Writing is Hard: Humans are humans

After the last After Dinner Lounge episode, Erik Johnson made a comment on Twitter that reminded me of something I want to drop here. Jack Kirby came up in the podcast thanks to Evan's reading The Eternals, which led Erik to write, "I’m foaming at the mouth with excitement hearing your Jack Kirby discussion being such a big fan of the man’s work, but I will admit my knowledge dips off after Silver Age years. His visuals are still great but the writing is a bit out there."

Thinking about Kirby's writing reminded me of a piece of writing advice he gave that's stuck with me ever since I read it. I've reinterpreted it and probably misquoted it through the years, so I want to document it here in case I need to refer to it again. 

In an interview posted at the Jack Kirby Museum, Kirby said that "Superheroes may be superhuman in stature but inside they’re human beings and they act and react as human beings [...] It  doesn’t matter whether you’re doing legendary characters like Hercules or modern characters, you’ll find that humans are humans and they’ll react the same way in certain situations."

That's profound and like I said, it's always stuck with me. You can put characters into all kinds of crazy, outlandish situations, but as long as they act like real people, as a writer you'll always be okay.

Come see me at CONvergence 2016!

This weekend - starting today, actually - is CONvergence, a big-deal science fiction/fantasy convention here in Minnesota. I've heard about CONvergence for years, but have never been and always felt I was missing out. So I'm pretty excited that this year I not only get to go, but get to go as an Invited Participant.

I'm not totally sure what all that entails, but I do know it means I'll be on a lot of panels. And moderating a couple of them. My schedule is below, if you'd like to come say "hi."

I probably won't be around much today or tomorrow, but I'll be there all day Saturday and Sunday. As you can see, Saturday is packed with panels, but I have more time on Sunday to check out everything else that's going on. Hope to see you there!

Saturday, July 2

11:00 am

Moving at the Speed of Plot - I'm moderating this panel on the relationship between world-building and plot. The official description of the panel says it well: "When you’re world building, how do the choices you make, such as setting, affect the decisions you make later about plot? Has your world inspired your plot more than your plot has inspired your world?" If you've read Kill All Monsters, you know where I fall on this, but it'll be fun to discuss with some other writers.

12:30 pm

Gaming with Kids - All about introducing kids (and really anybody) to deck-building, role-playing, and Euro-style board games. David introduced himself to deck-building games with Dinosaur King and Pokemon, but I'll take credit for RPGs and board games.

3:30 pm

Are Comics No Longer for Teens? - I'm moderating this one, too. According to the official description, the panel is mostly focused on DC and Marvel, but I expect we'll widen the discussion to include more kinds of comics than just that. I've been talking with some of the other panelists and we've got some varying opinions, so this should be an awesome conversation.

5:00 pm

Building Collaborative Works - Talking about the benefits and drawbacks of collaborating with other creators, as well as some practical "how to" stuff.

8:30 pm

Everything New is Old Again - Really looking forward to this conversation about reboots, remakes, and sequels. Been talking to some of the other panelists on this one, too, and I'm not the only one who enjoys a well-done remake. Maybe not at the expense of original stories though (if such a thing exists). Gonna be fun to hash this out.

Sunday, July 3

2:00 pm

Submarines: They Don’t Have to Be Black - The theme of the convention this year is the vehicles of science fiction and fantasy and I couldn't be more thrilled to get to talk about scifi/fantasy submarines. If you follow my Life at Sea Tumblr (or just this blog for a long enough period of time), you know how much I love the sea adventure. Looking forward to geeking out about some favorite fictional subs and most likely learning about some that I'm not so familiar with.

The spiritual side of writing

Sorry about not posting yesterday. I got back from FablesCon Sunday night and immediately went to work on writing it up for Robot 6. That, plus just being gone all weekend, didn't leave any time for here.

I won't go over again how much I loved the convention as a whole, but I can go into more detail about the effect it had on me. At some point over the weekend, I tweeted that the cumulative effect of the panels was "incredibly inspirational for storytelling. Like, spiritually so." What I meant was that being in the same room with experienced writers like Kurt Busiek, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, and Chris Roberson - and listening to these guys talk about not just writing, but storytelling in general - kind of filled up my tanks.

