Month: April 2013

The past few weeks this blog has been pretty heavy on the “business” side of my experiences, so I figure it might be about time to get back to discussing more creative matters. The idea of tropes raised its head again in the comic commentary recently, and this time for once it wasn’t me bringing them up but readers. Of course, at least one of them seemed a bit critical of the choice to have Muriel suddenly reappear for one last confrontation between villain and hero, considering it a played out sort of thing.

Now first, oddly enough, when I went to good ol’ TV Tropes to try to find the entry governing such matters, I couldn’t locate one. If it’s common enough for some to consider it tired out, you’d think it would have the good grace to be easier to find!

That is, by the way, free license for any of you reading this to roam forth and succeed where I failed… I didn’t look too hard. But even if it really isn’t there right now, I’d be the first to argue it’s perfectly worthy of a YKTTW attempt. YKTTW stands for “You Know, That Thing Where…” and is basically the way tropes get put forward as possible additions to the site, where they can be refined for consumption, or (as happens more often than not) outed as already being present on TV Tropes in some form. It means some patience and effort on the part of the sponsor, but it’s a fairly decent editorial process. I ran the gauntlet myself awhiles back when I put together an entry on people in fiction being able to hear each other perfectly no matter the circumstances, which I cunningly(?) termed Acoustic License.

I digress, however. Villain rises again for a last shot at the hero, sometimes in what is felt to be a far-fetched fashion. My gut tells me that yes, this is a Thing. As for my use of it? Well, from my perspective I didn’t find it out of the blue, since everything I’d shown (or more importantly, not shown) since the last time we saw Muriel left the question of her survival open. I myself know exactly what happened in that smoke cloud at the end of Episode 6, and what she did after, and even though the audience may never see it, that was enough for me to move forward with the narrative as planned.

And from a writing perspective, that’s just something you sometimes have to do. Sure, you can seek feedback from all manner of different folk and look at all manner of different approaches others have used for similar subject matter, but in the end the decision and the burden rests on you. And you’ll have to face the fact that not everyone will be happy with the direction you go.

This isn’t the first time a reader has questioned an aspect of the story or the behavior of a character, and it won’t be the last. It’s not the first time a trope has been invoked, and it won’t be the last. If you read no other article on TV Tropes as an aspiring writer, you should read the one I linked last week, but shall link again here: Tropes Are Tools. Hell, I recommend it for everyone. If you don’t want to take the time, the basic principles are that Tropes Are Not Bad, and Tropes Are Not Good… and no work of fiction can exist without them.

As with all tools, skill and experience play a role in the product created… but there’s also always a subjectivity involved in the creative arts. As far as comics go, for instance, there are many, many people who regard both Watchmen and Batman: Arkham Asylum as masterworks. And yet Grant Morrison was on record as considering Watchmen “the 300-page equivalent of a 6th form poem” (in U.S. terms, basically saying it was a college freshman effort at best), and Alan Moore in turn described Arkham Asylum as “a gilded turd”.

Truly, one man’s trash can be another man’s masterpiece, eh?

This doesn’t invalidate criticism, but it’s something to keep in mind. Mark Evanier, who I’ve mentioned before, is fond of saying that there are two truisms involved in any piece of creative work that achieves popularity: someone will declare it the worst piece of crap that’s ever crossed their radar, and someone else will be so impressed they’ll steal it and try to pass it off as their own.

For the record, I’m not considering Zombie Ranch a masterwork, or even all that popular. I work with my tools, and I do the best I can in the manner in which I feel best serves the story we want to tell. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have been disappointed along the course of that, whether or not they chose to express their disappointment vocally (well, as “vocal” as you technically can be in written forms). Even those of you who have stuck around probably have your own hopes and dreams of “What happens next?”, which may not jibe with what I have cooking. Every new comic comes fraught with the peril to underwhelm at least a portion of the audience… but if I spent my time worrying about that, I could never get the story told at all. Tropes are tools, and a writer should be aware of them, and perhaps even a little afraid of them, the way one would be cautious handling any potentially dangerous substance… but never to the point of trying to avoid them. That’s just troping against trope, and while I suppose that is also a Thing, it’s not a particularly productive one.

Last week I went over my reasons for why Dawn and I have become leery of submitting to paid entry contests involving our creative work. Even if they’re not intended as scams, some of them just seem like little more than what could be termed “vanity awards”, where if you rise to the top of the heap you get to put a little logo on your comic or whatnot – “Winner of the 2012 Golden Shuzbut Award for Best New Fiction!”

