In my last post I talked about my first "big" script. I intended to send this to Dark Horse for their consideration, but I think I talked about how it might be better suited to Markosia in the UK. I decided to wait on some feedback before making a decision.
I got bored of waiting for feedback.
And so I made the decision that it would be better suited as a graphic novel and to be sent to Markosia. I spent last night re-formatting it from 6 books into one, tidying up a few things and taking out all of the helpful translations into US English. It is now pure UK English with reference to UK things like Formica, Meccano and the A303.
And because they take submission by email, I sent it. I did a 1-page synopsis and emailed the whole 132-page script to them. I hope they like it. Apparently if they have not replied in 4 weeks they are not interested. I'm getting used to silence.
And that's about all I wanted to say at this time. Time to think about what my next script might be.
Friday, 11 March 2016
Friday, 19 February 2016
First sizable submission
It's been a while since I have posted, but I have been busy. I have written a big script - a 6-book short series, 22 pages in each book.
It's a modern-day mostly realistic story set mostly in London. A woman who's son is diagnosed with leukaemia turns to wiccan magic to try and effect healing. While she is striving for control, her attempts at magic take her more and more out of control, and we find just how much she is willing to risk.
Of course there's more than that, and there are some nice twists and turns. I think it's pretty good, so I'm not going to give any spoilers here. I've been reading a book on telling stories ("Into The Woods"), and while I'm a little skeptical about its formulaic approach, it helped to give me some hooks in structuring the story.It could be seen as a hero quest, a 3-act story, a 5-act story, a 6-act story, it has a midpoint and symmetry. It has a crisis and character change. What it doesn't have is a lot of violence. Almost no violence at all in fact, which might make it not that appealing to the comic book world. I find myself not really wanting to write violence.
So I started thinking it would be a single-shot story. Then I realised it could be longer, but I thought that it would probably work best as a graphic novel. Then it started to nicely break into a 6-episode story. So currently it's written like that.
I got quite obsessively into it as I was writing. It was like an internal pressure building up that had to come out. I ended up researching some strange things, from obvious details about leukaemia, to domestic water purifiers, to how to break into Stonehenge.
I have a couple of friends who may read it and give me feedback before I submit it anywhere. I have a small quandary about submission. I wrote it intending to submit it to Dark Horse, and I still might. I actually think it would best suit Image, but they don't take writer-only submissions from un-established writers. There is a British Publisher, Markosia, who it might suit better, but they would either only publish it electronically, or a collection, or maybe as a graphic novel. With it being set in London it might do better with a UK publisher. They also take email submission which Black Horse do not. Submitting nearly 180 pages of paper to the USA might be a little expensive. Also it would take time. On the other hand, Dark Horse are the third largest publisher of comics in the world, Markosia are much smaller, likely to not publish in print (is this important?) and seem to want a different format for the script.
So I'm going to mull this over while my friends have a read.
Meanwhile, I have heard nothing from 2000AD or Timebomb, Timebomb said it would be March. 2000AD say 6 weeks and it's been nine. Maybe I need to do another Future shock for them.
It's a modern-day mostly realistic story set mostly in London. A woman who's son is diagnosed with leukaemia turns to wiccan magic to try and effect healing. While she is striving for control, her attempts at magic take her more and more out of control, and we find just how much she is willing to risk.
Of course there's more than that, and there are some nice twists and turns. I think it's pretty good, so I'm not going to give any spoilers here. I've been reading a book on telling stories ("Into The Woods"), and while I'm a little skeptical about its formulaic approach, it helped to give me some hooks in structuring the story.It could be seen as a hero quest, a 3-act story, a 5-act story, a 6-act story, it has a midpoint and symmetry. It has a crisis and character change. What it doesn't have is a lot of violence. Almost no violence at all in fact, which might make it not that appealing to the comic book world. I find myself not really wanting to write violence.
So I started thinking it would be a single-shot story. Then I realised it could be longer, but I thought that it would probably work best as a graphic novel. Then it started to nicely break into a 6-episode story. So currently it's written like that.
I got quite obsessively into it as I was writing. It was like an internal pressure building up that had to come out. I ended up researching some strange things, from obvious details about leukaemia, to domestic water purifiers, to how to break into Stonehenge.
I have a couple of friends who may read it and give me feedback before I submit it anywhere. I have a small quandary about submission. I wrote it intending to submit it to Dark Horse, and I still might. I actually think it would best suit Image, but they don't take writer-only submissions from un-established writers. There is a British Publisher, Markosia, who it might suit better, but they would either only publish it electronically, or a collection, or maybe as a graphic novel. With it being set in London it might do better with a UK publisher. They also take email submission which Black Horse do not. Submitting nearly 180 pages of paper to the USA might be a little expensive. Also it would take time. On the other hand, Dark Horse are the third largest publisher of comics in the world, Markosia are much smaller, likely to not publish in print (is this important?) and seem to want a different format for the script.
So I'm going to mull this over while my friends have a read.
Meanwhile, I have heard nothing from 2000AD or Timebomb, Timebomb said it would be March. 2000AD say 6 weeks and it's been nine. Maybe I need to do another Future shock for them.
Wednesday, 30 December 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
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:
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.
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 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.
Saturday, 12 December 2015
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.
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.
Thursday, 10 December 2015
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:
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:
- It's all about the player experience
- Give the player choices
- Don't forget the fun
- A good designer takes control
- The needs of the game outweigh the needs of everything else
- 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.
- It's all about the reader's experience
- Comics are not interactive, choice is less important, but I guess they could have choices in interpretation
- I guess remember to add in whimsy and humour, even in the darkest situations, or maybe to remember sprinklings of juicy extra detail.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- Remember what the reader is experiencing
- Use details to garnish
- A good writer takes control
- Build the iceberg
- Show, don't tell
- Use the reader's intelligence as an asset
- 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.
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