Writing is a lot of fun for me, but I don't always feel passionate about it. I discipline myself to write every day whether I feel like it or not, and that keeps me productive, but though I always enjoy writing as I'm doing it, there are times when I don't really want to sit in that chair. I've also developed disciplines to help me organize my stories and keep them on track and that's all really good. I need that, because I'm not that disciplined by nature, but it can get stifling.

At FablesCon, I got a lot of permission to let loose and just enjoy the flow of ideas. Roberson, Carey, and Gross talked a lot about it (Matt O'Keefe has a good write-up of that particular panel at The Beat) with Carey even saying that he doesn't teach three-act structure anymore in his workshops. Carey also poked holes in other writing conventions, like the idea that characters can steal control of a story from the writer (he writes more about that on his Good Reads blog, which is now in my bookmarks). He admits to being a very organized, outline-using writer, but he also lets himself play, as does Roberson. Their excitement about telling stories was contagious and motivating.

I want more of that and I think my experience at FablesCon showed me a way to get it. I got to chat with Roberson a couple of times in addition to attending some of his panels and was blown away by how well-read he is. I'm pretty good at consuming large quantities of stories, but Roberson makes me want to be a better, pickier reader. Though I don't do much linkblogging anymore, I still tend to read the Internet that way: scouring for details about comics and movies that I'm not even interested in. That time could be better spent on a critical essay or two; or even watching Life of Pi, which I understand has some deeply profound things to say about the power of stories.

In fact, I'm going to add Life of Pi to the top of my Netflix queue right now, because if it's everything I hear it is, I have post in me about it and Roberson's famous quote about Superman and Jesus. Thanks to FablesCon, I'm starting to realize how much of a spiritual activity storytelling is and I want to think and discover more about that.

Quote of the Day | The Writer at the Bar

By way of explaining what I've been doing today instead of blogging:

Michael Moorcock once commented that the man hanging around in the bar at night telling people he's a writer is not a writer, because if he were a writer he'd be at home writing.

--Warren Ellis.

I'm at home writing; finishing the Neal McDonough story. Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Image via Polished)

Writing is Hard: Get your dress dirty

Photo by Michelle Kennedy.

The only reason you need to follow Ben Caldwell's blog is the art he puts up there, but lately he's been doing some great process posts too. A lot of them are about design and visual storytelling, but last week he talked about some things that apply to writing too. In discussing creative block, he said:

start drawing/writing whatever is giving you trouble, without trying to make it good. even if you throw away everything you just did, at least you'll have done SOMETHING, and at least clarified certain things you DON'T want to have. it's always easier to fix something that exists, than worry about something that doesn't. also, no one ever accomplished something by not doing it.

if you're working on a script or drawing and unsure how to get past a certain point, then save a copy of whatever you're doing, then go ahead and finish it however the hell you want. follow your ideas through to their logical conclusion, because this can help you see if perhaps you were asking yourself the wrong questions in the first place -- which is the best way to get the wrong answers.

Writer Angela Booth describes this as "making mud."

Writing is creative work, not typing. [...] I look on my first drafts of all writing as making mud -- making a mess. You've got to get some words written so you know what you're thinking about a topic, and you can't know until you write it.

I love that analogy and it's helped me a lot with Kill All Monsters. I'm not as obsessed about turning in a perfect draft to James (my editor), because I know that it's just the material that I'm building the actual story with. I also love what Ben adds to that point: that the process of creating mud and playing in it is also educational. It's the creative equivalent of Edison's famous statement about knowing a thousand ways not to build a lightbulb.

Basically, it's about fearlessness. It's a cheap kind of fearlessness, because it doesn't even require showing your practice stuff to anyone else, but it's still important. Every creator either admits to struggling with doubts about his or her work, or is a big fat liar. So anything that helps deal with that fear - however small - is valuable.

Panel Bound Interview

Matthew Manarino from Panel Bound interviewed me about Kill All Monsters and the writing process in general, especially working with artists. He asked some great questions and I had a lot of fun.

If you like process stuff, the site has a whole series of writer, editor, and artist interviews with folks like Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun), Shane and Chris Houghton (Reed Gunther), Christian Slade (Korgi), and Brandon Graham (King City). That's some humbling company to be in, so special thanks to Matthew for inviting me.

