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Title: On Writing for Comics Author: Alan Moore Date: 1985 Language: en Topics: writing, how to
The biggest difficulty to write on any creative activity, since writing
on same it until writing on automobile-devouring (to devorar
automobiles) is that, in the majority of the times, the articles or
interviews that appear they seem to be incapable of will extend
themselves beyond the information obvious techniques and lists of
recommended instruments. I do not want to fall again into this same
line, being said which typewriter I use, or which type of paper carbon I
find better, since this information will not make the lesser difference
in the quality of that you write. In a similar way, I do not find that a
detailed analysis of my process of work is very useful, since I imagine
that it I vary drastically of the story for the story, and all writer
tends to develop its proper boarding in reply its proper circumstances.
Moreover, I do not want to remotely produce nothing that he remembers,
nor, something it type âHow you the Write s â The Alan Moore Wayâ. To
teach to generations of new artists and writers to copy the generation
that preceded them was a dull idea, of the time where the Marvel
launched its book âHow you the Draw s â The Marvel Wayâ and would be
equally irresponsible of my part to instruct consolidated emergent
writers or already on as to write unhealthy and fancy headings of the
type âDawn transformed the sky into an Abattiorâ (the dawn trasformou
the sky in a abatedouro) or any thing of the sort. John Buscema is a
good artist, but the industry does not need fifty people drawing as it,
and less still of fifty writing as I (note of the translator: of the
skill that walks the thing here in Brazil, even though âan obsoleteâ
book as this would be very welcome! â I until learned some thing with
it.)
With everything this in mind, would like to try to display something
that adds to this extensive chapter as we can really think on the art to
write comics, what she is better that one list of specific details. It
would like to say on boardings and mental processes that if hide under
the writing as a set, more of the one than the form as these processes
finish in the paper. As I see the situation, the way that we think the
act to write inevitably takes the form of the works that we produce.
Taking most of the current production of main the company of s, me it
seems that an ample factor of contribution to the general loss of heart
must be the famous stagnant processes of thoughts promoted for them.
Surely, in terms of the general conventions of writing for comics at
this moment, my trend is to see the same structures of the drama and the
same functional boarding of characterization being used many and many
times mechanical, until the point where the people find difficulty in
imagining where they could be different ways to make the things.
As basic estimated ours on the profession they come if becoming each
time more obsolete, we find that this if relates more to a problem of
creation of works of some relevance for a world that if it modifies
quickly, in which the industry and the readers who really support it
they are considered. For relevance, since I touched in the subject, I do
not want to say stories on racial relations and pollution, still that
they certainly are good part of this. I speak of stories that really
have some felt type of with relation to the world to our redor, stories
that reflect the nature and the texture of the life in these last years
of century twenty. Stories that are useful, in some way. Admittedly, she
would be more or less easy it industry comfortably to live for a time
pimping groups specialized in stories to the old or simple escapism, but
the company who works exclusively with this type of subject is, in mine
to understand, impotent, and deserves only a little more than
consideration or interest that an industry of anniversary cards.
The reason for which to write comics is perhaps even though more
interesting than to draw them it is that to write it finishes all being
the fuse of the process. If what it will be thought before writing will
be inadequate, script (plot) is inadequate. In this way, even though
under the hands of the best artists of the world, finished the story
goes to lament the lack of that no addition of colorful images and
pompous printed matters could substitute, or same to wait a
remuneration. To change the comics, we need to change the way to think
its creation, and the inquiry to follow only must be seen as the first
and coarse steps for this end.
To want some better place to start, either a perhaps interesting to
start for extensive consideration on the comics and its possibilities,
and to extract our method of inside of it. To think on comics you have
that to have some idea on what it is the subject that you are treating.
He is here that our first difficulty starts: in the effort of to define
the comics, many authors have little risky more than comparisons in the
drawings, between one technique and another one, more coarsely
acceptable as art forms. Comics is described in terms of cinema and,
with effect, much of the vocabulary that job all day in the descriptions
of the scenes for any artist derives entirely of the cinema. I say in
terms of close-ups, long-shots, zooms and panoramic; it is a stipulated
language of necessary visual instructions, but it also in takes them to
define the comic writing values as being virtually indistinguishable of
the cinematographic ones. While the cinematographic thought has, without
the shadow of a doubt, produced many of the best works in comics of last
the thirty years, I see it, as model to search our proper one half,
being many times limiting and restrictive. In turn, any imitation of the
techniques of the films through the comics finishes losing, inevitably,
in the comparison. He is clearly, you can use sequences of scenes of
cinematographic form to become its more involving work and livened up
that of comic writers that still do not dominate this trick, but, in the
end, you finishes being with a film without sound nor movement.
The use of cinema techniques can be an advance for the conventions to
write and to draw comics, but, if these techniques will be faced as the
culminating point to which the art of the comics can inhale, our way is
condemned perpetual to be a poor cousin of the cinematographic industry.
This is not good sufficiently.
Comics also are accustomed to being seen in literary terms, desiring to
trace comparisons between quadrinizadas sequences and conventional
literary forms. Thus, âshort storiesâ of the comics accurately would be
based by classic formulas of writers as the Henry and Saki (note of the
translator: never vi more fat people in my life), with the outcome
surprise in last comic. With little intelligence still (âmore idioticly
speakingâ), a story with more than forty pages automatically is compared
with a romance, losing, once more, apallingly with the comparison. With
all the good will of the world, if you to try to describe the NOVEL
GRAPHIC Of the CRYSTAL (that mutant personage and pentelha published in
revistinhas of the X-men for the Ed. April) in the same terms where she
would describe MOBY DICK (the book, not it version CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED
of Sienkiewicz, if well that the idea continues the same one), you are
simply looking obstacle. Opposing it the ideas of films without sound
nor movement, we will have romances without extension, felt depth and.
This also is not good the sufficient.
To make matters worse, all time that if they use techniques of other
languages, has a trend of the creators of comics in remaining perpetual
if inhaling in the past... Looking at what it comes being described as
cinematographic works in the comics, normally we find somebody speaking
that it almost took off its ideas on cinema that entirely of the work of
Will Eisner, and, of preference, of that it made has thirty or forty
years behind. It is not one badly start, I I admit, except that the
majority of the people seems to content itself only with that. Eisner,
in the height of the Spirit, used the cinematographic techniques of
people as Orson Welles, with resulted brilliants. Its mimics also use
the cinematographic techniques of Welles, but, of âsecond-handâ,
forgetting that Eisner was learning with the culture that surrounded it
in that time. Cinema in the comics is equivalent the Welles, Alfred
Hitchcock, and perhaps some other more, having all they carried through
its better works have one thirty years behind. Why she does not try
yourself to understand and to adapt the work of pioneering
contemporaries as Nicholas Roeg, Robert Altman or Francis Ford Coppola,
since a really cinematographic boarding is being looked exactly? Why the
literary values in the comics must be determined by the values of pulps
(cheap literature, type books of pocket variety or collection SABRINA)
of thirty or forty years behind, independently of the value that they
can have?
Better that to assume of superficial similarities between comics and
films or comics and books in the hope of that the respectability and the
prestige of these languages come to purify us, he would not be more
constructive to concentrate our attention in the areas where the comics
they are essential and only? It would not be better that, instead of
persisting in techniques of films that the comics can reproduce, we
perhaps tried to consider the techniques of comics that the films cannot
reproduce?
If, on the other hand, one gave credit that the guarantee of bigger
creative freedom or the division of the knowledge developed between the
artists and writers in the industry would produce one occasions of an
impressive creativity and invention, on the other hand, he is not ours
in case that (OBS.: it is not speaking of Brazil, and yes of the comics
in England and/or United States). With very rare and honorable
exceptions, the majority of the material of proper creation produced by
independent publishing companies almost do not distinguish themselves
from the current production that preceded it. Me he seems demonstrated
that the problem is not, the principle, of incentive or work conditions;
the problem is of creativity, and it will not be in a basic level of it
that if it will be able to decide it. I do not find that this solution
will come without a drastic improvement of the standard of writing for
comics, a time that, as he said in the start, the writer is the fuse of
all the creation process. For this end, then, we go to move of subject,
where I will give the best one of me to describe some of the problems
and the potential that I see inside of some aspects in writing for
comics.
Once more, the difficulty is to know for where to start. The list of
introductions to be done, same for simplest narrative, is enormous, and
it really it does not interest for what we choose to examine first.
Everything is connected, and each item leads to the other. Of this form,
we can equally take, the principle, the elements most intangible and
abstract it are of its context, before continuing in the necessary
aspects finest and of the workmanship. Perhaps a good starting point is
what rests accurately in core of any creative process: the idea.
