Arthur Gibson's Blog: A Journey In Mind, page 5

Complex and Concise

Writing occurs in many forms. One of the most difficult is that of comics. Sure, sometimes they are just a collection of punching brawls with some quirky quips thrown in. They can be fun. They can be simple jokes. They can be basic tales. But they can also be complex tales of the human condition.

A comic or a graphic novel is a collaboration. It is part visual and part word. The art shows what is occuring. It shows emotion. No need to describe your character's tears or frown. Your reader will see that. No need to describe setting. Your reader will see that. Much of the expository text can be axed. It is very freeing to be able to do that.

However, this leaves you with a problem. In a short series of panels (most comics are not that long after all) you need to tell your story. There is only so much space for dialogue. There is only so much space for comments to the reader. If you are telling simple, fun tales this is less of a burden. It really does not take much to get across a character. Basic storylines are not burdened by many layers. But if you want to tell a more complex story it will require more thought.

How to show the layers of a character? How to get across that the bad guy has a heart of gold? That in the quiet helpful boy next door beats the heart of a killer? That the hero is actually a broken shell of an individual with lots of personal problems? Short answer? Carefully.

One step at a time is a good policy to follow. Show the hero doing the hero thing. Maybe tack on a panel after all the action is over, after the police have gone away, of the hero brooding. Or crying. Or needing to come down of the adrenaline high. It is a one shot panel. Possibly something that may never happen again. Or it could be something to build on.

The giant comic characters that were created in the early years did not arrive on the scene as giants. Over the months and years and decades they developed. One panel at a time. One idea at a time. Slowly growing and deepening until they have become very layered men and women.

Take your stories one at a time. Add in your details. Tease. Grow. Layer upon layer. Panel after panel. Make them real and fun and complex. If they are "real" they have more than one side and more than one desire. Peel the onion one skin at a time. It is a challenge, but that is where great stories come from.

Lose The Audience

But in a good way. When we read and we enjoy it, we almost lose the conscious idea that we are reading. We stop seeing each and every word on the page and we start "seeing" the story. It can almost be like a movie. When we are bored with the words on the page or we struggle to process them then we are very aware that we are reading each individual word on the page.

The question is how do you lose an audience in the story? There is no one way to do it. Engaging them in the story by having sympathetic characters is one. Having a storyline that they find interesting is one. Having smooth and flowing writing is one. Every author uses one or more of these and other things to do it. It is the essense of good writing. Capturing the reader and not letting them go until the end.

Complicating matters is audience taste. What is awesome to one reader will be trash to another. We all like different things and different styles. No one book ever pleases everyone. The greatest works of literature are those that transcend many of those boundaries and touch readers of many tastes. It is something that every writer aspires to and very few ever really achieve.

Good and tight writing helps to create a story that readers want to be in. Well thought out plots. Interesting characters. A sense of atmosphere. Smooth pacing. These are all things that help. In the end there is not a secret formula. There is just the goal of working towards the best piece you can. No one can ask for more. Sometimes it even works too.

Bad Guys

How bad should they be? Is your focus on the bad or on the good? Is this a heroes tale or a villains?

Every good story needs a bad guy. Or several bad guys. They are what drives the conflict. Our desire to see them brought down is what drives our empathy for the hero. But how bad do they need to be? That depends on the story.

A sleazy guy can be taken down by any decent individual. A super villain needs a superhero. A cop needs a robber. Do you want your hero to be a legend? Then he needs an epic foe. Do you want real world? Then check out the headlines and make a real world foe. The villain needs to be bad, but not so purely evil that the hero will never defeat them.

The real issue is one of "cool factor". Let's face it. Bad guys are cool. They have cool uniforms, cool weapons, and an air about them of the rebel. They are cool. But any story that makes too much of them. That fails to show their badness for what it is. That glorifies them and their choice of lifestyle. This is a story that aggrandizes them. This is not the goal. This should be avoided. A bad guy is there to present a challenge to the good guy and show us all what not to do. They are not there for us to worship and hold up as things to imitate. That is why they are "bad".

