Research (From Hell's Heart)

Hey there! Its been a little while since I made a bit of a funny little post talking process and development! It's been a while since I made a proper post so lets dive in with a little talk about our newest project From Hell's Heart.

I mentioned a little while back that we were perhaps working on a new project that many folks (us included) are currently having fun calling Moby Dyke as a nickname. And since this baby is still in its major development stages I figured, 'what better time than the present to really talk about what goes into the development of a project'.

So the two of us are floating in between a lot of projects, taking breaks from some, shifting others around. We're mostly waiting on the OK from Tas' editor on her new GN. Which means we both spend a lot of time hashing out Plots and new Ideas.

WHAT IS THIS STORY EVEN ABOUT?

Okay, before we even get toooooo deep into the meat and potatoes. Here's a short-end of what you need to know.

This story takes place in a fictional whaling town called 7 Bells where a whaler falls in love with the sea.

There's Captain Lusitania Moore (Aka Lucy, Luce or Captain Moore):

And The Sea (aka Bonnie)--her human form's gotten a bit of an update since these original sketches but I love them still anyway and figured I'd post 'em here.:

This is honestly where this whole dang thing started. Tas created Bonnie and drew these above sketches and I saw this character and went, 'oh okay so we're doing whales now? Here's a whaler for her.'

There is another character to this story. You might see her in dev sketches a bit later... I'm not entirely sure if I want to remind folks she exists or if we want to keep it a surprise for the comic~

Anyway, after this we drop into...

BRAINSTORMING

This goes without saying, maybe that the two of us spend a lot of time brainstorming. But what does that MEAN? Because the process of brainstorming is so different for everyone and, even for us, the process of brainstorming for us flows a bit different from story to story. But for this particular story, the two of us sometimes spend afternoons asking each other questions. They can look something like this:

• But what is Bonnie's motivation for attacking Lucy's ship?
• Is Lucy afraid, angry or enamoured?
• What was Bonnie's life like before she was a whale? Did she Have one?
• What are Lucy's ties to land? What anchors her?
• Does she have family? (Either of them?)
• How deep do we want this story to go?
• What kind of characters do we need to push these two together?
• To tear them apart?
• How does this propel the story, what does it do? Are we hindering the narrative?
• Is this comics or prose? Is it illustrated?
• What sort of format is this going to be in in the long run?
• Are we playing into this or against it?
• Is this poetic or straightforward? 
• What sort of motifs and themes keep coming up... is this where this story has to go? Do we like this direction?
• What the hell are we gonna name all these boats...?
• So how many times, in canon, do they fu--

You know all the very important stuff (we ask each other so many questions, especially from my end because this story is actually going to be written by me, and illustrated primarily by Tas, I have to comprehend and understand her characters drives and what she wants out of the story before I feel comfortable enough trying to get them down on paper).

I spend a lot of time thinking about these characters, motivations and potential story beats. For this story the two of us are often starting conversations with, "Okay for the ending, I'm seeing [imagery]" or "I'm not sure where this would exactly happen but it would be cool if we could fit [story beat] in here." or "So-- okay so-- actually-- what if-- maybe we could put [this series of scenes] during [this part]"?? (That last one is usually me being overly excited about something I envisioned while I was listening to music.

MUSIC

Research, for us often starts with Vibes. It starts with Music. It starts with, how does this story FEEL to us. How do the characters FEEL to each other? Well. That's often where a funky little playlist shows up.

We are being VERY KIND right now, here's our playlist for these two: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1t5YVaaKUIT8JGZ9con5s1?si=9a7bb71ca7ad4458

And for those who don't have spotify but who would also like to know.... here's a couple screenshots of our list here:

(That all being said.... if you listen to this list and happen to have ANY recommendations to add... toss us a DM or a comment we're always looking to swap things out and fill in holes we're missing
also the titles here that got cut off are:

• 2.Ferryland Sealer
• 3. Another New World
• 7. Remember (Walking In The Sand)
• 10. Against the Peruvian Monster
• 11. Harpoon Fever (Queequeg's Playhouse)
• 15. Under the Water
• 16. Beneath the Brine).)

.....Wow there is a lot more Man Man on here than I remember LMAO alright.

