Weight of the Worlds
Advisor: Mr. Aaron Betcher
Onsite Mentor: Jessica Salazar
Stories and fiction serve a core role in human communication and understanding of the world around us. They provide entertainment, help us understand perspectives different from our own, and teach us lessons through made up characters and scenarios. There are many different ways to tell a story, whether through oral speech, novels, comics, video games, movies, or television shows. Adaptation of stories from one medium to another is an art practiced in many forms—whether it is writing down an oral tradition, adapting a book into a movie, or making a show based off a video game. Adaptation serves to make a story more accessible or reach a wider audience, and can reimagine a story in a different lens or perspective. In my project, I will be adapting the story of Shen and Zed from League of Legends into a screenplay for a TV show similar to the existing show Arcane. In this project, I will analyze the source material, study the art of screenwriting, and add or remove details, characters, and plotlines as necessary to create an adaptation that both expands upon and is faithful to the original. I will complete a screenplay for a show with three forty-minute episodes, and dub over a few parts of the script.
Project Blog
Week 0: Introduction
I began playing the game League of Legends in 2020, and a few months after I began playing, I learned that there was extensive lore and backstory for many of the game's characters. However, in a game with more than 150 characters, many character backstories are insufficiently fleshed out, and many characters lack depth or nuance. However, the 2022 show “Arcane” showed me the potential of the stories and personalities of the characters to be fleshed out, and inspired me to write my own TV show adaptation for certain League of Legends characters I am fond of. While I have never written a screenplay before, my years of writing have led me to attempt this project.
Because of the amount of characters in League of Legends, the stories of many characters are ignored by the company. However, many fans of the less popular characters feel left behind. Additionally, many fans feel strong resonance with certain characters because of a shared background, and may feel that the writers hired by the company did not adequately explore the characters’ cultural backgrounds.
With my project, I will provide additional stories and character exploration for characters that are important to many people. Because of my cultural perspective, I will also be able to accurately represent the characters and provide well needed representation to others. This project will benefit the online community surrounding League of Legends, particularly those who are interested in the lore, and will provide the benefits of art such as opportunities for reflection or the raising of thematic questions.
I have written fanfiction for several years, including for League of Legends. Fanfiction as a medium requires strong media analysis skills and synthesis of reading and writing into a product that preserves certain aspects of the artist’s original vision while adding my own creative input to my work. Because of English projects, I experimented with multiple genres of writing, such as free verse poetry and epic poetry. In high school, I took difficult English classes such as AP English Language and AP English Literature in order to develop my writing and analysis skills further. While these classes focus on technical writing, the skills I learned with creative writing helped me in these classes, and the skills I learned in these classes in turn improved my creative writing. I will post details of my progress next week.
Week 1
This week, I began studying the art of screenwriting and reviewing the source material I will be adapting. I read the script for the movie The Imitation Game, a movie I had previously watched. While I initially assumed that screenplays were composed of dialogue and “objective” descriptions of what should occur in a scene, I noticed that the narration in the screenplay was brimming with personality in the form of witty remarks and unique similes. The screenplay also described the inner thoughts of the characters more than I expected, both to more accurately convey how lines should be delivered and how the scene should be executed. Because I had already watched the movie it was made into, I could easily see how this script was turned into the final product.
I also reviewed the source material that I will be adapting, including character bios, short stories, a 6 issue comic, and in game voicelines. These different sources, while all considered canon and taking place in the same universe, frequently contradict each other or provide different images of the characters, making adaptation difficult. For example, Zed in his voicelines is depicted as a cruel person who forsakes honor to defend his country, while Zed in the comic is depicted as somebody who prioritizes honor above nearly everything else. Shen in his short story is depicted as nearly emotionless in pursuit of his duty, while depicted as quick to anger and turn to violence in the comic. However, these different sources share common central ideas such as the cycle of abuse, the power of tradition, and the types of goals people prioritize most in life. The magic system presented is soft and leaves many details open, but also provides room for me to fill in the gaps with my own writing, especially with culturally inspired elements.
For my adaptation, I plan on structuring the story and characters off the themes portrayed in order to reconcile the different ways the characters have been presented in canon. Next week, I will do screenwriting exercises to prepare myself to begin writing, and make a detailed outline and character sheets for the characters I will be writing about.
Week 2: Laying the Groundwork
This week, I continued studying the medium of screenwriting and made detailed plans for my three episodes of writing. I started by reading guides on the specific formatting of screenplays, which forced me to confront my own unfamiliarity with the genre. While I am an experienced prose writer who rarely finds writing advice given to beginners useful, many aspects of screenwriting advice for beginners was news for me. Even the formatting itself challenged my initial assumptions of screenwriting being basically similar to writing prose, such as the way scenes and settings are usually denoted.
