I’m getting older.
And my brain is becoming less elastic. I’m slowly becoming closed to new ideas, slowly becoming unable to process new information, slowly becoming unable to learn new things. Eventually, my brain will harden entirely and I will be completely closed-off from an ever-changing world. I will come to hate and fear youth, I will still be typing on Word docs when the rest of publishing is downloading streaming information directly into their brains, I will loathe people who do things differently than me and insist my way is best and I will be a great member of SFWA.
But for now, I am still pretty young (immortal, even, if my profile is any indication), and that means I am trying to learn new things.
So now I’m writing comics.
I’ve already raved about Rat Queens, but the truth is I’ve started becoming more and more interested in the art. I’ve been intimidated from Marvel and DC since I was a kid, but I’m finding real gems in the smaller publishers. Gems like Jim Zub’s Skullkickers or Gail Simone’s Red Sonja. But whereas when I was a kid, I’d be concerned mostly about swords and metal bikinis, I’m finding myself looking deeper, at the nuts and bolts…and the metal bikinis, but still.
Suddenly, I’m interested in panel layout: how does one learn to think in panels? How does one act creatively in such an enclosed space? What needs to be told? What needs to be said? How do you make the minimal amount of information look as amazing as it possibly can?
Suddenly, I’m interested in dialogue: how do you make it happen without monologues? How can you flex your character with such tiny space? How can you communicate in 90% witty banter?
Suddenly, I’m interested in motion: how do you convey people moving without drowning in panels? What are the critical parts of an action sequence that absolutely, positively must be shown? How do you make it look as cool as possible?
With these questions in mind, I started writing something.
And found that it is fucking hard.
I use too many panels. My dialogue is too lengthy. I’m not conveying motion well. I can’t capture dramatic essence in a single shot. I’m too used to having too much room to do whatever I want. I’m not used to having to focus my prose to a sniper point and pulling the trigger.
I’ve taken three drafts of the first six pages of my script. Each time I show them to my friend, who knows comics much better than I do, she points out some crucial flaw that I’ve overlooked. So I go back; I tweak, I cut, I maim. Then I come back with something neater, cleaner and tighter than I did before.
And I have new flaws.
To take a gander at it, I am pretty bad at writing comics. I’ve been venting my frustrations daily on twitter and to anyone who will listen. It got to the point where I thought it’d be more effective to write down a blog post about it. So here it is.
Writing comics is hard. Maybe the hardest creative endeavor I’ve ever done.
And that’s actually really, really, really fucking good.
It occurs to me that people are probably going through with novels what I am going through with comics: the frustration, the ire, the way you can force and force and try and try and study and study and things just don’t. Get. Easier. It occurs to me that there are people who probably stare at the words they’ve written and think to themselves that it’s bound to have flaws, so why bother. It occurs to me that there are people out there who are probably thinking of giving up.
And it’s for them that I want to say the following.
If it’s hard, you’re doing it right.
I’ve said that on every panel of every convention I’ve ever been at where the subject of how to write has even been hinted at. Writing is hard work. It has to be hard work.
People love talking about the business side of writing (because, as most writers have the business sense of a dumb baby, it is new and mysterious to us), but this is still a goddamn art. We are still making art, not “product.” We are still creating, not “producing.” We are still pouring joy, hate, fear, love into something and shoving it out into peoples’ faces, not going down a checklist.
Because it’s a creative endeavor, the only way you’re going to get better at it is by failing. And because it’s a creative endeavor, the only way to fail is by spending a lot of time and energy on something and then figuring out that it won’t work. That’s just the nature of the art. We have to build something up and then hurl cannonballs at it and see how long it takes to fall down.
But each time you build it back up, it’s a little sturdier. Each time you make it fall down, the places in which the structure gives out are more apparent. Each time it collapses, there’s more of it left for you to work with.
The only way to make it work and not feel hopeless about it is to see the truth in failure.
It’s a sham of an artist that flinches from failure because it’s impossible to grow without studying the ashes of what you just burnt down. How did it fail? What sentences wavered? What parts of the character were too meaningless? Where did it become sterile? Where did you flinch?
Even this blog post is a failure on my behalf. The advice I’m giving here is both so specific and so general that it won’t make sense to anyone else. You’ll find our own way to look at things and your own way to figure out how to make it work. You’ll figure out how your rhythm and your schedule works. You might even come to refer to your book as product and start decrying about how my advice doesn’t conform to your situation, ergo my entire point is flawed.
