Month: July 2012

Hang around authors of fiction long enough and you’re bound to hear one or more of them express something along these lines:

“My characters have taken over my story! It doesn’t matter what I want anymore… they’re writing it for me!”

It’s entirely possible some of you reading this, being writers yourselves, have experienced the feeling personally. Sounds weird to say out loud though, doesn’t it? The sort of thing that would get you funny looks at a family gathering, much less a gathering of strangers. But in the writing world, you wouldn’t be alone– even big shots like Stephen King have been reported as saying he feels writing is more like dictation than creation.  His characters take over and he just writes down what they are saying and doing.

And if that works for you, more power to you. King’s fame and bank account certainly don’t dispute it works for him; but from my perspective, I’m not willing to go that far. The idea that you’re just taking down dictation sounds more to me like the work of a secretary than a storyteller, and I don’t cotton to those implications. Letting your characters run your story seems as dangerous an idea as a director letting their actors run their film.

Mind you, I also don’t like the idea that characters are just props and mouthpieces. I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle on this whole shebang; I can’t remember ever feeling like one of my characters was talking to me or writing for me, but they ought to have a certain sense of having lives of their own beyond what I want them to do. I’ve felt a certain amount of “pushback” if I’m putting words in their mouths or making them do certain actions that, on review, end up being questionable. Is that the same thing as characters telling me what to do? Maybe, but it’s not any sort of literal conversation occurring. It’s an internal process of give and take, and there’s two sides to it, the side of the character and the side of the narrative. In fact, I’ll revisit the actor/director comparison I made just a paragraph ago. The actor’s job is to portray their specific character as best as they can. The director’s job is telling the story that character is involved in– which often happens to be a story other characters are involved in as well. It’s not the actor’s job to think about those other characters or the structure of how the story is going to unfold. Nor should it be! They’ve got their hands full bringing a fictional being to life in a way the audience will care about, which is no easy task (trust the guy with the theater background; it ain’t).

Now you can see how that can lead to a limited perspective. Sometimes the actor is right to tell the director, “I’m not feeling these lines. Can we talk about this?” And a good director should have a listen to the concerns, but also can’t be afraid to put their foot down; they’re not only the ones responsible for the big picture, they’re in the best position to see it. Sure, the actor would love to have their character do a 15 minute monologue, but there’s no real time for it… so sorry, but we need to keep it to 15 seconds.

I won’t speak for all writers, but in my personal process, I’m constantly internalizing this whole debate. It definitely sounds like a crazy thing to say– but then again if you were watching me it would probably be a pretty boring sight of me typing… looking at the computer screen… typing some more… deleting… tapping the keyboard thoughtfully…

This is not exactly the stuff of straitjackets and  tranquilizer syringes. But I’d venture to say that ever since people started telling stories, storytellers have played with the line between fiction and reality. To make your fiction have the semblance of reality, it has to instill some sense of belief in your audience, and so at least in a temporary sense, you have to let yourself believe in it. Believe in the characters, and the world, and the conflicts occurring… but at the same time I feel like it’s a good thing–perhaps even a necessity–to keep at least part of your brain in “director mode”. Find your balance between being the puppet and the puppeteer. Let the characters breathe with the life you gave them, and if you think they’re trying to tell you something (so to speak), by all means, listen. Just remember the final decisions are yours.

Or possibly your editor’s. But that’s a whole other story.

So as some of you know, we did not manage to score a Small Press table this year for Comic-Con International. We did what we could in terms of getting our paperwork and jury submission in early, but in the end we were put back on the wait list, and this time there was no April call to bring us forwards.

Disappointing? In a sense, sure, but if you read my report from last year, I did mention how exhausting it is. Also I was hearing some disappointment from our vendor friends that we talked to, expressing a similar sentiment to that of Jeph Jacques that traffic and sales seemed down.

Does that mean we didn’t turn in our application for next year? Of course not! I mean, hey, maybe that disappointment will translate into some spaces opening up again. Or maybe not. But Dawn and I were attending SDCC for many years before we ever had our table, and it was easy enough this year to slip right back into the freedom of keeping our own schedule. Eating where and when we wanted, checking out whatever interested us… sleeping in. Oh how it was nice to sleep in again.

Also, I have to say that we had enough nasty happenstances getting there  that I’ve decided this was more blessing than curse. To begin with our car suffered a breakdown before we even got out of the L.A. area, and although the station we pulled into was kind enough to run a speedy diagnostic in hopes of a quick repair, the trouble turned out to be of the expensive and time-consuming sort. Then the car we borrowed ended up with a flat tire. Then the spare also turned out to be flat, although fortunately that was just a case of refilling it since it had never been used. Also fortunately, it was a robust enough spare to finally get us down to San Diego (and eventually back again), but by the end of it all what should have been a three hour trip became six and a half and had us arriving dirty, sweaty, and drained of energy. We were also too late to hang Dawn’s art in the Art Show and had to wait for that until Thursday morning, which we knew would be a zoo all over again. But can you imagine if we’d had to deal with exhibitor set-up on top of all that? I think my head would have exploded. Now it’s entirely possible that if we’d scored a table we would have driven down the previous day instead, but then our car might have died on us either halfway to San Diego or down in San Diego, leaving us with potentially even more stress and problems. So hey, file that under Just As Well.

