Morning from the brackish coast of Vancouver. Its been a minute since I’ve sent one of these. To be honest, over the past few weeks its completely slipped my mind. I’ve been spread pretty thin over the last month, juggling a few major life things that are varying degrees of demanding. But, I’ve worked through the worst of it (for now at least) so we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Things have been good. Despite the general insanity of the world I’ve found myself in a healthy relationship with the pandemic lifestyle. Getting up early and reading, getting a walk in during the day (or multiple if I need to do a lot of context switching), and dramatically reducing my time online. I’ve been watching a steady diet of films and reading lots of great fiction.
This week we’re talking about crafting deeply human characters. The release of Undone by Blood or The Other Side of Eden #3. What I’m watching: Under The Silver Lake, In The Earth, and Lee Chang Dong’s Burning. Also some general musings on the comics industry as we can never get enough of that.
Writing Craft:
Crafting Deeply Human Characters
Over the past few weeks, I’ve outlined two new comic series with one thing on my mind: character. In many ways, for me, a new book is starting all over again. A chance to do something different, flex a different set of muscles, or scratch an itch you didn’t know was there.
So for this round of projects, I’m interested in simple character driven stories that are free from complex world building. That are firmly set in the “real world” devoid of any miraculous technology or inventions. Stories about deeply human people trying to connect with others in a world that does everything to push them apart. I know that’s vague but I can’t really clarify until these books get announced in 2022. So this will have to do for now.
Due to the manic pace of comics, I feel like people don’t always get the time to think about their characters. They focus on plot or genre (which are both important but mean nothing if your character isn’t interesting or fully realized).
I’ve boiled down a few things that make interesting characters to me:
Multiple dimensions.
Desires, dreams, and flaws.
A unique voice.
You fill in all the details of their life and you don’t settle until they feel real. If you do this correctly, there will be a point where you’re writing and the character will actively pull you away from your carefully constructed outline. Their agency will be too much to resist.
Multiple Dimensions
People are more than one thing. They are not defined solely by their job or profession but often have a desire to be something more than what/who they are currently. A good character will have multiple things that help define them. These dimensions to their personality will inform the decisions they make throughout the narrative.
It’s not enough to say someone is an artist. Go deeper. They’re a painter. Educated at a certain University with a certain type of program. Maybe they’re a fine artist who believes the market for their creations has been destroyed by Corporate mega companies. They believe that artistic integrity matters above all else. But they do work for giant corporations for the visibility. Perhaps they’re a voracious reader, an animal lover, an environmentalist, a meat eater. Some of these things should be contradictory because people don’t make logical sense.
If you drill down on these different dimensions it’ll allow you to create opportunities to test your character’s beliefs. It’ll allow you to bake tension into a character from page 1. A character at war with themselves is exciting to follow.
Desires, Dreams, Flaws
This plays into the previous segment. But a character must have a clear desire. More conventionally this is called a goal. It’s the very plot-centric dimension of a character but it doesn’t have to be. It’s what drives them through the narrative and pushes them to make choices. A character should have a clearly stated desire and should be tested in ways that are difficult for them to overcome. What are they willing to do to get their desire?
Dreams. These are less tangible and usually work out to be the intention of pursuing their goal. But it can be more than that. It’s important for your character to have some sort of idealized version of where they’re heading (even if you don’t state it). These dreams will help define their relationship to the outside world and in turn define their relationship to themselves. Dreams help us rationalize our decision making. They make sense of sacrifice or moral compromise.
Flaws. Everyone fucks up. It’s just that simple. No one is perfect and I think there’s been a huge push in recent years to define characters by being a perpetual fuckup or calling for a “flawed character” but that doesn’t mean anything to me. A flaw isn’t something like "I murder people who deserve it.” It’s something more akin to “I don’t think things through” or “I refuse to take responsibility for my choices”. These flaws should be apparent when you’re trying to block your character from achieving their goals. There is nothing more frustrating than undermining yourself.
A Voice.
If your character sounds like everyone else in the narrative, then something is horribly wrong. The dialogue your character speaks should sound like it could only come from them. If they only speak in generic platitudes, it’ll feel indistinct and ill defined. Most people have a certain cadence or rhythm to the way they talk. Pay attention to the ways you can phonetically represent different speech patterns. Try to reveal character through dialogue whenever possible. Most people aren’t direct about their feelings - how and why does your character use dialogue to deflect? How do they use it to probe?
Feeling Real.
Flesh your characters out. I tend to give a protagonist multiple pages of prose history that defines everything in their life: taste in music, food, film, etc. I define past traumas, memories they return to, relationships they return to, relationships they try to avoid. Their family history. Where they were when major life events happened to them… the list goes on.
Everyone has a complex history. They have the facts about their life. Then they have the interpretation of those facts. I often flesh out an “objective” history of the character that works as a list of concrete facts about them. Then I work to create a “subjective” history of those facts. How does the character interpret these things about themselves. What are the lies they tell themselves about themselves?
That’s how you get real emotional character conflict.
In conclusion.
Characters should be complexly fleshed out but simply related. It’s a difficult dance but if you do the work up front - your character will come across seamlessly throughout the narrative.
Comics
Self-finance your ongoing
The main thing that most people don’t consider about the vast majority of ongoing comic series is that they are almost entirely self-financed. If you’re reading this and want to break into comics to write your 50 issue mega opus, I’ve got bad news for you: no publisher is going to pay you for that.
Early in my comic writing career, this is a trap I’ve found myself falling into over and over (truthfully, I did it again with I Breathed A Body but that’s a story for a different time. Maybe after folks read the final issue). The realities of the current comic book market are such that most publishers are only interested in acquiring intellectual property rights. Releasing comics is almost a side business to the shopping of IP to Hollywood producers. Which means, once you’ve told a complete story (ie: five issue miniseries) they have all they need to capitalize on the story and immediately shift to recoup the loss of releasing the book. There is no marketing strategy for the trade. There is no plan for the long term viability of the story. There is no plan for supporting the creative team.
