Broken Dreams

So today I was setting up a display case of books for my Big Corporate Internship and one of the books in question was Glen Beck's latest hardcover titled Broke. And let me tell you, was that book infuriating. It just kept falling down. The spine was shoddy, the cover weight was weird. In short, it was unbalanced and poorly constructed. Indicative of the contents maybe? Well, whatever.

I had a dream last night. It was dark and cold and lonely. There was nothing around except for faint wisps of aether, floating like a fog. I had no idea where to go or what to do when there appeared a light in the distance. It blurred and became three. As it drew closer, I saw that the lights came from an inner fire belonging to the three Sworn Brothers, heroes of the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The compassionate politician Liu Bei. The wise warrior Guan Yu. The hot headed Zhang Fei. They wore sequined China Dresses split up the sides to their thighs and each held microphones daintily in one hand. To a chorus of gentle, meaningless sounds like something the Chiffons would sing performed by the stout and fearsome warriors, Liu Bei began a song in his dulcimer tones. Subttitles appearing somewhere around his belly informed me that he was saying something like "The time has come/ the mandate is yours/ let the lists live again."

It can only mean one thing. The universe itself has willed it that I, Robin Crew, inventor of Things, Stuff and Such (TSS for short, a humor column for the commuters at Fairfield U) must revive the popular Top Most Non-Existant Lists here on my blog. Look forward to it. In the meantime, my advice for Graphic novelists is long overdue.

As a disclaimar, this isn't something I trained for, nor something I do extremely frequently. A dedicated comic writer or the submissions manager at Marvel would probably be able to give you some greater detail, but I've got a few starter tips that, in my experience, have always worked out for the better.

1) For the love of God, put that sucker in Screenplay format. It's so much easier to read, you'd be amazed. If you can't afford Final Draft or Movie Magic, or don't want to throw down that kind of money (which makes sense) just grab a template for use in Microsoft Word or whatever processor you use. Trust me, it helps a lot.
2) Do not pull an Alan Moore on me. Don't be crazy and violent. Errr, no. I mean, that's a good lesson but it isn't what I mean. Alan Moore seems to forget that he's supposed to be writing graphic novels and not regular novels. He's got crazy amounts of text and extensive art direction. My writing group would undoubtedly groan to hear me give my favorite example again, but in the film Bridge Over the River Kuai, when the bride explodes, you know what the script says? Does it describe the size of the blast or splinters or anything? No. It says quite plainly "the bridge explodes." let's face it. Graphic Novels are written as scripts, it's half the finished product. Just like theater, TV and movies. It doesn't help to try and control everything, and it can actually chaffe the director/artist etc. And let me tell you, I have seen Graphic Novel scripts where the author will, within the first page, begin a seven hundred word description of a gunfight that boils down to "they exchange fire but miss." If every piece of action was used, you'd fill a twenty page comic book with nothing but tiny little panels showing each place bullets thunked into walls. This is not helpful. Don't do it.
3) If you're pitching graphic novels to agents, packagers, or publishers directly, you may not want to compare yourself to Marvel. Generally when people do that, my first response is "then why aren't you submitting this to them?" Besides which, graphic novels are struggling, and beggining to succeed at branding themselves as something beyond "mere" comic books. They were re-popularized by the lenghtier and more widely varied manga (a Japanese form of GNs) and now it is becoming common for American companies, even major publishers to produce original works as graphic novels. For instance, Big Corporate Internship is launching a series called Pulp History, which is all outrageous (but true) history. Spy stories, war stories. That kind of thing, but legitimate, honest to God non-fiction. Besides, even if you were pitching to Marvel, I seem to recall the ever-cool Peter David saying something along the lines of "Most people who submit story ideas don't understand why they're rejected. Well, they're rejected because their story amounted to 'Wolverine and Sabertooth fight in the woods. Wolverine wins. The end.'"

So until next time...uh, don't write stupid things in sloppy format, with unecessary information and send it to people who don't care?