Was it worth all the trouble? Well, to tell the truth… yes. It always is, and 2012 was no exception. This was possibly our most hassle ever in arriving, but we got there, and because we did, we got to do stuff like this:

That’s me there in the back, punching a demon in the mouth on the way to seeing a free Dethklok concert on an aircraft carrier last Friday. Dawn of course, is highly visible there in the front. She didn’t get to go to a lot of concerts growing up, and absolutely adores Metalocalypse, so this was kind of a can’t miss opportunity. We did not miss. It was fantastic. Oh, and then there was this:

Dawn made herself a Boot Angel costume for last year’s Long Beach Comic Con. Don’t know Boot Angel? Then you haven’t been keeping up on the latest Love and Rockets collections of the past few years, where Jaime Hernandez started weaving whimsical tales of an all-girl supergroup called the Ti-Girls. SDCC also saw the first debut of the book that collected all those episodes plus some new additions into a single volume, titled God and Science. If you click the link you’ll see Boot Angel front and center on the cover.

But anyhow, Dawn retouched the costume for San Diego since we knew all three Hernandez bros. would be there to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Love and Rockets (which I’ve gushed about in a prior article). We didn’t know if they’d be doing signings, or how mobbed they’d be if they were, but she brought everything just in case. And in the end, we not only got to talk to all of them and get their signatures on several books, but they were especially pleased at the cosplay. From Jaime’s own mouth (and I have no reason to believe he was lying), he said that in 30 years of doing what he does he had almost never seen anyone cosplay as any of his characters, and the one that he did remember was part of a contest with prizes rather than just doing it out of pure inspiration. That floored me, but also it was easy to understand why their faces lit up seeing Dawn arrive at the Fantagraphics booth. She made their day. You can’t ask for much more than that. But what the hell, while they were in good moods I gave each brother a copy of Zombie Ranch #1. Don’t judge me, we’d just been at their panel where they talked about their love of unusual stories and how they started in do-it-yourself efforts… we may not have had a table, but I still had a backpack to carry a few issues around in for just such moments of shamelessness on my part. I did the same after a nice conversation with Karl Kerschl, creator of The Abominable Charles Christopher. I don’t expect anything to come of these offerings, really, they’re more like sacrifices to my Gods… and at least I’ve stopped shaking like I did when I offered them to Scott McCloud and Kurt Busiek two years ago.

I think Dawn’s doing better, too. Just walking around with a Professional badge, you’ll get people asking what you do, and that’s a great icebreaker for telling them without feeling like you’re imposing yourself. I think being on the other side of the table has also helped a ton, because we now better understand things like trying not to “block the merch”. We said hi to a lot of friends, bought some good stuff, and had some great times. And Dawn sold her She-Ra vs. Rainbow Brite picture, of course.

Comikaze comes up in September and we’ll be back on the exhibitor side, but all in all this turned out for the best. If there’s any show where the siren call of wanting to just walk around and experience it tugs at you, it’s SDCC, and it’s a privilege these days just to be there in any capacity. We’ll still see how it pans out for 2013!

Two weeks ago I was discussing the movie Tremors, and among other things praising the characters for reacting to their situation in a “fairly realistic” manner. If you’re wondering what I mean by that, I guess the core of the idea could be boiled down to this:

– If a character puts their hand on a hot stove, and doesn’t immediately recoil from doing so, you’d better have a good reason.

“Because my script needs their hand on that stove” is not a good enough reason by itself, at least not if you’re hoping for some level of audience investment in what’s happening to the character. If you can’t figure out a decent explanation, even for yourself, then it’s a good sign it might be time for a rewrite.

Do you have to immediately spell out the explanation to the audience? That can be its own pitfall, so no, I don’t believe that’s always appropriate. What’s important is a certain sense of consistency; an internal logic of character that is at least as important as the internal logic of your world. If you’ve established someone as a timid follower, scared of their own shadow, you probably shouldn’t write them as being the first to poke their nose into the spooky abandoned house unless you’ve got an answer for that, and sooner or later are prepared to let your audience in on that answer. On the other hand, if you established someone as curious and reckless, you can treat that as a sort of shorthand for behavior that fits along those lines and get on with things.

I just re-watched Alien recently and noted a perfect example of this with Kane, who out of all the “space truckers” of the Nostromo crew has the most enthusiasm about venturing into the unknown, volunteering without hesitation to go out after the distress signal. There are people who complain that his decision to peer over an opening egg is monumentally stupid and only happens because it has to happen for the plot… and if it had been the griping, nervous Lambert in the same situation, I would agree. But it’s Kane. Is it smart? No. But perhaps even more important than your folks being smart in a manner consistent to their character, is when they’re stupid in a manner consistent to their character. Who else but Parker would have ever tried to knock a seven foot tall monster aside to save the girl? (Dallas, earlier on: “Parker – I don’t want any heroics out of you, all right?”) Not to mention Lambert had just recently saved his life in the tussle against a certain robot.

