A Confusing Submision

I have written another short story script - more on that later. I have sent it to Timebomb Comics who are at timebombcomics.com and produce a short stories anthology called "Bomb Scares". Their submissions say for first time writers to send them short (up to 5 page) scripts as their first submission.  They have an email address to send the submissions to, but when I sent it I got a "this has not been delivered" message.

They have a general contact form on the website, so I sent a message telling them that my email had been bounced. I got a confirmation email from a completely different website ("Reaper Comics"). A few minutes later I received an email saying that my submission has been passed on to the submission editor. I am confused - did they get the original email? If not I didn't attach the script to the message.  Oh well, it'll all come out in the wash, as Willie Wonka might say,

So the story - it's a story idea I had a while ago, and thought of it as a short story, but it could work quite well in a comic I think.  Two brothers cast a spell which literally takes the M25 as the "Road To Hell". After circling London 3 times a special route opens up allowing them into hell, where everyone is happy and everything is permitted, along the lines of the myth that hell is where all of the fun people will go.  The twist in the tale is that this hell is a fake, and a group of devils have set this up to deliberately mislead people about the nature of hell.

My plan of action

So I have been promising a post on my plan of action for a while now. Here it is.

Stage 1: Identify publishers who accept unsolicited script-only submissions. These are pretty few and far between. I have so far reviewed the submissions policy for about 68 publishers, and have come up with about 5 who are looking for writer-only submissions. I have gone through most of the major publishers, but there is quite a big list (200+) of smaller publishers that I can look for. A significant proportion of them will not still exist, as they are drawn from a list of comics published over the last 70 years. I may also be missing major players, but I think I have most of the significant ones.

Those publishers that I have identified as being open to scripts are:

• 2000AD. They insist you start with 4-page twist stories
• Dark Horse. Surprisingly very open to a wide range of things from short stories to long series. Need to post to US.
• Timebomb - a small UK publisher wanting writers to start with up to 5-page stories.
• Antarctic Press - want writers to send 1-4 page synopsis, not full scripts, but of longer stories
• Markosia - UK-based, minimum 22-page stories, open to more than one at once
• Avatar press - looking for 8-10 page scripts featuring their own characters - seem to be looking for jobbing writers, but I'd rather be working on my own stuff.

Stage 2: Start writing scripts. Most importantly, start small. I think 2000AD's insistence that people start with Future Shock scripts is genius, The best way to get good practice is to iterate the process lots of times quickly and short scripts give that. Also, it would seem easy, but a short script has to be really tight and punchy. Small steps before I try anything bigger. This limits me down, at the moment to 2000AD, Dark Horse and Timebomb.

Stage 3: Spread the submissions: There seems to be about a 6 week cycle with publishers, so while I will probably send multiple scripts to the same publisher, most of them insist on one at a time. I'm going to get a better coverage and wider experience by spreading my stories around the possible outlets. Unless I can find more outlets this might be a slow process, Either that or I might need to start doing longer scripts sooner than I hoped.

Stage 4: Learn the craft. There is a whole lot of information out there about how to write (grammar and so on), how to write stories (narrative, characters, structures, and so on) and how to write comic book scripts (including some "seminal" books that are widely recommended). As well as writing I will be reading, and as well as that I will be reading comics, hopefully with an analytical eye to see how it is done.

And that's about it. I'm sure I'll revise this as I go along.  Right now I'm somewhat excited about this. I've written a short script, and posted it. I have a nice idea (I think) for another short story. I have ordered some books to help me learn, and I have been working on surveying publishers.

It's a windmill, and my lance is lowered, I'm tilting at it.

A trip to the post office

A trip to the post office is in and of itself not hugely momentous, but when the envelope you are sending contains a comic book script and is being sent to 2000AD magazine, there is a certain feeling of stepping out into the unknown.

I am mentally prepared, I think, for rejection. I know there is loads for me to learn about writing comic scripts. Also, while of course I think the story is good, I am not as invested in it as I would be with a story that has taken me months to write. Script 1. Sent. Job done.

Now, 2000AD are almost unique in the world of comic publishers, in that they will reply and send me back my script - or so they say. I'm hoping that they also give some feedback.  I don't know how long it will take, but different places say somewhere about 6 weeks before you try again, so I hope it will be seen within that period.  Anyway, I'm not supposed to send another until I have heard from them.

I wrote a script!

I did it! I wrote a comic book script. Just a small one.

I was going to write another blog post about how I'm gonna tackle this whole thing, and I still owe that one, but things got quiet at work, and in-between meetings I wanted something to do that was not starting a major thing.

