Writing Process, Cover Update, CH3 Inking Begins

Happy New Year!

In this first update of 2023…

• I've started inking Chapter Three!
• If you haven't done so yet, you can still vote for a cover design.
• In response to this process video, I received a question from reader Laura DP about navigating from outline to thumbnails. I answer it along with a five-star extended metaphor!
• Some recommendations for books on writing and creativity.

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CHAPTER THREE INKING BEGINS, or THE VALUE OF MOMENTUM

I am currently living through a pointed reminder of this good old advice: always leave an easy-to-accomplish slice of today's work as your first task for the next day. For example, if you're making a batch of animation background designs, instead of working to finish a background by the end of the day, save one last tree or a row of fencing (or whatever) to finish the next morning, so that you have an "easy win."

Similarly, I should have inked at least one page of Chapter Three before I shifted into holiday mode.

Now I'm standing at the foot of Mount Inking, feeling trepidation. I am shifting out of my timepiece-ignoring, cookie-devouring, eggnogg-guzzling habits AND shifting into a new craft mode (from drawing to inking). Those mode-shifts are never easy at the best of times. The combination is making it harder. I should have seen this coming but, alas, I am bad at following my own advice.

Oh well, nothing for it except to jump in. By the time you're reading this, I should have a few pages under my belt and all will be smooth sailing. (I sometimes write these Patreon posts at the start of the week for a variety of good reasons, but this week I might simply be procrastinating.)

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ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PICK THAT ONE? ;)

Thank you to everyone who's voted for a cover for DD4/PRACTICAL DEFENCE. I will not comment on the results so far because I do not want to influence anyone who has yet to vote.

I am extremely enjoying everyone's feedback and comments, especially on the theme of what does and does not "feel like a cover." I wonder: if it connects to us in a way that gives us familiar cover feelings, does that make it a good cover or a bad cover? If it looks cool but does not feel like a cover image, maybe that makes it stand out. Do I aim for familiarity or antagonism? Hard questions to know the answers to.

Additionally, Claire mentioned,

…All of the covers read a little static to me though, in contrast to the dynamic covers of the previous books…

…which is something I thought, too, but had trouble reconciling in my sketches. I want to introduce more dynamism when I move forward. It might be tricky, because all of these covers suggest "defence and protection," which naturally seem to ask for a solid, squared-off arrangement, I think, but there's got to be a way to have our cake and eat it too. Anyway, that's my problem to worry about. Thank you, Claire, for mentioning this.

There's still time to vote! 

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MAKING SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE: "WRITING" PROCESS!

After I posted this video about my thumbnailing process, reader Laura DP commented, asking,

I’m interested to know a bit more about the point just before the translation of notes into thumbnail pages. … I assume you still plan an outline where you have the main beats locked down prior to thumbnail notes? Or are the notes you showed in the video basically the outline you give yourself (I also assume you do different drafts as you work out the story) and you leave just enough wiggle room to let certain things develop in a different way than you expected?

If we can rephrase the question like, "what sort of scaffolding do you build yourself before you start illustrating comic pages," I'll describe that below. The TL;DR is: these assumptions are correct, more or less.

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CONTEXT INTERLUDE! When it comes to making comic books, I feel like I know what does and does not work for me in a lot of ways and I'm also still figuring stuff out. One of the few absolute beliefs I hold about creative pursuits and their industries is that everyone needs to figure out their own way to do things, and that, ironically, I do not trust anyone who claims to offer absolute solutions. This is all to say: glean what you will from what I can offer, but only through trial and error will you figure out what works best for you. <3

As a ten-year-old, sitting at the kitchen table, my comics-making process was: just draw each panel one-at-a-time, without the least bit of concern.

Over the years, I learned how to feel fear, worry, and self-doubt, just as most of us do. When I started the comic that became DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT, I made roughs and sketches to try to mitigate those feelings.

