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v02.n033
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From: owner-comix-biz-digest@lists.xmission.com (comix-biz-digest)
To: comix-biz-digest@lists.xmission.com
Subject: comix-biz-digest V2 #33
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comix-biz-digest Friday, March 6 1998 Volume 02 : Number 033
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 02:09:47 -0600
From: Dead Man Glenning <wraith@imaginot.com>
Subject: Re: (cbiz) Re: comix-biz-digest V2 #17
>>any one else on this list or what??
>
>Yeah - we're here...
>
>Jake's search for a comics authoring software program sound intriguing -
>but if everybody had the same program, all stories would be fairly much
>alike.
Well... I don't know about that. I mean it's just a different sort of word
processor, the words still have to come from the writer. ;-) There are
several programs out there for writing screen plays that adapt well for
comix scripts. The company I've heard the most positive things about is
Screenplay Systems, and their two products, Dramatica and Screenwriter
(http://www.screenplay.com/). Their testimonials include W. Somerset
Maugham (Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge), Jack Sowards (Star Trek II:
The Wrath Of Khan, ST:TNG), and Ron Bass (Rain Man, My Best Friend's
Wedding) -- if in fact these guys really do use this software they're
fairly divergent. ;-) Anway, it's big screen oriented software, I think for
both Mac and Windows. But you can achieve screenplay formatting with any
word processing program that can do stylesheets and glossaries. Years ago I
used to use a shareware DOS program called Screenwriter, I don't know if
it's still out there, but I've personally found stylesheets to be a lot
more powerful and I just use MS Word. If you submit scripts to places that
want different formats, you can just apply a different the style sheet, and
if you're writing for yourself or creative partners, you can adjust them
however you'd like. But they're tools, if they don't save you time, chuck
'em, I say. I don't think I'll ever get away from starting things on
paper, or proofing things on paper. Speaking for myself, the formatting is
most useful simply because it's easier to draw from. Any text editor will
give you the ease of drafting and editing.
>Maybe we could start a discussion about comics-writing by hand on this
>list? How to get ideas, establish a plot a.s.o.
sounds like a fine plan to me. I personally come from the bar napkin
school of ideas, i.e. ideas come when they want to and get written on
whatever scraps are at hand. >B^) I do routinely carry a small sketchpad
and one of those small yellow ruled tablets, and fill them with beginnings
and striking visual images or dailogue snippets or whatever whenever they
hit me. I don't use a 100th of them -- I'm sure everyone else is that way.
I don't ever lack for ideas, not even interesting ideas, just the time,
momentum and motivation to implement them. ;-) I almost always start with
haphazard notes on paper which I then try to organize into a loose outline
later in a word processor, a lot of times there will already be bits of
dialogue plugged in and a few images I want to use. I personally like to
write the initial stuff in coffee shops and bars when I can, or outside, in
the right weather. Hopefully with lots of interesting looking people
passing by to enscript for imagining up characters. ;-) Then I build it up
for a while with plot details until I'm ready to structure it more
formally. Before that, I do some really loose page layout thumbnails
(otherwise I write too way much dialogue for the allotted number of pages)
just to get an initial feel for how the pages are going to go, and I tend
to write in a screenplay sort of format that I stole originally I think
from a John Ostrander Grimjack script. ;-) Page by page, panel by panel,
descriptions +/- captions or sound effects, and the dialogue. Then I hit
the bristol and totally rewrite it. ;-) For my own personal discipline, I
need a clear idea of where a story is ending early on, and I spend a lot of
my rewriting time worrying about consistent pacing and working over
dialogue. I also tend to fret a lot over whether I'm going to be able to
successfully lead the eye through the panels on a given page, and sometimes
move things around on that basis, and I always do a lot of reposing for the
same reason. But that's a lot of personal quirks, I have to believe this
process is as personal and varied as your favorite color. ;-)
Pax ex machina,
Glenn
_________________________________________________________________
"I'm all religious figures rolled into one,
Qaddafy Duck propelled from Jimmy Swaggart's tommy gun!"
--- XTC
wraith@imaginot.com, glenn@suntimes.com, www.wraithspace.com
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End of comix-biz-digest V2 #33
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