So there's this comic book magazine in the UK called 2000AD, they have been going since 1977 and as they are weekly are on issues numbering about 1945-ish right now.  They feature all sorts of serials and one-offs, including the long-running Judge Dredd. They also have some short 4-page stories called "Future Shock". Their submission rules for writers are that however unknown or well-know you are, you have to write Future Shocks before you write anything else for them.  The great news is that they are quite well known for using this as an entry point into comic book writing.

A four-page comic is quite short, how hard can it be?  Well I worked on it at work and then in the evening at home, I have had a story idea floating around in mind for a Future Shock, about a computer scientist who is co-erced into making software to emulate Elvis Presley's voice, and a sequence of disappointments and refinements to make it sound real and authentic. Finally he implements an artificial personality meant to mimic Elvis's personality, in order to give the singing more "attitude". The shock (not a big one I admit) is that once it has a personality, the virtual Elvis refuses to sing the song it is given because it doesn't like it. It's called "Velvis" (which is short for Virtual Elvis).  There is of course a bit more to it than that, but that's a nutshell synopsis.

So here's the thing I want to talk about, how did I got from no script to script when I haven't done so before?

I've read several things about formatting a comic book script, and while there is no standardised format, in a nutshell you break it down into pages (of the finished comic), and then break it down into "panels" (comic book speak for the individual framed pictures). You describe what is shown in the panel, and follow this with the text for the speech bubbles, done in a sort of movie/TV script way, or for traditionalists, a bit like lines in a play.

What I didn't know was how to break my story down into pages, and how to decide on how many panels on each page. Instead I just started at panel 1 on page 1 and did one panel at a time until I had told the story.

The submissions guidelines at 2000AD encourage you to use 5-7 panels to a page, which is an average length of 14 panels. However, I knew also that first pages tend to have fewer panels, with a big picture to get you started.  Anyway, just writing it out, as it came, I ended up with 28 panels, which is a little bit big, but for what I was going to do that was perfect.

Because I started it at work I didn't have any of the style guides I had downloaded, so the second thing I did, once at home, was to reformat the script.

I then started breaking it down into pages, and at the same time trimming a few panels by merging the speech of more than one together, tightening up the script. I found it helped to visualise how it would be laid out on the page, how many panels on a line, how many lines.  I tried to make the page breaks at natural pause points in the story, which I seemed to manage OK.

By the time I was finished that pass I had basically also tried to tighten up the speech, removing unneeded words to make it tighter, and added quite a bit to the panel descriptions. It finished up at 21 panels, feeling (to my mind) like a nice, tight script. I have also written a synopsis at the front (the chances are only the synopsis will be read).

To finish the job, I need to write a cover letter and get some envelopes and stamps, and send it to 2000AD along with an SAE.

I HOPE they like it. It's my first script, I'm not kidding myself that I'll be a genius at this at the first try, if ever. But... you gotta start somewhere, and now that I've bitten the proverbial bullet, I should bit the next one an actually send it.

Anyway, I will, sometime soon, write the post about how I'm going to tackle this thing, but let's say that the first stage is to write a Future Shock for 2000AD. As it happens it is what I was going to do first so whew!

For my own purposes, and for the purposes of counting how many scripts I write (intending to give up at 100) I will be numbering my stories. This is...

01 VELVIS - Future Shock for 2000AD

I reserve the right to re-work it for a different publication, but in that case the new version might be 01a. Or something. I'm waffling, time to stop.

Useful Principles

I'm going to give some thoughts on how to approach the writing of comic book scripts, in a high-level, very generalised way.

I have an assumption that if I am going to do this, I'd like to be able to do so reasonably well. Somebody very smart, who I have read a couple of blog posts from, reckons the way to get published as a comic book script writer is to get good at writing comic book scripts. Instead of giving lots of tips about how to get the attention of publishers, he focuses on the craft of being a scriptwriter and storyteller. This seems smart, and I will be starting to read things about the mechanics of telling stories, and the mechanics of telling stories through the medium of sequential art, in the same way that I am somewhat aware of the ways to string words together and use the mechanics of writing, to control the delivery of ideas.

Like this, I used a paragraph break to get emphasis.

But apart from these mechanics, I want to take a little time to think about high-level principles that might serve me well. Things that would inform my whole approach and mindset.

I have been teaching game design for fifteen years now, and have got quite good at assessing, deconstructing and assisting the construction of game ideas. I have at least six fundamental rules of game design:

1. It's all about the player experience
2. Give the player choices
3. Don't forget the fun
4. A good designer takes control
5. The needs of the game outweigh the needs of everything else
6. Build the iceberg.