A LOT of this is music we've had for years we've tossed into a funky little sailor salad. It's been REALLY instrumental in visualizing character moments and instances. In development stages I often use music to power me through huge character moments and beats, backstories, interactions. I used to have a good commute when I worked a part time job at our downtown bookstore but since I've quit, I've recently started building a habit of taking an hour or two out of my day to just lay in bed, shut my eyes and plug myself into some tunes.... admittedly this sometimes turns vibes time into much needed naptime. Alternatively, plugging into your tunes for a good half hour at the gym also does the trick with the bonus of also getting killer thighs from running. Either of these work really well. Its been nice giving myself a reason to relax, stop and think.

Sometimes Tas and I's brainstorming sessions turn into both of us listening to music together and explaining where our visions came from. Its nice. It's exciting. Its also where the two of us get to emphatically LOVE the story we're working on and often where a lot of our hilarious little hooks & pitches come from that later get used when we're trying to sell the story to readers!

RESEARCH

I'm listing these like they're in some kind of particular order. Roughly, yes, honestly? No. All of this is kind of happening in tandem. We're talking, we're showing one another posts we found that are really neat. We're watching things and sitting back and talking about them, discussing how this might play into our story. Research on our end is.... a bit more nebulous than sitting down and bingeing twelve wikipedia articles about whaling and trawling through logistics behind minutae (that DOES come into play but .... later when the story is being built more constructively).

So what are we DOING research-wise right now? Ha... we're reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville (this is a free audiobook recording for those interested) because neither of us have actually read the original work this thing is borrowing from by osmosis. 

We're reading Wikipedia articles about The Incident that Inspired Moby Dick. (Watch out there's cannibalism???)

We're watching .... a movie from 2015 with Tom Holland And That Other Guy in it based on the event that inspired Moby Dick and Herman Melville is in it as a character (watch out this movie is a ride.... if you wanted the cannibalism its disappointingly subtle and the reasons for their hubris completely glossed over which is a real miss on irony imo).

We're then re-watching Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3 just so that we can wash our eyeballs out of the.... godawful use of CGI in In the Heart of the Sea, also [spoiler spoiler spoiler there is a kraken in our story shh], and delves a lot in themes of loves for the sea. Don't worry, the rewatch of these was a bit soiled by having to see Depp on screen.

Sure didn't stop us from watching the 4th one... you CAN judge us for that one. But it sure reminded me that Mermaids exist so fun fact for when you see mermaids in From Hell's Heart, now you know the Secret Lore.

We were also massively inspired, before this by Spooky Lake Month on tiktok after they did their episode(s) on Lake Superior so I'm deep diving the lore on that.... That's one scary as fuck lake let me tell you.

I've recently been picking and poking at this tumblr someone's curated regarding seafaring~

We watched a natgeo docuseries called Gathering Storm which was uh... wow... eye-opening. Less about whaling but stormy sea imagery is just Yikes.

We've been occasionally looking up sailor speech and sayings.... wow a lot of things we know colloquially in speech today sure is borrowed from sailor lingo isn't it? Neither of us is a huge fan of pushing accents and such in dialogue but speech patterns and sayings might make their way in character's speech or in naming locations and ships...

(For instance we learned that 7 Bells was a saying which built out the town Lucy comes from as having 7 lighthouses to keep an eye on the surrounding sea and signal with bells to keep the monsters at bay).  We also borrowed bells to keep monsters at bay from Hilda via how they keep the trolls outside of Trollberg. In this story we're making it work because whales typically have really sensitive hearing! We're still working out ways to differentiate it, and will be looking into troll fairytales and mythos to make sure we're not taking a quirk from the writer/show vs just common troll lore. (We're also admittedly not even sure HOW MUCH this piece of lore is going to fit in to the final story).

BUT THERE'S MORE--

While this already looks like quite a bit of research, my next steps are going to be assembling atmospheric pin-boards to really start to put to paper what this world looks like. I haven't started this.... Yet. But it's next on the roster as I start to sketch out locations and reference for Tas to use (because wow she's doing all the drawing! I'm just the writer on this beast! wild!)

We've also got a few more books and movies on our roster:

• In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
• The Lighthouse (Film)
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
• Open Water (Film)
• Like a whole lot more digging and picking and poking around for information.
• We'll probably also dig up a few more documentaries about things surrounding the subject matter

(Of course, if you all have any ... suggestions for things we should take a peek at we're always curious and interested~!

I think.... that about wraps up our process so far on this beast. We have a bit or artwork but since I rambled on here I think I'll save some of the art (and perhaps some script sharing) for another post~!

Thanks for all your patience lately everyone~