Writing Comic Script: The Search For Body Gesture Terminology

Tonight, I was working on some things for my illustrator.  As this blog's readers will know, we're in the process of making Bovodar and the Bears into a comic series or a graphic novel.  In fact, subscribers to the newsletter (click HERE if you want to subscribe) will have already seen a preview of this comic series in this month's e-mail. 

Now, I find that writing fiction for an audience and writing a comic script for an illustrator are two completely different and very involved processes.  As many people are aware, when writing a work of fiction, you have to first put it on paper.  Then go over it to clean it up.  Then edit it again.  Then have someone look at it.  And maybe another person.  Then you go over it again.  You're always refining the work until it's presentable. 

But I am in the process of slowly transforming a novel into a comic book script format for my illustrator.  I'm doing this to give her a visual idea of what to specifically draw various scenes.  And describing a scene to an illustrator and describing a scene to a reading audience are two entirely different things. 

For example, several times in this process, I've been trying to explain to her a few gestures or facial expressions.  It would be helpful to have a catalog of body or hand gestures, as well as a dictionary/encyclopedia of facial expressions.  But I'm unsure if these things exist.  And if they do, I'm unsure I can currently afford such volumes.  Time will tell.

But I find it fascinating that I'm having to basically re-write an entire novel all over again---AND in an entirely different way---in order to pull these images out of the ether of my imagination, translate them through an illustrator, and get them onto paper for the rest of the reading/viewing world.  It's as though we are trying to psychically photograph a scene from another dimension that we can only visit in our dreams.  Writing comic script requires a knowledge of a whole new terminology, among other things.  It's been a fascinating medium to break into, and I can see so much potential in it.  Comics/graphic illustrations are set up more like a sort of 2-D theater, while raw text fiction remains an abstraction that not everyone will have the patience to see. 

Octopus

I managed to see the new season of OA on Netflix this month.  It was weirder than the first season, with a few graphic scenes I ended up skipping---something I typically have to do with Netflix shows. 

There was a particular scene in which the protagonist establishes a psychic bond with an octopus, and the octopus telepathically talks to her.  He sounded like a sage, wizened creature from the underwater animal world.  It was all at once fascinating and disappointing.  Why disappointing?  Because I'd already written about octopi in the latest book.  Telepathic octopi, no less.

What to do?

This isn't the first time a writer proceeded with a story, only to find out a part of it was conceived by another writer.  Like the many versions of King Arthur, the Marvel multiverse, or the haphazard Star Trek canon, all one can do is proceed as scheduled and hope their own version of the tale out-does other versions.  You continue, hoping your take on it is the superior, most memorable version.  For example, many stories favoring a dragon's perspective are out there, but E.E. Knight's Dragon Outcast is the one people will remember.  (Who can forget a dragon version of Horatio Alger?)

Besides, when you're underwater, you can't talk.  How else are octopi supposed to communicate?

Lean Years vs Times of Plenty

Illustrated by M. MacArthur

The writing has been picking up lately.  This is thanks, largely, to the vision and encouragement of my friend, Mary MacArthur.  Positive reinforcement can do wonders for boosting creative output. 

But lately, I was thinking a little more deeply about these kinds of factors.  That is, I've been thinking about the various things that can boost creative work and things that can work against it.  And it occurred to me that I was able to quickly produce more copious amounts of escapist fiction when my life wasn't troubled.  When things were happy and I didn't have problems to think about, the creative juices flowed.  However, when there were major problems in my life, such as the death of a parent, difficulty at my real-life job, or financial struggles---during those times, I found it difficult-to-impossible to write any kind of fiction whatsoever. 

It's easy to write about the news or about social issues or things like that.  I discovered that I can write non-fiction, even if my life is troubled.   I mean, if I was experiencing something horrible, I still had an opinion.  I still felt strongly one way or another about this or that issue.  I suppose conflict creates opinions. 

But when it comes to world building, character forming, and plot planning...I just couldn't carry on during the dark times.  It was as if my creativity were some sort of a plant being locked up in a closet, deprived of sunlight and water.  I do not know if it is like this for everyone who writes fiction.  But it sort of unnerves me a bit to know that, from my personal pattern, sad times mean lean fiction years, and the good years yield more content. 

If this is how it's going to be, then I really need to be on the ball with my writing during the good months so that I can accomplish what I want to do.  We only get one life, after all.  And I am uncertain I will live long enough to complete every project I have in mind. 

Cheap Heroism and Villainry

Bovodar breaks his chains to fight for his life in the castle of Valemod, the Polar Bear King.

The following comes from a blog post titled, If You're Worried About Story:

I don't believe in either cheap heroism or cheap villainry, as both are the product of mediocre writers with insufficient imagination. While I would consider Captain Europa to be a villain and the Global Justice Initiative to be evil, he most certainly does not.

Nor do I believe that my favored side must always win. After all, the ultimate heroism is self-sacrificial, and I am not even remotely hesitant to kill off even my favorite characters if the story's logic demands it. (The fact that this also helps solve the fatal perspective-character-inflation problem is merely a fortunate side-effect.) Nor do I ever indulge in the storytelling fraud that is so often present in Martin, Marvel, and DC stories; there are few literary devices for which I have more contempt than "bringing back" an obviously dead character. It's not only lame and fake drama, it is unnecessary for the sufficiently skilled writer.

 I also don't believe my favored side should win.  And yes, I'm also willing to kill off my characters for the same reasons as this author outlines.

As for what he calls "cheap heroism or cheap villainry," sometimes there simply is a bad guy and a good guy.  Beowulf vs Grendel, Arthur vs Mordred, Aragorn vs Sauron, Kirk vs Khan.  It's a common dynamic.  I will grant that complex characters make for very interesting stories.

This latter quality--complex characters--I believe, is showing itself in my recent fiction writing.  Bovodar and the Dragons is turning out to be not as simple as Bovodar's first adventure.

Check out Bovodar and the Bears, available on Kindle.