Sounds impressive, unless of course you’re dealing with an industry professional who asks, “What the hell is the Golden Shuzbut Award?”, and even more embarrassingly may follow this with the further question, “Why should I care?”. How does the fact you won this Golden Shuzbut have any more bearing on your credentials as a creative artist than that mug you received for Christmas last year with “World’s Greatest Nephew!” ?

Well, if you were the World’s Greatest Nephew of Steven Spielberg, that might be something, but let’s stay away from nepotism for the time being. The point is that even if you win the contest you paid to enter, the end result might well be no more impressive to the world at large than if you’d just taken your money to an engraver and had a nice plaque made with your name and “#1 Artist!”

The question of whether or not a contest is worth being part of is such a big one that the Writer Beware site of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has an entire section devoted to helping aspiring writers make the judgment call. Just having an entry fee doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth the time, but there are other pitfalls to consider as well.

For instance, winning can have far worse consequences than just receiving a consensually insignificant award. Much, much worse.

You might win a contract.

Well, wait… how is that bad? Isn’t the whole point to garner some fame, recognition, and (hopefully) money? A guaranteed contract with people who will promote you and your ideas to the world sounds like the perfect reward!

This is where it gets sticky, though. What are the terms of this contract? And does participating in the contest mean you have no right of refusal should you win? That’s a big red flag to look out for, because you could be locked in legally just by signing up, and you may not like the end result.

In general, I think independent artists nowadays understand that copyright is an important thing and not to be given up lightly. But just recently a fellow webcomicker brought to my attention a contract award where the organizers made a big deal of the artist retaining their copyright… but their company will control exclusive commercial distribution rights, in all forms, for the next eight years. The artist will enjoy 20% of the net profits of those enterprises.

Which still might sound pretty tempting to a person struggling to pay their rent, right? The problem is you might be giving up a lot for very little. “Net profits”, for example, are not the same as “gross profits”, and there is a very clear illustration of why they are risky to have in your contract at this link. One of the highest grossing movies in history, Return of the Jedi, is making some people very rich and leaving others very poor, and the reason why is right there in the term “highest grossing”. Due to Hollywood accounting shenanigans, it’s still considered unprofitable, which in this case is to say that it made no net profit once the ahem, “operating expenses” were tallied.

That’s pretty sobering to consider, but hey, at least Peter Mayhew has some fame and still gets to be a special guest at conventions, right? He was part of something really special and has fans all over the world, even if he never got rich off of it.

Well, consider this. In the case above, they are paying you exactly zilch for the potential to profit off of your idea. In fact, I believe you do have to pay to enter the contest, but even if you didn’t, the key term here is “potential”. What happens if they just decide to sit on it and do nothing? Was there any clause requiring them to actually do something with the property? Sure, people get paid by film companies wanting to option the rights to their ideas all the time, and a lot of times those companies don’t end up doing anything with it. I have one friend whose graphic novel has been optioned not just once, but twice by different film companies, the second picking it up after the first sat on it for too long and the rights expired.

Is he angry that he never got to see his ideas make it to the silver screen? Nope. If the second company doesn’t do anything for long enough, the rights expire again, and every time another company comes to him with an option deal, he gets paid thousands of dollars again. You’ll notice there’s two important factors at work here, though, which is that he’s getting paid up front, and the terms of expiration aren’t eight years, but the standard 12-18 months the film industry works with.

Also, hell, the whole legal structure of “optioning” is different. Optioning is not so much buying the rights as buying a window of time where they have the exclusive right to cut a further deal, assuming they can put a production together. If they can’t, that’s their fault and they gave you thousands of dollars for nothing. Too bad for them, but great for you, especially if another suitor comes knocking.

Now I admit I haven’t gone over the contest contract with a legal expert, but these organizers don’t sound like they’d be out thousands of dollars if they did jack crap with what you gave them. You might say it’s in their best interests to at least try, but how hard will they try? For how long? All eight of those years? Sure, you still own the copyright to your work, but how much does that matter if the only way you’re legally allowed to profit off it is through them, and any net profits (much less 20% of net profits) may never exist at all even if the IP proves very popular? I’m guessing since you still own the copyright you might be able to give your work away for free, but you better not have so much as one Project Wonderful ad on your website.

Commercial distribution in all forms is a pretty draconian clause, when you think about it. Are they really the best company possible to handle every potential licensing agreement for the next several years? Games, books, movies, comics, action figures, maybe even potential media that hasn’t even surfaced yet? Again, you at very least signed away your right to deal with movie companies yourself, now all that tasty option money is theirs and you don’t get a dime.