In case you are wondering, the sixth one means that you need to take the detail and depth of your design, especially your world building and characters, far, far deeper than the player will experience. This is the way to make things feel real... get that depth deep enough that the players don't find the bottom.

I guess some of these will translate into script writing.

1. It's all about the reader's experience
2. Comics are not interactive, choice is less important, but I guess they could have choices in interpretation
3. I guess remember to add in whimsy and humour, even in the darkest situations, or maybe to remember sprinklings of juicy extra detail.
4. A good designer takes control. This applies to anything creative. The more the designer thinks about and crafts every element they can think of, the more chance there is that the design is good.
5. I'm not really sure about this one. In game design this means that if there is a conflict between gameplay and story logic, the gameplay wins. I guess it may be true that story is king, but I think when your central focus is storytelling, inconsistencies are less likely to be forgiven. I'm a firm believer that internal consistency is really important for storytelling, because it aids the willing suspension of disbelief so much.
6. Build the iceberg. Got a story that's four pages long? You might still need a lot more detail on the background, history and personality of your characters, your world needs to be fleshed out and rich in detail. 

So 1, 4 and 6 for sure, and the much-quoted "show don't tell". 

I have a final one in my mind, which is to imagine the reader is intelligent. One of my favourite writers on TV is Aaron Sorkind, creator of the West Wing. He has a great ability to give the viewer information in a minimal way, letting them work out what is going on in people's minds for themselves, or the consequences of a situation, He trusts the viewers to put two and two together, and it makes for a great story-telling experience. One of my favourite moments is an episode that starts as the staff are on air force one, preparing for liftoff for a trip. In the pre-credits warm-up we are shown that several people on the flight are in some kind of conflict with others, and there is an obvious intention to use the flying time to get into these issues and things are likely to get heated. In the final short clip before the credits we see one of the staff strapping in for the flight as the captain announces over the tannoy various details about the flight finishing with something about the weather and "so we anticipate we will have a smooth flight". The character we are watching just snorts a tiny ironic laugh-snort through her nose.

At that point the viewer puts together that the our character anticipates the flight to be far from smooth in an emotional sense, and has seen the irony of the captain's statement, but only in the sense of via a pun on "smooth". That snort-laugh is a beautiful piece of writing, and it relies on the viewer being able to draw these things together.

So, my rules, which I will feel entirely free to add to and take away from and alter as I get experience, are as follows:

1. Remember what the reader is experiencing
2. Use details to garnish
3. A good writer takes control
4. Build the iceberg
5. Show, don't tell
6. Use the reader's intelligence as an asset
7. Don't be afraid of emotions

I just added that last one, which is really number one wrapped up again. My best judge of what might move a reader is what moves me.

So that's it for today, one day I might break free from the pontification of this blog, but I have at least one post in me before then. One day I might actually write a script. 

One day.

How are comic books made?

So... another post. What do I know about the process of creating comic books?

Oh, and what is a "comic book" anyway? A lot of people seemed to have asked this question, and "comic books" along with the longer "graphic novels" are distinct from both "comics" and "comic strips". They all seem to belong under the umbrella term "sequential art" which is a term people who make these things seem to like. I think with good reason. They all have many examples which use the standard semantics and semiotics of western comics - the sequence being right-to-left and down the page, speech bubbles for dialogue, onomatopoeic words for sound effects and so on,

A comic strip is usually a short sequence of pictures, somewhere from four to twelve usually, and usually not a full page, often with a set cast of characters and a consistent-ish "world", but either telling very short stories, or a serialisation, and the most common occurrence of them is within newspapers or magazines. They are often designed to be funny, and often not the main focus of the publication.

A comic strip is Peanuts

A comic, on the other hand is a whole publication, usually aimed at children under the age of 12, often with several stories, but once again using stable (and therefore recognisable) characters. Stories range from 1/2 page to several pages long. There may be thoughtful moments, but comedy is often the focus.

A comic is The Beano

And a comic book is really quite similar to a comic, except it is aimed at an older audience, sometimes aimed squarely at adults. Some are collections of small stories, some are a single story, some form a serialised episode of a larger story and some have several episodes of serialised stories in them, or any sort of mixture of the above. Traditionally a large volume of comic books is taken up with superhero stories, and the two largest publishers of these are DC and Marvel.

A Comic Book is Batman, and so is 2000AD.

