Gail Simone's Blog, page 1158

APE IN A CAPE: A Hopefully Helpful Thread

APE IN A CAPE: A Hopefully Helpful Thread:

memnochzero:

gailsimone:

I had a Hollywood friend ask me this morning about how to format a comic book script. That's a big question. I'm going to answer it, and I thought it might be helpful to some of you who are aspiring to write comics yourself (the short answer is, everyone does it differently. The long answer is,…

Thank you for taking the time to do this, Gail!

One thing I really enjoy about your work is that every character you write has a unique voice and they all stand out (Secret Six has been my favorite book the last few years, alongside Kirkman's The Walking Dead). In the world of comics, or fiction in general I think that's probably one of the most important things, as it separates the generic from the exceptional.

Just a bit of a set up, I'm working on a comic on my own (writing and art) and I'd like it to have first person narration from the lead protagonist. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for me, but the protagonist is female, and most POV characters I've written have been dudes. Being a dude myself, I have this fear I won't be able to nail the character's voice.

My question is how do you know when you've hit that "ah ha!" moment with the character and it stops just being words on a page and turns into a person?

Myself being a male writer writing a female character in the first person, what would you suggest I do to make the character stand out and read three dimensional instead of merely words on a page (or worse, a dude writing an awful female character)?

Thanks again! 

Okay, this is a great question that I get a lot.

I'm going to say something a little weird here. But it feels to me like a lot of writers have concentrated on plotting or on some other function of form, that they have neglected to make the characters compelling.  Some of the most successful writers of all time really never give you a sense of what a character is feeling…Michael Chrichton, comes to mind, Isaac Asimov, lots of people. You can succeed without this skill, but I always feel it leaves a work cold, if you can't feel some of what a character feels.

So I have a few tips…this topic is too big for a short post, but here's some stuff to consider.

First, fucking PLAY ACT. Seriously. I find that guys sometimes have a hard time writing females because they are afraid to really imagine what a woman feels. Now, there are a ton of gender issues here, and I don't mean to make the discussion binary, but answering the question, how does a GUY (the poster) write a FEMALE (the character), we are sort of in that position. So consider this advice to be about everyone on the gender spectrum who ISN'T the group you belong to.

Play act. Imagine. I mean it, if you write a woman walking into a room, mentally play that out. Don't be the man observing the woman, BE THE WOMAN. How does she enter the room, how do people in the room respond to her?

We live in a diverse world. If we only write characters like ourselves, fiction is doomed.  Don't be the observer, be the character. Then give that character a voice.

If you try to do it the other way around, you will not get the same result. When I write the Penguin, I am not Black Canary, observing him, I AM THE GODDAMN PENGUIN. I know his resentment, I know his avarice, his bitterness, I know the soft part of his soul. And when I write him, I write him as smart and dangerous and funny and angry, not as a punching bag.

In this, I can't stress enough how helpful acting classes or books on acting can be. Many of the best writers I know have drama backgrounds. Think of the character, be that character.

That's tough enough. But there's a second part to this, which is getting the READERS to care enough to keep reading your character.  To do that, they have to empathize in some way. How do you get a male readership to read a female character? To feel for her, in a way other than as a spectator?

There are lots of tricks. One I use a lot is sense memory.

Show the character EXPERIENCING things, physical things, that the reader knows and can relate to. I have characters eating cake, or walking in a cold stream, or smelling a burning fire close by.  These elements grab the reader almost involuntarily into the character.  Almost all of us have eaten cake or walked in a cold stream. We feel that, we remember it. Suddenly, we are eating what the character is eating, walking where the character is walking, instead of just reading about it.

Second, think of real world effects of the actions of your characters. How many times has a character in a comic gotten the crap kicked out of them and they don't even mention that it hurt?  With Black Canary, I made sure that the reader FELT when she got hit, that she felt a socket pop, or if it's raining, she got water in her boots. This works emotionally, too…Huntress and Black Canary feel comfortable in their costumes at night in an alley, but weird when they are in a bright hospital where they are observed by normal citizens.

