But tomorrow, Friday 4/20, if you come to Bridge City Comics between 6 and 9 pm, you will see:

Jen Van Meter

Erica McGillivray

Rachel Edidin

and also me, celebrating the release of Chicks Dig Comics!

* I am compelled to tell you that Google Ads in its wisdom, when I was searching for the publisher’s page so I could link it, displayed a t-shirt reading “Chicks Dig Cartoonists.” Which, yes, certainly, sometimes. But chicks also are cartoonists, which, again, the point.

Prose Pros:

– Control. Being totally in charge of the world I’m creating.

– Being free to write about things that are hard to draw without fear that I’ll eventually make an artist’s life hell.

Prose Cons:

– I can’t use silent pages, which can be a great way to create breathing space for a reader and convey moods.

– I can’t use the kind of narrative counterpoint that I love so much in comics, when the pictures convey something different from and perhaps in opposition to the text.

Graphic Novel Pros:

– Collaboration. Getting the insight and talent of another creator.

– A graphic novel script doesn’t take as long to write as a novel.

Graphic Novel Cons:

– The script might not take as long to write, but I still have to wait for the artist to draw it, and the artist almost certainly has other projects competing for their time.

– There are still a lot of readers out there who don’t speak the language of graphic novels, who aren’t confident in their ability to parse panels, or are just disinclined to make the effort.

How am I going to decide? I don’t know.

I can already visualize certain scenes very clearly. But does that mean the scenes will be most effective as comics, or that I simply need to convey them as clearly in prose as I’m seeing them in my head?

Other writers of both comics and prose, how do you decide which format is best for a particular story?

So, if you’re going, and you’ve never been to a library conference before, here are some things for your consideration:

Understand that the Exhibit Hall is ginormous, and the conference is pretty darn big too. Last year there were about 6700 exhibitors and 19,500 attendees. It’s not ComiCon, but it’s not a little show, either. There’s an Exhibitor Resources section on the conference site.

Bring giveaways. Librarians are typically cash-strapped, now more than ever with the sadly common budget cuts to school and public libraries. Have something they can pick up that will give them a flavor of your work. Make sure it includes your website address and ordering information for your comics. If you’ve got or can make up some posters, they’re often in high demand as free/cheap library decor. Bookmarks, of course, are good too. But really, anything that’s free should be fine.

Be prepared to talk about the age level of your work. Librarians, especially those who work in school settings, will want to know the age(s) of your intended audience.

Know the distributors where a librarian could order your work. A couple of the big ones are BWI (Book Wholesalers Inc.) and Ingram.

Be prepared to discuss your speaker fee and how far you’d be willing to travel to do a library presentation. Are you willing to speak for free because you love libraries so much? That is seriously great! But remember, librarians talk to each other. If you do a session for free for Library X, don’t be surprised if shortly thereafter you’re contacted by Library Y, thrilled that you’re so willing to share your talents with the community. Don’t have much experience with negotiation as a freelancer? I commend to your attention the archives of Work Made For Hire.

Be prepared for experts, newbies, and everyone in between. Some of the folks who come to your table will be just starting to learn about graphic novels. Some will be longtime comics fans. Some (cough) may be comics creators themselves. You might see some publisher representatives, too. And at some point you’ll probably get an awesome invasion of teenagers. They’re at the conference to give their expert opinions of the titles nominated for YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list, and they get free range of the exhibit hall.

Questions? Additions?

The fact that it’s taken me this long to post my notes is an indication of the baseline level of CrazyBusy that has been operating around here. MORE TO COME.

For now, return with me to Sunday, April 17th. Evan Dahm, moderator, with Barry Deutsch, Kel McDonald, Larry Marder, Carla Speed McNeil, and Jenn Manley Lee.

Everyone introduces their work and says a bit about how worldbuilding plays into it. (Click above links for more.)

Barry: Set in a fictional community based in real traditions that I made up.

Larry: Easier to read than it is to explain. Separate reality, self-contained with own laws & geography.

Carla: I like to call it speculative fiction.

Jenn: Science fiction comic with more talking than spaceships.

Kel: Sorcerer learning magic from an angsty vampire. World is based on ours, but I’ve slowly been changing things as it interferes with the stories I want to tell.

(Evan initially doesn’t want to participate as well as moderate, but he is persuaded.)