Writing is Hard: Starting with short stories

At SpringCon this year I had the pleasure of sharing a table with Mike Bullock (The Phantom, Lions Tigers and Bears). Mike and I had been acquaintances for a while, but it was the first time we'd had the opportunity to sit down and really talk. We chatted about a lot of things - books and comics we like, the recent resurgence in pulp, stuff like that - but one of the things that's stuck with me longest from that conversation was Mike's interest in writing prose, particularly short stories.

I'd already begun thinking in that direction when I discovered how much fun it was to write "Bigfoot and the Bone Face Murders" for the Mondo Sasquatch anthology. The more I think and learn about it, the more I want to work in that format. Jeff Parker recommended short-story writing in an interview he gave to Newsarama shortly after my conversation with Mike:

It really is mostly practice, the art. Writing too, but you have to go through a number of stories to start making leaps. That's why short stories are important to do, and there need to be more venues for them.

That's similar to advice George RR Martin recently gave at a signing. Literary agent Kristin Nelson was there and summarized Martin's comments this way:

...he said that being a beginner, unpublished writer declaring that he's writing a 7-book series is kind of like being a guy who has just started rock climbing and announcing to the world that the first climb he's going to do is a little hill called Mount Everest. That's absolutely not what you want to do. It's too hard. Too big in scope. If you are a beginning rock climber, you want to start with the climbing wall at your local REI or a small hill that won't kill you first.

As an agent, I've given this advice any number of times but in the end, writers don't believe me. Okay don't believe me. Believe George instead! Forty years in this biz, he knows what he's talking about...Start with short stories where you are forced to have a beginning, middle, and end. You are also forced to nail plot and character in a short amount of space. Then graduate to something bigger--like a novella or one stand-alone novel. Master that. Then tackle the big series.

I'm not planning any multi-novel sagas (though I've certainly got ideas!), but I'm still taking to heart the encouragement to practice my writing through short stories. I've sold three of those now and loved the experience each time. They don't take a lot of time, but Parker, Martin, and Nelson are right: writing those has taught me more about the craft of writing than any number of author interviews, articles, or books (though I've learned a lot from those too). When Jason and I finish Kill All Monsters, I'm going to take some time off from comics and focus on short stories for a while. I'm already working on the first of them, a mystery about a guy in the 1940s who wears a Freddie Krueger-like mask to fight crime.

Writing is Hard: Constructing a logline.

Image hijacked from Ancestry.com.

In the 17th century, a log-line was the way ships measured their speed. It's also where the nautical term "knots" comes from, but that's not what I'm talking about right now. I just thought that was cool.

The logline I'm talking about is the writing term: a brief synopsis of the story that summarizes the main character and the story's hook. According to Wikipedia, it started as a labeling system for Hollywood studios to easily identify and remember what scripts were about, but developed into a pitching tool. Not only for people pitching projects to producers, but also for pitching completed products to audiences - like the blurbs in TV Guide or DVR descriptions.

I don't know how much the term is used in the publishing industry, but the concept is certainly there. Writing a great pitch or query letter is a vital skill for writers, though one that a lot of new writers admit to having a problem with. How do you condense a novel or comic series into a one-sentence summary?

There's a really useful article on Scriptshadow that explains how to do just that. The boiled down version is this: "A good logline...gives us the main character, the main character’s goal, and the central conflict in the story (what’s preventing them from getting that goal)." There's a lot more to it than that and writer Carson Reeves makes it simple, including examples from famous movies. If you're a writer and unsure about how to hook an editor or agent with a pitch, it's important reading.

Come to think of it, it's good to have a logline even if you've self-published and are trying to sell your stuff online or at conventions. In the business world, it's called the Elevator Pitch: how you would describe your product to someone in the few seconds of time you have traveling with them in the elevator. I've been to a lot of conventions, traveled a lot of Artist Alleys, and heard a lot of sales pitches from independent comics creators. Most of them would have benefited by a strong logline.

It's also useful long before you get to the sales stage of your product. It's great for making sure you've constructed a good story in the first place. If you don't have a main character with goals and something that's preventing her from achieving those goals, you really don't have a story at all.