And even if they are completely sincere about making you and your work the next big thing, there’s the spectre of a company going bankrupt and being bought by someone else. Eight years is a long time, particularly where a new venture is concerned, and unless there are specific clauses in your contract, it does not expire because it changed hands, and the new owners may have even less interest in promoting you.

It’s possible with terms like this that you could still get lucky, but if you don’t, you might end up just as broke and unknown as you are now, and with the added burden that you no longer are the sole custodian of that wonderful idea you nurtured. Even promises of copyright retention aren’t enough to just nod and sign, and you had better be very aware of the terms & conditions you’re agreeing to just by entering, which might in some cases be as good as signing that contract in blood in the eyes of the courts.

If you win, of course. But sometimes, it does seem like winning can be far worse than losing.

In case you trip over my pretentious (and possibly inappropriately used) Latin here, the basic translation is “I do not wish to contend”, or more simply, “no contest”. The term mainly comes up in U.S. courts where a defendant chooses to accept conviction on the criminal charges filed against them without actually admitting guilt, even though it pretty much still counts as a guilty plea. It’s complicated. I don’t claim to understand it.

But I’m tempted to start using the phrase at conventions, though obviously not quite in the same sense. At WonderCon we had some very nice, enthusiastic people come by our table, and they seemed very interested in our work. They also handed us a flier advertising their awards contest, encouraging us to enter.

Now I want to emphasize that I believe (or at least am willing to give the benefit of doubt) that their praise was genuine, but as they wandered on at last, I turned to Dawn and remarked under my breath, “I wonder how much this one costs?” It was a bit of an in-joke since we’d dealt with a group last year that on two occasions gushed over Dawn’s artwork and asked her to enter their art competition, both times neglecting to mention there was a hefty entry fee. You must forgive me if I’ve grown a bit skeptical in the wake of that.

Besides, when I logged on to check out the contest site, I found: you guessed it, a hefty entry fee. In fact it was even stranger because that fee only got you considered for one “Best Of” and one limited category, and then you had to pay further fees to get consideration beyond that. For example, you submitted your work to the Film section, and could ask to also be considered for “Best Director” as part of your initial fee… but “Best Actress”, “Best Screenplay”, etc. were separate buys.

I’m not suggesting these contests are all scams. I know movie companies spend quite a bit to get looked at by the Oscars (though I’m not sure if that’s promotional or if there’s fees to even be looked at), but we’re usually not talking the Oscars, or even the Eisners. There’s no fee I know of for the Eisner Awards, aside from production and shipping costs in getting copies of your work to the judges if you’re nominated. Same for the Russ Manning Award, which we went ahead and submitted Dawn for this year. Does she have a chance of making it to nomination stage? Maybe, maybe not, but all it cost us so far was a print copy of one of our comics, an envelope and a stamp. And these are awards that have at least some pedigree to them, that have been running for years or even decades.

The entry fee contests I’ve been referring to are relatively new fish, even to the point of being first year start-ups. Sure, everything’s got to start somewhere, but if you’re insisting on cash up front I’m going to be a bit leery no matter how much in the way of exposure and good times you’re promising. And if you or your volunteers / minions / whatnot cruise conventions telling artists they’re fantastic and they’ve surely got what it takes to win, can you at least be up front about the fact that they need to pay to play? Otherwise it comes off a bit like the nice lady who tells you how handsome you are and how much she’d love to date you, then when you get excited informs you it’ll be fifty dollars for the first twenty minutes. Weird stuff extra.

Again, not accusing anyone of scamming. I honestly think most “scams” that occur aren’t professional criminal operations so much as they come from an unfortunate convergence of naive organizers and naive clients. Out of sheer enthusiasm, the organizers make promises they can’t really deliver on, the clients buy into the dream, and then as crushing realities set in there’s a panic, everything collapses, and no one’s happy.  This does not always happen, but it happens enough that as one of the potential clients it pays to be wary, even if the person you’re talking to seems like the most sincere fan of your work *ever*. I mean, if that’s really true, shouldn’t they just feel the honor of having you be part of their contest outweighs any paltry fees? I don’t want to come off as arrogant there, I’m just saying if you butter someone up that much and then hold out your hand for money, you may be sending the wrong message. Maybe that’s exactly why no one wants to do that last part in person, they just want to get you to their contest website and… I dunno… hope the lingering afterglow of the interaction causes you to open your wallet.