Evan: Psychedelic, atmospheric kind of fantasy stories.

Why work in invented settings?

Barry: Usually start with a main character and figure out a world where they fit. Appeal is to be able to create the world and then mess it up for the characters.

Larry: Built a world around my strengths and weaknesses; have a strong sense of design & iconography, weaknesses as a renderer. Came up with characters I was comfortable drawing and built the world around them. Took 10 years from invention of the beans to the first Beanworld story.

Carla: I’m easily bored. Whenever I come up with an interesting idea, my brain wants to spin out “Wouldn’t it be cool IF…” The simplest things can change the way people live. The beautiful thing is that no matter how weird that thing is, to someone it’s completely ordinary. It’s completely ordinary to sit down with your iPad in the morning, watch Netflix streaming, talk to friends all over the world. It’s also completely ordinary to roll out of a taro leaf bed, strap on a penis gourd & go kill someone.

Jenn: Started with characters first, and used sf motifs b/c I wanted to play with metaphors that people could accept. Folklore & metaphors translated into sf so it has more relevance — play with a social hierarchy that’s extinct & reintroduce & repurpose it — I wanted to do science fiction b/c I wanted to do magic.

Kel: Creative part of world deals with the magical part — my more built-up parts have to do with how demons deal with each other, supernatural communities in different cities. Demon politics.

Larry: Disclaimer in the books that the laws of science and the laws of magic have nothing to do with what’s in Beanworld. Everything you need to know is in the book.

Evan: I get to make everything up and draw from every source I can possibly see in the world. Give everything a distinct visual character.

How do you keep settings internally consistent?

Larry: It’s hard, and I forget stuff all the time, and thank god for my fan sites. A lot of times you get these great ideas and you end up reinventing the wheel. Every time I make a choice I close doors. I always feel like I’m building a house of cards, some fan could say ABC and it all falls apart, but that’s the challenge, that’s the thrill.

Evan: Your readers will always know more about the setting than you do.

Carla: If you approach your world as though it is not in fact being made up by you, you can treat it the way we treat our knowledge of our own world — limited and incomplete. Something that appears insanely inconsistent can represent a whole dinosaur skeleton’s worth of knowledge to unearth about the society.

Kel: Decided what I wanted to do and decided what would have happened in the world to make that possible.

Carla: When you’ve got this incredibly complicated world, how much are you gonna burden the story with explaining things? It really can’t slow down the story — in my case I did extensive footnoting, like a director’s commentary in the back of the book.

Kel: I cheated, my main character teaches history.

Someone: “That isn’t cheating, that’s a strategy.”

Barry: I cheat in the opposite direction b/c character’s 11 years old and doesn’t know so many things. She knows the details of her life as an 11 year old — her school, and things like that. But she doesn’t know how the economy of the town works so I’m excused from having to explain that. Depend a lot on book research and trying to present it in a fairly straightforward manner.

Evan: Inject a character who knows nothing about the setting.

Jenn: I keep it consistent b/c story is based on an area where I grew up. And it’s based on social interactions, when people cross-pollinate they have to explain themselves to each other. Also, it’s very good to have a character who hides a lot of their past and tells lies.

Evan: I keep very good notes — but also I rely on the wiki maintained by my readers which is ten times more accurate that anything I’ll ever write.

What advantages or disadvantages do comics offer in working in invented worlds?

Barry: Comics have a great advantage over prose because you can very easily embed the reader in the experience. You can just show your characters living in the world very naturally rather than having to spend paragraphs describing.

Jenn: You can also interject something again and again — seed things very very subtly until they become important in the story.

Carla: Only real disadvantage is that comics take so much longer to produce. Do whatever you can to your work method to prune things off to get you faster.

Kel: I do a lot with the eyes of different creatures — the eye color is a key to what type of being a character is. On the downside, I have characters with accents and that is super hard to convey through dialogue.

Jenn: To contradict Carla — in 1 page of comics you can get 10-20 pages full of prose. It is kind of grueling and isolating. But it takes a long time to write, too, and a lot of people do it badly.

Barry: Readers definitely are a pain in the neck, but I mean that lovingly. The Internet has made it so much harder to put things over on readers.

Larry: I’m not a professional cartoonist, I’m a marketing person, but I love comics. The only comic I’ll ever do is Beanworld. Can’t imagine doing anything else.