The idea is that on which the story treats; it is not nor the drama of
the story, nor uncurling of the events of it, but what the story
essentially is. As example of my proper work (not because it is
particularly a good example, but because I feel myself with more
authority to say of it of that he would have if it was the work of
another person), I I could cite # 40 of magazine SWAMP THING (published
for the Ed. April in the magazine Monster of the Quagmire # 3), âThe
Curseâ (âthe Curse of the Full Moonâ). The story deals with the
difficulties supported for the women in the masculine societies, using
the common taboo of the menstruation as central reason. This is not the
drama of the story â the drama says respect to a married young if moving
for a new house, constructed on the place where it had one old
aboriginal hut, that possessed person for the dominant spirit sees
itself that still inhabited there, changing itself into a werewolf. I
wait that here the distinction between drama and idea has been well
clear, therefore it I am important, and ignored for many writers. The
majority of stories in comics the only subject possess dramas in which
is the fight between the two or most antagonistic ones. The result of
this confrontation, normally involving some exhibition âdeus ex machinaâ
of some superpower, is equally the resolution of the drama (note of
translating: this term in Latin mentions the fact to it of almost the
totality of the super-heroes to be predestined to use its superpowers in
the solution of the story, without which same it would lose its reason
of being). Beyond an extremely vacant triviality and without favor the
type âthe good always it will win the evilâ, really does not have main
ideas in the majority of s, it are the notion of that the conflict is
interesting by itself (note of the translator: ... no, however, IT
SELLS!).
Of where the ideas really come are, the first sight, the biggest concern
of the majority of the people interested in learning as to write comics
and are, probably, the only question that the creative people if ask
with more frequency. Without surprising, it is also the question that
more has remained without reply. If they threatened to torture so that I
give me a concise reply, probably would say that the ideas seem to
germinate in the fertile crossroads enter the influences of other
artists and my proper experiences. The study of the work of other people
it supplies useful pointers of as to formulate ideas, but the primordial
impulse comes inside of the writer or creator, influenced for its proper
opinions, its preconceptions, for all the things that have happened with
them and for all the elements of its life that finish for defining the
type of person who they are. It does not have substitute for the
practical experience, and if you to want to write on people, you has the
duty to disdain â booksâ and to leave for there looking better thing
that to study the way as Stan Lee or Chris Claremont people describe
(another note of the translator: care; the arrogance, when it does not
kill, catches! E I still did not learn to please the public who nor
these two cretins).
One becomes important to change its perception to notice small peculiar
circumstances that could, in another way, to pass unfurnished, studying
our proper conviviality and the relationship with the people and the
events that in encircle them until you to feel that it developed a
coherent angle in top of the life and the reality, to less so far how
much having the perspective on situations that indicate the coming of
proper and original ideas. Eddie Campbell (N.T.: another one that I
never heard to speak) has developed a singular and extraordinarily
percipient eye for the triviality of the existence, and this allows it
to transform things that could, in another way, to seem usual and
infuriates of note, in something at the same time revealing and amused.
My thesis is that you cannot teach the people to have the same
perception and ideas that the Eddie... you it must only follow the
orientations of its proper head, in a certain way in direction as you
see the life and you she will perceive that the ideas then will come
spontaneously, to the end, with only some suggestions. An only new e
point of view never is reduced to an only new e thing to say or on which
to speak. Visa in the certain way, everything is changed into source of
ideas. Opening the periodical in the page of the economy and reading on
the scaling of the crisis of the international deficit, something that
could seem flat and hard to swallow to the first sight is, in the
reality, a situation primorosamente insane person who very probably goes
to affect the life more beyond of that they live in this planet per the
next decades and. It has a skill of this if to become interesting,
perhaps amused, or perhaps terrifying, to the common reader? E if you
counted to this in terms of a fantastic allegory, situated in a foreign
planet with something nonsense it type skin of money rat serving? The
idea of a handful of foreign imbeciles putting irrevogavelmente its
planet in polvorosa behind a handful of rat skins is perhaps amused? E
that such if we made a serious and realistic the story implacably,
substituting the great involved national interests for individuals,
people, so that the problem can be felt in small scale, in terms of
human elements, a common agent of a company of loans trying to perhaps
charge the payments in an inhospitable and hostile agricultural
community? Exists there some thing capable to arrest the interest of the
people per one ten or fifteen minutes?
Perhaps in another way, some incidents our proper one passed supply the
embryo to it of a the story. When child, for example, if my parents
photographed me in a small delict that I was certain that they would not
have as to know, some times I occurred me that the adults could have
some special power to know of everything, who kept hidden of the
children. With effect, some times I had the impression of that everybody
had such ability, except I, and that I age the only excluded person of
this telepathic conspiracy en mass (if you to insist on this type of
thing after the nine years of age, you can in such a way be a paranoid
schizophrenic how much a writer of comics, since that you she makes
question to keep some distinction â N.T.: THIS is not commentary THERE
mine! Already it tava in the original text). Using this fear irrational
as springboard, it would be possible to perhaps reach a type of fancy to
la Ray Bradbury on the infantile universe, or perhaps a cruel the story
of psychological horror on the paranoia as phenomenon in itself, perhaps
having a child who suffered from complex of persecution that if became
an agent of espionage of low step, working incognito of the wrong side
of the Wall of Berlin (OBS.: this text is of 1988), in a world where all
its horrors of infancy become tangible and real? Please, it always has
in mind that the placed ideas are not necessarily good ideas... they are
only some taken off examples of the sleeve of the forms for which the
usable ideas can be lead.
I would have to perhaps designate that, when constructing a story, itâs
not always necessary to start with an idea. Technically, it is perfectly
possible to arrange inspiration for a story thinking only about tools
purely abstract or a sequence of scenes or any similar thing. In some
place of the process, in any way, a coherent idea must start to appear
of the work beyond its simple mannerisms. If to happen of you to think
first about a clear and short sequence of four pictures, very well, but
you must then try to explore more the type of character or idea that the
four pictures better express. As example of my proper material, an
original idea that eventually is praised of first the four or five
episodes that I made with the Monster of the Quagmire, takes form as a
handful of disconnected ideas for sequences that they had small a
meaning, individually: an excellent idea was to use the capacity of
camouflage of the Monster of the Quagmire... to perhaps have part of its
leg or of the visible body in the way scene that as much the reader how
much the other personages do not perceive that they are looking at for
the creature of the quagmire during some seconds. This finished being
the two first pages it # 22 of magazine SWAMP THING, in the episode
âSwampedâ (published as âPossessed for the Quagmireâ, in magazine NEW
TITĂS # 5). Another idea that I had, at the same time, involved the way
to work with outdoors âBurma Shaveâ, carefully spaced and rhymed, used
to cover to the long one of the roads of America in a sequence of
signboards rhymed in such way that the last line of rhymes, â... Burma
Shave.â it was, in the truth, more visible in the plate in itself that
inside of the space of the letters. This effectively happened in the two
pages of # 26 (published in the magazine SUPERAMIGOS # 23, but without
this trick of outdoors), exactly not having no idea to really thinking
about the sequence on the form as it would become related or which part
of it would participate of the set of the story. I kept the hanging idea
until having an opening where he could inseriz it, and thus, when I had
to make something drastic with the Matt personage Wire, I caught it and
I played it in a scene of car disaster. The fact is that I had to keep
the sequences kept in the refrigerator until having an idea for the
story that would complete them. As I said before, nobody needs to start
for an idea, but, in some point to the long one of the process, an idea
is necessary, admitting that this work must be of some impact.
We will assume that, from now, we have a workable idea, something who we
would like to say and to feel that we can say with certainty. Before
directing the problem, we would have to perceive that, in any act of
communication, they exist to the little two participants. In creativity
terms, these participants are the artist and its hearing. If you are you
give to expend a time mount preparing its image, either perhaps
advantageous to little spending a little in a fast consideration on the
person for which the message if dirige. Obviously, a time that we are
saying on hearing en mass, of thousand of individuals, does not have as
the artist to understand the fondness and aversion of each one of them.
The conventional reply to the problem, to little as it was evident for
the behavior of many of main the company of s, it is to try not to
offend nobody. I had to the little one publisher of the branch saying
that he has not felt in taking off of the alienation to the little
reading one that is, being that the best one to make is âto alleviateâ
the dialogues or the scenes in question until it does not have more
nothing that can be criticized by the most sensible member of hearing
(N.T.: it really is speaking on the States and England. If well that,
after the codes of ethics of the Net Globe and the Ladies of Santana, I
do not know not...). Taking this reasoning to the extremity, this
suggests that a hypothetical reader to which the artist must direct
itself with its the story is moralista afrescalhado extremely affected
that has one peripaque to the first suggestion of something more flesh
time that a kiss of good night on the forehead. This not only
strengthens the idea of that the comics are, in some way, offensive for
its proper nature, and that they will only be tolerated while to be
remained inside of its leash â by the way, very pressed well, by the way
â as also they fail for they will not consider the enormous number of
readers in potential made use will not lose it its literary time with
gruel of nenĂȘ. It has something strange in being offensively harmless,
and, a time that I am not suggesting at no moment that all the comics
must be destined the cynical depraved ones just-left adolescence (N.T.:
any similarity with public of fanzines in Brazil it is not mere
coincidence here. Total freedom is very good, but ability is what this
joça of country and cultural industry they need), to little if it would
have to perceive that the potential hearing beyond these faces is, of
far, much varied and great excessively to apply any established
restrictive criteria in completely not-trustworthy hypothetical pictures
of an imaginary âreader-standardâ. The concept of a âreader-standardâ is
completely retrograde, when trying to create a reader who does not
exist. I very know few people who if find âreaders standard of comicsâ,
and little people still that they demonstrate really conventional when
to be examined more than close. A so small media as this really has a
significant standard that it can be defined from its public?