The fact is that even if someone is 100% sincere and 100% confident of their organization skills, there are a lot of genuine scams that use the contest format, and scams tend to have “payment up front” as a vital component of their model. There’s an uphill struggle to overcome that stigma, and if I feel right off the bat that someone wasn’t being fully honest with me, it severely hampers my enthusiasm for taking a chance on what’s already an untested venture of dubious value.

In fact, I’m pretty much at the point where “pay to enter” just means I’m not interested. Maybe we’ll miss out on some genuine opportunities because of that stance, but a long-time professional like Mark Evanier will tell you the #1 rule is “They pay you, you don’t pay them“. Mr. Evanier was referring specifically to writing, not contests, but if you read that linked A Writer’s Life article he does mention the idea of contests and (spoiler alert) does not have good things to say. I don’t imagine there’s any contest out there that would pay me to enter it (for reasons of conflict of interest if not good taste), but unless it’s something exceptionally prestigious and established I don’t think I should have to pay them either, and then only a reasonable fee for processing. If their prizes and/or infrastructure are contingent on getting entry money, that’s just even more reason to run away (screaming and flailing optional, but encouraged).

Whether it’s a matter of malice or inexperience, the end result is often the same. So while it’s great to hear they love my work (or Dawn’s), if there’s a fee to get it considered by whatever panel of experts they’ve put together, chances are that we must enter our plea of No Contest.

I think I’ve mentioned before how lately I’d gotten somewhat pessimistic going into convention appearances. There have been occasions of terrible sales, terrible boredom, and on a couple of occasions a deadly combination of both, and running into one of the latter when you go in bright-eyed and full of hope is a disastrous toll on the soul. So I suppose it’s a defensive measure, right? Expect the worst, be pleasantly surprised when it’s not as bad as you expected. Much better than the other way around.

I should probably try to mitigate this attitude, since it makes the pre-convention travel and setup more unpleasant than it needs to be. Also I look at some of my convention reports from 2010, for example, and see how happy I was just to have a table regardless of any issues… I figured at some point I’d start to get jaded about things. Has that happened? After three years, I think you do have to consider yourselves as maybe moving beyond the “starter” stage where you can just shrug off the expenses as being made up for by promotion/networking rather than profits. That was part of our recent decision to scale back from non-local conventions after we do Phoenix this year.

Or will we?

That decision was based on the fact that we just never seemed to be able to do much more than make back our expenses reserving a table, and sometimes not even that much. Again, not something we realistically expected at first, but by our third year I admit to getting antsy. WonderCon 2012 was a particular sore spot where our sales totals didn’t justify the table, much less the gas, parking, or anything else. Emerald City 2012 was much better, but despite that put us much more in the red what with plane travel and such being involved. Had it been local it might have been a different story, but that was my same lament for this year, plus our sales saw almost no increase and that seemed to be a bad sign.

And we just couldn’t seem to make the numbers work at a local con, at least until Long Beach last November. I’ll still call that one a beacon of hope, both for us and for the convention itself, but before I got too celebratory I wanted to get another good show going. When Emerald City didn’t improve over the previous year, I started doubting again…

WonderCon Anaheim 2013 hit like a bolt from the blue. I can’t even begin to grasp at what went right, but… things went right. Do we finally have a good enough spread of merchandise? Have we finally gotten our table set-up worked out to maximum effect? Or was this just an amazing fluke?

We more than doubled our best sales total ever. Ever. It was like fate decided that it had had enough pessimism out of me, thankyewverymuch, and provided us with a weekend of unassailable success. Shut up, Clint, and take their money. Combined with the relatively low overhead of a local show, we might have actually made a profit on this one… or at least broke even. I’ll take being able to break even.

The next big question will be how the one day Long Beach Expo does for us, and then of course how things go at Phoenix. Could Phoenix possibly be good enough to us that we balance the expenses of being there? Before this weekend, I would never believe it. Now? Maybe.

The thing is, every convention is a bit of a crap shoot, even when it’s the same show on a different year. The date matters. Your position on the floor matters. The organization of the show matters. All of these can be variables, and you never know when you might end up with a booth that has a support pillar stuck in the middle of it that screws your usual sweet set-up. I did have a conversation at Emerald City with a friend who has been at this far longer than we have (but still has a day job), and asked him how they made the ends meet every year… and his response was that you can never be 100% sure how things will go, but hopefully the shows you do well at will at least balance out those that are disappointments.

This year’s WonderCon has given us our first taste of being able to do really, really well, and Long Beach and Emerald City weren’t shabby. We’ll see how the rest of the year goes.