AMA: "They'll never go for it!"

Q.: Is there a storyline you thought up, but decided that your audience would never go for it?

A.: The answer to that is no, and the reason behind it is essential to my writing philosophy. At its core, my job is to convince you to "go for it." That's what writing is. Some of the best stories I've ever experienced started with a dubious concept. The narrative then convinced me to go on that journey, and in the end, I was amazed by the experience.

If you said, "Hey, we're going to watch a movie about the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office," anyone in their right mind would pass. But "Glengarry Glen Ross" is one of my top-five favorite movies of all time. A TV series about five raging alcoholic narcissists who run a failing dive bar sounds downright depressing. Still, my sons and I have torn through "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" together, howling with laughter. The best examples of challenging concepts delivered by good writing are in manga and anime.

• A powerful creature claims that within a year, he will destroy Earth, but he offers humanity a chance by becoming a homeroom teacher, where he teaches his students about how to kill him. ("Assassination Classroom")
• A man who can defeat enemies with just one punch doesn't want to be a superhero. ("One Punch Man")
• Heck, "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" is such a solid example of this concept; it defies a suitable one-sentence synopsis.

That's my job. Sometimes I do it well. Sometimes I need to improve. The recent EiAD storyline featuring Miss Match and Death Chill is a prime example. Part of the problem was undoubtedly the realities of independent publishing. Getting the pages weeks apart worked against the internal narrative machinery that presented the audience with a challenging concept and slowly revealed the explanations for the actions. The longer those inter-page pauses, the more I watched some of you dig in against the story. The reading experience will be much different in the book, as readers will be asked to suspend their disbelief for a couple of pages rather than being asked to do so for a couple of months.

I incorporated a lot of things into that arc. One of them was how people find strength in sexual submission. The story was also about escaping your problems by pretending to be someone else. Finally, it was about discovering that you can change drastically and still be the same person. (That last one is a significant character development for Miss Match as she grapples with her romantic entanglements with a superhero.)

Those are complex concepts. It's a narrative filled with nuance. It's... a Big Swing. And right now, I guarantee you, several people are in the comments section listing all the ways I got it wrong. That's OK. It goes with the territory.

But my job as a writer isn't to back away from that. My job is to embrace it and find more and more ways to make the experience rewarding. Sometimes I do it well. Sometimes I miss the mark. And one reader's hit is another reader's miss. It's a challenge, and I kind of love it.