At which point, your pedantry will overwhelm me and I will likely punch you.
So, if you want, you can take this as advice about whether or not writing is for you. If you want, you can tear this blog post apart and see what parts work for you and what parts do not. If you want, you can ignore it entirely and go read something someone else wrote.
In the end, maybe this whole blog post was, like any creative endeavor, for the artist first and the audience second.
Because it just doesn’t seem real to me unless I write it down.
This was what it’s like for me learning how to write video scripts. I’ve done a lot of them now, but learning how much can be conveyed in pictures instead of words, or how words/images can work together to convey emotions and ideas is incredibly different from every other type of writing I do.
I’m lucky to work with some great video designers at the day job who help me cut and refine, but it’s always jarring to write for a new platform and basically start over at level 1
The sentiment is laudable, and heartfelt. I would like to throw in one addendum I think is utterly vital – something that I’m missing and made advice such as this, normally positive and helpful, completely toxic.
Define suitable conditions for FAILURE and SUCCESS.
I stopped writing because I lost the ability to define a rate of failure that qualified as success (Only every eighth sentence sucks….Hooray! It’s finally ready!). Actually that’s not true. I don’t think I ever had it, but as I improved as a writer I started caring I succeeded – only to realise I couldn’t measure what success was. Without a target (other than the utter delusion of perfection), without a dry island in the swamps of self doubt, each step isn’t a question of moving further from, or deeper into, the mire. It’s just a step in more shit.
I say this because I doubt I’m the only one who has this problem. And as I said I think what you say contains much truth and wisdom. I just think in order for certain types of people to heed what you say, couched as it is around the concept of positive failure, there needs to be an acknowledgement that in themselves they may lack something.
And that something is the difference between being inspired and crushed.
That’s actually incredibly helpful and I’m a bit embarrassed I didn’t note it myself (naturally, long after you are dead, I will tell everyone I thought of it).
But it’s totally true. You must define for yourself what success means. In the case of these comic scripts, it’s getting down maybe one page well. But I feel the only suitable condition for failure is giving up entirely.
Well, I kinda meant failure in terms of resetting an algorithm…..So like:
Step 1: Write
Step 2: Edit
Step 3: Check Writing against “Success Conditions”
If SUCCESS then goto step 4. If FAILURE goto step 1
Step 4: Send to agent
If you don’t know your success/fail conditions, either you always continue to step 4, or get caught in a loop by returning to Step 1 every time. The first case means you never improve, the second disheartened.
So in your example, failure would be assessing a page of script and saying “I’m not satisfied this is good enough”, and repeating the process until you are.
Thanks for sharing. I think this is pretty much how many people starting out in comics writing feel.
I grew up on comics and writing them was always something I wanted to do. But somewhere along the way I started writing short stories and novels instead, moving away from comics. Although, I still read comics religiously! Whilst Marvel and DC (mostly Vertigo titles like Sandman) were my gateway into comics, I’m loving more of the creator-owned titles that are being produced (mostly by Image, who just seem to be going from strength to strength).
I started getting back into comics writing about 2 years ago when I was 22 (mainly because I was working in a comics book shop), when I had stories to tell, but didn’t think that they could be told through short stories or a novel.
Everyone has their own way of going about things, but for me, at least, in the early stages as I’m fleshing out an issue, I like to draw out panel for panel what I think happens. And trust me when I say, I’m no artist, but it gets down visually what is in my head. Then I go back to each panel, as they’re usually packed full of things, and highlight the most important image to help convey what the panel is showing and pull that as the main image. You have to be quite strict with how much to show and so you have to ask yourself how big does this panel have to be to show that image. For example, you don’t need a full stretch panel for a single characters face, and if it’s just that character can they just be heard and not seen. Then it’s from there where I fill out with description and information for the artist.
One thing I’m always certain of before I start, is that somewhere there will be a one page spread, which will be my feature page.
This early stage of drawing out the panels comes from the notion that if you can tell the story solely in art form and it flows well then you’re on the right track. Adding text is an additional treat to accompany the art.
When it comes to text, I write it separately as conversation between characters or inside the characters head (sort of like The Sunset Limited). Then I go back to the panels to cut and add the necessary text accordingly.
