You tackled a musical at your age. Writing a musical at all is a task and a half, and you've got a great start here ^__^

So you've got Austin and Tracy.
Austin doesn't care about school or work and doesn't know what he's doing until he discovers his passion for singing.
Tracy does care about school and work, yet knows she wants to sing for the rest of her life.

Is this correct?

If it is, I want to introduce you to the concept of dynamic and static characters. Dynamic characters change over the course of the story; Austin is a perfect example. At the beginning, he doesn't care about anything and hates work, but by the end, he wants to work to become a great singer.

On the other hand, a static character is one that doesn't change. Tracy fits this description rather well, unfortunately, as she knows at the beginning she wants to sing, and still wants to perform at the end.

The next step you should take before adding anything else would be to find ways to change Tracy throughout the show. Maybe she absolutely hates tutoring, is selfish and thinks only of herself, but after seeing how it changed Austin, she thinks it's not so bad and decides to open herself up to other people. Of course, this is only a suggestion, I'm sure you can come up with other ways to make her into a dynamic character.

The reason that's so important is because people love conflict in stories, but even more than that, people love when that conflict is resolved and people learn something from it, therefore changing the characters for the better (or worse).

Once again, you've got a great start, my friend. ^^ Keep it up, and I'd love to see any changes you make.

EDIT: Also, the song where they're arguing WINS.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Thanks for the advice Sagey. I'll try to do better in my next planned musical, Middle School Musical 2. Because i'm starting it tomorrow, and i'll have help with writing the songs. But this is the only storie I have acctually PLANNED bwfore I wrote it, because the one that I posted on the site was a Re-Write. And thanks for saying that I had a great start here, cause all in all i thought it might not be the great of a story as I thought it would. But then again, Im 8 years old!

No problem ^^ I understand sometimes when other forumers give you advice, it can be a little frustrating to think about. Most of the guys here are used to conversing and giving tips to adults, so I'm glad I could speak maturely, but at a level you can comprehend.

Planning a story is a very important step in the writing process. Some people swear by it and have pages and pages of outlines **raises hand**. Others prefer to write on the fly and see where a story goes from there. It depends on your style, I guess. I'm glad you're trying something different!

However, editing's an important process as well. Once you've got your rough draft completed, it's important to go through and add things, remove things, take things out that you don't need, expand on things you really liked, adding more stuff, etc. My suggestion beyond what I told you in my first post would be to add more characters into the mix. What about their friends? What can they add to the show? How about the middle school musical itself? You end at the conclusion of the audition process. Is the sequel going to be the rehearsing and performance? If that's the case, what you can do is make the "first" musical the first act, and the "sequel" the second act of one EPIC musical. ^^

Hope to hear your thoughts!

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Thanks Sagey, I was trying to think how to explain that. But I just seem to confuse my little cousin when I give him writing advice and he's about Socks' age, so I decided against trying to help. Besides with the jokers around here, Socks has enough trouble trying to sort help from smartalecks.

~Tobe

Well, sagey. It did show the show at the end when Austin sang "Raise the Roof" and when Tracy sang "Sing like an angel". That was the show. But I like the idea of continuing the story with the rest of the show. I like the idea of making a book, story, movie etc. and have the sequel begin where the predecessor left off. So I'll definatley go with that advice, but im still in the phase of writing music for the sequel. Since i clearly stink at writing songs, I might need a little help.

*puts up sign that says "Songwriting help wanted"*

Also, if you wanna know what MSM2 is about, here it is.

To change the outcome of the characters a bit, I'm gonna make it to where there is a little bit of romance between Austin and Tracy, so i think this will be intresting. But when a student of Atari Carterson Middle School gets expelled, she moves to Rocky Ridge Middle School. But this black-hearted girl has been in every school production since kinder-garten, and wont let Tracy and Austin become the leads of the next show!

Whoa wait, what? The end of the first one was the actual performance?

All right, I think we have our next point for you to work on. ^^ I realize you can take creative liberties in works of fiction, but if you want this to be believable, here's how a musical typically works in any setting, whether middle school or high school or even professional:

~ Audition process (1-5 days for a school performance, up to 3 months for professional works). That's where everyone shows off their skills and the judges and director sees who they want for what role.

~ Callbacks (1-2 days for a school performance, no idea for a professional work). For the truly exceptional auditions, they gather them all together and see how well the actors work together and finalize their cast list.

~ Audition list/first meeting (less than a day). Everyone who made it in gathers for a meeting going over rehearsal schedules and whatnot.

~ Rehearsals (TOTALLY varies. About two or three months for school performances, anywhere from three weeks to MONTHS for professional). This is where the magic happens, where the cast hates each other, where the director gets frustrated, where lines are learned and cues are forgotten, all sorts of things like that. This is gonna take up the majority of the time, easily. And there's SO MUCH YOU CAN DO WITH THIS.