Evan: You can be more subtle in how you reveal things than you can in prose or film — I like to have complete tyrannical control.

Jenn: I have some odd-looking characters and I don’t want them to become prettier. If you’re reading a novel and you start liking a character, they start to get prettier, you definitely see it in fan art. But no, it’s very important that this person is over 40 and has no ass!

Many people are daunted by the apparent size of making a world.

Jenn: Start with what you know. Based my main planet on my old neighborhood in NJ. Media, social, work, manufacturing center with waves and waves of immigrants, and old families, with an established hierarchy. Make it real for you first, cause that’s the only way you’re going to convince anyone else.

Barry: Write something that you don’t think you’re going to get tired of.

Larry: Design characters that you are not going to hate drawing over and over and over again because you will draw them a lot.

Carla: I can talk on for days about character design. Draw characters as simply as possible in chibi style and if they’re still recognizable the design is probably sound. It’s important that what you draw is what you dig, what you really like.

Evan: If you’re daunted by the size of the entire world, focus on the story you want to tell and build the world around it.

Barry: Scott McCloud says don’t build too much of the world. Draw enough of the world so that the story is breathing and has a place to inhabit, but not so much that it gets in the way.

Kel: That’s why I start with our world but change what gets in the way of the story.

Larry: Can’t remember if it was Ursula LeGuin or Joanna Russ, but one of them said that you’re really working with a sense of touch out there — you can’t really see it, but you can kind of feel it — it’s a lot like being in the woods and you’re not really sure what’s behind that tree or around that bend — and that’s a good place to be starting out from, you certainly don’t know where everything is.

Carla: If you can work those revelations in as plot points then you’ve got your world-building and storytelling at the same time.

Evan: Interesting to look at it as kind of a teaching process, give the reader an elegant way of understanding the world without stopping the storytelling.

Carla: I wanted to create an environment that would allow me to tell any kind of story I wanted — building the Winchester Mystery House.

Audience question: What are the built worlds that have inspired you & your creations?

Evan: China Miéville, books mostly about cities and he makes these incredible but entirely believable settings that you just drop right in the middle of and have to figure out.

Larry: Marcel Duchamp’s entire body of work, but especially the Large Glass and the Green Box. Looks like a painting but it’s actually a schematic of an animation that you do in your head. Contemporary to the popularization of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Duchamp started out as a cartoonist but quit because he never got paid.

Kel: I like Discworld a lot because he took a sort of stock fantasy world and made it far more interesting — taking fantasy tropes to their logical conclusions.

Jenn: John Varley — he’s way out there but very consistent. Favorite thing is the peek-a-boo uterus. Pregnant police officer with a porthole so she could watch her fetus. Also some not safe for work things that I won’t go into but they’re awesome.

Carla: I’ve read such a mulch-heap of stuff since I was a kid, all of which has had some flavor, but the thing I’ve gotten so nerdily into is Nickolodeon’s Avatar — such a beautiful exploration of such a cool world with so much depth, mind-bogglingly good.

Kel: Super-into The Meek right now.

Barry: What influenced me the most are things that are less world-spanning and more the feeling of really being embedded in a community, the small culture that’s being described — Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez — Great Brain books — Usagi Yojimbo.

Jenn: Good point, worldbuilding doesn’t have to be completely fictional.

Evan: Nothing is ever completely fictional.

N.B. These notes, while admittedly extensive, are incomplete. I recommend listening to the whole dang thing.

He used to do a talk called COMICS 101, because it was so ridiculous to think of people taking a class in comics. Now of course there are a bunch of places where you can get a whole degree.

I’d heard Art Spiegelman speak once before, at YALSA’s 2002 preconference on graphic novels. (It was a seriously influential event.)

I forgot how much he can pack into a single sentence, which is then closely followed by another sentence while I’m attempting to transcribe a version of the first. Next I realize that really I should also be looking up at the screen to see what images he’s juxtaposing with the words. Sometime thereafter it dawns on me that I haven’t taken any notes for the last few paragraphs, which means that the next thing I scribble is not actually connected in any obvious way with the scribble that immediately preceded it.

Here follows a few of my more coherently captured scribbles; the links I’ve added might or might not be endorsed by Mr. Spiegelman.