In my opinion, the best way to deal with the problem is to leave the
material to find its proper level and its proper hearing. But, a time
that to not defining our hypotheses of work we finish producing reading
imaginary, is obvious that we have that to find some way to understand
the part that the reader occupies in the creative process. A time more,
I imagine that he is less problematic to take the problem for its
extremity. Instead of thinking on what he could negative affect the
reader for then purging any trace of this in the work, why not to think
on things that probably affect the reader positively? Again, we have the
problem here of as to define what better it functions for an extensive
band of people, but to little, in this example, has a series of useful
models to base our thought. One of them is banal but always the creative
joke.
Jokes are not, in general, directed a specific public; they only happen!
Strangely, the criterion of that is or a good joke highly does not seem
to be contested, as when we speak on films, books or comics. Some people
laugh high, the diversion of some are a little more contained, one or
two do not laugh exactly. whichever the reaction, the joke served to its
intentions and affected some different people with the best one of its
capacity in relation to the senses of mood of each one. The person who
arrives the principle with the joke does not make idea of the person who
eventually goes to listen to it... it only finds the joke funny. If it
makes it to laugh, has an excellent possibility of it to make a portion
of people also to laugh. I until would risk to say that many of the
writers of sketches (N.T.: humorĂsticos pictures of television programs)
if content in trusting its proper intuition on what he is funny, same
that they have attended interviews with comedians as Max Wall (another
N.T.: this must there be of homeland of Alan Moore), seeming that it has
a very great effort in thinking on what accurately makes the people to
laugh. It has, surely, some obvious principles of mood that are almost
certainty to provoke laugh as reply, not importing which the disposal or
the situation of the person that hears the joke can have. To understand
these reactions immediate human beings is a tool of much more useful
creative mood that any consideration on a âpublic-standardâ can have.
Thinking on basic a general process that affects an ample specter of
human beings very better that a notion or specific idea that would not
affect at least an only type of hypothetical reader, it will be possible
to arrive at an understanding of one of the basic mechanisms of the
reactions human beings. It is possible to look at very well of close for
our proper reactions and answers and making some happy deductions on the
basic answers of its reading. If you to want to write a horror the
story, thinks first about the type of thing that horrifies you. The deep
enough o analyzes its proper fears and could be capable to arrive at
some conclusions on the raw material of the fears and them anxieties
human beings. Either implacable when making it, and it exactly submits
itself in an enormous emotional suffering will be necessary to have
answered this question: what it leaves me horrified? Images of babies
dying of hunger in Africa horrify me. Why this leaves me horrified? This
horrifies me because I do not obtain to be thinking about very small
children being born in a world of hunger, misery and horror without
never knowing nothing beyond pain and the fear, and not to never know
that it could possibly have something more than to need food so
hopelessly how much a suffocated air man necessary and never hearing
nothing beyond I cry, lamentations and desperation. Yes, very I do not
obtain well, but Why to think about this? I do not obtain to be thinking
about this because taste to feel the world as having some form of
justice and order without which much of the existence would seem
meaningless, and I think that for these children he does not have the
lesser possibility of them to feel the world in these terms. Also I know
that, if it was in that one same situation, also he would not be capable
to see any situation beyond the together hunger and misery. Then, this
means that it would not have no order, no reason for the existence? It
is this that makes to all splodge me (âhorrifies the shit out of meâ)
all time that I see those titicas of fly agonizing in reporter of the
six (for the schedule of England or the United States). He is. Probably
he is this! What it scares me exactly probably is not what it is
happening with them, but what this implies for me. To that it is not a
noble cause, incredibly easy of being faced, but it is the type of dirty
work that you have that to face to have some valid understanding of the
material in which you are working.
This material is human thoughts, human feelings and ideas human beings.
Everything in our world, since the familiar structure until the bomb of
nĂȘutrons has its origin in this area, and any one that it intends to
make one mishmash with the conscience of mass for a vital mission to be
client of the material, is dealing with and as this if it holds in
certain circumstances. For this end, if to consider a person who
eventually will be to read its the story in comics, the common
denominator for which you goes behind is not the common denominating
very small of the receptivity of the public, and yes the common
denominator of the basic humanity. If you are reading this, you have an
excellent possibility of that you it is a human being. He also has a
good possibility of that, you do not import essential by what means only
e are or think that is, you exist certain basic mechanisms that you
allotment with members conservatives of the parliament, radical and
police miners of Yorkshire, lesbians. If you it will be able to identify
and to use these mechanisms for its proper satisfaction, then you it
will have base not to produce an art more beneficial than if a consuming
imaginary standard spent its time hopelessly hallucinating and trying to
hammer out its work in a form that pleases its highly hypothetical taste
and criteria.
Very well, now then we have our basic idea and to the little, some
notion of that type of thing is probably what better it affects an ample
band of our readers. In this point, we can start to consider the real
form that the communication of our ideas must have. Before going down
until finer details of the internal mechanisms of stories, the first
thing to be considered is its basic form and its structure. To maximize
the effect of the idea that you are trying to communicate it is
preferable to give to the story some type of definite form whom a
certain way of unit has and sense of integrity that produces an
impression coherent and organized in the mind human being. It has as
many forms of stories as forms in the nature exist. Some of them are
irregular, others, regular, all they with its advantages and
disadvantages and possibilities. Presumably, you will choose a structure
that seems to accommodate, in the best way possible the effect that you
desire for the story, but, moreover, does not import really which the
chosen structure. The important one is that you it understands the
structure of the work that is creating, whichever the structure that can
come to have. If you it chose to turn aside from the subject, then all
good, while you he will only be intent to whom it is making and because
you are making, and intent to the consequences in the global effect of
the story.
Some structures are obvious and evident by itself. One that I use very,
probably beyond the account, is the elliptical structure basic, where
the elements of the start of the story reflect events that they are for
happening in the end, or where a phrase or particular image will be used
in the beginning and the end, acting as extremities to point out the
story, in a sense of care and unit. Another structure is to initiate
from the way of the story and to fill the past at the same time that it
advances with the drama in the future, moving in this way both the
situations with the narrative at the same time. An example of this would
be âthe Teams will be Runningâ of # 26 of SWAMP THING (published in
SUPERAMIGOS # 23, with the name âDay of Escapeâ). The action starts in
the way, with the Swamp Thing and Abby running through the quagmire,
being filled with the events that had taken them to that situation at
the same time where we show the story to continue, unfolding itself in
the gift. A more complete structure would be one that I took loaned by
Gabriel Garciâa Marquez, in the second part of âNukeface Paperâ in SWAMP
THING # 36 (published with the first one in an only episode, in
SUPERAMIGOS # 35). Here, we have a counted entire the story for each
personage, depending on how much of the central action it happened with
them, individually. In this way, none of the personages had the story
all, but with each new story of the events we more obtained a little on
the situation until finally perceiving that the mountain-Russian is
complete and that the picture all is finally ahead of us, if that
unfolded in one forms uncommon and â I wait â well interesting. A
simpler structure would be of SWAMP THING # 34 (published in SUPERAMIGOS
and the remaining portion of the story, simply the frame of that central
part.
Still thus, all these are formal structures and it does not have reason
for which the writers of comics aspirings must collect its slight
knowledge of structure from parameters so limited as mine. Returning
again the Eddie Campbell, or without a doubt the Phil Elliott or Ed
Pinsent or a without-number of other attractive talents that have
emerged in these last years, other peopleâs to the current market
humorists, us we find forms of stories that are radically different of
any of the described forms most conventional above. Eddie Campbell tends
to give to its stories a type of informal anecdotal structure that
mirror necessarily the way in which the jokes usually is recounted of
person for person intercalated by small souvenirs and turning aside
itself from the left subject unbroken. Stories suggest to have a
necessarily controlled structure, but they seem, in some way, much more
natural and organic that a portion of same clienter structures of itself
that I have 0ccasionally used. Phil Elliott describes its stories as
having one ââ and aâ B âto define the start and the end with nonlinear
type of exploratory narrative and, that takes place between these colon.
These are all valid boardings, and looking at for they with analytical
eyes certainly if they show usable to arrive at the idea of that the
structure really is and what its proper boarding of the subject could
be.
Perhaps in this point, I must underline that, much even so is presenting
these several facets and elements of stories so that they seem to make
sensible for me, does not have reason for which you must carry through
its the story accurately following these steps literally. Instead of
starting with a idea-base you decide that she had an excellent idea for
a the story structure and then leaves behind an idea that better agrees
to this structure. The episode of âV FOR VENDETTAâ entitled âVideoâ, for
example, was a the story where the structure was conceived first: it
would be possible to count to a the story using only incidental
dialogues absolutely happening in a television set? The structure headed
the basic idea of the story, and when a convenient place in the
continuous appeared of the episodes of the series where this structure
could be used to advantage, I employed it. A simple image, a simple line
of dialogue, any one of them can be the beginning of a the story. My
thesis is that, in some place to the long one of the line, in any place
that you starts, all the some individual elements that we argue here
they will be examined case the work is being so good how much you can
make it.
Now that we have some idea on structures, the next step is to consider
the proper act to count stories, that, for quarrel effect, will be
defined here as the form for which stories if they move and if they hold
inside of the limits of the structure. A time that now we reach a
definite area better of the composition of stories, is much more easy to
see the elements that go to characterize the difficulties of the process
to count stories. Without no particular order in, prominent areas inside
of a set of narrative instruments, including scenes of transition, speed
of the narrative, rhythm, smoothness of the flow and all the other
aspects that more say respect to the story properly said that when
uncurling of the events inside of the same one.
