New Goals for a New Book

This is PART FOUR of a series of posts about preparing for DELILAH DIRK BOOK FOUR, a new graphic novel.

What am I trying to accomplish with Delilah Dirk 4, and what do I want to to be different about the process of getting there? How will I gauge its success? The old advice is to make the book you want to read, but is that good advice?

Some would argue that it is an author’s duty to know their audience and write accordingly. I did not do that with DD1. For that book, my audience was (adhering to that old advice) myself. Primarily, I relied on my own preferences and tastes to steer the direction of the book. The rest of the direction was chosen by “listening” to the book as I was working on it, finding out what it was, seeing how it sat on the page, and responding accordingly. When it hit shelves, the publisher recommended it for middle-grade readers (ages 8-12 or thereabouts). That made sense—I was a middle-grade child when I fell in love with the Indiana Jones movies, the feel of which I was trying to recapture. It was also noted for featuring a “Strong Female Character” in the lead, something I legitimately had not considered would be a talking point. Because of prevailing gender nonsense, that meant that DD1 was most likely to be read by middle-grade girls.

Knowing this, do I design DD4 with that reader in mind? Do I tailor the book for middle-grade girls? What would that even entail? Is it presumptuous of me to pretend I know the tastes of middle-grade readers of any gender?

Certainly there are some accommodations that are easy to make. When I was ten years old, all I “knew” about the Napoleonic Wars was that Napoleon was short (apparently he was, in fact, of average height) and wore a triangular hat. I had not read Jane Austen and wouldn’t have understood it if I had. I don’t think I even knew that the boundaries of a country could change. The idea that maps were changeable was inconceivable to middle-grade me. So it would be wise to acknowledge that a young reader does not have a broad pool of historical understanding to pull from. Let’s not assume that a ten-year-old understands 19th-century gender dynamics.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to “dumb down” the work for a younger reader. That feels criminal. I remember a Calvin & Hobbes strip about Santa potentially being a ”CIA spook.” When I read that strip as a child, I did not specifically understand what a “CIA spook” was, but I spent time thinking about it. I want to respect that a reader might be willing to spend time thinking about what they read. I want them to be able to make conclusions based on context. Without knowing about the CIA, I got the joke: Calvin is suspicious of Santa’s capabilities. Ideally, DD4 would have enough narrative clarity to make it a low-friction reading experience for a young reader, and would be layered enough that later, subsequent readings reveal new depth to the story and characters. Ideally.

Aesthetically and tonally, I would like the final product to fit in with the other books in the series. I don’t want to take so much of a hard tack in a different direction that DD4 ends up belonging to a whole other family of books. Aesthetically and tonally, it should be a natural fit.

Like the previous books, I want this one to be self-contained. There will be elements that connect to other books in the series, of course, but DD4 will have its own beginning, middle, and end. No cliffhangers. Thinking back to the Sharpe and Hornblower novels that partially inspired this work, I kept reading them not because I needed to know “what happened next,” but because I wanted more new adventures of the same sort.

DD4 should have a sense of humour. It should be lighthearted and funny, if only to provide good contrast to the areas where it is darker and more serious.

I think DD4 needs more “breathing room,” relative to previous books. DD3 felt densely-stuffed, like the station wagon of a family that vacations with three children. I’d like to move in the direction of finding more quiet, or relaxed, or meditative passages. Again, this is a contrast thing: the action-packed or dramatic sequences will feel more intense when contrasted with calmer ones.

Similarly, I’d like to rediscover the spirit of The Turkish Lieutenant (DD1), which was less precious and more freewheeling. There’s a two-page spread in DD1 wherein a fisherman might be crushed by Delilah’s falling airborne sailboat, and he looks forward to his impending doom, except the sailboat’s fall is arrested and the fisherman survives, much to his disappointment. It’s a weird sort of tangent, but it’s delightful. I’d like to make room for that sort of delight again. I think I’ve been working too hard to make every page and every panel flex its muscles in favour of the storyline. The book might be better if we can give that a rest. Not to an indulgent, lazy degree, but enough that the book has DD1’s “hairy” texture; it’s a little rough around the edges, a little silly and unexpected. That’s a good quality, I think.

I’d like this book to be challenging, too. I’ve been making books the same way for too long. I don’t think I’m looking for a dramatic change in process, though. For example, over the years, I’ve been trying to lean into the fact that I do not ink the artwork, like most comics. I render it in pencil, but cleanly. When I started, I used the pencil to try to imitate an inked line. Then I tried taking advantage of what a pencil does best, adding shading and using the texture to my advantage. I could push it further, though. It would be a challenge to balance aesthetics that take best advantage of the material’s inherent qualities while not deviating so far from the series’ established style, and I’m after a challenge.

The same idea can be applied more broadly: what can I do differently? How can I surprise myself and the reader? It applies to the aesthetic, it applies to the design of the panel and page layouts. The goal is not necessarily to do anything flashy, but to maximize the expressive potential of the elements at my disposal. Line, colour, texture, value, text, panels; I am free to combine these elements in an infinite variety. I would like to do so in the best service of the story, without necessarily leaning on old habits.

Sounds good, so why not just do what I did for previous books? In the next instalment, I will explain why not, and what I plan to do instead.