On Roy Lichtenstein: Using comics was a way out of abstract expressionism. The only people doing representational art in the fifties were cartoonists and tattoo artists. But Lichtenstein ended up being as useful for comics as his friend Warhol was for soup.

On Nancy: It’s a lot more work to not read Nancy than it is to read.

You want to use cartoon language in a way that works against its more pernicious aspects, e.g. racist caricatures.

The dance of the vulgar and genteel is one of the most productive struggles in America.

Krazy Kat was kept alive because Hearst’s nephew thought it was funny to have a cat get hit on the head with a brick.

Disagrees with the politics of Lil’ Orphan Annie, but the blank eyes are totemic — the absence of expression lets you in.

Every medium swallows the one that came before it, so the first comic books are collections of comic strips.

On Frederic Wertham‘s witch hunt: Okay, there were witches, but they were witches we needed, they were inoculating us with their toxins.

Joe Sacco has returned comics to its original Goya function: to say “I saw this.”

The short answer is the ever-popular “It depends.”

Slave Labor won’t consider a script without art — or art without a script, for that matter.

Dark Horse will, but make sure to read their very detailed submissions guidelines for writers.

Many publishers won’t look at unsolicited submissions of any kind.

For writers who want to break into graphic novels, I think it’s worth your while to pay an artist to illustrate a short comic that you can make available as a chapbook to sell or give away. Yes, it’s an investment, but it accomplishes two important things:

• It’s an introduction for you to what it’s like to work with an artist. Anything you find challenging about collaborating on a short story will only be magnified when you work on a full-length graphic novel. Better to learn on a shorter-term project, so you can use what you’ve learned to make whatever changes in your work style will make the graphic novel collaboration process more successful.
• You’ll have something tangible to hand to editors at conventions that they can read through quickly to assess your work. (Caveat: not that they’re likely to do so while you’re standing there.)

My idea is based on a technique that may or may not be unique to the excellent Powell’s City of Books; rainbow shelftalkers, which they use to highlight books with queer content. They’re colorful, eye-catching, and allow browsers to discover GLBTQ-themed titles serendipitously.

So why not do something similar with graphic novels that are interfiled with prose?

Here’s an obvious iconic image:

Write your description/blurb inside the word balloon. Use similarly-styled shelftalkers for your other graphic novels.

If you’re pressed for time, they don’t even have to be ‘talkers’ per se; use a smaller version of the same word-balloon icon simply to call attention to the presence of a graphic novel among prose books.

I know this doesn’t answer the question of whether to shelve gns by the name of the writer or the artist, or what to do about the varying heights of graphic novels, but you are all very smart and awesome and no doubt have your own brilliant solutions.

(Is anybody out there already using this style of shelftalker? If so, send me a photo and I’ll add to the post!)

Ways in which it is like revising a prose novel:

– I spend a lot of time staring into the middle distance, trying to figure out if that character would actually do X, say Y, or react in Z fashion.

– I scrutinize my edit notes.

– Every so often when I am doing something that I think is entirely unrelated to revision, such as watching a movie or attempting to fall asleep, an idea will bubble up to the surface that I am immediately compelled to scribble down because it fixes a problem or provides an insight into an aspect of a character’s arc that was previously opaque.

– I print pages and cross things out, then scrawl the new text in the margins and on the back of the paper. There is something about the physicality of actual handwriting that seems to work better than endlessly deleting and retyping on the computer. I don’t know why.

– I waste time on the Internet, feel guilty, and eventually turn on MacFreedom so I can get some damn work done.

Ways in which it is different:

– I need to make more choices per scene. The process is not simply about determining what happens to which characters, and how to transition between different parts of the story. It’s about how the reader will see it all play out on the page. Close on the characters, for nuances of expressions and body language? Tiny silhouettes against a complex and crowded background? Characters entirely absent, replaced by images that function as counterpoint to narrative text? The details of these choices will, of course, be worked out by Ms. McNeil, but I am trying to teach myself to err on the side of providing maximum information in my panel descriptions about the mood I want to evoke.

– I draw (a few, incredibly poorly rendered) thumbnails, to help make sure I’m asking for something that makes sense visually. (I also bite my thumbnails, and the ones on my other fingers too. But that is a way in which revising a script is the same as revising prose.)

So how do you write a graphic novel script? I don’t know yet, I’m not done. I believe strongly in the axiom that you never learn how to write; you only learn to write the book you’re writing, by writing it.