Transition, the movement of a scene for another one, is one of the most
intricate and intriguing elements of all process of writing. The problem
is to move of a place or a time to another one without making something
drastic or unskillful that could compromise the delicate wire of the
involvement of the reader with the story. If the transition will be
dealt with the missed way, this will make the reader âto awakeâ fast
excessively for the fact to be only reading a the story; if you the
first scene spent all constructing the involvement of the reader with
the drama and the personages, certainly do not go to want that nothing
she returns it to the reality. A time that until scene changes requires
with frequency a type of breaking, following a pause enters the end of a
scene and the start of another one, the transition interval is one of
the places where very probably you risk yourself to lose the interest of
the reader if she will not be worked adequately.
As I see, a successful the story of any type must almost be as a
hypnosis; you fascinate the reader with its first phrase, she more ahead
leads it with second, and she has it in settles soft for return of
third. Then, having well-taken care of in not waking up it, you ahead
take it among the narrow ways of its narrative, and, when it will be
completely lost for the story, having itself delivered it, you makes
right it with a terrible violence, like hitting a ball with a bat, and
thus, she leaves it to beg for the exit in the last page. It believes
me, goes to be thankful therefore.
An important thing is that the reader has not waked up until you thus
wants it, and the transition between the scenes is the weak point of the
enchantment that you are having a labor (or workmanship âJS) to launch
on it. Of one it forms or another one, as writer you have that to come
with its proper repertoire of tools and tricks with which you construct
the credibility interval that the scene change represents, taking loaned
some advice of other writers and, if God to want, who you know, bringing
a little of its proper ones. One that I have used in excess, to judge
for the commentaries that I harvested in revisions or letters of the
readers, is the use of the overlapping or coincidence of dialogues. Or
either, better the one is something very that to fall again into old and
crippled âMeanwhile, in the Room of Justice... â or some twitch
(kneeherk âJS) seemed, and is more widely applicable than some of the
boldest experimental ideas on scene change, many of which only possess,
in the most instances, a limited use.
Thing that I finish making that it facilitates the transition and it is,
some times, everything what it is needed to carry through it, is to
write having as basic idea the page, in way that the action of the
reader to turn the page if becomes the âcompassâ in which I moves of
scene without disturbing the rhythm of the story. Another boarding is to
vary the technique of overlapping of dialogues and to use the
sincronicidade of the image more than words or even though a coincident
joint of vacant and abstract ideas. It is even though possible to use
the color to move of scene: the end of a scene that has a portion of
exchange of shots and spilling of blood could finish with one close in
the shining red blood all spread on the white floor. The following
picture could, suddenly, cut for a commercial square in Italy, in one
close of a tent of a florist with a vast profusion of red flowers taking
most of the scene. In this example, the simple maintenance of the red
color probably is enough successfully to lead the reader to the
transition.
The transition nor always has that to be soft. If you the sufficient
will be adept, some times you can use a very abrupt transition, with
such elegance that nobody will go to perceive any breaking in the flow
until the moment has passed and the reader already duly is absorbed by
the next scene to the story. An example that comes of the cinema would
be the dizzying artifice that Hitchcock used in âthe BIRDSâ; when
finding a body mutilated by the birds, in the leaked eyes, the heroine
opens her mouth and inhales, obviously gives to free an shout deafening.
Instead of showing the shout, Hitchcock it cuts, suddenly, for the next
scene, in one close-up of an engine towing, in an amplified and
dissonant racket as what it was formed in the head of who attends, as
the shout that if was waiting to hear. The brusque change in the scene
is surprising, but Hitchcock obtains to use the sense of surprise with
positive ends, accenting the pleasure of the story much more that
exhausting the attention. This would not function in a half
quadrinhĂstico, exactly using effect with onomatopĂ©ias, but a mind with
initiative does not have reason for which cannot find a form to adapt
the bases of this artifice in a sequence of words and fixed images.
Transitions, important in itself even so same, can also be considered as
part of a general topic on spacing or compass. The compass, although,
when made correctly, nor it is perceived by the reader, is an integrant
part of the story, determining the intellectual progression with which
the reader if inside moves through the story and timing (the
temporization) of the events of the story for one better impression. The
way simplest and mechanics to understand timing in the comics are to
learn how much a reader spends in one comic before passing to the next
one. The principle, it takes a certain time reading the legends and the
balloons of dialogue. Perhaps one comic I contend a standard of 35 words
will lead about seven or eight seconds being read, depending on the
complexity of the image that follows it. Perhaps a simple graphical
image without no balloon nor legend takes three seconds (N.T.: perhaps
in a country of illiterates vitiated to television it delays a little
more, but, it must be for there same). If you to read some stories
having timing in mind, in briefing you will have a useful intuition on
how much the reading delay in each picture. Still that this gives a
rigid control to it, such which the assembly of the time enjoyed for the
cinematographic industry (which has its proper disadvantages), without a
doubt it confers you some principle of control on how much delay for the
eyes of the readers to be guided to the long one of the page, or through
the story as a whole.
The compass must engage the clutch having the scene in the hand. A
thoughtful scene that probably demands attention would function better
with a completely slow rhythm. A scene of fast action, perhaps a fight
scene, very probably would function better when how much possible so
fast moving itself. It compares some of the quiet scenes of fight of
Frank Miller â which if they move very fast, flowing of image for image
with the speed of a conflict in real time, not interrupting the reader
with pauses to read mounts of accompaniment text â and the scenes of
fight of lesser writers with some sense of scene movement are interfered
with by the antagonists having poured mounds and mounds of dialogue on
one another. What was said above are not rigid rules or of easy
assimilation: I am certain that it is possible to write a scene of
action with rhythm fast e to use many dialogues, as well as I know that
it is possible to increase the amount of details in the next scenes to
make a long dumb sequence that is chore to slow well. Or either, some
intuition on as to trim the words is essential for the construction of a
the story, as much to construct suspense in a dramatic situation, or to
synchronize one gag for more circumstances. It plays with quiet scenes
and it sees as they can be used to extender the suspense moment until
strengthening the impact, if necessary. It tries the synchronization
notion and it sees what it happens. In episode â100 roomsâ of the series
YOU LEASE TAMBIEN, Jaime Hernandez incredibly makes some strong things
with the structure of the time and he executes them with genuine Ă©lan
(boldness, audacity). An example would be when the sad former-noble who
âhad kidnappedâ Maggie finally removes the hand of its mouth, confident
of that it does not go to cry out. Abruptly, in comic following, we cut
for an indefinite future moment, in the same room; Maggie and her
abductor had obviously made love and the man is seated to the side of
the bed, excusing itself for its behavior. This sudden, disconnected one
and deliberated compass in addition of the story are disorienting, but,
in certain way, satisfactory. It is not nothing that I have insolent me
to try personally, but only demonstrates what it is possible if you it
will have enough talent, nerves and imagination. You can add elements
that really disturb flowing of its the story and still to obtain that
they act in the context of it as a whole.
Basically, he does not have limits to the different effect of narrative
and boarding that are possible beyond the limits taxes for our proper
imagination. Everything that if asks for is that if it thinks on
techniques that if are using, understanding what they are and knowing
where they are applicable. More important still, he must yourself be had
in mind that the some narrative artifices only are there for giving the
best expression of its the story, or part of it. If you he will have a
shining idea for an artifice of these and it will not be appropriate for
the story that you are writing, abandons it. When tools narrative
oppresses the idea that you was trying to lead the principle, then you
is working in detriment of the story, much more that in benefit of it,
and must be scratched out without pity or mercy. As many of intricate
dramas described above, confidence in that you are leaving stop
backwards and what to include in any definitive the story they are
things who come only with practical and experience, but, a time that it
knows at least what it is looking for, probably will see that these
things finish come more fast the one that if imagines.
Assuming that you now have some notion on the real possibilities to its
disposal to tell a story, in this stage we will pass to the
considerations on the proper elements of the fiction work. By
convenience, the main elements in this category can be divided in three
basic sectors: composition of the personages, composition of the
environment and, finally, drama(trauma/drama? âJS). Let us start with
the environment, therefore the nature of the drama and the motivations
of the personages widely will be determined by the world where they
live.
The task of the writer, independent of it to be trying to describe a
colony in Neptune in the 3020 year of or the life in London for 1890
return, is to invoke a sensation of ambient reality of the most complete
and flowing possible form. The way most obvious of if making this are to
explain the expository bases of its world to the readers through legends
with text or dialogues, being this also, in my opinion, the less
efficient method most artificial and least efficient. It happens that it
is also the method most easy, being therefore applied with as much
frequency. Inversely, the best way to give to its readers a sensation of
space and a secular and geographic localization is, in the my opinion,
most difficult, at the same time that she is most compensating in the
long run.
The best way, me seems, is first to consider the environment with that
you are working as a whole, in detail, before starting to write. You
walk to write âV FOR VENDETTAâ, for example, I gathered an enormous
amount of information on that world and its inhabitants, many of which
never will be shown in the comics for the simple reason not to
constitute essential material for the knowledge of the readers and that
probably she would not have place for she incases them in the entire
history (story? âJS). It is not important. What it is important is that
the scriptwriter must clearly have a picture of the imaginary world in
all its details inside of the head all the time. Coming back to our
Neptunian colony for a few seconds, we go to pass for the type of
details that are essential to the synthesis of a picture clearly of that
world.
