XVII: Lost In The Creepers
Spinning green silk, fine blades slide along your arms, opening your arms to the trees.
This is the seventeenth edition of The Voice In Your Head Is Mine. The date is September 7th, 2020. If you're receiving this email and have no idea what's going on, well, fuck. I guess I blew it. Or maybe you blew it. Either way, you're here and this is Zac Thompson's weekly newsletter.
It’s early Monday morning. I just spent three days camping in the B.C. backcountry with my partner and it was the most incredible experience. We hiked in with everything on our backs, up a mountain trail over shitty terrain for about 3 km. We got to a lake and made camp for the night. Everything was pack in, pack out. So it was a new experience doing an intense hike with 30lbs on my back but I loved every minute. There was no cell reception, only a few other campers, and the trails were absolutely gorgeous. The second day we hiked over two mountains to a second lake, bouldering the whole way over switchback trails, finding and purifying our own water, while also foraging for wild mushrooms. It was everything I needed to end my summer.
Now my whole body hurts and I’m ready to return to work.
Thank You
A small aside to everyone that picked up LONELY RECEIVER this past week. It was far and away the most successful book launch I’ve ever had. I was blown away by how many people picked up the book and just how much it resonated with people. We thought we were taking a risk with a weird sci-fi horror romance, but people really showed up.
Thank you to everyone who had nice things to say, who picked up the book, those that reviewed it, those who gave me feedback on early drafts - it’s all a little surreal that this is finally out in the world.
Issue #2 hits October 7th and it’s somehow even weirder than #1.
The Emotional Hook
So I just wanted to briefly talk about something I’ve been thinking a lot about in my own writing. I suppose I’ll call this The Emotional Hook. The idea that in whatever story your telling readers have to have a very clear indication about what your character cares about and what drives them through the story. This usually boils down to people telling you that your character needs to be relatable. But that’s such a broad and sweeping distinction that I feel like it misses the mark for me.
The Emotional Hook should be something that feels true. A kernal of your own experience or interpretation of the world reflected through the lens of your character. Something vulnerable and something that you’re not super comfortable putting out into the world. Something that speaks to the deep longing inside yourself that feels inconvenient or complicated to express. That degree of your own experience will inform readers connection to your character (or characters) in a way you simply can’t replicate.
Grant Morrison’s Animal Man grounded Buddy Baker’s insane body horror journey in moments of family strife. A longing to be a better father/husband dovetailing with a longing to be a better hero. As insane as this book gets, that’s the emotional hook that centers the character.
Some versions of this will be more heightened than others but the general thrust remains the same: give your characters some element of yourself or your world view (or the inversion of it). Communicate it succinctly and clearly. Allow people to understand what guides this character, what pisses them off, what they’re struggling with and ensure that it’s something profoundly human. If you land your emotional hook correctly then people will basically follow you into hell.
Once you’ve laid down an emotional hook your story can blossom into whatever weird shit you want to pull off. But people need steady ground under their feet. They need to know who they’re going on a journey with and they need to at least relate to some of the emotions displayed by the characters. Too often, stories service plot over character and the end result is a cold emotionless descent into a beautiful and complex world without anyone to care about it.
Owning Your World
I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of creating worlds that I own outright. It’s early days right now but I’m building a few things for next year that will likely not release through publishers but will go direct to readers. There’s a lot more risk with this kind of model but I’m finding the types of things I want to make are deviating slightly from the types of things publishers want to publish.
So last week I officially began developing a new project with some dream collaborators that’s essentially a no-holds-barred expression of everything I love about comics with absolutely no restraint. It’s still early days but I’ve been sitting on this idea for a few years and I’m really happy that it’s finally in development. And this tweet was referencing the first script for it:
This year put a lot of things in perspective for me. Namely that I need to be more in control of my career and the trajectory it’s on to ensure that I can build a stable future for myself. With everything up in the air during the early days of the pandemic it really crystalized how dependant I was on others to get my work into the hands of people. I immediately began plans to pack up some ideas and build my own path forward. Right now, we’re still figuring out what that may look like. But as soon as there’s a plan for release the people reading this newsletter will be the first to find out.
For now, just know the project is a strange eco-horror thing that walks that razor thin line between sexy and terrifying. You’ll get your first peek at what it is in October.
Tiny Scabs
I’ve been playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 until my hands hurt. Muscle memory is kicking in and I’m having a ton of fun. If you were a fan of these games when they came out this remake is perfect. Highly recommended.
I took in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things last night. It’s already my favorite film of the year. A strange meditation/indictment on the manic pixie dream girl archetype. A musing on memory, on romantic comedies, on editing, on filmmaking, storytelling, and dementia. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
My first issue of Angel + Spike hits stores in two weeks. I’m pretty damn proud of what we’re cooking up in that book. I hope people check it out. Until then, read this interview with me and Robert Secundus over at Xavier Files. It’s an in depth chat about the world of Buffy, looking at the series as an adult and my plans for the book.
This article on regenerative agriculture is a great read. The way we’re farming is broken and until we start practising better farming, we’re losing the battle against climate change.
This week’s playlist, right here:
Be Good To One Another
Another week has slipped through the cracks. Summer is over, I guess? So let’s endeavor to be even better to one another as the year barrels toward its conclusion. Be kind, wear a mask, wash your hands, and disconnect from the online world when you can.
Until next week,
Z