Working Methods: to Fight or to Embrace?

A while back, I wrote a series of posts talking about how much I would like to change my method of working. Now, I’m sitting down to make progress on this comic and I find myself proceeding in a very familiar fashion. This feels like the same old exercise! I wonder, how easy is it to change working habits? How hard should I work to challenge my own working habits? Is it worth it?

Here’s how things went on previous books: I started with loose notes, all over the place. Then, I cobbled them together, “put them in order.” Having processed them so, I began writing a novel-style manuscript. I’d print out the manuscript and go through and divide it into pages. Then I’d begin laying those pages out as little drawings, “thumbnails.”

For this book (the fourth Delilah Dirk book), I wanted to change things up, hoping that it would be more challenging, more engaging, and would result in a better comic. And, so far, things have been different.

Most notably, I’ve chosen to skip the “manuscript” part of the process. With this book, I will not get a 25,000-word novel as a byproduct. Even though I’ve been telling myself and others how beneficial it is to perform this step, I am wondering if that’s true. If I approach the story in a prose format, does that shift the direction of the story away from the graphic essence of a comic? Can I make it a better comic by thinking first and foremost in the essential language of comics?   

With that question in mind, here’s how I’ve been proceeding.

1. Using post-it notes, I assembled story details along a timeline. I’d never approached the story this way before, and it felt successful, because it was easy to reorder things, remove things, and add little things in when I thought of them. I chose not to worry about whether any particular addition or removal had knock-on effects later on in the story.

2. In a parallel track (referring to the post-it note timeline), I approached the story with index cards, using the “Heads/Tails” technique I’ve talked about elsewhere. This is the second time I’d tried this approach, and I liked how it reminded me to think about certain aspects at every point in the story. It was a useful exercise for brainstorming and “fleshing-out.” (Eww.)

3. This is where I’d ordinarily tackle the story as a prose manuscript. I’m not doing that, for the reasons I mentioned above. But I did feel like I needed another stepping stone between my timeline and index cards, and my thumbnails. This is it; a quickly-written note to self about how things will progress and which elements not to forget.

4. And lo: thumbnails/roughs. These are turning out more detailed than my usual thumbnails, but no where near as tidy as my roughs. I find myself doing a lot of dialogue and narration writing in the margins. I am hoping I can go straight to drawing the pages from here.

Those thumbnails look familiar to me. They’re not too dissimilar to the ones I made for DD2 and DD3. That familiarity was/is worrisome, because I told myself I wanted to do things differently. But perhaps they are a necessary part of the process. How much could I ever hope to get away from them? A comic’s gotta look like a comic.

Maybe I thought they might be more detailed or less detailed, but it’s hard to imagine them being much different. Thumbnails achieve the task of recording comic-page ideas. I want to get enough down to be able to record the ideas without dwelling on one part so much that another part evaporates from my notoriously sieve-like brain. Proceeding in this rough, quick fashion, I can put enough specific panel-to-panel information down without losing track of the larger story. When I suggest to beginner comics-makers to “start small,” this is part of what I hope they’ll discover: what is the best way (pace/style/format) to get their ideas out of their head and into sequential form. And this method of thumbnail-making is what I’ve found works best for me.

But is that true? Is that a notion that can be challenged? Can it be changed? Is it worth changing? How much effort should I put into modifying an approach that seems to work?

I’m coming at this from a background of being an absolutely raging contrarian. At one point, if you told me the sky is blue I might have gestured at the overcast weather outside and cocked a shitty eyebrow at you. (I’m sorry! I’ve been working to improve!) On top of that, at some point in my life I absorbed the idea that it is wise and good to challenge every notion; that you get strong results by tempering and testing ideas. While I’m not saying that’s a bad practice, these days it also reeks of institutionalized anxiety and toxic individuality or masculinity, though that might be overreaching.

Compare that with an approach that involves observing what comes naturally and responding to that, working with that. “Being in harmony.” Trying something, finding that it meets a need, and accepting it. Supporting it. Looking for ways to hone it. “Yes, and…”-ing your own working habits. This also seems wise and good.

As I write out the passages above, I think maybe these two notions—challenging yourself and accepting yourself—are not opposite. Maybe they’re just bends in the same pathway. I’ve lately read a little about the idea of “go slow and mend things” as a contrasting motto to “go fast and break things,” an idea that has accumulated a miasma by association with Silicon Valley douchebags. I see the former as a healing practice, the latter as a challenging practice. Maybe it's good to have a little bit of both. I wanted a different approach to making comics. So far, it has been different, though perhaps not as much as I was hoping. But maybe instead of throwing out everything that worked before, I need to be identifying the little nodes of dissatisfaction and working to heal them.

After all, my end goal is still A Finished Comic Book, and I need a stepping stone between “assembled story notes” and “final art.” I’m not willing to jump right into my big sheets of paper just yet. I know enough about this process that doing so would create more problems than it would solve. As tempting as it is to look for a miraculous discovery that will ease every burden—a disruptive new solution!—perhaps sometimes you have to recognize when to put your trust in familiar processes.

Rereading what I’ve written so far, I’m thinking “of course this is true.” So far, I don’t miss being able to refer to a novel-style manuscript. The thumbnailing process has been slower as a result, but I also feel like I’ve been moving with more flexibility. The narrative nimbleness that used to be part of the manuscript-writing process is now part of thumbnailing. Will that make for a better comic? A worse one? It's too early to say.