Flavors

Literature has flavors. Comics. Novels. Short stories. Flash fiction. Novellas. Many more. Almost too many to list. Because as long as there are ways to put words to paper (or text to electronic screen) there will be people using it to tell their stories.

Do you restrict your diet to one food prepared only one way? Why should you limit your reading? Why would you decide to limit your interaction with humanity to only one point of view? That seems crazy to me. Your mind should have all the same rights as your taste buds.

Any work you do is the product of all that you take in. Everything you see, everything you read, everything you experience. The more you experience, the richer your work will be. You will have opinions, knowledge, and since you write you have a way to say it. You can give your characters opinions and life history different to yours. You can give them opinions different from yours. Everything you take in you can send back out in new ways. Not that you should regurgitate them, but you should digest them and make them your own.

Explore humanity and its stories. Help contribute to good ones. Make us all richer for the flavor you create.

Bruises

Have you been discouraged? Did you not make the cut in a contest? Did you get a bad critique from a publisher? Is the review less than stellar? Did your Beta reader tell you it stinks? Discouragement happens to us all. It can happen for a big reason or a small reason. But it happens. And it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

No one likes being told their hard work doesn't quite measure up. But that doesn't mean that the world is coming to an end. It means that not everyone likes everything. Is this a suprise? Variety is the spice of life. Everyone likes something different. Not everyone will like what you do. It will not be right for every market. Do not take it personally. It is not an attack against you as a person. It is a difference in opinion about your work.

Every negative comment has a grain of truth. It might simply be that it was wrong for that person. It could also be that maybe they have a point. Take a deep breath. Look at your story. Look at it objectively. Does it need tightening? Does it need revision? Does that scene with the clown and the fish have to go? Sometimes negative comments can be a blessing. They can be the motivation to go back to the drawing board and make the manuscript even better than it was.

In the course of every writers life there will be rejection. We can sometimes wallpaper whole rooms with publisher rejection letters. But that doesn't mean you need to give up. It doesn't mean you need to feel that you will never get anywhere. Life is hard. A career is hard. Take the negative and turn it around for yourself. Turn it into a force for change for the good. It takes a shift in thinking, but it is a shift well worth making. You'll be thanking your detractors for helping you along and making your work the best it could possibly be.

Passive or Active?

Was the night dark and stormy? Or did the shutters bang against the house, almost ripping off their hinges? Was it quiet in the room? Or did you watch dust settling on the divan? What kind of opening do you have? Passive or active? Closed or open?

We like movement. Our eyes are drawn to it. Our bodies prefer it. Our minds are always roaming about. Should our fiction be any different? Opening lines of a story help to pull the reader in. If they read the first sentence then they will probably read the first paragraph. Read the first paragraph and they will probably read the first chapter. Read the first chapter and they will probably read the book - if only to see what the train wreck is like, lol. Those opening lines help to start that process.

You do not need to have rushing water, crashing lightning, or flying bric-a-brak. What you do need is a sense of motion. Motion helps to draw us in and draw us forward. A sentence that is stagnant gives us a feeling of having stopped. A sentence that has motion gives us a feeling of action. It does not need to be dramatic. It just needs to be there. Something moving. A window that is covered with dust is not as interesting as dust motes spinning in sunbeams slanting through a window.

Your first sentence is important. Make it a good one. And since you are thinking about it now, what is your favorite opening sentence?

Was That Easier?

There are a lot of software programs out there designed to help you with formatting your work. They are touted as easy and "one click" programs. This is often true. But how easy are they really making your job?

We do not always have time to type and retype and retype our manuscripts. Setting up paragraphs and fonts and everything else that we need to ensure that our documents look as good as we want them to. I have turned to software on more than one occasion to assist me. But it does not always work exactly the way that I want it to.

The last (and current) one I am using is a drag and drop system. Highlight whatever I want in document A and drag it to document B. B then automatically formats chapter breaks, fonts, and makes it look pretty and print ready. It does look great. But there is a glitch. It adds a 'tab' in front of every paragraph. There is no setting I can turn off. There is nothing that can be done. So at the beginning of every paragraph I have a double indent. This is not fun. It means that I have to go through everything I transfer and remove one indent from every paragraph. Time consuming and brain numbing. Still, this is one of the better programs I have worked with.

