Broken Frontier

Action!

Heh, I get to say that … but only in my head. When you are the writer and the creator of a story, you call the shots. Being in the writer/director’s chair is a huge challenge and responsibility, but you soon realize that no one else can push the project ahead except for you.

At the end of the day, even when you are writing, drawing, inking, coloring or lettering a work-for-hire project, the only person that calls the shots, that gets the work done is you. Sure, you can have an editor or a creator yelling down the phone or the email to get you to meet deadlines, but the reason that you were hired is because you are the only one, or the best one, who can do the work (at least until you get fired!).

So, how do you take an idea that becomes a plan and turn that into a story? How do you get the action to happen when you yell out the command—even if it is an internal monologue you are having with yourself? A lot of people will tell you that if you want to be a writer well, you have to write. So, I will carry the same logic over to creating comics; if you want to create comics well, you have to create them! You have to shout ‘Action!’ and you have to make it happen.

Getting down to business can be a difficult thing to do. We always have other worries and responsibilities, things we want to do and things we have to do, but I have come to realize that if you don’t create time to create comics, you will never create comics!

So, first things first, getting down to business means creating an environment that is conducive to creativity. Thanks to a renovation of our house late last year, I now have my own office, my own space in which to create (I would show you a photo, but our digital camera is busted). I will have this luxury at least until we have too many kids (haven’t got any yet) and my office becomes someone’s bedroom. At the moment, my office is pretty bare; there is one bookshelf that holds my trades and my fantasy novels and a few photos. Resting on the mantle piece above a fireplace is a framed 1977 vintage Star Wars poster, together with the original 1970s 12 inch Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker figures.

On my desk are photos of my grandparents and on the wall in front of me, to the left and right of the window are framed convention sketches from Marat Mychaels (X-Force: Shatterstar and Demonslayer) and my favorite artist, Rob Liefeld (Youngblood, Cable, X-Force).

How can I not be inspired?

Environment certainly helps you to get into the headspace to write. Yet getting on with the job means actually hitting the keyboard. I am an intuitive writer, something that 12 years of schooling did its best to destroy. Yet, sometimes intuition is not enough, so before I yell ‘Action!’ and I get the story going, I need to have a plan.

Before going into battle against the Death Star, the Rebel Alliance had a plan of attack, and the same philosophy should be directed at creating comics. While you don’t need an X-wing packed with proton torpedoes, you do need an idea of how you are going to approach the project.

I feel that I am what I call a method writer. Similar to a method actor, a method writer becomes consumed by the story they are writing. When I write about a young thief stealing a fairy from a wizard, I don’t script from the point of view of an outsider looking in, I write as if I am a participant in the story, seeing the action unfold first hand.

When my characters feel pain or joy, I don’t assume what they are feeling, I feel it. I draw from experiences within my own life and apply the emotions I felt at the time to the circumstances in which my characters find themselves (although this can be a little hard when your character is going head to head with a pack of rampaging dinosaurs!).

Method writing can be quite exhausting; I find it hard to get into the skin of characters or into environments of worlds that do not exist, except for in my mind. Yet, that is really what a writer is: an explorer of fictional worlds.

Once I immerse myself into this world—I like to draw maps and pictures of creatures or castles to help me to do this—the story should begin to emerge. When you understand a character, the world they live in, their motivations, their fears… well you come to know them and come to know how to write them.

Inside the Story World, or the Special World as Volger calls it, the writer and the Hero become one (or the Shadow if you are writing the story from their point of view). I prefer to write to a broad outline so that as the Hero discovers their Special World, so do I. Often things that neither I, nor the Hero, expected to occur and that is a good thing!

As you begin your creative adventure, your Hero begins their quest. Sometimes taking that first step is the hardest thing to do. Yet once you find your feet on the road of story, there is no turning back; the ‘Action!’ command has been sounded and the wheels of Story begin to turn…

Next I will begin an extended series of columns looking at making a comic happen and by that I mean putting together the creative team!

Next: Infinite Creation Crisis!