I could spend longer theorising about these distinctions but the truth is it is far from important for my purposes, other people have done a much better job of this deconstruction, and I cannot be bothered. I'm sounding quite academic and although that's true to character, it's not really what I want to do. At least not all the time. The point? Lost it.

Ah there it is.

So how are comic books made?

Well it all depends. Sometimes a single talented person does everything. More commonly it's a team effort, involving first a writer who creates a "script" - a list of instructions to the people coming after. This seems to include a panel-by-panel breakdown with descriptions and dialogues, and looks a little like a movie script in some ways. Apparently there is no standardised format, but there are commonly-used conventions, which I'm sure I can pick up easily enough.

After the script writer, there is behind the scenes an editor, whose job it is to get the script into a good shape if it is not already. I suspect they also act somewhat as a project manager or producer.

Next, the penciller comes in, and draws out the scenes described in the script.

Next an inker takes some black ink and makes the pictures all inky.

Next a colorist (or in my world maybe a colourist) adds colour to the pictures, unless it is a black and white comic book, which still happens quite a lot. In which case we don't need a colourist, obviously.

Finally a letterer comes and adds all the words, mostly in speech and thought bubbles.

Of course, it's not as straightforward as this, Sometimes one person does several of these jobs, sometimes there is no need for a letterer, sometimes one artist does all the non-scripty bits... as with anything creative, it all depends on the people, the project and the publisher.

So I want to make it absolutely clear, the part that I am proposing to attempt is the first bit, writing the script, I am not an artist, and I don't really want to be. I want to write the scripty bit. There is a kicker with this ambition though: it's the hardest to get into.

The problem is this - it's quite easy to know if you are any good at art, but there are many, many fools who think they can write. For example me.

I have seen this in the game development world, where there are three main disciplines - programmer, artist and designer. Programmers and artist have obvious skill sets, so everyone who has an obsession with games but no obvious skills fancies themselves as a budding game designers. And they think it should be easy and obvious because they are really excited by the ideas they have for games.

There is a sort of saying in the games development world: "everybody has an idea". It's true, and certainly it seems to be true that ideas are easy to come by. Good ideas are harder to find, but the rarest of all is someone who has the skills to turn an idea into a crafted, well-rounded, detailed game design which in turn delivers a memorable and worthwhile player experience.

Coming up - what principles can I apply to comic script writing that might help me to be good at it.

What Do I Know About Writing?

So what do I know about writing?

Ta-daa, look, see I make my fingers tap on these lettered keys and words come out on the screen like some kind of advanced magic.

That's not enough is it?

Well I'm moderately good at the whole spelling and grammar thing. I need to be able to do that or apparently nobody will take me seriously. I love spellcheckers, me.

I do quite a bit of non-fictional writing for work. I'm a lecturer, so I write lectures, tutorial material, assignments and hundreds and hundreds of emails. Not the same, I need to know about stories. Have I written any stories?  Yes, two.

Several years ago I wrote a short story called "The Magnificent Octopus". It's not actually about an octopus, it's about a hedgehog. It has a proper "hero journey" structure.

Also a couple of years ago I wrote a children's rhyming story called "The Wobbit Of Jesmond Dene".

Not a lot of experience I admit, and neither of them are published, although I did submit "The Wobbit" to an agency and had an editor look it over. And pull it apart. Maybe my grammar is not as good as I think it is.

Is it possible to absorb storytelling skills by osmosis? My Mum had a story published and wrote several others. My Dad has written a couple too. I also have a really good friend who has won awards for his published sci-fi and fantasy work. Surely this can rub off?

Somewhat bizarrely, I have been teaching about the use of stories in games for about 15 years now, not in great depth, but as a tangential subject to games design. I know some stuff about the mechanics of writing stories.  I know stuff about:

• The willing suspension of disbelief
• Character association
• The Deus Ex Machina
• The three-act structure
• Character creation 
• World building
• The Hero's journey story structure
• Polti's 36 dramatic situations
• Protagonists and antagonists
• "Show don't tell"

...and I have read Robert McKee's seminal book "story" about writing film screenplays.

Actually when I look at that list is seems somewhat impressive.  I hope it's not a case of those who can't do, teach. I have been reading some advice about writing comic book scripts, and one clear message that is coming through is "learn your craft" and all these bits of knowledge will be useful.

And another thing: a few years ago I wrote an article that got published in a magazine. Actually I wrote and published three, but one is particularly relevant, because it was about how to create better stories for computer games, and it was published in the national trade magazine for the games industry in the UK. In some ways, coming from a man who has never written a story for a published game it was a bit arrogant of me to write it. The thing that amazed me was that after it was published I was contacted by a man who's job it was to write stories for games, a man who has worked on triple-A games, and worked with Douglas Adams on Starship Titanic. He liked my article and seemed to think the points I made were spot on the money. Seems like, maybe, just possibly I know a thing or two about the theory.