Remember that just because it says it is easier doesn't mean it always is. There is something to say about the old way of typing everything ourselves. Even though it takes a loooooong time.

Why Is This A Plot Device?

Women in trouble. The romantic image of the damsel in distress. Not quite the same today as it was in the midst of the Romantic Period. Now she is kidnapped, beaten, raped, tortured, bound and gagged, and generally treated as something far less than a human being. Not occasionally but frequently. Why? Why do we perpetuate the myth that if you need someone in trouble a woman is the way to go?

Plotting any story can be a long and arduous process. We often need things to pick up the pace or to keep the reader involved. Revenge seems to be a plot point that frequently comes up. Not just any revenge, but revenge for whatever the wrong is that has been done to the woman. This occurs in books, TV, and in films. When you need a hero or antihero running around kicking the crap out of people, having the reason being avenging or attempting to prevent violence against a woman seems to be the number one choice. Is it because we feel that we can commit just about any atrocity simply because a woman was hurt? Because the crime is so terrible? Perhaps. But it is still no excuse.

Violence against women and exploting violence against women for plot should not be a choice. There is a place for it because it is a part of real life. But it is rare that it is needed. There are enough other reasons for an individual to be trolling the world kicking ass that we do not need to bring women into it. It is one thing when it is organic in the story (female spies, soldiers, mercenaries, criminals, or superheros who engage in violent careers will themselves often be on the receiving end of violence). But too often it seems to be something put in so that we can cringe and be angry and then want the characters to take a measure of revenge.

Violence happens. Crimes occur against just about every creed and race on the planet. Male and female. Gender should not be the issue. If there is violence in your story, it should not matter if it is against male or female. It should move the plot forward and be there for a reason. Otherwise it begins to move towards the camp that uses violence for violences sake and violence against women just because they want a reaction. This is not plot. This is laziness. This is unneccesary. Don't perpetrate it.

Speech Patterns

Everyone has a different way of speaking. We use different phrases. We have different inflections. We have different speeds. They are the things that make us individuals. Your characters are no different.

If you sit in a public place and listen to how people talk you can pick out individuals by the way that they speak. As we read your story, we should see slight differences in the way your characters speak too. That is not to say that everyone will be utterly unique. But some people use different mannerisms and modes of speech. Some people say "like" a lot. Other people pepper their speech with "umms". There are a lot of ways to occasionally throw in something to separate one character from another. Again, it should not be every time they speak. But every so often adding in a flavor is nice.

If you do decide to make a character unique, there needs to be a reason. I have a character who never uses contractions. You always know when it is that he is speaking. There is a reason he chooses to speak that way. Should that reason get "solved" then he wouldn't necessarily choose to continue to speak that way. There should always be a reason for anything truly unusual that you do with speech.

Iconic Characters

We all know them. They are the individual characters from books, comics, video games, movies, and TV shows that are imprinted on our collective cultural heritage. They span the globe. They have millions of fans who would buy just about anything as long as it featured their treasured character - or even had its picture slapped on the outside. Let's face it, we all want to create one. But how do you?

The simple answer is that you don't. Iconic characters happen. They aren't created (intentionally) or forced or made. They are very simply good characters that live and breathe in good story. Let us not forget that they also occur in the right place at the right time. Many brilliant characters languish in obscurity. Never underestimate the power of timing.

But there is a lot you can do to make your characters ready to explode into the stratosphere of "I gotta get that" fandom. 1) Make them memorable: Are they humorous? Quirky? Do they act differently? What makes them different than every other type of individual out there? 2) Give them words. Dialogue makes or breaks a character. The flow. The pace. The ease of communication. Description can take you only so far and then you're dead without good dialogue. 3) Humanize them. Mistakes get made. People are tragic at times. There is no getting around it. Use it. Our favorite characters are always those we identify with whether we want to be more like them or less like them.

Do your work. Craft your characters. And then cross your fingers and hope for the best. If you are lucky, your character will reverberate in people and could become a household name. Have faith in your work. It DOES happen.