According to the radar, there’s a Dragonball somewhere around here.
Sono: I get it now! That’s why my father and the rest have been working so hard just to find it.
Sono: This is terrible…The Red Ribbon Army…has forced the people of this village to work as if they were slaves.
Goku: So why doncha beat ’em up?
Sono: Impossible! They’re armed to the teeth!
Sono: In that tower they’re keeping the mayor of our village hostage. If someone dares to try to rescue him, they’ll kill him.
Goku: We’ll see about that. Time to get going!
Goku: Thanks a lot for saving my life! I’ll save your village to return the favor.
Sono/Mother: What?!
Sono: They’re adults and you’re just a kid! They’ll kill you!
RR Guy: There he is!
RR Canine: Get ‘im!
Nam’s Sob Story
Roshi: Hey! How envious you make me! Fighting against such a beautiful woman!
Roshi: What what? His eyes seem as serious as a manga character’s. He’s not playing around. I feel in him an incredible spirit, as it the tournament were of great importance to him.
Roshi: Let’s see.
Boy: Brother, I’m very thirsty.
Woman: Even the well is dry now.
Man: This isn’t good. We won’t be able to harvest anything with a sun like this. This village is finished.
Nam: In six months the wet season will come. Until then I wil go to the city to bring you all water.
Woman: But if you do that we won’t have much water left for the vegetables. There’s no way to endure two months that way.
Nam: I will enter the Tenkaichi Budokai and buy water with the prize money. The fact that the tournament is happening right now is a gift from God.
Woman: Thank you very much…but how will you get there?
Man: Nam, have this money. It’s from the entire village and I think that it will at least be enough for you to make the trip.
Nam: I promise to win and bring you all water.
Villagers: …Give it your best…Don’t worry if you lose…Fight hard…
Roshi: Now I see…
Roshi: I understand. So that’s why he’s being such an asshole.
Potsticker: “That’s clearly Jackie Chun in the Nam sequence.”
Aw shit, mixed them up again.
Mordaedil: “I found this particular part of the Toriyama interview interesting: ‘Toriyama: What I wanted to depict the most was the sense that he might not be a good guy at all, although he does do good things as a result.’ And then I recall the very last page of the whole manga, where he flies off with Uub. Even in the anime, this scene seems discordant. Nearly a bit chilling. The idea that Goku might not be such a good person as we’ve come to expect came through that scene more clearly to me than most others.”
Blue Star: “That Toriyama quote is interesting. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Goku is some kind of sociopath or something. I think Toriyama is saying that Goku might not be “such a good guy” only in comparison to, like, Superman or something. Superman is utterly selfless (or so I’ve been lead to believe; I never got into superhero comics). Goku is pretty selfish but he’s kind-hearted and good-natured. He cares about people and has a sense of right and wrong. That good-naturedness coupled with his admittedly selfish desire to always become stronger is what makes him a hero, albeit an imperfect one.”
Thyrork: “Goku’s imperfections make for a better character. 
“
Agreed.
Effort Posts 