~ Performances (2-3 nights for school performances, anywhere from one night to months of shows for professional). This is where all of the rehearsal pays off. If the cast really bonded over that harsh rehearsing period, they'll be able to get through anything onstage. You can definitely play with that when editing your story. After all, it's gotta have its rocky parts if you want to keep people interested.

The reason I bring this up is because you seemed to miss the most crucial part of a musical in your first draft: the rehearsal process. Like I said before, the crap's really gonna hit the fan in the rehearsals, and you can totally do stuff with it regarding how the characters work together, especially if you want to work in a romance or another character altogether. For example, if Austin wants to be in the musical, he has to keep his grades up. But if he keeps his grades up, Tracy won't be his tutor. He can struggle with that for awhile and decide which is more important to him. Meanwhile, depending on how you make dynamic-ize Tracy, you can do a number of things and have her play off of Austin, as their personalities clash really nicely.

Finally, you should really consider incorporating more characters into the story. Though there are shows with casts of 1-4 people, that kind of skill and training would go beyond what a middle-schooler can do. You don't have to name every single character, perhaps just imply there's a chorus rehearsing at the same time, things like that.

I hope this helped and made a bit of sense ^^; Long days make for tired Tricias.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Well, I'm only 8 years old, again, so i havent been able to experience the real stuff that happens in a school production. Ive never really wrote a musical before, so im not very experienced with it. But maybe it would have been easier if i thought of another story arc for the musical. Like, not a musical about a musical, like i did here. But i will try to do better, because ive already started writing Middle School Musical 2.

^^; You don't need to justify your actions every time you post. I think we're all aware of how old you are and have taken that into account when reading and replying. At the same time, I'm pretty sure there are full-grown adults who don't know what goes on in the musical process. So don't feel like you have to say "Oh, I'm ____ and that's why I don't understand" 😀 Life's all about learning new things.

And hey, look at what you've got so far! You've got a totally workable draft in your possession ^^ What you need to do now is just edit it. You can either finish writing the sequel and then go back and edit both at the same time, or you can pause the sequel-writing to edit the first one, then add stuff to 2 based on what you did to 1 without having to "waste the time" writing a sequel that you're just gonna end up changing.

"Waste the time"? I hear some cry. "But editing is a very important part of the writing process!"

Indeed it is, however a lot of people don't want to put the effort into reviewing and rewriting their own stuff. Those who do take the time are the ones who get five-stars all the time in newspapers, websites, etc. 'Cause they play with their writing until it's completely perfect. Sometimes this means 12 whole months of reviewing and rewriting.

Now, I'm not expecting you to revise for a year. ^^; But what I am suggesting is that you go through your first one (waiting till you finish your sequel works, so your mind's not jumping between stories) and edit it. It's really hard at first to pick out things to edit and things to leave in, but it gets easier over time. If you want, I can give you some pointers in the right direction.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Now, im OK with editing. Its just adding all that extra story of the entire musical-making prosess, It just does seem "time-wasting". Because I have hundreds of freinds who have read it, and all seemed to like it.

But, i have a small question. Just so people dont complain or criticize about this, am I suppost to put in another thread saying "MIDDLE SCHOOL MUSICAL 2 HAS ARRIVED!", or post it here saying "Now you can read Middle School Musical 2 on the site!" .
So, Sagey, just to let you know, it will take time to edit MSM2 and everyone who read MSM, I told them, "I set a realese date as September 15th." I also told them "Im releasing the sequel on October 17th!".

What you can do is edit your first post to say Middle School Musical 2 (see latest post) or something like that.

And **nods** I'm glad they like it! I'm just saying if you want to go above and beyond with this and further your writing abilities, adding more to it would be a good thing to do. And think of how much more your friends will like it when there's a more detailed and full story ^^

Also, *envy* @ having hundreds of friends read your stories. I'm lucky if I get more than one person reading my stuff ^^;

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Well, I dont think im gonna edit this one sagey. I really don't. I may slip in "10 months later" or something like that as if it skipped ahead from auditions to the show.

EDIT: Me and my big sister,(Shes older by two minutes), have finished filming (But can't edit until Mid-200 MIDDLE SCHOOL MUSICAL. But it's not available on DVD or CD, bu tit is available on CD-R which can play on most computers.