I don’t think it’s a secret that most comics don’t make money. Or at least, they don’t make back the advance that’s paid on them. There are plenty of exceptions to this (a few of my comics among them) but as a general rule: your miniseries won’t be a long term money maker. Most publishers treat comics like lottery tickets. They are willing to take the loss if they could potentially get a lucrative adaptation deal. Which is why many publishers are in the business of releasing countless #1 issues but not many #6’s.
When you look at a model like that you’ll see an alarming trend: these publishers who claim to love and adore comics - don’t really want to spend the time building strong lines filled with steady sellers. They’d much rather keep buying lottery tickets because eventually one will pay out. The IP is paramount to all else.
So it’s rare to find a publisher that’s willing to invest in a book and support it long enough to build a steady audience of dedicated readers. There are a few books out there working on this model and it’s totally refreshing to see. Vault is making strategic innovations in it’ line with smart moves that back successful titles over multiple years. As a publisher, they seem to understand better than anyone else that if you spend time building a dedicated audience and invest in comic shops that investment will return to you in kind (it just may take some time). But what you get in return is a dedicated audience. An audience can be appealed to, an audience can be activated, an audience can be pushed to another title. But audiences take time and commitment to build.
If you look at a publisher like Image. Most ongoing titles are made without any sort of advance. They are made by teams with a strong idea and a commitment to invest in themselves. It’s why you don’t see many new creators making a long term commitment to a huge ongoing - they simply can’t afford it.
Truth is, many many publishers haven’t left behind the Marvel/DC mentality. They are much more interested in investing in IP than individual creators. To them, the IP will always be the thing of value and the creators will be secondary.
So don’t pitch your big ongoing comic on the “lets see how the first five sell” mentality. It’s almost never worth it.
UNDONE BY BLOOD or THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN #3
Tomorrow marks the release of Undone By Blood #3. With this issue Silvano and Bud are on the run after their heist went sideways. We’re thrown into a dust storm and we’ve got more hard boiled eggs that a human stomach can handle. While Solomon’s side of the story starts to get a little more experimental and takes an unexpected detour that fans of the first arc will adore.
Like previous issues, Sami and Jason are a force to be reckoned with here. Look at this two page spread. It’s end-to-end gorgeous and features some spectacular storytelling choices from Sami.
It all goes down tomorrow. See ya there, pardner.
Zac On Cinema
UNDER THE SILVER LAKE - A criminally underseen neo-noir from David Robert Mitchell (It Follows). The film follows Sam (Andrew Garfield) who sets out to investigate the sudden disappearance of his neighbour (Riley Keough), only to stumble upon an elusive and dangerous large-scale conspiracy.
I watched this over the weekend and was blown away by its style and unpredictability. In many ways it feels like the perfect companion piece to PTA’s Inherent Vice - it’s a twisting neo-noir steeped in paranoia. The key difference is Under The Silver Lake has an air of boredom (or mumblecore) to it and knows what you’re expecting of it - so it does everything to defy that expectation. As a result it ends up being one of the finest post-modern detective stories every put to film. I can’t recommend it enough.
IN THE EARTH - Ben Wheatley’s micro-budget eco-horror movie completely floored me. It’s not perfect but manages to do so much with very little that I can’t help but admire it. The film follows Martin, a scientist who’s sent to a research outpost located in an unusually fertile forest area. He must make the journey on foot but the trek into backcountry goes horribly wrong.
What ensues is an incredibly tight film that muses on our relationship to nature in the face of a rapidly changing world. It also features some really smart uses of limitations to create horrific scenarios. There’s a scene with a strobe light in here that floored me. And hell, it’s got some great science on Fungus and the Mycelium networks built into the roots of trees. See it and commune with something greater than yourself.
BURNING - Lee Chang-dong's Burning is a slow burn psychological thriller that evolves into full blown noir. The film follows an aspiring young novelist, Lee Jong-su who one day runs into Shin Hae-mi, a childhood neighbor and classmate who he barely recognizes. The film centers around their evolving relationship and exercises restraint at every turn, so much so that you’re never sure who or what to trust.
Filled with beautiful shots of Korea and tension to spare the film provides just enough to keep you guessing but never enough to get comfortable about where the narrative is heading. It floored me with its understated but powerful performances.
It’s also got an incredible original score by Mowg. Which I now listen to all the time.
tiny scabs
A collection of interesting things for you to read, if you so choose.
Endless scrolling is making you sick. I definitely feel this. I get up every morning and essentially refuse to look at my phone until my workday has started. The temptation to lay in bed and endlessly scroll is too much and it makes me feel foggy brained and unable to focus during the day.
How eco-fiction may save us all. This one really resonates with me as it’s something that is a conscious theme in almost everything I’m working on this year. We can, and we should, use fiction to talk about the ongoing climate crisis and educate readers in subtle ways about how to make meaningful interventions.
This week’s playlist:
Peace
Make space for yourself because no one else will. Take time to unplug and practise being completely unavailable for a few hours.
I know the world is crazy right now.
You’ve got through worse, you’ll get through this too.
Z - 05/18/21
Excellent update! I really enjoyed OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 3. Awesome storytelling, really enjoyed the twists and turns in this issue. And the recognition of Sol's name by someone else. He really is the bad man he seems to be.
Love what you are talking about as far as building characters. I think it really comes through on the page and in the dialogue when you build a full background and really know your way inside the character. Even if that stuff doesn't actually make it on the final page, it shines through to the reader for sure.
Thanks for the thoughtful updates! Keep being awesome!