:: Introduction of anime production :: »Scenarios(*1) and scenario writers(*2) Why do we need scenarios? During the planning period, the project plot is just an outline of the world view and the personality of the main characters. When we reach the production stage, we need very specific "instructions" for the storyboarder(*3), character designer(*4) and background artist(*5) to drive their imagination. Scenarios are the "instructions" and well written scenarios give production staff a better understanding about the world and characters they are going to create together. For the reasons above, producers(*6), director(*7) and scenario writer need to have many meetings before the final edition is done. The scenario meeting(*8) itself usually takes hours since producers, director and writers are all giving their opinions and ideas on how to enrich or cut the story while reviewing the plot. Because people in the meeting are just throwing out ideas regarding the plot or rewrite the scenario (after a few meetings), the scenario writer needs strong nerves (to stand all the criticism and constantly rewriting the scenario) and a quick response for taking notes of the ideas from producers and the director and using his highly specialized writing skill to organize those "inspirations" and "ideas" after the meetings. As you can learn from many online/off-line resources, creating scenarios is quite formulaic and requires special writing skills. Depending on your point of view, writing a scenario may be considered more difficult than writing a novel. What makes it quite different from a novel is that scenario writers need to write the story like an observer watching the scene through a camera and thus transforming or creating the personality of characters from dialogue and actions into "words". Here is an example from "Tenchi Muyo! GXP": This is the scene "when Seina is at Kiriko's home and Kiriko is taking care of Seina's cuts and bruises that he got from the bicycle accident". But in a scenario, we have to break such simple sentences into many parts: Stage:"Masaki Kiriko's garden" Scene: "Kai is holding the handle of Seina's bicycle with a pensive face while trying to fix Seina's bicycle." Stage: "At the verandah of Kiriko's home" Scene: "Kiriko is sitting on the edge of the house's verandah." "Kiriko is holding a piece of disinfected gauze with tweezers and puts it on Seina's face which is covered with cuts and bruises" By breaking one simple sentence into different "parts" and following the formulaic style the scenario write creates a clean "map" for the rest of the production staff. What does it take to be a good scenario writer? There are many people who say that they want to be a scenario writer and write a fantastic scenario to create great anime. But the fact is, most scenario writers are not writing about what they really are interested in to begin with. Since scenario writers have to make a living, they often need to accept scenarios from from anime/game studios that are not their favorite subject or something they are very familiar with. A good scenario writer has to love writing and reading and also has to be flexible enough to meet with various requests (be well read, too). Also, the screenwriter needs to train himself/herself to write the scenarios from a third party view while portraying the world-view and creating the personality of characters and dialogues. The other ability a scenario writer must have is to break down an original novel into small parts while remaining loyal to the spirit of that original. So, how much does a scenario write earn for all these efforts? Normally, the average payment for a 26 minutes anime scenario is ¥150,000 to ¥400,000 in Japan. Please keep in mind that this mentioned payment is not fixed and very much depends on the project and the popularity of the writer. Starting at a studio which has a scenario writer section(*9) is the straightmost way to work for anime/game scenario. But there aren't many anime production studios in Japan have such a section and only some very big production companies which need a large production line to have a scenario writer section to support their long running TV anime. Even though there seems to be more direct ways, they are not not faster, since it requires a couple of years experience after which a young writer can handle a game or anime alone and thus make a living by writing scenarios One of the key persons in anime creation is our allmighty director and we will talking about this job in the next chapter. »»Next: Director (*)Terms in Japanese *1 Scenario = =ShiNaRiO, SuKuRiPuTo, KyaKuHon *2 Scenario writers = =ShiNaRiORaiTaa, KyaKuHonnKa *3 Storyboarder = =EnShuTu *4 Character Designer = *5 Background artist = =BiJyutuSeTei, BiSeTu *6 Producer = =PuRoDyuuSaa *7 Director = =KanToKu *8 Scenario Meeting = =KyaKuHonKaiGi *9 Scenario writers section = =BunGei © AIC. All rights reserved. We welcome you to contact us if you have any question toward this website. If your questions are related to our anime work, please send your question by e-mail to here.	Index Planning-1 (2003-07-01) Planning-2 (2003-07-11) Budgeting (2003-07-31) Scenarios (2003-08-28) Director (2003-12-18) Character designer (2004-06-03) Storyboard, storyboard artist and episode director (2004-07-01)