Try to think of the consequences of the actions in the story. Those humanizing moments will do WONDERS for getting people to empathize.

I hope this helps…it's a big topic!

APE IN A CAPE: A Hopefully Helpful Thread

APE IN A CAPE: A Hopefully Helpful Thread:

nerdshipkelvin:

gailsimone:

I had a Hollywood friend ask me this morning about how to format a comic book script. That's a big question. I'm going to answer it, and I thought it might be helpful to some of you who are aspiring to write comics yourself (the short answer is, everyone does it differently. The long answer is,…

What is your editing process when writing? 

Interesting question. Okay, my first rule…NO ONE SEES MY FIRST DRAFT.

No one. Never.

A first draft is for ME. It's for me to look at, to tinker with, and to improve. It's the wrong time to bring people in, they will only muddy the waters.

So I always go through and do a second pass before an editor or artist sees it. The second pass doesn't mean re-writing from scratch, it means fixing dialogue, dropping or editing scenes, that sort of thing.

WHILE I am writing my drafts, I am constantly editing. What I am doing is listening for the alarm bell in  my head. If a line sounds generic, if it sounds like anyone could have written it, or any character could have said it, the alarm goes off and I try to reconfigure it. I don't want generic characters, I don't want to repeat other stories I've enjoyed.

So I guess my advice would be to develop that alarm bell. If you write, "I'm getting too old for this shit!" your bell should go off. I might change it to, "Jesus, I thought I was going to die skydiving." Anything, something different, something fresh. If your script is a sandwich, you don't want any old meat in it, right?  Do something different. Every time you hear that bell.

In Which I Adore My Husband...

This story is true, and a little weird, and while I SHOULD be angry at him, I have to say, I can't quite manage it.

At the Geek Girl Con, the vibe was so amazing and wonderful that it's easy to forget we still have to live in a real world that ISN'T so supportive and creative and wonderful.

Here's what happened.

Because we go to a lot of conventions, we've made friends with tons of cosplayers, and they have become very dear to us both. Some of them have had problems with attendees, everything from just being hassled or mocked, to upright being groped and otherwise abused.

Because of that, my husband, who is a very sweet, funny, kind guy, is always watching out for people hassling cosplayers and several times he has had to step in when security was either not available or not aware, or simply not interested. At some of the bigger cons, women in particular can get mobbed past their point of comfort, even if the people only mean well and just want to take photos.

But sometimes it gets a little uglier and a couple times he's had to help someone find something else to look at, as it were.

I should add that my husband is a big guy, 6'3" and karate trained, used to have to throw belligerent rednecks out of a packed bar. So he is very sweet, but hates bullies like I can't even tell you.

At the Geek Girl Con, the event was split between two buildings in the Seattle Center, a good ten minutes walk apart, so the whole weekend, cosplayers walked back and forth between the two buildings. You have heard about what an amazing event it was, it was incredibly fun and supportive.

Two con cosplayers that we met that we both adored were there, just outside the main con building, in a public area, with music going on. They were Kyrax2, the famous "San Diego Batgirl," and another girl, who was dressed as Black Canary, complete with wig (she was dressed as Knockout the day before).

Now, they both looked fantastic, absolutely amazing. Photographers were taking pictures of them all day, and they spread joy everywhere they went. They had just done battle poses for the convention photographers. They are incredibly sweet, gorgeous young women, and most importantly for this story, they are both TEENSY. They are both really, really small young women. I'm not that tall and I towered over them both.

They were standing outside, minding their own business, having a great time and making the con even nicer, when some incredible jerk, a middle aged, angry creep with a pony-tail and a down jacket, comes walking towards them quickly, VERY aggressively, not at all in a manner that looked safe. This got my husband's attention.

This was a guy in decent, even expensive clothes. And he's slapping the back of one hand into the open palm of his other hand, loudly, like a gun shot. Again, very aggressively.