I am apparently a Master of Many Styles

According to I Write Like, when reviewing Annie...

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

This concerned me until I learned then when composing updates on my writing and reviewing Camouflage...

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

And when reviewing Atlantis: The Lost Empire...

I write like
Douglas Adams

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

And when reviewing The Legend of Boggy Creek...

I write like
George Orwell

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

So obviously this is an extremely sophisticated and accurate tool.

Quotes of the Week: One Big-Toothed Cat Short

I laughed when the article said Skaar's adventures will include meeting up with prominent Savage Land character including Ka-Zar and Shanna, as I think that's pretty much one big-toothed cat short of all the prominent Savage Land characters.
--Tom Spurgeon

Everyone in Hollywood knows how important it is that a film is a brand before it hit theaters. If a brand has been around, Harry Potter for example, or Spider-Man, you are light years ahead. And there lies the problem. Because unfortunately these franchises are become more ridiculous. Battleship. This degrades the cinema.
--James Cameron

In creating a movie or a book or a comic, it’s not a mathematical equation. 2 plus 2 doesn’t always equal 4. It can equal 0 or a hundred. There is no way of completely duplicating the success of something you’ve seen. So much relies on instinct, voodoo, luck and, the main thing, the talent and vision of the people involved.
--Axel Alonso

Writing is Hard: Bad Writing and Great Moments

Bad Writing



It's only in five theaters nationwide, so most of us will have to wait for Netflix, but this documentary looks fairly fascinating. It's about a bad poet who interviews renowned writers about the craft and how to improve.



8 Moments You Absolutely Need to Deliver to Your Readers

Larry Brooks has an excellent post on how moments in a story have to work together to support the Big Picture in order for a story to satisfy its readers. If you've spent any time studying the craft of writing, some of them will be familiar, but Brooks even talks about those in ways that I hadn't considered before. I especially like how he describes the ultimate goal of any storyteller: for readers to get "that feeling of loss when the book is done." I'm bookmarking this one to refer to later as I keep thinking about it.

Converging worlds

Jennifer de Guzman writes about how decompartmentalized writers lives have become thanks to social networking. I think this is a good - though sometimes scary - thing. I'm not saying that it works this way for everyone, but it's certainly helped my self-perception as a writer to have my creative life mingling with other aspects of who I am.

Writing is Hard: Character Actors

John Rozum has a cool post on "casting" his characters in his head before he writes them. Referring specifically to Adam and Julia Kadmon from Midnight, Mass. he talks about how imagining a specific actor in the role can not only help communicate ideas to comic book artists, but can also help solidify the character in your head as you're writing:

When I got to thinking about Midnight, Mass. again shortly before it finally became a reality I had an epiphany of Julia being Famke Janssen which really brought together all of the loose threads and ideas I had for the series and definitely cemented the character of Julia for me.

I've done this a couple of times and it was very helpful. I need to do it more.

Writing is Hard: Marketing 101

RM Rhodes is a comics creator who's married to a marketing manager. He talks about what he's learned from her in this very helpful post.

In addition to advice on bare-minimums like having a decent website (Facebook doesn't count), business cards, and an elevator pitch, he also talks about how to be memorable at conventions. And he touches on the topic of making sure you're memorable in an way that reflects your work. Rhodes wears a purple suit to conventions and that helps him stand out from other creators who are usually dressed in what he calls "hipster business casual," but he admits that "nobody knows much about the content that I produce – they just know the suit." I'll look forward to reading his thoughts as he continues to figure that out.

John Rozum on Developing Characters

John Rozum has a helpful post outlining his approach to creating meaningful characters. It's an excellent starting point for beginning writers and a great reminder of what even veteran writers should be thinking about when putting a story together.