Alien works, in my opinion, because even if the characters involved are doing things you personally would never do, chances are you know some people who might react like that. It’s accessible in that way, and that lets you get involved and start to care. I think that’s why every death in Alien feels shocking in a way that most of its imitations can’t seem to capture, beyond just the blood and guts (although oh, those are still some nasty ways to go). These were people, and what’s happening to them is therefore quite tragic.

Keeping a character-driven consistency in the actions and reactions of your people is a great way to present who they are to an audience without needing to dump a ton of exposition on their heads. Deviating from expectations can also be rewarding, since I think all of us know people who have surprised us with some relationship or reaction even after we’ve known them for years. Go too far in one direction and the character seems unrealistic because they’re so “one-note”. Go too far in the other and they become a random mess. How do you capture that elusive middle ground? Hell, I’m still working on that, myself. Some readers expected Suzie to come out shooting as soon as she found the McCartys on her land. She didn’t — which I’m fully willing to say may actually have been the dumb choice under the circumstances — but if it seems like a deviation from her character all I can tell you is I don’t feel it’s an unreasonable one, both in terms of aspects of her that have been presented to you so far and aspects that haven’t.

And with all that said, it’s time to finish packing for Comic-Con! No table for us this year, but if you happen to be one of the lucky ones attending, make sure to stop by the Art Show upstairs in the Sails Pavilion where Dawn will have some great original art and prints available. We’ll be having sketch time next Wednesday before continuing the story, but I’ll be here with my blog as usual. See you then!

When this article goes live, it will be July 4th in most of the United States of America, a.k.a. Independence Day. It is the freedomest of freedom times, though mostly we just end up celebrating the anniversary of our declared separation from the governance of the British Empire with beer, barbecues, and lots of bright lights and loud noises. Even then, the freedom to blow your own fingers off with an M-80 firecracker has been curtailed by the U.S. government since the 1970s.

Your mileage may vary on whether that’s a good or bad thing, but there’s no question that Americans (and apologies to my international readers who get their feathers ruffled that the U.S. of A. has co-opted the term despite their being quite a few nations in the Americas… I’m guessing mostly because “Statesians” just sounds weird…) do love the notion of being able to choose whether or not to blow our own fingers off. In theory, I mean. Once it happens, then we wonder why the hell there wasn’t a law preventing that poor kid from blowing his fingers off, and then a law gets drafted, and then everyone still in the theory stage gets disgruntled  that the days of easy and convenient finger endangerment have passed them by.

This tug of war between individual freedom and government regulation has been going on pretty much since the country started, but in my opinion nowhere did it come into as stark a contrast as in the frontiers of the Old West. It’s what makes that particular historical time and place fascinating to me beyond just the usual trappings of cowboys and indians, gunslingers and bandits; here was a setting where laws and civilization still held sway enough that people had contracts and filed legal actions, but also knew that their best defense for their land claim might end up being a loaded shotgun. The movers and shakers of distant big cities exerted a subtle but long reach. More local powers in certain areas could exert an immense influence that became almost a law unto themselves, at least until a “bigger fish” decided to take an interest.

A telling crossroads of savagery and civilization is in that old chestnut of the bandit gang “robbing the mail”, which didn’t mean they were after your letter to Aunt Ethel back in New York, but the cash payrolls that were being transported along with it. Outside of civilization, cash, letters of credit, etc. have no value beyond the paper and ink they’re printed with. If the Old West were a truly lawless and savage place, then you’d reckon the bandits would be after something they could actually eat, wear, or use, and cut out civilization as a middleman.

Now, I’ll admit this is not a wholly unique circumstance, as any highwayman of 18th Century England would happily explain as he took your jewelry. But there is also a certain inherent “bigness” to the Western United States that added to that sense of freedom, for those who preferred answering to no one but themselves. It didn’t mean you were an outlaw, because you really could ride off somewhere that no one had laid claim to. Even today, there’s that whole wistful ideal of “no fences”.

But then again, what happened once someone had found a place with no claims? Well, they tended to lay claim to it, and they tended to want a way to formalize and represent that claim, especially once other people got wind that there was a nice spot of potential out beyond where they were. And if you’re any student of human nature, you know that when two people can’t agree on something, there’s generally three options: they come to blows, or one party gives in, or they take their case to a third party whose authority they’re willing to accept.

That third party is exactly where government starts. And recording the decision is where paperwork starts. But the settlers of the Old West didn’t have to figure all that out from scratch, they’d already grown up with it, and to a certain extent also had the ability to govern themselves.  Townspeople couldn’t agree? Let’s take a vote! The setup of the American government tended to repeat itself even on the fringes. A town might elect a mayor or alderman, but his word wasn’t law without the support of the people. People who tended to be independent-minded, resourceful, and always looking to better their lot… otherwise, they’d have stayed where they were.

The Western frontier was a place packed full of folks seeking Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, often at the risk of Life; and the echoes still resonate to this day, if nothing else in the international stereotype of seeing Americans as reckless, whooping cowboys.  The reality was far more complicated than just that, but no less fascinating.