And he says to the two cosplayers, who are hurting NO ONE and having a great time, very angrily, like he was threatening to confront them, "Get a LIFE. Why don't you just GET A DAMN LIFE?"

Now, I know cosplayers hear that sort of ignorant thing all the time. But usually, it's mocking and scornful, but insignificant. This guy was angry. Pissed off. God knows why, and he's doing this just a few feet from women half his size, classic bully mover.

So he says it again like he expects them to answer, "WHY DON'T YOU GET A LIFE?"

And he didn't realize my husband was with them. My husband, looks at the guy and loudly smirks, "What, like YOU?"

The guy's eyes go wide, he didn't realize he'd picked on the wrong young women. Even WITHOUT my hubby, there was a packed courtyard of young women who would not take too kindly to this guy's assholery.

So there's a pause, and the guy answers back, "YEAH." Like, yeah, these lovely, talented, funny, intelligent, creative women should get a life like me, a jerk berating people half my size in public courtyards.

So my husband looked at him dead in the eyes and said, "Really? But YOU are just a huge piece of SHIT."

I'm sorry, but I find that highly amusing.  I know there are smarter moves than confronting strangers in the street in Seattle, but like I said, my hubby hates bullies.

The guy slunk away, suddenly losing interest in the conversation altogether.

I know I'm supposed to be mad…he could have just let it go. Sticks and stones, right? 

But I think of some jerk trying to intimidate and berate these two wonderful women for NO REASON and I can definitely see where he was coming from.

Anyway, that would have been a weird story—my husband got in a fight at Geek Girl Con! So, I'm glad it didn't come to that, but maybe that creep will think twice before he tries to bully and insult strangers half his size.

PS. I think, "But you are just a huge piece of SHIT," is pretty funny, given the circumstances.

I Am Happy

I think there were some stumbles in the new 52, no question. I think anyone thinking there wouldn't be was either fooling themselves or works in marketing.

But it makes me VERY happy to see Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Batwoman in the top 20. I'm pretty sure when reorders are all in, Batgirl will be in the top ten, and the other two in the top fifteen. Batgirl orders are substantially higher than the press has said, not even counting digital and bookstore sales.

It's hard to even really express what a big deal that is.

There's a ways to go, obviously. But this made me really happy.

geekeryandhockey:fantaspic:roxannameta:fantaspic:geekerya...

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geekeryandhockey:

fantaspic:

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fantaspic:

geekeryandhockey:

fantaspic:

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fantaspic:

nahchillhomebro:

DAT MARTIAN MANHUNTER!

so many butter faces in one post

Don't be an asshole, we can read what you're writing about us. No love, Aqualass.

I'm sorry you' and your friends are butterfaces.

My condolences to your bodies.

Bitch, you need to shut your mouth cause your jelly keeps falling out.

There's nothing to be jealous of, though…..

.-.

I'm just gonna leave this here: would you shit-talk to our faces if you were standing in front of all 11 of us, in costume, at Comic-Con?

If you wouldn't do that in person, don't do it on the internet. Judging by your own photos, you're too immature to realize the human decency of what I'm saying, but I'm gonna take a leap of faith in humanity and hope that someday you'll learn "do unto others." Good luck out there.

Yes, I would say that to your faces. I stand behind my opinions.

Plus, you're not exactly an intimidating bunch, haha, but the fact that you think you are is quite amusing.

I'm not here to spare any feelings, I'm here to put my opinion on my personal blog. Stop being insecure and learn to brush off the opinions of a stranger on the internet.

Oh look at you, the big tough girl on the internet. Not only are YOU actually the ugly on in this thread but you're also a complete liar. You would not go up to a large group of people in person, in public and call them all "butterfaces" I don't care how intimidating you think they aren't. You're as full of absolute shit as you opinions.

Stop being a cunt and keep your opinions to yourself (or actaully ON you "personal" blog) instead of seeking attention for them by trollishly attaching them to things you know damn good and well that you shouldn't.