What I lack is practice. Definitely need practice. How do you practice writing stories? By writing stories. There's no other way really. If I'm going to write them I may as well submit them to see if any publishers like them, and if not I might get some feedback along the way on how to get better. That would be nice.

Finally, I have one thing which is neither experience of knowledge - creative drive. I don't have the obsessive drive that some writers have, that they have to be writing. A writer writes. If a writer takes a break from writing they often find they end up doing some other kind of writing.  I don't have this specific drive, but I have what is probably the same thing in another disguise, a drive to create. I cannot help this one, I get restless if I don't have a creative outlet. Usually it's safer if I have more than one otherwise the pressure can still build up.  For a lot of my life this has been vented into musical ventures, recording, songwriting, writing ceilidh tunes, and so on, but it also comes out in creating new modules and degrees at work, and in creating things like murder mystery evenings. And sometimes writing. This is not my first blog, I have holiday diaries, poetry, songs, articles, philosophical monographs and many more. Some finished, but not all. I need to create, and creating worlds, characters and stories are part of that drive.

In my most delusional moments I imagine that I can create world-shattering captivating stories and will become a household name. In my more rational moments I realise I am a rank amateur and that this is something that will take work. Work, patience and a resilience to rejection. That's OK I think, and if it stops being OK, I can just stop.  

I'm going to leave it there for this time, but I have at least one more blog post in me about this, even before I get started, possibly two. I can talk about the plan, such as I have one, of how to approach this, and I can talk about the mechanics of writing comic book scripts, comic book creation and the process of publishing, as I see it at the moment.

The Crazy Idea

I just had this crazy idea.

When I say "just" I mean in the past few days. What if I were to try writing comic books? That might be cool.

So there are several ways this could go. I've got a history of mad ideas that have never come to anything much. Started projects that I perpetually feel vaguely guilty about. This could go the same way as all of those, initial enthusiasm in a burst like a semi-controlled supernova, ending in a sidelined whimper.

Or not.

Another way it could go, it could be like the few mad ideas that I have which come to fruition.

Case 1: buying and keeping tropical fish. To be fair after the initial splash of interest (see what I did there?) it's relatively low-maintenance. Plus they're nice to look at.

Case 2: writing and recording music. Check, done that, still doing that, Four albums of instrumental rock released into the wild, an album of cover songs, following on from two tapes of my own songs several years ago, and two or three tapes made with friends. Another album is in progress,

Case 3: starting a ceilidh band. This was a similar "I've just had a crazy idea" moment, back in the mid-90s. I'm currently in my second ceilidh band with quite a considerable number of events done and no signs of stopping yet.

The thing is, you never know. You don't know how far you will take something unless you try. I'm now old enough and cynical enough to not be scared of failure, at least in this sort of context. I also know that losing interest is fine - having said earlier I feel guilty over incomplete dreams - to be honest I don't really, not very much.

So it could be worth a punt.

So between myself and me, in order to stay relatively sane, I am prepared to do myself a deal. If I submit a hundred scripts and have nothing accepted, then it's time to give up. Unless I have a good reason not to give up, which probably would be because I'm having too much fun being rejected. It seems unlikely.

I can give up any time I like before that. I probably will. I think the chances are about one in two that I will even start writing my first script, then one in three that I will dare to submit, and about one in a hundred that I will have the first thing I do accepted. I don't need to do this for the money (although the idea of quitting the day job and becoming a professional writer is attractive, a bit) and it is a hobby, so I will set out principle number 2: If I stop enjoying it, then it's time to give up.

I guess the final question is - why blog? I guess three reasons:

1. A writer writes. I know this instinctively, and because I have read published writers saying so. All writing is practice.
2. The process could be interesting, at least if I carry on with it. It's rare to have a blow-by-blow account of something like this right from the start. I have taken on enough challenges to know that this will be a journey, and although right now I am blogging to a readership of one (me) there may be interest in it one day - or it might just join the millions, probably billions of blogs out there where people are pouring their hearts out to the void. Hello void.
3. It will give me a great tool for prevaricating - why write actual scripts when I can blog about it?

That's probably enough for a first post. Maybe next time I'll talk about my scant background as a writer. And another time I can talk about how I could approach this. See, that's three ideas for blog posts already, if that isn't an indication that I can be a writer then nothing is.