Writing 101
Writer. Editor. Troubleshooter. Troublemaker.
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Jun 15, 2012Courtesy of Maureen Ryan, TV critic for the Huffington Post in her critique of this season’s Mad Men finale (no spoilers): “[M]ost engaging stories get you to want something for the characters. The characters don’t have to be good people or they don’t even have to have admirable goals, yet because... more
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Apr 09, 2012The most frequently asked question I get from other writers about moving into digital comics isn’t about how to make any money doing it, though you’d think. (And we’ll be discussing that soon.) It’s “Jeezum Crow, how do you WRITE for that format?” And what’s both daunting and exciting is that we’... more
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Apr 30, 2009Artist, please draw more attention to the severed head.” Probably my favorite part of the editorial job–not co-plotting with writers, not copyediting scripts, not having the interns Google me all day–is working out covers. Part of that is because I’m a particularly visually minded editor, but... more
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Apr 09, 2009A sister post to last week’s about how to energize your plots by letting the characters make unexpected choices. Fair warning–this post is (a) short and (b) generally more applicable to writers of serial fiction than of stand-alone stories, novels, screenplays, etc.–but maybe there’s still... more
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Apr 02, 2009Wherever you were yesterday at about 10:00 a.m. PST, if you heard the distant sound of a scream, that was me. I’d gone to bed the previous night having finished the most recent script for IRREDEEMABLE and feeling very good about it– –and then I sat down the next morning to polish it and realized... more
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Mar 26, 2009Writing this one on the plane from La Guardia to LAX, so it may or not be posted by Wednesday depending upon how late the flight gets in. In 1990, having recently departed my editorial position at DC Comics, I went to work for Archie Comics in Mamaroneck, NY as an assistant editor/proofreader/... more
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Mar 19, 2009There used to be a Triangle Rule in comics. I first heard it from one of my mentors, the brilliant writer/cartoonist William Messner-Loebs. I’ve repeated it many times since, and God only knows who first articulated it, but it supposed this: There were three qualifications for making good in... more
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Mar 13, 2009Straight up, I will tell you that with the craptacularly unproductive week I have just had, I don’t feel qualified today to give anyone advice on how to count to ten, much less how to do comics. Still, I will soldier on, however briefly. The old school of thought was that having an eye-catching,... more
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Feb 26, 2009Losing two of the next five days to cross-country flights, but no complaints from me. I’m on my way to the Orlando MegaCon this week, and while (like most of you) I’ve come to hate flying, it’s worth it: MegaCon has become one of the largest and best-run comics/anime/sf conventions in this country... more
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Feb 19, 2009Following up on some of last week’s post about The Job of a Comic Book Editor…. I made several big presumptions and (at least) one ill-phrased comment, all of which sparked worthwhile discussion not only here but also on the forums over at boom-studios.com and in person over drinks. These points... more
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Feb 12, 2009Look, SOMEONE’s got to get this stuff out of the hands of the writers and artists and to press. Comics editors, rumors to the contrary, are some of my favorite people, and I’ve always admired the good ones. In fact, when I broke into comics in the mid-’80s, I did so as an editor, at DC; I had... more
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Feb 05, 2009Continuing the sample proposal from last week…. THE SERIES ISSUE ONE: We introduce Samantha, Wolf, the concept of the Hunter-Killer squad and the Ultra-Sapiens. We OPEN with the home life of Ellis and introduce him and his kindly parents as people we genuinely like and care about. But when Ellis... more
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Jan 29, 2009The difference between a pitch and the next stage of the development process—a proposal—is story. A proposal must demonstrate that your pitch has “legs” by providing a more specific outline of events, additional background on the characters, and some sample plots. As with most every document in... more
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Jan 22, 2009Over the past few weeks, my friend John Rogers (creator of the new Blue Beetle and creator of the TNT show LEVERAGE) has been kind enough to let me practice my blogging skills over at his terrific site, Kung Fu Monkey. I’ve been over there doing a weekly series on What I’ve Learned About Writing... more
