But why a comic book?

One thing I should be hitting on in other posts is how much of what you write seems inevitable and foreordained. It’s not really that you are just making things up, but you are trying to make them “right”. There are directions you could go where they would not fit. Sometimes it makes obvious sense, and sometimes it is not obvious, but you can figure it out, and sometimes I suppose it could be a complete and total mystery, though nothing comes to mind for that yet.

In picking a storytelling form, there are things that feel right and not right. “Cara” was always going to be a novel, and “Jade Mask” was always going to be a screenplay. That’s just how they felt. Sometimes it is more obvious than others. With “Between the Lines” and “Out of Step”, there are dance sequences. Trying to describe them in writing out the screenplay is hard enough, trying to get the reader to get the whole feel of it in a novel would be kind of weird. It could happen, but you have something that is visual, and auditory when you add in the music, so maybe that makes more sense filmed.

Sometimes it is less obvious. There was something I tried writing as an essay once, and it wasn’t working, because that form required more specifics, and I was trying to convey a feeling, and a more universal feeling, and then suddenly it was a poem and that worked. When I first started writing “Hungry” I struggled, and so I stopped writing it is as a screenplay and wrote it as a short story, and that worked, and then I was able to go back and write it as a screenplay.

To some extent, if it is more mental it makes sense to go with a book, and if it is more action-oriented go with a screenplay, but people come up with some really interesting things sometimes by ignoring that. Probably they could also come up with some colossal failures that way, but hey, maybe it’s the risk that gives you that rush.

Working from “Danger Days”, that material may be inherently suited for comic book form, because they’re coming out with a comic book from it, so maybe that is just the way it is. That being said, there are some specific benefits that I am getting from working with a different form, and that is working out well.

One thing that I was liking about the form starting out is that it gives you some extra freedom. Narration in a movie often feels lazy, but there are places in comics where it can totally work. In books you have to describe everything to have it be seen, but in comics you can actually show it. Together, you have more ways of conveying the point. I like that.

In my case, I also have to deal with the reality that I do not expect for this to be drawn. I will put it out there to be read, but there will not be artwork with it. Also, people who read it because they like me, rather than being fans of the band, will not be coming in with helpful background knowledge. Combining those issues. I have to do a good job of clarifying and describing in the writing.

This is where I think this project is going to be really useful. When we were studying plays in high school, one thing that was hammered into me is that the play is neutral. What I mean by that is that how the inflections are done, and what the sets and actors look like, and various details like that are blank, and then things can be decided by the director and the actors.  I got it in my head that this is how you have to write a play, and I brought that mindset into writing screenplays.

One conflict I ran into on my collaboration was that my collaborator was totally the opposite. Of course, she came from a novel-writing background, so she was used to putting in details, but she put everything in there from small facial gestures to colors and fabric types for clothing.

I felt like she totally overdid it, but at the same time I was underdoing it. One thing to remember is that the director and actor and set designer and costumer are all free to make their own changes, and from everything I have heard they totally will. However, you need to at least create a picture so there is something there to capture their interest.

Previously I would write dialogue and action, and I believe I did them well, but there was a bare minimum of description—only what was absolutely necessary for rooms and objects, and nothing on how people looked or how they felt.

I guess what I am saying is that even though I am writing this as a comic book, and what I write in the future I expect to be primarily screenplays, I will write the screenplays more like I have written the comic book.