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.
No comments:
Post a Comment