What Happened When I Was Twenty?
Visited 449 Times Published by Rico January 27th, 2007 in Rico's Ramblings, What and Writing.When I was twenty, I came up with my first real story.
Up until then, none of the stories I wrote were “real” for me, because they didn’t make any sense. It’s probably because of my infatuation with Sci-Fi, but I tried too hard to create fantastical worlds full of mechanical miracles. And my Writing classmates loved my modern adaptation of Jack be Nimble, but my professor criticized it as too scatter-brained.
She was right. I decided to go back to the drawing board, so to speak. I realized that I totally neglected the fundamentals. In my quest to create inspiring prose, I lost track of the important things, such as an established background, a sensible progression of events, and clarity for the readers’ sake. I recognized the need to work on the basics before trying to create my own style. You can only push the envelope when you know what the boundaries are. So I concentrated on creating simple writing, making sure all the bases were covered. Thematically, grammatically and literarily.
To literally make a long story short: I came up with Juan Salakot, a fearsome Filipino hero who fights against the criminal and corrupt. Dressed in a Salakot, kamesa de chino, pants and sandals, Salakot nevertheless had the skills to overcome even the greatest of obstacles. He relied less on brute strength, more on pinpoint strikes with his arnis sticks, and relied on a fearsome persona to intimidate the bad guys. Much like the Dark Knight. I’m not giving anything else away! 
Even if it borrowed heavily, the Juan Salakot saga represented a story I could live with. And my professor gave it a much higher grade. The writer in me learned that only fundamentals lead to greatness.
Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to Fool for Five today, and Share This with others. Donate and help keep Fool for Five online.
hey. do you have an inked versions of your character? post it here.
It was great meeting you and Sasha at the party yesterday.
junie: Never drew him, but he was my first attempt to model a character. And I won’t post that, since nahihiya ako (it’s embarassing).
And thanks for bringing Marcelle along, he did bring the house down.
Jonas: Same here dude!
Jonas: No problem.
hey dude, nice meeting you at the blogparteeh last saturday!
Likewise.
Juan Salakot was a filipino comics character in a magazine called funny komiks. I think your character was inked a long time ago.
I’m not surprised. Juan Salakot sounds like a real logical name. You wouldn’t happen to have the issue would you? I wanna see it!
I wish! I was actually looking for people that had the issues uploaded when i stumbled upon your page.
Sigh… it’s too bad komiks died out. But I’m sure websites like The Comic Blurb will bring back the glory!