WOW. Just Wow.

Okay, so this is the coolest.

I am in Bergen, Norway, for the RAPTUS Comics Festival.  And it’s funny, because I’ve been told all month that not that many people here read Western comics, that Norway only produces humor comics, most people wouldn’t know who I am, on and on, so I was prepared to have to explain who I am and what I do to the audience.

It didn’t turn out to be that way at all, my first panel was packed, and it was more girls than boys, and most of them had read US produced comics, and they asked great questions and had books to sign and were completely lovely and fierce and very friendly.

What was most exciting was how many of them want to make comics. This is always thrilling to me, but it turns out that many of these young people were students of actual college courses on comics. I loved the universal love of comics that we all shared—they are used to entirely different books (Donald Duck is HUGE here, it’s practically a religion) and formats, but we are all bound by the love of pictures and words together.

Tomorrow, I am supposed to do a two hour seminar on character creation. My own process for creating characters is weird and difficult, I am not sure I can teach it or that it will be helpful to others. So I was nervous, these kids deserve a great class.

So I had this idea…and in the middle of the night here, I emailed a bunch of my favorite writer friends, and I asked them, if they were to just give ONE small piece of advice on how to make characters, what would it be? What would you tell these passionate aspiring comics creators in Norway?

I didn’t think anyone would respond, it’s the middle of the night here and late there. And everyone’s busy, and they’ve heard this question so many times.

WOW.

I was wrong.

Almost instantly, I started getting AMAZING advice from people like Mark Waid, Devin Grayson, Greg Pak, Paul Storrie, Mercedes Lackey, Dan Jurgens, Jimmy Palmiotti, Joe Kelly, Dan Slott, Marv Wolfman, Adam Glass, Gerry Duggan, Kurt Busiek, Gerry Conway, Colleen Doran, Chuck Dixon and Kelly Sue DeConnick.

And I’m telling you, there’s a reason why these people are successful and great at their jobs, this stuff is liquid gold. It made me look at my own process again, it’s the stuff that makes you want to write all day.

I’m going to share a bunch of this with these Norwegian aspiring creators, I hope the small language gap isn’t a problem because man, if I could sit in a class and get writing advice from THIS group of writers, I would be glued to my seat. Wow.

This stuff is too great to just be used once. I may ask permission to share some of it here, if the writers are okay with that. If we do, I strongly advise everyone to read this stuff and absorb it, it is incredibly powerful advise from the best in the business!

Ps. I have awesome friends!