You know, it would be funny if you made the spoof off of high school musical only make the characters stupid, the plotline crappy, and the music lame...oh wait..that Is High School Musical BA-ZING! Seriously...I hate Zac Efron, and I hate High School Musical, even Hairspray, seriously in my opinion only teenage girls with a high hormone and low brain cell count would even give two flips for HSM and Zac, because I belive no adult with a brain would even care...I know we're talking about Middle School Musical, Granted you've worked hard on this I bet...but...I think you should've done something else in my opinion...oh well, good luck

Please, don't link this to High School Musical in that way. Maybe the plot and even thought of doing this thing was because of High School Musical, but in my opinion it has potential to grow in to something way different then HSM. So please, don't hate this just cause you hate HSM. (And don't hate Austin just cause you hate Troy). And also, MSM was not a spoof of HSM. This was just a story inspired by HSM. But i can't blame you, my original opinion of HSM was two thumbs down; TOTTALLY sucky! But after seeing HSM2, POW! The only reason I really even like HSM is because it span off an AMAZING sequel. And anyways the plot in mind of MSM2 is TOTTALLY different than HSM or HSM2. And you will see what i mean on October 17th when I post MSM2 on the site. So the point to this post was, DON'T LINK MIDDLE SCHOOL MUSICAL TO HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. THEY ARE TOTTALLY DIFFERENT. Plus, name a connection to Austin and Troy. THERE IS NONE! Name a connction between Tracy and Gabriella. THERE IS NONE! And the only link of MSM to HSM was the small plotline and name. As I said. IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE SOMETHING ELSE!

It may have the potential to grow into something way different than high school musical but has it? and is it really a good idea to write about middle school when you have no experience the subject? You don't go writing about romance when your a virgin 42 year old living in your moms basement and you don't go writing about middle school when you're only in elementary school. Thats just my $0.02 on the subject though.

Think about the logic in what you said, Stair. If you have to experience something in order to write about it, there would be next to no horror stories, very few romance novels, no comic books or manga whatsoever... That's the beauty of the imagination. ^^ Even though you haven't actually experienced something, you can take what you know about the experience and fill in the blanks from there.

Let's go with a superhero story, for instance. I know that superheroes save the world (or maybe just a city) from dastardly evildoers. But I'm not a superhero, so I don't know what they actually go through. So my mind makes up the rest: I think a superhero would have fun using their powers at first and their powers would feel like _____ to them. I think they'd eventually tire of it or feel the superhero persona is too much of a burden and they want to stop, but the media says no, so they'd feel ______. Things like that.

So yes. It's perfectly okay for him to write about being in middle school without actually being a middle schooler. Lord knows there are enough stories geared toward younger people about what a glamourized middle-school life is, and he can (and has) filled in the blanks from there.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Coming soon:

Middle School Musical 2 (2 more days)

Middle School Musical: Live in Darien! (4 days and 4 months)

Middle School Musical: On DVD (4 days and 2 weeks)

Middle School Musical: Live in Darien DVD! (4 days and 5 months)

I read this, and while ti wasn't too badly written, it didn't leave much of an impression on me. Keep trying.

Ya know, if your gonna tell me how much my story didnt impress you, you could at least tell me what was so bad. I'll try and improve it. Was it the plotline? I couldnt think of much of a musical other than ones ive seen, being only Blues Clues musical that I saw when I was 3, and High School Musical. Was it the music? I dont think much 8 year olds do better. I cant impress you if all you say is that it DIDNT impress you.

There wasn't much wrong with it, just felt it was written a little "flat". Like it could of been more, but lacked dimension to it or something. I just have high standards

Well at least your telling me whats wrong with this, and just so you know, i dont mean to be flattering myself when I say, that MSM2 is going to have a more dimensional plot. The only thing i will have to give up is the music. Im gonna have to maybe cut out the music, maube just make it a music-free story. Then I'll have to change the name.

middle school musical 2: MIDDLE SCHOOL STORY is what im thinking about right now.

Hmm... Middle School Story, huh?

Sounds less exciting, but I'll still check it out.

I'm thinking of other different storie/plot ideas for middle school musical 2. Maybe, uh...

MSM2: The populars

MSM2: Middle School Story

Middle School Musical 2

MSM2: Graduation Day

Which do you think is better? For MSM2: The Populars, two french exchange students come in and they become the most popular kids in school. Eventually, they end up in a popularity compitition. They need to work it out and solve their problems in order to turn the school back to the way it was. And along the way, they learn that the easiest way to be popular, is by just being yourself. For Middle School Story, there will be NO music. But, Tracy is writing a book and a story about her life in school. But when her book is published, her fame is drawing her away from her freinds, like Austin, and has to make things right. MSM2 would be, that theres a new girl in school who has been in every school production at her previous schools, and she won't let Austin and Tracy keep her from the next musical at Rocky Ridge Middle School. For MSM2: Graduation Day, is as simple as Austin and Tracy having to move up to Rocky Ridge High. But, Tracy is moving and Austin doesnt want her to go. So he devises a plan to make Tracy have to stay and move up to High School with him. So which do you think is better? Tell me what you think. I will write whichever one you chooose, on December 17th when my stuff comes. Bye!

I think whatever one you want to write the most would be the best one to go with. ^^ Whichever one you feel is most developed should be your choice. I'm sure others would say the same.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Well, before any of those come out, se "The Time is Near" To read about my short story "Middle School Musical Decks the Halls"

Um, you could just make the announcement here. It'd be easier for those who are keeping up with the musicals to keep track of the updates.

Ok terg. Sweet Avatar.