Wednesday 30 November 2011
How I Arrived So Late To Writing Comics ( Part 1 ) ...
On December 5th, 20011, i will be 40 years old. The big four oh! I've been writing since the age of 6 and at the age of 39 i finally began writing my first comic series.
Why did it take me so long? Well, it began like this. In 2001 i had an idea for a novel, then called 'The Immortality Of Snow'. Well, actually i had many ideas, too many in fact, more than i could possible fit into a single novel. That was my first problem, should it be a trilogy, or maybe five books, or more? It didn't take long for me to realise ( well, about one abandoned synopsis and three continually rewritten chapters ) that what i had in my head was certainly not what was ending up on the page. I soon became convinced that the ideas i had were better than my ability to turn them into a story.
Something about the story or the way i was telling it just didn't feel right. The ideas felt good, the characters felt right, but nothing else did. So after a lot of unsucessful rewriting and more than a few sleepless nights i finally decided to put it on the proverbial shelf.
And for ten years it stayed on that shelf, never forgotten, just gathering dust and filed away under that heading of 'The One That Got Away'. But for those ten years it kept nagging at me, tapping me on the shoulder every few months or so. I had a gut feeling that if one day i ever got it right it had the potential to be the best thing i'd ever written.
And then in May of this year all of that changed, ironically while i was working on something else entirely. At that time i had been reading/ catching up on a lot of Neil Gaiman's work and i had just finished reading his modern classic 'American Gods'.
I happened to mention this to a friend. "Have you read his 'The Sandman' series?" i was asked. I hadn't. I'd heard of it of course, but i hadn't really read comics since my early twenties, at least not properly or regularly.
So on my friend's advice i began reading 'The Sandman' and something very strange began to happen ...
Why did it take me so long? Well, it began like this. In 2001 i had an idea for a novel, then called 'The Immortality Of Snow'. Well, actually i had many ideas, too many in fact, more than i could possible fit into a single novel. That was my first problem, should it be a trilogy, or maybe five books, or more? It didn't take long for me to realise ( well, about one abandoned synopsis and three continually rewritten chapters ) that what i had in my head was certainly not what was ending up on the page. I soon became convinced that the ideas i had were better than my ability to turn them into a story.
Something about the story or the way i was telling it just didn't feel right. The ideas felt good, the characters felt right, but nothing else did. So after a lot of unsucessful rewriting and more than a few sleepless nights i finally decided to put it on the proverbial shelf.
And for ten years it stayed on that shelf, never forgotten, just gathering dust and filed away under that heading of 'The One That Got Away'. But for those ten years it kept nagging at me, tapping me on the shoulder every few months or so. I had a gut feeling that if one day i ever got it right it had the potential to be the best thing i'd ever written.
And then in May of this year all of that changed, ironically while i was working on something else entirely. At that time i had been reading/ catching up on a lot of Neil Gaiman's work and i had just finished reading his modern classic 'American Gods'.
I happened to mention this to a friend. "Have you read his 'The Sandman' series?" i was asked. I hadn't. I'd heard of it of course, but i hadn't really read comics since my early twenties, at least not properly or regularly.
So on my friend's advice i began reading 'The Sandman' and something very strange began to happen ...
James
How I Arrived So Late To Writing Comics ( Part 2 ) ...
As i lost myself in this fantastic, unusual and varied world that Neil had created i slowly began to realise that he was doing the sort of things in comics that i had been trying and failing to do in a novel. I'd always wanted my story to deal with immortality and gods and lots of the more weirder ideas i'd had over the years. I'd wanted to tell a story that jumped back and forth through time to different periods, had a lot of different characters and that was quite often told in a non linear storytelling form as well.
I'd been slapped in the face. I'd been slapped hard and i'd been slapped good. It was now clear to me that 'Modern Days' was a story that had always meant to be told over a period of time, as a comic, in installments, at 22 or 24 pages at a time, but also a story that would work as a far larger story when read in one go.
I'd never attempted to write a comic script before though, or for that matter any kind of script.
It had always been prose for me. That was all i'd ever written, all i'd ever wanted to write.
So that first script for the opening issue, issue #1 of 'Modern Days' became a very steep learning curve for me to say the least. I read as much as i could as i wrote. I re- read 'The Sandman', i read the 'Death' spin offs, i read Alan Moore's 'Watchmen', i read Joe Strazynski's 'Rising Stars', and so on, and so on. I read and i learned as much i possibly could.
And in the midst of all this i fell in love with comics again. I realised that you can do anything with them. and more importantly, and most surprisingly i realised that i now enjoy writing comics more than i enjoy writing prose. Hmm, yup, go figure.
And so, i guess after years of writing just prose this is how i arrived so late to writing comics ...
James
I'd been slapped in the face. I'd been slapped hard and i'd been slapped good. It was now clear to me that 'Modern Days' was a story that had always meant to be told over a period of time, as a comic, in installments, at 22 or 24 pages at a time, but also a story that would work as a far larger story when read in one go.
I'd never attempted to write a comic script before though, or for that matter any kind of script.
It had always been prose for me. That was all i'd ever written, all i'd ever wanted to write.
So that first script for the opening issue, issue #1 of 'Modern Days' became a very steep learning curve for me to say the least. I read as much as i could as i wrote. I re- read 'The Sandman', i read the 'Death' spin offs, i read Alan Moore's 'Watchmen', i read Joe Strazynski's 'Rising Stars', and so on, and so on. I read and i learned as much i possibly could.
And in the midst of all this i fell in love with comics again. I realised that you can do anything with them. and more importantly, and most surprisingly i realised that i now enjoy writing comics more than i enjoy writing prose. Hmm, yup, go figure.
And so, i guess after years of writing just prose this is how i arrived so late to writing comics ...
James
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