Quotes of the Week: Someone Else's Characters

I had a great phone conversation with [Harlan Ellison] while I was writing THE X-FILES comic book series in which he expressed his extreme disappointment in the work I was doing there. Everything he said was right on the money and tied in to the usual restrictions that come with playing with someone else's licensed characters, especially when those characters are on what is currently the hottest tv show on. There's not much you are allowed to do with such a property, and my hands were tied. Again, upon hearing this he was equally as supportive as any other time I've talked to him. I didn't find his dismissal of my work on the X-Files to be a nasty rant, but simply the opinion of someone who was disappointed because they knew I could have been doing so much better. And he was right.
--John Rozum

I like being Politically Correct. If I'm saying something that is offensive, even unintentionally, then I want to be alerted. I don't, as a rule, blame the offended party for being offended. Yes, I know this PC stuff can go too far. But I don't want to get into that with this post. Mainly, I worry about PC just for the sake of staying aware. I like having a clue. I think PC protocols should often be broken, but I want to do it intentionally, with thought and for a particular purpose. I don't, generally speaking, want to be a jackass.
--Richard Beck

Quote of the Week: Writing at Home

I think the thing people idealize most about freelancing is what they would like the least: the idea of working at home. Every single interview with Periscope Studio, our members are asked, "Why did you recreate an office situation?" Like we're insane. Everyone pictures themselves in a massive study with tall windows looking out on the forest or the cliffs over the water. But usually you're in an attic or moldy basement, somewhere by the washer and dryer. Getting office space is great if you can make it happen, I promise.
--Jeff Parker.

Writing is Hard: How Not to Write

This week's been threatening to get away from me since it started and yesterday it finally did. So there'll be a couple of more posts than usual today to make up for it.

How Not to Write About Africa



As a guy who loves jungle stories, but is sensitive to the racism in many of that genre's tropes, I found this article extremely helpful.

How Not to Write the Blurb for a Fantasy Novel



Maybe this is just me, so tell me in the comments if it bugs you too, but there's something that'll turn me off a fantasy novel every single time, even when the cover is as gorgeous as this one by Dan Dos Santos. From the Amazon Product Description for The Questing Road: "Acolytes to a dark god have crossed the gulf between worlds to abduct an innocent tariling..."

The italics are in the description, but they also highlight the word that stopped me cold. I've got no idea what a "tariling" is and I hate having to read the rest of the blurb to find out. Reading a blurb should be about discovering if I want to buy a book, not solving a mystery. In this case, I gather that a tariling is a cat-like creature (though the blurb likes the word "felinoid"). Couldn't it have just said that right up front?

I guess there must be an audience that enjoys being plunged cold into a world where everything has to be deciphered from the get-go, but I'm not part of it. I appreciate a fully realized world with its own languages and cultures and creatures to discover, but I prefer to be introduced to the strangeness gradually, not playing catch up from the first page. Or the cover blurb.

Writing is Hard: When to Do What

Pimp My Novel is a great blog about the publishing business from a Sales perspective. Recently, blogger Eric re-ran a post about what you can do to sell your book, and more importantly, when you should do what. It's not only informative, but as you read through his timeline it's also fun to imagine all those book deals and promotional tours you're going to get once you sit your butt down and finish the dang novel.

Elsewhere... CrossGen returned

Here's what else I've been up to online:

The Return of CrossGen?



Inspired by the Comic-Con news that Marvel's planning to do "some CrossGen stuff" now that they access to the properties Disney bought when CrossGen went belly-up, Tim O'Shea and I came up with a list of six CrossGen series we'd like to see make a comeback. I was a huge CrossGen fan back in the day, so knowing that it could be resurrected in some form is all the reason I need to appreciate Disney's buying Marvel.

What Are You Reading?



Short reviews of Super Maxi-Pad Girl #3 and a serial killer mystery called The Awakening.

The Royal Historian of Oz and Fanfic



In this week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs, we tackle the age-old problem of creator-owned work vs. corporate-owned (or public domain, as the case may be). Which should you read? Which should you create? And what does the concept of Official Canon have to do with it?

Writing is Hard: Self-Publishing Ebooks and Feeding Your Family Too

Writer JA Konrath has been championing the advantages of self-publishing your own ebooks for a while now, having raked in a ton of money himself that way. Because I'm interested in the publishing industry and where it's headed, I've been following his posts with a lot of curiosity. I just haven't linked to them because I don't have a novel I'm trying to get published or any other dog in this particular hunt. Not yet anyway.

But I'd like to one day and I figure that I'm going to want to remember his detailed advice on How to Make Money on Ebooks.