First, as human beings obtain to survive in Neptune? Which are the
physical problems that would have of being surpassed before the people
could live in that planet and what she would sound as reasonable method
for the overcoming of the possible difficulties? The fact that Neptune
is constituted largely of gases would have to imply in an amount of
environments artificial linked floating platforms perhaps for a domestic
telecinética net? How the telecinético system would function? Which the
effect that the enormous gravity in the planet has on the lives and the
psychology of the individuals that live there? Which the intention of a
colony in Neptune? It is, by chance, the ore exploration to be consumed
in the Land? Which is the political situation of the Land prevailing in
this point of the story and as it affects the life of the colonists?
Have how much time they are there? The time enough to have developed a
proper culture? If thus it will be, that type of art produces and that
type of music composes? Is itâs art overwhelming and claustrophobic as
resulted of the pressures of living in a so closed environment, or the
parts of art and music are full of light and space to compensate the
inhibiting environment that the colonists are forced to support? How is
kept the law in the Neptunian colony? That type of social problems
exists? The inhabitants of Earth are the only species that obtained to
colonize the planet or has other involved foreign races in the settling
project? The humanity found of fact some foreign race in all the decades
that if had followed until the time where if uncurl our the story or
still is alone in the universe â until where it knows? How functions the
economy in this place? How the people if dress? How the family is
structuralized?
This was the process that I submitted myself when I composed the world
of WARPSMITHS and the way as its culture was structuralized. I crossed
process with HALO the same JONES and V OF REVENGE. The question is that,
a time that you elaborated the world in all its details you will be
capable to speak of it with complete confidence in trivial way without
hammering the reader over the head with excess information.
Howard Chaykin proceeded thus with AMERICAN FLAGG. It elaborated the
names of the marks of products and shows of TV, the trends of the
fashion and the problems politicians for then only following with the
story and leaving the readers to catch the general climate in its
transcorrer. In the first episode of American Flagg, we see the flashes
of shows of TV and announcements that in give much more genuine
impressions to them in the way as the personages think and live that an
enormous amount of legends could pass. Moreover, it has the advantage to
seem much more natural, therefore it follows the way almost accurately
as we catch a foreign culture when we travel for the exterior. We do not
understand necessarily everything of the face culture, but, gradually;
to the measure that we catch the details of the environment, we reach a
complete conscience of the set, its atmosphere only e the social
elements that shape it. When a writer manipulates the environment in
this way, does not have the sensation to be receiving a gamma from
pressed irrelevant details against us only why said whose he wants that
let us know meticulously by what means it has been in the construction
of the story. On the contrary of this, we realistically have the
sensation of a conceived world of complete and detailed form, where the
facts transcorrem normally, exactly that the story is not focused in
them. A world to point out the our the story that is structuralized
logically interrupts any diffidence of the reader and finishes dragging
it in that state of hypnosis that I mentioned in my previous article.
While the previous commentaries if relate environments specifically
imaginary, if you are if I take care of to a real environment, you needs
to be meticulous to the extremity in its conception of the world that
you are displaying. When I started to write the MONSTER of the QUAGMIRE,
I read regarding the Louisiana and its rivers and tributaries in such a
way how much I could and I obtained to congregate instrumental knowledge
on its flora and fauna and its general constitution. I know, for
example, the type of liquid the hyacinths (flowers) synthesize in a
thick sheet in the surface of the water â that it makes that this sheet
seems firm land and allows that these grow so fast that, some times in
the past, had of being burnt so that they did not take the quagmire all.
I learned that the alligators eat rocks finding that they are turtles
and later they do not obtain to make its digestion. It is therefore that
the alligators have that excrement mood. I also know that cajuns
(descending of the French colonists) is called âcoonassâ for non-cajuns
as a demonstration of racial discrimination, but that cajuns had
transformed the insulting term into a compliment, creating enormous
adhesives where if it reads âPRIDE OF BEING COONASSâ. I know that the
more popular name cajun is Bordeaux. If desire a name that sounds
natural for a common citizen in the Louisiana, I look for in my
telephonic catalogue of Houma until finding a name that jumps me to the
sight: Hatie Duplantis can be a good name. As well as Jody Hebert. If I
to want to know which the road a personage I would have to take to go
inside of Houma to Alexandria (of the United States, not in Egypt. After
all, isnât there PARIS, TEXAS?), I look for in a road map of the United
States. They are the small details as these that make with that its
description of a specific place is realistic and convincing. They can
accidentally be dripped in the comics, without ostentation, and will be
probably more convincing in the ratio where they will be trivial and
irrelevant.
Of course, when considering an environment, is not only the physical
reality of the place that must be understood, but also its atmosphere â
the emotional reality. It catches the Gotham City of the Batman, for
example. It is only another version of New York? Is it an enormous park
of diversions for super-developed children, full of giant typewriters
and Jack-in-the-boxes, populated by creatures such as the bat-dog and
extremely wicked hobgoblin bat (bat-mirim, in the livened up drawing)
and clowns as the Penguin and the Joker? It is a paranoid and left-hand
side landscape urban derived from Fritz Lang, frightened for deformed
types and monsters, whose only defender is a cold, guarded, and
remorseless man that is dressed as a bat? The way that you choose to
treat the way that goes to all modify the character of the story and is
so important how much the final effect as an understanding of real the
physical factors that compose the world on which you are writing.
The boarding of the composition of personages in comics has evolved, as
all more in this disaster of delayed way, in a painful slow rhythm in
these last thirty or forty years. The boarding oldest sight in comics is
that one where the composition of the personages is maniqueĂsta,
constituted generally of the âthat one it is good thereâ and âthat one
is there badlyâ. For the comics and the world comparatively simpler than
they were made use to entertain, this perfectly adequate age. There for
the start of years 60, however, the times had moved, and a new boarding
for the composition of personages if it made necessary. Thus, Stan Lee
created a new composition of personages of two dimensions: âthat one is
good there, but it is unlucky with the girlsâ or âthat one is there
badly, but it could help the Avengers if a certain number of readers
wrote asking for that it made thisâ. Of new, at the time, this was an
innovation to take off the breath, and perfectly seemed a valid way of
if making stories in comics that had importance in the context where
they were being made. The advances since then have been minimum. In an
effort to follow the times, the personages properly said had become more
distinguished, dopey, bixxare or neurotics, but the basic way to portray
moved very them little. Still they are carefully defined personages
under the two angles, with a pinch of verbal embromação a play to
perhaps liven up them here and there.
I believe that it has left of the part of the guilt for this state of
things if it must to the great adhesion without questionings to good and
the old one dictated: âif you it will not be able to summarize a
personage in fifteen words is not a good personageâ. He wants to say,
who is that he said this? On the other hand, certainly he is possible to
define the personage and the motivations of Captain Ahab in a
well-elaborated phrase as a âwild cripple who feeds rancor against a
whaleâ. Herman Melville, obviously, better found to go deep itself more
the service a bit. He seems me that the best one that if wanted to
really say with that how much in such a way false phrase one type is
something it âif a personage will not be able if summarized in fifteen
words it does not have to be salable to a young public, that presumably
have limited attention and brief supplies of intelligenceâ.
These written laws and this conventional wisdom are not really the curse
of the industry, or, at least, one of its curses. The problem is that
they tend to involve the people in a certain way to reflect on the
things. He is obvious that if our necessary personage to be described in
fifteen words, you will incline in direction to a personage of fifteen
words â something as âone takes off cynical whose parents had been
assassinated, what he compels it to undertake a private war against the
crimeâ. At the same time where this can represent the beginnings of a
elaborĂĄvel personage, the trend is of that the scriptwriter not look
very far beyond the skeleton of fifteen words. One or two times to each
episode it will make with that the personage says some cynical thing and
has remembered itself of its career as policeman. Moreover, one of the
secondary personages probably will say, the certain height, âFrankly,
you is so cynical!!!â. To that our hero will answer: âWhat you he
wanted? I remember, already I was strap â. If the scriptwriter will be
relatively adept, small subtleties of personality will be introduced in
the project... is disclosed, for example, that our former-she also takes
off cynical collects stamps. Strangely, this generally will be leagued
of some skill to the initial premise of fifteen words: âI am Well, here,
with my album opened in my front, glue stamps. I would not be making
this if still he was one takes off. About the hard one, the more I think
about this, more cynical I I am â.
If the writer will be bold, will feel the necessity to explore the
personage in a bigger depth. The question is that it does not matter how
deep it goes into the soul of the personage; it still will have fifteen
words of width. Perhaps the writer dedicates all an assay to the
personage, trying to unmask the mysteries of its past through a
flash-back or something thus. The story will have a central point and a
subject, such and which must have stories, turning probably around âWhat
he was same that it became this so cynical personageâ. To the long one
of the twenty and as many pages we will cross the first years of
formation of the personage until reaching the apocalyptic event, well in
the height of the story: âI was only seated there, seeing my album of
stamps and the collection without price that had consumed years of my
life to be composed, when, suddenly, I perceived that, a time that the
donkey had jammed those stamps with glue here and the glue one direct in
the album, was impossible to inquire its value â they already did not
possess value some. Then, I understood that the universe did not pass of
a cruel joke on the humanity and that the life had not felt. I became
cynical on the existence human being and could see that the dullness all
intrinsic the human effort. In this height, I decided to integrate me to
the police force â
The point is that if the initial premises of work on which the
personages are constructed are limited and gradually rigid, thus are
also the proper personages. Perhaps if the scriptwriters of comics to
obtain to develop its of composition of personages until a level where
if she follows changes, were not an bad idea to play except some of
these models expenses and to face the problem of one another form. A
logical starting point would be simply to leave and to observe the
people. It also considers the structure of the character of the people
to its return and its proper personality with the biggest frieza and
objectivity that to obtain. After little time you it will go to discover
that almost nobody can be described in fifteen words, at least not in an
excellent and significant way. You also it will notice that the people
mold its behavior depending on with who they are talking. They are with
the different voice when they speak with its parents and when they speak
with its colleagues. They vary the attitude and disposal to each hour.