By the time I got to DELILAH DIRK AND THE KING'S SHILLING, I was more comfortable with long-form writing, so my process included writing a 25,000-word manuscript which I thought would let me isolate my story-related fears from my illustration-related fears. This assumption was partially correct.

As I began PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY, one of my big questions was: does the manuscript help or hinder me? I decided to skip it. For one thing, I knew this would be a multi-year project, and I wanted to leave room for liveliness and spontaneity; I didn't want to lock everything down and leave myself nothing to do except to execute the script. Maybe I could leverage the fear for my benefit. I also believed that if I did much of my "writing" in my thumbnails, the comics would feel more "natively" comicky. (I wrote much more about these choices at the start of the project).

As of this writing, I think that first notion turned out to be valuable. I'm glad I didn't try to freeze the story in carbonite two years ago (and "try" is an important, accurate word in that sentence). Whether it makes the work more or less purely comicky, I'm not sure. I think it's about the same.

OKAY SO HOW EXACTLY ARE YOU DOING IT RIGHT NOW?

The Outline. I poked through my folders to see when I started this project and the first material I have for DD4 is from the summer of 2018. I was going to say "the outline just sits in the back of my head and barely changes" but that can't be true: I forgot I originally included a whole separate frame story set in Finland.

But my key elements have stayed true. You got to have something to hold onto, right? The island, the conflict with mom, and a few other notes we haven't hit yet. If building a story is like baking a dessert, this is like saying, "I have buttermilk, two eggs, and a half a banana—what can I make?" rather than saying, "I am going to make an apple pie," and going out to buy apples. I've got a handful of images or ideas I want to include, and I'm going to include them, and the rest of the dessert better shape itself to suit.

Stocking the Pantry. Post-its! I started using them. Clever story movements, useful connections, and impactful images occur to me in the shower/during dinner/while watching Great British Bake-Off and I write 'em down on colourful sticky squares. I am a firm believer that writing down ideas does two things: it triggers my brain to start chewing on those ideas, and it makes room for new ideas. Jotting down ideas is the first step in moving a story down the mental digestive tract.

I am happy to be the first person in human history to praise the value of "making notes." Please ship my Nobel Prize to my house, I am too busy (being a genius) to collect it in person.

Some examples of these are…

• "DD in the crow's nest—she wants to see real pirates."
• "A suspicious ship is on the horizon. Dad insists they shelter at Istoria (mom's island?)," connected to another note, "they expect a warm welcome."
• "Mayor (A) is mom's brother" — in the original outline, he was just any old mayor.
• "Cold welcome from the locals… until they find out it's mom."
• A note spitballing on a concept: "Generations / Family. -This being Mom's home. -Dad was here before as assistant to envoy, met mayor, Vignelli's father then. -Mom has: brothers? A sister? Parents? --last time they were here was for her parents' funeral?"

… and so on and so forth.

They are all roughly arranged along a timeline, slotted in where I think they'll fit. It's a very casual organizational method.

One thing I know about myself is that I come up with better connections when I give everything time to "simmer" (or give the dough a chance to rise, ha ha, Nobel Prize me!). This Post-it approach provides an easy way to lean into that tendency. While I draw Chapter Three, for example, I'm leaving new notes for later chapters.

This is very zoomed-out, "outliney" writing. It's a lot of logistics and problem-solving, like "how and why can we include this tomb imagery," and, "why didn't Alexandra's parents talk to her about English Lady Demands sooner?" It also feels like where the most muscular parts of the story take form. 

Rolling Out The Dough. First, I take all the Post-its for my current chapter and I re-write them longhand on new paper. Then I start writing the story out in order. If the previous step feels like building the forceful part of the story, this part feels like finding the passion and the humanity. I didn't intend to divide it that way, and I wouldn't recommend anyone intentionally do that, but that's how it goes. 