It’s long winded for a first draft, but I think I do it this way because when I come up with ideas, I think in terms of moving images like a short film, then when I draw ideas on paper they are essentially the main snapshots. This partially comes from the fact that I like comics that are not packed with text, as too much can often detract from the art (which is why I quite like The Shaolin Cowboy by Geoff Darrow). This is also gives the artist an idea of where you imagine the story, but you also want to give the artist as much creative freedom.
This is what works for me (despite being long and odd), but I definitely like reading blog posts like this and seeing what other people do, as a creative in a different format, it helps tinkering with one’s method until one finds what works, and so I’m always looking for different ways of doing things (at least for comics).
Comics writing is hard because it’s restrictive, but I also think it’s an amazing challenge to see how much you can convey in such restrictions.
Just realised I’ve been rambling and not really sure if any of this makes sense!
Good luck with it all! ?
Thanks for sharing. I think this is pretty much how many people starting out in comics writing feel.
I grew up on comics and writing them was always something I wanted to do. But somewhere along the way I started writing short stories and novels instead, moving away from comics. Although, I still read comics religiously! Whilst Marvel and DC (mostly Vertigo titles like Sandman) were my gateway into comics, I’m loving more of the creator-owned titles that are being produced (mostly by Image, who just seem to be going from strength to strength).
I started getting back into comics writing about 2 years ago when I was 22 (mainly because I was working in a comics book shop), when I had stories to tell, but didn’t think that they could be told through short stories or a novel.
Everyone has their own way of going about things, but for me, at least, in the early stages as I’m fleshing out an issue, I like to draw out panel for panel what I think happens. And trust me when I say, I’m no artist, but it gets down visually what is in my head. Then I go back to each panel, as they’re usually packed full of things, and highlight the most important image to help convey what the panel is showing and pull that as the main image. You have to be quite strict with how much to show and so you have to ask yourself how big does this panel have to be to show that image. For example, you don’t need a full stretch panel for a single characters face, and if it’s just that character can they just be heard and not seen. Then it’s from there where I fill out with description and information for the artist.
One thing I’m always certain of before I start, is that somewhere there will be a one page spread, which will be my feature page.
This early stage of drawing out the panels comes from the notion that if you can tell the story solely in art form and it flows well then you’re on the right track. Adding text is an additional treat to accompany the art.
When it comes to text, I write it separately as conversation between characters or inside the characters head (sort of like The Sunset Limited). Then I go back to the panels to cut and add the necessary text accordingly.
It’s long winded for a first draft, but I think I do it this way because when I come up with ideas, I think in terms of moving images like a short film, then when I draw ideas on paper they are essentially the main snapshots. This partially comes from the fact that I like comics that are not packed with text, as too much can often detract from the art (which is why I quite like The Shaolin Cowboy by Geoff Darrow). This is also gives the artist an idea of where you imagine the story, but you also want to give the artist as much creative freedom.
This is what works for me (despite being long and odd), but I definitely like reading blog posts like this and seeing what other people do, as a creative in a different format, it helps tinkering with one’s method until one finds what works, and so I’m always looking for different ways of doing things (at least for comics).
Comics writing is hard because it’s restrictive, but I also think it’s an amazing challenge to see how much you can convey in such restrictions.
Just realised I’ve been rambling and not really sure if any of this makes sense!
Good luck with it all! 🙂
“and I will be a great member of SFWA”
Ha! I hope I can avoid hating and fearing youth. I think the trick is to embrace change, but try to leverage whatever wisdom you have.
This weekend I watched Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I will admit that I am not a comic book reader, but I am a reader and appreciate a good story. I had a lengthy discussion with my husband about the lack of a quality story in the Thor movie. As I am flitting around the internet this morning, I was reminded of this blog post that you had written and decided to chime in.
Being that I am only a consumer of Marvel movies, I wonder if the integrity of the story is lost on screen. I found the Captain America story to have much greater depth than the Thor story. The characters are better, and the story more engaging. While I really liked both Thor movies – the stories were well-told – I don’t feel like at its core the Thor story itself is very good. For example, I don’t get the Thor/Jane Foster connection. Him falling in love with her is about as believable as Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist.
Maybe I need to read the comic books.
I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on this topic, seeing that you are putting a lot of time and thought into writing comics these days.