The Section Comics

An experiment in comics

Category: 4-Writing

  • Writer’s tips: Plot

    NOTE: It’s a good idea to read the starting points post before this one.

    People spend decades writing books and screenplays sometimes. This project is just a couple of days. So there’s a real need to figure out the plot and how everything will work together quickly. There are a lot of options available.

    Simple plot explanation

    A plot will need to have a beginning, middle, and an end. During the first GNW, I created a example in comic form:

    The basic ideal being that in the beginning we figure out who the character is, and how they get into a problem. Then we have them face difficulty of some sort. Finally, we find a way for them to triumph (or in the case of tragedies, fail).

    This may seem incredible straightforward, but it’s essential to determine the beginning, middle, and end, so that everyone knows what they are working towards. This doesn’t need to be done at the beginning, it could be figured out on the way, but readers expect this structure.

    “Save the Cat”

    Blake Snyder’s book, “Save the Cat” is a classic review of structure in Hollywood screenplays. It gives a quantitative structure of what needs to happen and where – minute by minute – in a film. It’s hard to use this as a one-to-one resource in a 48 hour graphic novel, as you will not know at the beginning how many pages you have to tell the story, but so far as giving a clear outline where you just need to slot in moments, it might be a good resource to review.

    There are also a number of resources online to map out “standard” structures for various genres (mystery, romance, thriller, etc.)

    Some people feel that following this sort of pre-fabricated structure makes films and books a bit too formulaic, and that might be true (I absolutely believe it’s true, but what do I know?). All the same, this will make the story familiar, and act as a guide for you in this process, and you might find that useful given the short timeframe available.

    Story board

    It might be useful for the writers to layout the story on a story board, either visually (possibly using the thumbnail drawings recommended) or with text post-it notes. This gives the ability to move concepts around, and see how everything fits.

    This is also helpful to the artists – one of the biggest things we heard from artists in the first graphic novel weekend was that they wanted to know where they fit into the story. So having a large story outline where they can picture a little drawing of themselves and the words “you are here” will be very appreciated.

    Let your freak flag fly!

    The artists are likely to want to draw weird things. Few artists come to a comic book related project expecting to draw two people sitting at a table hashing out an argument. So, even if the writing team finds a story they want to tell that’s relatively straightforward and grounded, it would be a good idea to find a way to make sure that the artists can draw some more bizarre things. Structuring the plot around dream sequences, museums, film shoots, etc. can add that sort of spice into an otherwise straight ahead story.

  • Writer’s tips: General

    1. Read the Artist’s tips, especially if you are not an artist, yourself. You job will be to manage them and help them get the pages out that tell your story, so it’s important to understand what the artists are up against in this process, and the recommendations they are getting, so you have as clear a sense of that struggle as is possible.
    2. When telling the art teams what to draw, stick to what you want to happen in broad terms. You are the writer and director, but the artist is the actor and the cinematographer. You have to trust them to use the skill set they have. The less you detail you give, the more they will give you to work with in the end.
    3. Rule of thumb: For all text on each page, you have roughly a maximum word count of 210 words. That is the absolute maximum. Less is more. Each individual word balloon should be at most 20-25 words, each panel (in a 5-6 panel page) at most 35 words.
    4. Make your words count – less is more, but also in this project, your words can be used to cover unfinished art, or art that isn’t working. Write dialog to fit to the finished pages, but also with this sneaky corrective capability in mind.
    5. Try to finish each page in 1-2,5 hours. If your dialogue is finished for the finished pages, meet with the other writers to discuss where things will go next.
    6. Keep in close contact with the artists, and follow what they are doing, as well. At the same time, don’t just hover over their shoulders… that’s weird, and creepy.

  • Two page spreads

    Always work in two page increments – they can be two page spreads or two individual pages that go together. You can work with another team so that each team creates one page in this combination. But always work in two page increments.

    This was a place we dropped the ball in the initial graphic novel weekend was totally my fault. Because I thought it was important to be as flexible as possible with positioning the story, I said to only create single pages, and work together if there were two page spreads necessary. 

    Unfortunately, without a digital team, all of the arrangement happened months later, in some cases without the original artists involved. 

    If you work in two page groups (keep in mind that the first and last page will both probably be single pages, but we can deal with that separately) then placement becomes easy, and you will have more control over how your stories get told. 

  • General Guidance Writing

    Writer’s Room and the Marvel Method

    Stan Lee ended up as the editor of Marvel Comics at the age of 19, via a series of weird events. At a certain point, it fell to him to write the bulk of the company’s comics. He used a method learned from Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (the creators of Captain America) which has come to be known as “the Marvel Method.” Rival DC comics, and many other comic companies, used full scripts, but the Marvel Method was simple – Lee told the artists what the story was (sometimes writing a few pages, sometimes more detailed, and sometimes just telling them in a few sentences). The writers drew the stories, and often created a more detailed plot – and in fact, sometimes they didn’t even need the plot from Stan, they could just come up with their own story. And then Lee would write dialog to fit the finished pages.

    This Marvel Method makes a 48 hour graphic novel possible, because waiting for a full script is not going to work for the artists, really, and there’s no telling how many pages an artist can finish in the time you have until you see how fast they work. 