I also started making detailed plans for the episodes I will be writing, including brief character sheets for original characters I wanted to introduce. I stuck to my usual style of plot planning that I use, first writing a large paragraph long summary for the overarching plot, then splitting it into three episodes and writing a paragraph long summary for each individual episode. I also wrote sentence long summaries for a few scenes I wanted to include in each episode, but left plenty of space in between to provide flexibility and fill in gaps. I also made loose notes for my ideas about my worldbuilding for the story, filling in gaps left by the canon material and making modifications in places to fit the story I want to tell. Normally, when I write, I enjoy using my plans as a guide but will often deviate from them as I write. Because of this, while I do make plans, I don’t make extremely detailed plans to afford myself this flexibility.
Next week, I will begin writing the first episode, working at a pace of approximately four pages a day, equivalent to about four minutes of runtime a day. While I anticipate potential problems with keeping up the writing pace, I have come to understand that when it comes to longer writing projects, discipline is more important than inspiration.
Week 3: Starting the First Episode
This week, I began writing the first episode of my script. I initially began writing the script on Google Docs, but realized after a couple of pages that it was extremely tedious to do the formatting correctly and switched to using a specialized scriptwriting software called StudioBinder. While I initially felt overwhelmed with the formatting, I was able to pick up screenwriting fairly quickly because of my initial experience in writing dialogue heavy storeis. After a couple days of writing, I realized I was displeased with the direction my writing was taking in regard to my characterization of an important side character who played an important role in the plot. Because of this, I decided to delete what I had written and start anew with a slightly different early plot and character interpretation.
The source of this conflict stems from a retcon in the source material I am drawing inspiration from regarding the character of Kusho, the father of Shen and the leader of a religious order. In the original lore, Kusho is presented as a stern and cold man who rigidly follows his religious teachings until his eventual death. While his teachings are extreme, he genuinely believes that it is his duty to follow them strictly. By contrast, a newer comic presented him as somebody who only used his religious teachings to manipulate others and went against them as soon as it was convenient for him. With my adaptation, while I originally started off using his second characterization, I found it hard to construct a nuanced or believable character when many of his motivations for being “evil” seemed to make no sense. Because of this, I restarted my script using his older characterization instead, because I decided I wanted to present him as a complex man who was a distant father but resolute religious leader.
My struggles with Kusho’s conflicting characterization show the difficulty in adaptation of deciding what elements of the source material to keep and what to discard, especially when the existing canon is messy and sometimes contradictory. However, based on the story I want to tell and the themes and characters I wanted to explore, I was able to make my decision of what version of the lore to go with in my adaptation. Next week I will continue to write my first episode, and hopefully catch up on lost page count.
Week 4: Finishing Episode 1
This week, I continued writing my first episode. Because I restarted in the middle of last week, I am planning on working this weekend in order to catch up. As I write, I feel more familiar with the format of the screenplay and how to construct a story with it. I can also feel the story beginning to take shape as I write, and feel more confident in my characters and world as I move the story forward.
The conflict in my first episode centers around two boys, one who is Shen, the son of a highly esteemed religious figure while the other, Govos, is a servant working in the temple Shen is studying in. Each major character in my story has their own ideas about fairness: Shen believes strongly in being fair and has a naive and idealistic view of fairness, Govos believes that the world is inherently unfair and it is stupid to expect fairness, Kusho holds rigid and conservative ideas about fairness that ironically come off as very unfair, and Kaeko believes in a greater, cosmic sense of fairness that she does not yet understand.
Another major theme in my story is an examination of Eastern conservatism and its shortcomings. While the setting is fantastical, some of the ideas present in the story such as rigid ideas about caste and social class, the value placed on obedience and respecting your elders, and honoring tradition are relevant in modern contexts. While these cultural and religious aspects may not be inherently bad, my personal experience with these elements has given me the knowledge to criticize them in a nuanced way.
This weekend, I will finish a rough draft of the first episode of my screenplay and I will begin the second episode next week.
Week 5: Beginning Episode 2
This week, I completed my first episode and moved on to writing my second. While I am slightly behind in progress, I am continuing to work at my planned pace and have strong guidelines for how I will write my second episode. Finishing my first episode has given me a better understanding of the themes and characters in my story, and made me start fleshing out the character arcs I want to give to certain side characters to help flesh them out.
In one of the later scenes in the first episode, I write a moment Shen has with his father that seeks to humanize Kusho and the burden he carries, but also convey the distance in their relationship. I had been anticipating writing this scene since I started the project, and I had Shen hug his father while Kusho shows no reaction, showing Shen’s desire for affection that his father does not fill. In my second episode, I skip forward in time, showing Shen and Govos making the transition to adulthood and the new challenges they will face. In the canon material, Shen meets Yevnai, his fiancee around this time of his life, but she is given very little characterization beyond being his love interest. In my adaptation, I am attempting to remedy this fact by exploring her motivations and giving her her own character arc as somebody seeking freedom and self expression but who attempts to get these things in different ways as she matures.
Because Yevnai is only ever characterized through her romantic relationship in canon, giving her personality and identity beyond that is proving to be a challenge for me, especially since she is only a side character. However, for the story arc I am planning on completing for this project, she will not get very much screen time and this will only become a bigger issue once I attempt to complete this project in my free time. I will spend the week after the break finishing the rough draft of the second episode.
