Weekly Update - 64

Comic this week?: I think I should be able to get page 103 done by Wednesday.  I'll let you know if that changes.

Max Poster: Needs more linework.

Drawing: Page 103 (need to find some better way of doing this, because 99% of my time is really just spent working on The Next Page, but the goal is to list like... other things, if and when I have the additional time to work on them)

Playing: Cyberpunk 2077

Rambling:

As I've slowly been recovering from the hectic-ness of the move and falling back into a new art routine, I've been thinking a lot about payoff scenes.  I have a fair few scenes coming up before we end Part I of Kiva's story that are intended to deliver (what are intended to be) very strong, powerful moments.  I have questions to answer, concepts to challenge, and plot to... um... plot.

Payoff scenes are, in summary, the scenes that make your story good. They are the scenes that have to happen. They are the scenes that your readers eagerly anticipate from the get-go.  They are the scenes that make your readers exclaim, "YES!!!  FINALLY!!!" at the top of their lungs.  You can't even start watching a James Bond movie without expecting that 007 will blow something up, drive a cool car, defeat the bad guy, and get the girl.  Those are the payoff scenes.  In many ways, they are genre-defining.  They are the scenes that you cannot skip.  A romance story isn't a romance story if the starring couple doesn't get together in the end.  If they, instead, die in a murder-suicide, suddenly your romance story is a Shakespearean tragedy.

But writing a James Bond story or a Shakespearean tragedy is very different from writing a story of my own.  I'm not deluded that I'm some kind of edgy, revolutionary, genre-challenging author that's breaking the mold of writing, but with God Slayers, there certainly isn't a clear-cut model that I'm trying to follow.  I can't just look at my plot and say, "oh, right, I have to insert a payoff scene here because the formula demands it."  I don't have a formula for that.  I'm not trying to write someone else's story.  My payoff scenes surprise me just as they might surprise someone else.  They are the ones that make ME tear up when I imagine them.  They are the ones that run circles around in my head as I break down every word and every panel and make me slave over them until they reach a point where I cannot change them any further because they are as perfect as I can get them.

But payoff scenes have to be earned.  If you don't take the time to build them up, they will not have the impact they are intended to have. When your readers exclaim, "YES, FINALLY!" it's because you've been teasing them for so long.  Foreshadowing is critical for the payoff scene.  You have to get your readers WANTING that payoff.  You have to get them thinking about it.  The buildup can be a bit boring, both to read and to write, but it is important.  Your payoff scenes are used as a reward at the end of a long game.  Give them up too easily or too often, and the game is no longer fun. Hold the payoff scenes back. Keep them close to your chest. Build your readers to the point where they are begging for the thing to occur, then let them have it.

Of course, that's the ideal. That's what I strive to accomplish. It is only really retrospectively can I ever know if I succeed.