    The first goal we had with the original GNW (where we started everyone at the same time) was to get the art teams drawing page #1 of the book as soon as possible, so that you as a writer have time to write. Writing takes less time that drawing. 

    Learning from TV

    As a group, the writers also need to work in the structure of a TV writer’s room. All of the writers will need to sit down, and break the story, and determine where it’s going. These meetings should happen several times throughout the event, as you respond to the new pages, and bring concepts together. 

    So, a writer is a member of two teams, and works in both their own team as a leader, and the team of writers as a group of equals.

    Gaiman Variation and ensuring an ending 

    Neil Gaiman is known for having one of the great early noble failures in creating a 24 hour comic. He did not finish 24 pages. So he stopped at 24 hours, regardless of not completing the pages. Given the number of creators involved, this is essential to a 48 hour graphic novel, because something needs to be finished. So, pay close attention to where there are gaps in the story to try and make necessary connections.

  • Writing tips: Improv

    I took improv classes for quite a while around Amsterdam, and did a bit of improv performing (that one time). It was important to me to have writers with an improv background in the first graphic novel weekend, and I sincerely recommend to anyone else attempting a 48 hour graphic novel that you seek out improv experienced people. 

    Creating within 48 hours means that things will change and shift, and you need people who are ready to go with the flow. The foundation of improv is taking any idea and saying yes to it, and building on it. It is essential to have that feeling in mind. 

    Why? Because you do not know how things will go. If you get to stuck in the idea of how things are supposed to be, you will find that the pages don’t get drawn that you need. Or there’s a subtle difference in them that leads you in a different direction. 

    “Yes, and” will keep the story moving, and in a direction that will benefit everyone. 

    As a writer in a 48 hour graphic novel, you are not trying to build the detailed plumbing system for a house, and determine where the water will flow. You are riding a river of creativity in a raft that you have to continuously rebuild – so keeping loose, accepting what comes along, and looking for new directions that will be more fun but still keep you heading in the right direction (while avoiding sharp rocks) is the best plan you can have. 

    How to say “no” in improv

    Saying “yes, and” doesn’t mean you can’t say no within the story, it means you have to embrace the idea, and the character has their perspective and feeling within that idea. On stage, for example, if someone turns to you and says “look out there, the sea looks rough tonight” and you reply “that’s not a sea, it’s an audience” — you might get one laugh. But the scene can’t move forward, because you would destroy the story of it. And you would ruin the connection with your co-creator.

    But you could say “I’ve seen rougher seas,” as a way to stay in the world, and build it, but argue within it.

    So, the key is to embrace the idea and the world, and react to it.

  • Starting points

    As I mentioned, coming up with a beginning point for the story was a bit contentious for us in the first graphic novel, and so it is worth discussing. 

    There are many ways to come up with how to begin the story, but the point is that we have a bunch of artists and writers ready to begin work. Writers can argue for months over an idea, so it’s essential to find a way that you can bring everyone together quickly. 

    We definitely knew that we wanted to set the story in the city we were in, as that helps ground that event as being about the town, and means that if you need inspiration you just have to go outside to see it. 

    I personally felt that we needed a single image concept that could allow writers to get their artists started, and then figure out the story. Others felt that we needed to let the writers find something as a start point among themselves. 

    There are a few ways to work this out, and by no means is this list everything, but at the least it should get you thinking in the direction of how you’d want to find your beginning. 

    A single concept to begin

    As mentioned, this is what we did in the first graphic novel weekend. I came up with an image of astronauts in a Dutch city even before we knew where we would set the event. My reason is listed in the recap of the first GNW. 

    But basically, I wanted a single image that could be drawn by everyone and which wouldn’t require writers to know more than how many characters they were writing for. And you could do this. 

    An improv game to come up with the concept

    As the rules of improv are already very important to this concept, why not steal something else from them? 

    In improv it’s often the case that a call will be made out to the audience to come up with a location, a profession, an object, whatever. You could use this here, and just throw out to the whole crowd to come up with something you wouldn’t expect to find in your city, or a job, or an object. And then vote for the best combination. It would take a few minutes, and get you started. 

    A pre-meeting

    This was a topic that kept coming up. The idea was to have the writers show up in advance to figure out the story. There is a lot of benefit to this. Personally, though, I was hesitant because I feel like the artists need to be involved from the beginning, but that might just be me (and an argument could be made that my chosen method didn’t allow anyone present at the stage of coming up with a concept) and at least for coming up with a concept, it’s definitely a good plan. 

    Tie it to an event or a cause

    One of the real hopes of Doe Het Niet Zelf was to make these graphic novels about something. And so events and charities are a great way to go. Put a focus on a cause and let the story spread from that. 

    Don’t be constrained by your beginning

    Once you have an idea, that’s just the starting line. Plan to go beyond that and do new and different things. To prove this point, during the first event, I put up a slide with this on it:

    What do these specific things have in common?
    The Beatles
    The Crimean War
    The Hulu hoop craze in America in the 1950s
    Doing your taxes
    Lodewijk Napoleon
    The Stegosaurus
    Japanese Calligraphy
    The Computer Language Fortran

    The answer is that all of these things relate to our world. As unrelated as any two of them are to each other, you could write a story connecting them fairly easily. Because it’s all within our world and our knowledge. So treat the beginning point as what it is – point A on a journey, nothing else. The journey is to the end point.