Week 6: Experiencing Delays
This week, I continued writing my second episode but faced disruption due to traveling on Monday and having a red eye flight that extended into Tuesday. While writing, I experienced issues with my structure and pacing that I felt uncertainty over how to fix, which made progress difficult. I also received feedback related to the pacing and structure of my first episode from my external advisor, but was unable to find time to act on the feedback and make suggested revisions.
While writing, I realized that my planned storyline for my first three episode arc was shorter than three episodes. At the same time, I received feedback that my first episode should have higher stakes and a darker tone, because it fails to be a good hook for the rest of the show, which I agree with. Combining these two issues I am facing, I am thinking of adding a darker element in the story present in the early episodes instead of only introducing the dark element of a powerful, murderous demon in the third episode.
However, I am still struggling to fit in a darker element that can appear earlier on. While I have a war planned in the future several years later, it would be difficult to foreshadow the current war in this setting. I did add a scene of Kusho killing humans in order to restore spiritual balance to show that the Kinkou’s mission involves doing things that come off as cruel or ruthless, but because this aspect of the lore is not well explored in canon, it will be difficult for me to come up with additional stakes and conflict to introduce. Next week, I will try to finish up Episode 2 and move on to Episode 3.
Week 7: Getting Back on Track
This week, I continued writing my second episode with plans to finish at the end of the week. I continued to face difficulties in tone and pacing, and started to struggle with motivation in continuing with the story and characters. I began introducing a new antagonist, a serial killer that the protagonists assume is a dangerous demon, and tried to make him a terrifying villain while also maintaining an element of mystery.
Struggling with motivation halfway through is a common occurrence both for me and for many other writers. When anticipating the writing of a story, I focus on my favorite moments I am looking forward to writing and forget about intermediate steps between that take a lot of effort to complete. Sometimes I discover new favorite moments in the midst of writing that I did not plan out from the start, but maintaining discipline is nonetheless necessary for me to get through parts that are difficult or unenjoyable to write. However, because of the tight planning of the senior project, delays in writing that are usual for me to experience when writing on my own cause me to fall behind schedule.
Because of this, I will be modifying my previous plans and no longer trying to voice act out the scenes because of the time required to record and edit, in addition to needing to find participants to help me. However, I will continue to finish all three episodes as planned, and try to get words down without being too perfectionistic about them.
Week 8: Back on Track
This week, I began writing my third episode and the final one for my senior project. Because this episode will cap off the first story arc, I have a stronger idea for the plot of this episode than my previous one, and am having an easier time keeping up a writing pace because of it. This episode, I will be showing both Shen and Govos facing difficult decisions as they attempt to help others.
The beginning of this episode continues shortly after my last one, where Shen, Govos, and Kusho have arrived at the first village ever attacked by the new demon they are hunting and gathering evidence. However, rather than placing focus on the evidence and mystery, my script places emphasis on the way Shen, Govos, and Kusho react as they are presented with the pain and suffering of others. While the second episode closes off with them hearing a recounting of the demon’s attack, the third episode begins by showing the different ways Shen, Govos, and Kusho attempt to help the victims.
Kusho is primarily focused on learning information and hunting down the demon, devoted to his duty but dispassionate to the suffering of the people of the village. Govos makes a great sacrifice in order to physically heal somebody critically wounded in the demon’s attack, inspired by a childhood memory. Shen attempts to heal a little girl caught in the demon’s attack on a spiritual level, showing his sensitivity and desire to connect with others. However, their positive traits shown in these choices end up hurting them later when applied in a different context where Kusho’s cold, ruthless attitude is more necessary. Next week, I will try to finish a rough draft of the third and final episode.
Week 9: Wrapping up the Plot
This week, I started building up the conclusion of the first story arc of my story. Despite nearing the end, I am getting exhausted and having issues with continuing to write and meet page count goals. Because of this, I will no longer be voice acting anything for this project, and will instead focus on creating the scripts only.
My third episode starts off with calmer, more dialogue heavy scenes interwoven with politics that set up a larger conflict. Despite only doing three episodes for my senior project, my entire story is planned to be nine episodes long, and I am using the first half of my third episode to set up wider scale conflicts in later episodes. The location this story takes place in, Ionia, lacks a central government at the current moment and is instead a landmass that shares a common language and some elements of culture but is ruled by local lords and chieftains. However, some powerful lords seek to unify Ionia under a single government, while many other lords and chieftains fear losing control and their own regional identity.
I set up this conflict by juxtaposing two political negotiations taking place at the same time but different locations. Yevnai’s family is pro-union and her father negotiates with other noblemen over dinner to form a military alliance to unify Ionia by any means necessary. Meanwhile, a chieftain of a small village eats dinner with Kusho, Shen, and Govos, and fruitlessly tries to persuade Kusho and the Kinkou to protect her village’s autonomy. She warns Kusho that the pro-unionists will not care for Kinkou neutrality, but Kusho is adamant in his own beliefs. The second half of the episode, on the other hand, shows Shen and Govos both being forced to confront their limited worldviews. After witnessing a horrible attack by the demon they are chasing, Shen and Govos both begin to reinterpret the doctrine they have been taught. Next week, I will begin work on my presentation, and finish up my third episode.