They will make with frequency things that are, apparently, it are of its
personality. Simple and subtle comments as these help to equip the
creative mind in direction to a more complete understanding of the
composition of the personality of that the one that is offered by some
brief generalizations on the phenomena in general.
Valley the penalty to observe as the people in other areas decides the
question of the authenticity human being. An artist who wants to learn
to portray the body realistically human probably will start drawing
models livings creature, observing as the people stop, if they incline
and if they put into motion. Not to be that they are wondrous donkeys,
they will not try to catch the life in its figures by means of little
trustworthy declarations as âpretty figures have salient chinsâ or
something thus.
It studies proper itself and to the people to its return with details
and tries not to lose nothing... Each knot in the voice and hesitation,
each nuance vacant in the corporal position or unconscious gesture of
the hands. It hears as they speak and it tries to inside reproduce its
voices of its head with all the features and mannerisms. Exactly that,
very probably, you never it has, in all its career, success in creating
a personage who is total true, to the little o effort will bring it more
close to this objective and to the understanding them involved problems.
Another useful instrument for the composition of personages can be
extracted of the theater. Already I mentioned before I look for to adopt
a method of boarding in that the always-possible composition of
personages and that it seems to be giving resulted. As for example of as
I would approach a personage for this method, I would cite the way of as
Etrigan, the Demon I was treated in the ones in the 25, 26 and 27 of
magazine SWAMP THING (published for the Ed. April in the ones in the 27,
28 and 29 of the magazine SUPERAMIGOS). To elaborate the personality of
Jason Blood did not present no real difficulty, but, a time that the
Demon represented and fact a creature of the hell, I perceived that its
interior mechanisms, its psychology, demanded some reflection. I wise
person who it I would be a stocky personage low e, and later drew that
it would be very intense and inflexible, in consequence to pass the life
in the hell. I imagined its weight enormous, as if it was of massive
iron, and its internal temperature almost so hot how much the magma.
This in accordance with suggests a type of feverish intensity in its
action and thoughts its smashing weight, result of its powerful density.
I noticed that in the original sketches of the John and the Steve (John
Tottleben and Steve Bissete, the tracers of the series) for its proposal
of treatment of the personage, who the canine tooth was sharper and the
mouth had a light crack in the superior lip, like a catâs. This
suggested that the voice of the personage would be a little distorted,
says it modified for the deformation of the lip and teeth.
Armed of all these information, I closed the curtains of my studio so
that the neighbors did not scare and called the social assistant
(probable the equivalent the English to the staff that direct the people
to the Juqueri) or something to it sort and try imagine what feel if be
of fact the personage. I imagined the weight enormous of my body, that
now was very lesser, and vi that this would bring to the corporal
movements a terrible impulse. Keeping the fierce nature suggested by the
imprisoned frontals, I tried the sensation to incurvate myself like
QuasĂmodo (Hunchback of Notre Dame) and to limp. Later that I felt that
to get the physical sensation of the personage, I tried the voice,
splitting the teeth and raising the superior lip until being difficult
to speak with clarity. To make direction, after all it seemed necessary
to speak very slowly, what it suggested a type of voice as of a record
player disconnect, guttural and very serious. Finally, I perceived that
the accurate voice that it looked was of the type of voice as of Charles
Laughton in the film âthe Riotâ, electronically distorted. A chosen time
the voice and the position of the personage, you can record in the mind
the impression to evoke it when to arrive the time to put the personage
in the axles and to produce realistic dialogues for it.
A conclusion that I arrived is that almost all have a practically
infinite number of facets in its personality, but emphasizes only part
of them in the biggest part of the time. All we have parts of that they
are cruel, badly intentioned, cowards, profligates, violent, greedy...
If to describe a personage with these characteristics, we must in
preparing them to look at for regions of our personality with which in
we feel them less comfortable of front and to make a honest evaluation
of that we see. On the other hand, all we have sides that noble, heroic,
they are unfastened or loving, let us admit or not. When creating a
noble personage, you must before Have to try to see in you yourselves
any spark of nobility, exactly that the possibility of the existence of
it seems the most improbable in its worse moments.
The more audacious you to be in the composition of its personages, more
confident he will be in facing the problems most specific and confusions
of the work. How a white writer, of the masculine sex and heterosexual
practitioner, for example, as I go to be able to write on a homosexual,
a black or a woman? Theoretically, it is clearly, it would be more easy
to write on people of one another color, sort or sexual inclination of
that on livened up vegetables, whermeuschen or creatures of the abyss.
The point where this can give pra backwards is that, if you to
understand its ambulant vegetable in making a mistake way, will be able
to offend and to hurt somebody that can be felt mentioned. To deal with
the vast multitude of different types of personages that you probably
will create during its career of scriptwriter is, at the same time,
demanding absorbent and. In one day, you it will be the infanticide of
New York; in the following day, a transparent creature of Altair 4; in
the other, a nun of seventy years taking care of the survivors of the
second plague of London of 2237. You she will be forced to ponder on
morally offensive people who are politics or you and to try to
understand them.
This can in such a way be personal how much professionally compensating,
but the main result is that, when writing on the personages in the
course of its work, you care degree of and pretension and at the
demanded degree of authenticity or estilização with the complete notion
of the involved principles will arrive at an adjusted. That one
remembers that never more all the involved ones are personages, same
that who, by chance, take a walk for the dumb scene and leave been
silent, reappearing. Exactly that you it does not make use of time and
cannot spend traditional the seven days of the week in this, you had, at
least, To have certainty of that thought in such a way about the subject
how much it has been necessary.
Now that we have the discriminated idea, structure, boarding narrative,
environment and personages, I assume that if must also think about
considering the plot (even so, as you already must have deduced, if he
is that you already it read sufficiently of my works, I almost I cannot
bother me with this formality). After all, that devils are a plot? That
expensive has? The plot is not the main point of the story or its main
reason of being Is something that is there more for enhancing the
central idea of the story and the personages who will become involved
themselves in the one of that she stops dominating them and forcing them
if incasing it in its limitations. Plot is the combination
environment-personas only with the element added time they. If the
combination of environment and personages can be called âsituationâ,
then, plot is a situation seen in four dimensions.
Using the example that we take from the excellent âReport on the
Probabilityâ of Brian Aldiss, thinks about a different thing of stories
in comics for terms one another perspective of the idea. Let us consider
a painting â in particular, âthe Mercenary Shepherdâ, of the daily
pay-rafaelita William Holman Hunt.
In this picture, we see a young in facing in first plan, in way to a
pretty and luminous pastoral landscape, bathed for the golden light
setting it. Kneel or stoops downs, then behind of it, we see a young
man, the shepherd of the heading. It is with an arm raised for backwards
of the shoulders of it, as it was the point to establish a physical
privacy, involving it in one hugs. However, at the portrayed moment, its
hand still did not touch it. Canine tooth in the palms of the hand, it
brings a small âsphynx-skullâ butterfly (note of the translator: insect
that has printed in its wing the figure of a skull). As much the
expression of the beautiful shepherd as of the young one is ambiguous.
The shepherd seems wanton and the young woman seems
stimulated/motivated. Seen in another light, the expression of it is a
little more left-hand side, while of it is of somebody suffocated by the
scare. Behind the couple, in the bathed English fields in gold, a flock
of sheep wanders without route and protection while the shepherd passes
the time with the beautiful young on the lawny one soon above of the
grass. The shepherd seems to smile to if preparing to show the insect,
and it she does not seem bothered its approach. The sheep graze, the
butterfly if it agitates, the moment is suspended, without passed or
conclusion. He is only one second, extracted of one continuum on which
we do not know more nothing. We do not know nothing on the past of them
â where the shepherd grew or same where he passed the previous night. We
do not know if the woman is until there by chance or if she had combined
of if finding before with it. Of its future we know less still. When it
shows the insect, it if he enchants or if he scares? They will make love
there exactly, or they will talk or only fight? What it will happen with
the sheep, left without guard? With an eye in the apparently left-hand
side symbolism of the sphynx-skull, will exist something more
threatening implicit in the scene? Not something necessarily
melodramatic/sensational as the shepherd to be you give to strangle it,
but, perhaps, a mention to the death and the way as we waste the essence
of the life? This perpetual moment that we see, imprisoned in the
screen, is the start of a relationship, or the end? The beauty of a good
painting is in the fact of the mind and the directions to be able to
become vacant perpetual in, following its track and covering its ways in
this place where the time is suspended. âthe Mercenary Shepherdâ in
displays the situation to them. The not dumb situation, but we in inside
dislocate them from it, appreciating its subtle meanders perspective and
meaning.