Be gone you hideous assclowning cuntsack.

I've seen some of these people up close at conventions. It may be slightly impolitic to say, but they were all fricking GORGEOUS.  Beautiful, beautiful people and amazing cosplayers who made everyone happy everywhere they went. They were a highlight of the con.

Oh, and fuck that 'butterface' creep.

ealperin:blackalice:comiccombatant:hey, hey, hey, Alice,...

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ealperin:

blackalice:

comiccombatant:

hey, hey, hey, Alice, look what I can do!

This is adorable!

Lol. Cute!

Ooooooh, do I want these two back, SO BAD.

DC had this weird idea that the two characters would be related. The writer of Bop was kind enough to ask me if I was cool with that, and I really felt it was a bad idea and said so, and he made the change in the script so that they were not relatives.

That was classy and thoughtful!

CUTE drawing!

I really hope that Catman's male lover turns out to be transgender or at lest a cross dresser. Hooking him up with anyone who looks anyway like Robin, Nightwing, Superman, Joker or even Bane, just seems to make him like a fangirl yaoi of Bat man and less l

Not sure what to say to that…I don't think of Catman as 'gay Batman,' and I've never read any yaoi.  When Catman reveals that side, it will be something that fits his character, I promise.

I really hope that Catman's male lover turns out to be transgender or at lest a cross dresser. Hooking him up with anyone who looks anyway like Robin, Nightwing, Superman, Joker or even Bane, just seems to make him like a fangirl yaoi of Bat man and less l

Not sure what to say to that…I don't think of Catman as 'gay Batman,' and I've never read any yaoi.  When Catman reveals that side, it will be something that fits his character, I promise.

A Hopefully Helpful Thread

I had a Hollywood friend ask me this morning about how to format a comic book script. That's a big question. I'm going to answer it, and I thought it might be helpful to some of you who are aspiring to write comics yourself (the short answer is, everyone does it differently. The long answer is, here are some suggestions…).

Because I'm on the net and relatively available, I get about a bagillion questions about how to write, produce, and market comics and other stuff, just hundreds of questions about the art, craft, and business of writing. I can't possibly answer them all and I get a lot of duplication.

So, I thought I would start a thread here, and try to answer a few such questions as time permits.

If you have a particular question, go ahead and ask. I'll be as helpful and truthful as I can.

Let me make a few rules here, to head off anything that makes this uncomfortable.

1) Please don't give any details about your stories. I can't answer them, I can't read questions where your plot is discussed at all, for legal reasons. If I get questions about that, I will have to shut the thread down.

2) Please no fanfic questions, I'm doing this to try to help people who want to write for publication. Nothing against fanfic but there are lots of resources that can help you there better than I can.

3) Please try to make your question specific, and reasonable in scope. If you ask me, "How do I break into comics?" that is too big a question, AND I've already covered that at length on this very Tumblr. Try to narrow it down a little. Questions can be about style, marketing, craft, business, whatever. Some subjects I am not as knowledgeable about, if that's the case, I'll tell you. But smaller questions will get answered quicker.

4) Please only one question at a time from each poster.

5) Please be patient, I have to work these in as best I can when I have a free minute. If I don't answer your question right away, give it a bit of time.

6) It will help if you reblog when you ask your question, so I can simply reblog the answer. Just putting the question on the thread makes it hard to answer in Tumblr format.

I'm doing this to try to help, no other reason, so please be considerate and polite and succinct. I will give frank answers. If you disagree with them, that's fine, but the answers will be the truth as I know it.

Fair enough?

And we begin.  ;)

I Will Be At MCM Expo (Also, A Request!)

Hey, all! I will be at the wonderful-sounding MCM EXPO in London the 28-30th of October. I'm excited, it's my first trip to London. I hope some of you guys can make it!

Also, we're staying four extra days, and I'd like to ask the advice of people familiar with the city. What would you recommend we do there, what's great to see if you only have a few free days?