This "script" is actions, it's dialogue, it's this-then-that, it's pacing, it's "camera angles" or imagery I want to include. Sometimes I work out the dialogue during this process, sometimes I leave it for the thumbnail. I never write panel breakdowns (i.e., "this is what's in panel 1, this is what's in panel 2"). I rarely write page breakdowns except to say things like "end the page on this beat," or "make this its own 2-page spread." 

For example, my "outline" Post-its include the notion that the Cordelia runs aground on the mole outside of Archipoli. But they mention nothing about Alexandra warning the Captain, or that the Captain doesn't listen to Alexandra. The notion, "captain doesn't listen to little girl," didn't occur to me at the outline stage, it's just an idea that seemed A) believable and B) funny when I was sitting there, acting out the scene in my imagination like I assume all writing people do.

That element—an Authority Figure treating Alexandra dismissively—then returned  as a Post-it in Chapter Two, when Alexandra compares her parents' behaviour to the Captain's. I've really enjoyed having that flexibility, I think the book is benefiting from it, and I'm glad I'm trying it instead of having baked a manuscript at the start.

And that's how I get to the written document that you see me referencing in that thumbnail video. That's how I manage fear and uncertainty these days.

The answer to Laura's question is basically, "I do enough that I feel secure moving to the next step." Sometimes I do too much, sometimes I don't do enough. I improvise. And so it goes.

For more on the topic of writing (or to double-check whether or not I'm being a hypocrite), check under the "writing" post tag, or take a look at these…

• From early 2021, at the start of this project. Lots of Post-its.
• From Fall 2021, I get a better sense of this writing process as I start Chapter Two.
• A celebration of leaving room for things to develop.
• Two posts marking writing progress for Chapter Three—the steps above, in action!

As I suggested in the Context Interlude above, when it comes to writing and comics-making, everyone needs to discover the process methods that work best for them. Part of that discovery is practice and testing, but of course there's also just asking people what works for them. After all, no one expects you to bake an apple pie by first inventing fire.

Here are some books that taught me many useful principles.

• Most recently, George Saunders' A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN. I read this in 2021 and posted about it so much that I created a tag just for him. I am a big fan of Saunders' approach, which emphasizes intuition, iteration, and honesty.
• Lagos Egri's THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING. Long my favourite. Prior to this book, I had read Robert McKee's STORY and disliked it intensely. In contrast, this felt like a much better fit. I found myself nodding and agreeing a lot, even though all of Egri's example excerpts are from plays from 1930. It all felt "true." I should revisit it.
• Stephen King's ON WRITING. Say what you will about Stephen King, I found this book to be relatable, practical, and humane. His advice to use fewer adverbs will stick with me until the end.
• Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD. This came highly recommended, and though I remember it fondly I can't mark any specific takeaways except for the one in the title. I am including it because I generally liked it and hey maybe you don't want to read Stephen King.
• Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant's WRITING MOVIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT. An excellent contrast/complement to Egri's DRAMATIC WRITING, because it's important to understand the extremes. Shorter than McKee's STORY—if you're going to read that, you might as well read this.
• Austin Kleon's STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST as well as KEEP GOING and SHOW YOUR WORK. I like Kleon's broad-based point of view on creativity. I think we agree that principles from one discipline can be mapped to many others.
• Lynda Barry's WHAT IT IS. I made the mistake of dismissing Barry because her artwork was not to my taste. Oh, what a mistake. In this book, Barry emphasizes the value of images in writing. Not illustrations, but conjuring imagery with words and deploying their strengths. I love the principles she lays out.
• I've revealed my feelings about McKee's STORY, but it would be irresponsible for me to not acknowledge that I've found value there, too. For example, his advice to not write any dialogue until the later parts of the process is really useful advice. 

Perhaps you're thinking of pursuing more creative practices in this, a New Year. If so, I recommend Barry's WHAT IT IS and Kleon's STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST as starting places. The rest are all for writing nerds.

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OKAY ENOUGH PROCRASTINATION
LET'S INK

✒️
TC