If, then, to add the dimension time to this situation, the work of art
is completely modified. Instead of presenting infinite possibilities,
them they would follow an only definite route. The composition of the
events to the long one of this definite route. The composition of events
to soon of this route is the plot. The young woman in the painting
notices the butterfly and is curious and also a little scared. A
dialogue between the charming shepherd and the young woman is stopped
then, that it is fascinated by it. They make love after freeing the
small insect. After this, they discover that the flock was stolen or if
it lost in this half time. Instead of facing the fury of the raging
farmer who uses it to take care of the flock, the impulsive servant
decides to run away from the e region to look job in another county.
After some weeks the young woman he perceives that she is pregnant. Its
father and its brothers are knowing and swear to hunt the shepherd and
to give a choice to it â or he marries or he dies -... and etc, etc,
etc. I confess that the version above is an unskillful and ugly
extrapolation without nothing of that charm, subtlety or poetry of the
original painting, but believe that it clarifies the point of that to
compose the plot is a type of phenomenon of four dimensions, taking time
as the fourth dimension. The situation portrayed in the proper painting
is a representation of a three-dimensional world that, with the addition
of the time, becomes quadra-dimensional and passes of situation to the
plot.
Therefore, to assume itself of the process of creation of plot in a
valid way, you it must try to reason quadra-dimensionality. It sees the
world where continuum with past, gift and future live its personages as
one. It sees the form of all, then you are more apt to observe as the
elements inside of the global project if they relate much more clearly
in way. âWATCHMENâ was created exactly of this form. In the real time,
the story starts in October of 1985 and finishes some months later. I
have all the events enclosed in this period, incased necessarily. In
ampler terms, however, the story refers it events that go since 1940,
with individual sequences that if they give in years 40, 50, 60, 70...
the impression that we have, waits, is that a felt of depth and the
story likely, together world with personages who share this quality. To
the being capable to observing a period of 45 years of relative the
story of the world where if it before points out my drama exactly to try
to write an only syllable on that world, I was capable to observe
parameters of events and events that if they reflect conceptually,
potentially interesting elements of the story and its narrative that I
could emphasize and bring to the surface as the progress of the story. I
could notice chances to moor elements of the plot or the thematic
structure and to present one more coherent and all effective one as
resulted. Still, a time having the story and its some personages planned
in depth, if perhaps notices exactly of personages or interesting events
that they would occur logically to a certain height and that they could
suggest one or another interesting dialogue.
Establish its continuum with a quadra-dimensional format â with length,
width, depth and time, and then it takes an only wire of narrative that
leads it for the landscape that you created of the possible revealing
form most interesting and, either realistic it or of a more abstract and
psychological land. This wire of narrative is its plot. While the plot
if dislocates through continuum visualized well that you created for it,
you it will find easy to extract a real and pleasant impression parallel
if uncurling inside of the story that you are definitively telling. A
good example of this is the words that Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez had
created in âLOVE & ROCKETSâ. In stories âYou lease Tambienâ and
âMechanicsâ of the Jaime, we have the sensation of an only body of
likely details hover beyond the limits of the comics and proper the
story. After seeing for some months âMISSILES OF OCTOBERâ pichados by
the city, we discover that this is the name of the band of Hopey, in the
same way accidental that we discover that its name is âGlassâ or that
its aunt, Vicky Glori (note of the translator: it lacked the author to
read with attention, this she is the aunt of the Maggie, not of the
Hopey there), gained one disputed fight against Rena Titañon. In
âHeartbreak Soupâ, Gilbert produced a work equally notable in its
description of the community of Palomar in a period of fifteen or twenty
years. Observing Jesus, HerĂĄclio, Vicente and others to grow and to
establish its when adult lives. We see the Sherrif Chelo to start its
career as bañadora (âa woman who gives to bath in men â- note of the
translator: it can seem joke, but this type of service was common in
communities baffle plates of the years 50) before being banishes from
the businesses for the Luba beautiful and debtor to enter the force of
the law. In later sequences we see with that perfection it assumed its
new vocation and observes that it also is become thin and being more
attractive, while Luba starts to make look like each time more fatigue
and conscientious of how much it feels lack of youth and that is losing
the beauty. The world is genuine and three-dimensional. It takes fifteen
years of the story to perceive that Vicente more is complexado by its
deformity that originally mame look like to be. We observe two children
of different mothers, both generated by the young just-deceased
âestraçalhador of heartsâ Manuel, playing together during a public
commemoration, at the same time that the adult life continues in
function of them. We have the complete sensation of one continuum,
inside of which all the elements assume its proper degree of importance
and become vital part of the total work of art.
We have an idea that we desire to transmit and a script that enhances
and discloses the idea in an incendiary way. We composed the personages
to live the story and an equally concrete and likely world to shelter
it. First step is to catch our the story that, I presume, it was
developed with an eye in how many pages they are available for the
impression, and to see accurately as it can better adjust itself to the
limitations that we have. As an example of as this process functions, I
would cite my Superman Annual of 1985 (Super Powers # 20, in Brazil).
The idea was to examine the escapism and the fantastic worlds of the
dreams, that include happy times idealized in the past and points
desired in the future, where finally will reach objective longed for
ours. I wanted to evaluate I eat these concepts I would be applicable
and which would be the dimension of the interval that separates the
fancy of the reality. It was a the story, if to prefer, for the people
who I have found for the life measures that they are stopped in some
point of the future when finally they will be âhappyâ. They are people
who say âif I had not married that man or that woman, if I had continued
the college, if he had left there before, established, IDO to see me the
world accepted, the job that I refused...â or, that they say âwhen I to
pay the mortgage, will be able to use to advantage the life. When I will
be promoted and to earn better, I will be able to use to advantage the
life. When the children to grow, when I to obtain to publish my book...
â People are who if enslave for its nostalgia or its expectations, being
incapable to live the gift until it if has become passed.
The script that I chose to develop this idea involves the mind of the
Superman, enslaved for a parasite telepath that insufflates an illusion
that the heart of it more desired... a Krypton planet that does not blow
up. That is part of a script on a foreign enemy of the Superman â Mongul
â that wants the hero is of its way so that it can dominate the universe
or what he wants that these tyrannical types normally inhale. The story
happens in the day of the anniversary of the Superman, in Fortress of
the Solitude, with simultaneous sequences inside of its mind, while it
imagines itself in Krypton as if it still existed. In uncurling of the
story, we finally see that such eventuality could not be so happy how
much promised to the first sight, leading the hero if to undo of the
fancy. At the same time it perceives that its nostalgia for a
disappeared planet is useless, as of fact was, and exactly learns
something on itself with the experience.
Ok... then the problem is as to inside present that script and its main
idea of the restrictions that are imposed by the dimensions of the
magazine, the market the one that if destine, and thus by ahead. The
immediate restriction most concrete and is that the magazine has forty
pages. This implies in having that to adjust to my story that one it
needs dimension without that it seems neither pressed nor strained.
Thus, my first step is normally to catch a sheet of paper and to number
of one the forty, in the left side. Then sketch the scenes that already
are in mind and I try to decide how many pages they will consume.
Already I decided that desire to present a contrast enters the world of
Krypton in the dreams of the Superman and the reality of its situation,
paralyzed in Fortress of Solitude with one fungus sprouting of its
chest, if floundering in the bio-aura of the hero. So that this of this
certainty, I needed interesting facts of uncurling in Fortress of
Solitude while the Superman is asleep, and equally involving happening
simultaneously in the âreal worldâ. As this happened in the anniversary
of the Superman, it seemed logical that some of its colleagues
super-human beings appeared â Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin â as really
it would come to happen, and gave edge to some interesting incidents
with Mongul, that would be taking care of its workmanship.
The coarse project would be the following one: they arrive, we establish
its personalities in brief you launch and we show as they react. With
the dialogues, we allow that the reader knows that it is the anniversary
of Superman. We establish that as much Wonder Woman how much the Dynamic
Pair it brings gifts â brings an enormous package, whose content it does
not disclose in way some, and Batman and Robin have a special rose call
âKryptonâ, especially cultivated for the occasion. When entering in
Fortress of Solitude apparently, they find the Superman with a stranger
mass of black roses sprouting of his chest. It is immovable and total
inert. While they try to discover what she is happening, Mongul appears
and discloses the details excellent that lack. Wonder Woman tries to
attack it and is won with a brutal blow that the spear for the Room of
the Trophies and makes with that it crosses the wall of the Weapon room,
where the foreign weapons if discloses useless against Mongul.
Meanwhile, Batman cold tries to reanimate to the Superman, seeing in
this the only way out of the situation. More as resulted of the
increasing disenchantment of the Superman with the illusory world where
it is that for the efforts of Batman, the untied creature if and it
imprisons this last one. It is in this height that, it exempts of
influences of the creature, the awaken Superman. The fancy that it lives
finishes and the two extremities of the narrative if they join while the
events if head for the climax of the episode.
