It Is A Circle Blog

Although I read plenty of comics and graphic novels, I’d never seen myself as a potential writer of said. In part because it’s such a visual form. When you see a comic, all you get is the finished piece, with little sense of what might underpin it. I’d seen some of Tom’s notes back when he was writing as well as drawing – lavish, complicated things, the descriptions poetic and as enticing for me as the images he’d create from them. I knew I couldn’t do that.

In many ways, a comics script has more in common with film and play scripts than it does with novel writing (having dabbled in all of these forms to some degree). However, with a comic, all the work of the director and actors also has to happen on the page and there are no rules about where in the process this should happen. I gather when a comic is very author led, the author can be rather prescriptive about how the pages should look. Coming into a project Tom had already started, it seemed nuts to be trying to tell him how any of it ought to look.

The biggest practical differences between comics and my usual story writing are as follows.

1) Very little narration. I throw in odd bits, but too much is clunky.

2) Like the script for a play, all the action has to be played out through the dialogue and key directions.

3) I have no control over how things look. (Other writers may, but I don’t contribute much there.)

4) Fantasy elements really come to life, which means more scope for indulging in them without getting sidetracked from the plot.

5) Writing is much quicker than drawing. I have to be patient.

I’ve also found that long speeches are a nuisance, and that ‘talking heads’ pages are bad – which I didn’t know when I started. I’d have handled some of the talking differently had I been aware of this! these days when I write conversations, I try to put them in the context of things happening, although Tom assures me that this is far more an artist issue than an author one.

For comics to make sense, there has to be a good relationship between the art and words. If the words are trying to do everything (as in a book) it doesn’t work so well. I cottoned on to that early in the process and try to leave plenty of space for Tom to bring his own ideas to what we do.

I concentrate on the voices of characters, trying to hear them as distinct individuals in my head. I offer a bare minimum of ‘stage directions’ if I need the image to convey body language, or a gesture. Most of the time, Tom’s work compliments what I’ve written. Sometimes he startles the hell out of me with an idea that makes the story as written seem entirely different from how I imagined it, and invariably improves it. He’s bolder than me, has more vision, and I’ve learned a great deal from working with him.

One of the things I was able to do whilst in America, was see the process of page creation through from almost the beginning, to the end.

What I missed was the stage where Tom sites down with the script and figures out how much of it is going on the next page and how to lay out the panels. I gather a fair few comics writists detailed descriptions to work from, but I don’t. I’m not a very visual person, and figured out a long time ago that Tom has a far better idea than I do how to lay out comics pages, and what to put on them. The scripts I give him are almost entirely dialogue, with occasional extra details where the plot calls for them. The look of the story is entirely his.

Once there’s a plan, the panels go onto the comic board, followed by some fairly basic outlines to get positioning clear. There may be research at this stage, to find objects, or details of interiors, building and landscape to add interest to the page. Tom is careful to make sure there’s plenty to look at. I’ve helped with the research stage from afar before now, and we’ve drawn on the landscapes of my childhood as well as Maine to create the look of the place.

I’d rather imagined a drawing process where you start with the first panel and work through, but Tom doesn’t do it that way. He’ll move about between panels, sometimes because he needs to reference the backgrounds between them, but often for reasons that I can’t fathom. Basic shapes become details, faces emerge, and then finally the detailed shading happens – a curious process in which graphite is applied, smeared, rubbed out and otherwise kicked into the shape of his choosing. All of the original artwork is done in graphite, which is why the pages take a while to create. Typically half a page a day, if there are no distractions.

Watching Tom figure out perspective is like seeing a magician performing arcane ritual. As a non-artist, I don’t understand it in the slightest, but the results are amazing, and seeing them emerge is quite some experience.

Once the artwork is done, Tom scans the page, and adds colour using a wacom tablet, and does the speech marks on the computer as well. (Having seen his handwriting, this is a decidedly good thing). This part of the process is a lot quicker. Then the computer tech stage happens, and the new page is released into the world.

Feel free to ask if you want more details about any of the above.