That said, I can recommend a few informative sources:

Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel by Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud.

Drawing Words And Writing Pictures by Matt Madden and Jessica Abel.

Panel One and Panel Two, both edited by Nat Gertler. These are collections of comics scripts, including (full disclosure) one of mine in the second volume, along with commentary from the artists.

What else do you want to know, folks?

EATA (edited again to add): Alexis Fajardo recorded the panel in its entirety! It’s part of Episode 85 of the Tall Tale Features podcast, which also includes some additional conversation with Alexis, and Jonathan Lemon extolling the virtues of Zippy the Pinhead.

I had a good feeling about it as soon as I saw that there were a solid number of actual young readers in the audience. Serendipity was on our side as well — I spotted Matt Holm in the audience of the previous session and persuaded him to join the panel along with Alexis Fajardo, Raina Telgemeier and Hope Larson. Thanks to Matt for agreeing to be empaneled and to the other panelists for rolling with the last-minute addition!

Some highlights (anyone who was there and remembers more, comment away!):

On the challenges of doing comics for younger readers:

– Actually reaching the audience, since they don’t typically have a lot of spending money, and they’re often dependent on parents, guardians, teachers & librarians to get introduced to your work. And you have to sell your work to adult gatekeepers before it gets to the kids. All the panelists agreed that school and library visits make a big difference.

– If you’re doing comics online, it can be hard for kids to find you. If your comic is hosted on a webcomics portal, those sites often also include a lot of adult material, so you don’t necessarily want to send kids there. A few folks like Jeff Kinney have done a great job of making their own sites kid-friendly destinations.

– Though this is changing, sometimes parents still want kids to read “real” books as opposed to comics.

On adaptation:

– Hope will be doing the graphic novel adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. She’s working closely with L’Engle’s estate, and the project has been approved by L’Engle’s granddaughter. It’s intimidating to adapt a book that is so loved, but she’s a huge fan of the book herself and really wants to honor the material.

– Raina has adapted four Babysitters Club titles into graphic novels. The books were such a part of her own memories that the approach she took didn’t feel all that different from her other autobiographical material. Was thrilling to work directly with Ann Martin.

– Alexis adapts & transforms epic poems such as Beowulf. Using source material that’s hundreds of years old provides a lot of freedom — no worries about what the original author will think! His goal is to make the stories accessible.

– Matt hasn’t done the same sort of adaptation as the other panelists, but Babymouse incorporates a lot of parodies & fractured fairy tales. He wouldn’t mind doing another version of Star Wars.

On what young people interested in making comics should do:

Draw! Write! And don’t worry if you’re more inclined one way or the other — Raina recommends that if you’re more interested in telling stories, find friends who can draw, and if you’re more interested in drawing, find friends who can write. (The other advantage to that is when you collaborate, you can hand off the story to your collaborator when you’ve worked on it so long that you can’t stand to look at it any more.) Matt once had a whole group of boys present him with a comic that they’d made collectively; one drew, one wrote, one was kinda like the publisher, and the other…well, he couldn’t remember what the other one did. I suggested that perhaps he managed their online presence.

Okay, now back to, you know, the reason I’m not tabling at Stumptown this year: actually writing the graphic novel.

Coming soon(ish): more tips for comics writers!

You may have noticed, it is almost time for the Stumptown Comics Fest?

In mere hours, I’ll be headed over to Things From Another World for the party in celebration of Steve Lieber & Jeff Parker’s graphic novel UNDERGROUND, a crackerjack entrant in the crowded category of spelunking thrillers.

On Friday, I’m going to Drink & Draw Like A Lady, at the ever-swell Secret Society Lounge. I have every reason to suspect that my collaborator on the forthcoming Bad Houses graphic novel, Ms. Carla Speed McNeil, will also be among the ladies present.

And Saturday afternoon at 2 pm, I’ll be moderating a panel:

Comics for Young Readers Comics and graphic novels for kids, teens, and tweens are quickly gaining popularity among readers. Join creators Hope Larson (Chiggers, Mercury), Raina Telgemeier (Smile, Baby-sitters Club), and Alexis Fajardo (Kid Beowulf) for a discussion on their work, their audience, and their influences. All ages welcome!

Other Things Are Also Happening. I will tell you about them…soon.