Ok... a time with this organized, I needed to develop a similar project
for the events in the imagination of the Superman: we open in
KryptonĂłpolis, where we establish that it lives as Kal-El, has wife and
two children and is an archaeologist who works for long and tiring
hours. We are knowing that Krypton is in a phase of social decline. The
father of Kal-El, Jor-El, was banishes from the scientific community, a
time that its forecasts how much to the destination of Krypton they had
demonstrated to be baseless e, with the death of its wife, Lara, it if
he became frustrated a man and sad, inclined the groups extremist
politicians in the attempt to interrupt the decline that he sees in the
Kryptonian standards of living. This takes it to enter in conflict with
its son, who is more liberal, and the two if they misunderstand. We see
such events to culminate when we know that the cousin of Kal-El, Kara,
was attacked and wounded for armed members of a group of campaign for
the abolition of the Zone Ghost and that they feed an intense resentment
against who wants that is still that remotely on to the creator of that
project â Jor-El. Worried about these events, we observe Kal-El and its
family trying to abandon KryptonĂłpolis having as deep cloth of a parade
of torches, detonations and manifestations while Krypton starts if to
more quickly dislocate each time in direction to the collapse. Finally,
Kal-El cannot more accept the terms of the fancy and more prepared is
not felt to pay the needy price to support it. It breaches with the
fancy to find Batman prisoner of the parasite, when the two extremities
of the story if find.
The next step was to integrate these sequences in one all coherent one,
of form that parallel ran during all the first half of the forty pages.
This wants to say, I had that in such a way to make use the scenes of
the fancy of the Superman how much the scenes inside of Fortress with
Batman and Cia., deciding for high what it had to go in each page with
an eye in the final result of it, that must contain a complete scene. I
wise person who all this equipment needed to go in the start of the
album, covering the 25 first pages. This wanted to say that I had to
interlace the two lines of the narrative in joints synchronized well and
to try approximately to bring the two extremities in direction to the
height at the same time. When establishing a good one start for the
story I had an immediate position: or I started with the arrival of the
visiting super-heroes or I could shoot the direct reader in the fancy of
the Superman without any explanation. As it seemed more logical that
this last alternative would more tend to surprise and to instigate the
reader, I decided to open in a scene that if gives in the illusory
Krypton of the dream of the Superman produced for the parasite. The
effect waited on the reading one was something as âwhat!? Where we are?
In Krypton? But Krypton did not blow up? UĂ©... is Kal-El, the same age
that has today in the Land, but seems half different there. It seems...
common, it is using eyeglasses, it has a regular job, wife and two
children. What it is happening â If this first page will be intriguing
the sufficient, then you already it obtained to evolve sufficiently in
the process of âfisgamentoâ of the reader. When establishing this basic
situation in this imaginary Krypton, we turn the page and we pass direct
to the Arctic Circle, for the arrival of the three visitors for the
anniversary of the Superman. While it keeps one I dialogue accidental
however revealing, them they enter in the Fortress. Knowing that pages 2
and 3 are respectively in the left and right hand, he seemed
advantageous to wait any great scene of visual impact until page 4. A
time that has a sequence in addition after page 4, and, as taste very of
pictures that they take all the page, as much to call the heading the
story as to properly give to the suggested premise its had weight and
occasion, emphasizing the said start of the story, page 4 is the height
of the introduction: the Superman paralyzed with a left-hand side black
and red tumor sprouting of its chest. With luck, the reader is curious
with this uncommon state of things the sufficient to jump the
announcements of Figs and Apples Newton until page 5, in the verse of
the leaf, where we show the reactions of the friends of the Superman,
trying to guess what he happens to its colleague. The page if locks up
with one close of the face of the Superman looking at for the nothing
while Batman, behind of it, comments that the friend if finds in a
particular world. We take the look for the top of page 6.
Here, we have an image that it evokes comic previous. One more time,
Kal-El looks at for the nothing, but we are in return the Krypton, in
the dream of the Superman, almost literally in a âparticular worldâ.
Thus, the coincidence of images and the irony of the commentary of
Batman supply a soft transition and half-significant it enters the two
scenes without losing the attention of the reader. In page 6, we show to
the relation between Kal-El and its woman, with a certain text of
emotional details, using its dialogue to give to the reader information
on as it is the situation of them. The page finishes with a nocturnal
taking it building where they live against a blue and pink sky,
immediately after Kal to mention that she goes to visit its father in
the following day.
We turn the leaf and we have a taking showing one another Kryptonian
building, of this time with a sky of dawn, yellow, orange and red to the
deep one. Still we are in Krypton, obviously, and is equally obvious
that is morning of the following day. We pass to the meeting of three
pages of Kal-El and its sad father, who if locks up in page, with 9
Jor-El hatefully pulverizing an ornamental glass tree in the terrace and
jamming a glass bird, portrayed at the moment where he fed a youngling.
The last taking is of the cut off head of the bird, with a glass worm
still in the peak. At the same time where this in suggests a symbolic
image to them of the disruption of the relation father-son between
Kal-El and its old one, it has an oblique linking with the legend of the
next picture, that says: âin the truth, one is alone questao to join the
partsâ. This phrase, in the on reality to the comment of Batman in its
applied deductive process in the inquiry of that if it gives with the
Superman, also has apparent importance in relation the image of the torn
into pieces bird, left in the soil in fragments impossible to be
reconstituted. This in takes them to page 10, where it begins a scene of
page room where Mongul arrives and fights with Wonder Woman. It finishes
with the villain saying âObliged. I find that this answers to my
question â, while reaches the heroine, with the deep, the inert one
Superman to, looking at for the emptiness. In the next page, we again
have a scene in Krypton, the hospital. In first plan, we have the mother
of Super-Girl, Allura. To the deep one, approximately in the same
relative position where if it found in last comic, Kal-El enters in the
hospital. Allura despairingly interrogates a nurse on the conditions of
its son and says: âI made a questionâ. This continues in similar way,
going for front and pra backwards, until arriving at page 25 and
reaching the wakening of the Superman.
A mapeada time the first part of the album, I was capable to see how
much available space I had to co-ordinate the events until the end. I
wise person, for example, that it needed a strong final page, preceded
of one or two pages you spend only with the conclusions of action and
the establishment of a state of spirit of return to normality and
reflection on the liçÔes that we learn. This consumed more or but one
four pages. I want to say, the 36 for the burning hot final battle
between Superman and Mongul remained pages 26, what it seemed to be the
correct duration.
Using the same approach procedure as before, I then looked for to
interrupt this sequence of action of ten pages with one I gush out
interesting of lesser events while Superman and Mongul if spank for the
Fortress. To make this to function, I exhaustingly consulted the project
of Fortress of the Solitude, loaned for my tracer, Dave âFanboyâ
Gibbons. I wise person who the first Superman would fall on Mongul in
the Weapon room, where the foreign giant spanked Wonder Woman. If Mongul
made right the Superman with force the sufficient one to hurl it through
the ceiling, it would stop in the Foreign Zoo, immediately above. They,
then, if beating for the Zoo, would arrive at the Room of Communications
with its archives of computer. If, to this height, if they played in the
soil, if they would ahead estatelariam of the giant statue of Jor-El and
Lara supporting the globe of Krypton in the way of them. This seemed an
excellent place to lock up the battle, with its inherent echo of the
world where the Superman passed half of the story in dream. While this
happened, we follow the progress of Robin in dealing with the foreign
organism that it removes of Batman. It finally follows the track of
destruction left for Mongul and Superman, arriving until the two, the
time to bring the vital element for the defeat of the villain. Of new,
this had that to be made in natural way, bringing the two extremities of
the narrative (Robin/parasite and Superman/Mongul) to the height
simultaneously.
Mongul finally is defeated by that organism that it intends to use to
imprison the Superman. After a conclusion of three pages, in which the
heroes relaxing and talking after the fight, have Batman delivering its
rose âKryptonâ, especially cultivated, who are jammed during the fight.
The accepted superman with calm the death of the rose, and, for
extension, the death of Krypton, giving a contained emotional point for
the closing of the story, with the central idea reasonably explored and
to less partially decided. The final page, evoking the first page, in
gives a taking to them of the terrible and bloody reality lived for
Mongul under the influence of the parasite, showing that it is more
hopelessly chats inside of its dream of that never would be the
Superman, in giving a counterpoint to the eventual success of this last
one with its eventual defeat.
Good, we have the story completely dissected with an approach
understanding of that it goes in each page, as well as with the
understanding of as the dispersed elements that we analyze are working
jointly to form one all. The only remaining stages are mere final
creative processes in the reach of the correct track, as much in the
verbal narrative how much of the appearance.
The stonecutting of the language is important, therefore in that
bumbling language, flat, or without life to inhabit will very likely
disinterest the reader in relation to the plot that you desire to tell.
You must learn as to use the words with the maximum of its ability, one
more time applying the realistic reasoning to the involved procedures.
He is easy to develop a visual sensitivity, for example, still that she
is minimum, as mine, adopting the habit to make schematic scribbles of
each page before writing it, showing the visual elements that go in each
comic. You he will collect an idea of that he is possible to show in
each comic, and you he will have a notion of as a complete phrase will
consist; have many closes of faces or taking of countenances? They are
all visas of exactly angulo without-favor? This picture where you want
to establish a threat direction you would not have more effect if she
was seen from above, in way that we felt that subliminally somebody
almost observing the personages from above, unprepared there under, soon
to attack them? This would be better if it was a sequence of three
comics instead of one only, using comic remaining for some another
thing? Have many information squeezed in this comic e, this in case
that, have space in the page to distribute them in two comics, in way
that is chore more softly? Tips of this type will allow the tracer to
understand the effect that you search and the intention for backwards of
it, what it will be able to use as starting point for any visual
information that it desires to add to its the story, having in mind that
it, with almost all certainty of the world, will have a sensitivity (or
intuition) visual 50 times more solid and trustworthy that its (note of
the translator: since that you he is not working with one covered or an
imcompetent person, is clearly)