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Archives for June 2015

Five ways my book plans collapse upon contact with the real world – A Metaphorical Disaster Movie

June 10, 2015 by Nick Bryan

At this stage, I’ve written a lot of novels, and started even more than that. Every single one started with a plan of some form – sometimes a couple of ideas scribbled on a pad, other times thousands of words of ideas, followed by a chapter-by-chapter outline and then individual scene breakdowns within those chapters.

But either way, the plans always come a little unstuck when exposed to the writing process. As I’ve been doing a lot of first drafting lately, so spending a heaping helping of my time dealing with plans not corresponding to prose.

So, to inform and reassure anyone in a similar place, I’ve broken my Plan Vs Reality problems into an internet-friendly Buzzfeed-style five-point list. Yes, only a thin membrane separates some of these feelings, but I’ve spent enough time staring at my plans in despair to know they’re all distinct. If you’ve experienced all five of these, you can award yourself a prize when you reach the bottom!

1) “This bit read a lot better in bullet points!”

“It seemed a good idea at the time!”

BRAIN: “Look, y’know, this scene sounded amazing in my head and even survived the transfer to the planning stage as I wasn’t thinking about the nitty-gritty too hard, but bloody hell, as I try to actually make my characters do it, I feel like I’m trying to shove them in to an ampersand-shaped iron maiden.”

RETORT: Much to the relief of my tender ego, this one happens a lot less as I grow older, accruing more feedback and more experience. Generally, by the time I’ve written broad notes and narrowed them down into a plan, I’ve eliminated most of the utter gibberish.

However, still mega-disheartening when it appears, especially because it often hits on a really macro level. It’s rarely just a scene or a paragraph that withers on contact with the outdoors, it’s the whole damn ending or an entire character subplot.

Like, you were totally gonna write seventeen chapters from the perspective of Rufus The Hot Ice Cream Man but the material just isn’t there. It’s incredibly annoying, but rest assured, you’ll feel happier for having noticed now than after writing an entire first draft.

Although, yes, that can happen and it’s a complete arsewrench.

2) “This is an amazing twist!”

[INSERT ‘YOUR MUM’ JOKE HERE] [PHOTO ATTRIBUTION HERE]

IMPULSE: “Wow, y’know what would be amazing at this point? If he discovered his mother was a hamster! Because people won’t see it coming and it kinda-sorta flows into the rest of my plot and ramps up the tension, even though it does also ruin the next few scenes by disrupting almost everything I was gonna do, since all the characters will probably have to react to Bob being suddenly half-rodent…”

CONTROL: Less depressing than the last one, because at least you feel like you’re improving the story rather than tearing parts away, leaving only frayed edges stained by your tears. However, it still requires a degree of control and interrogation.

After all, many creative types (me included) get massive self-targeted erections when a killer plot twist comes to us mid-writing. We can smug-tweet about it and set about enacting a huge reveal and exploring the exciting ramifications.

And all that is awesome and has often improved my stuff – the sense of excitement and spontaneity travels from your fingers to the words. However, do make sure you still know where you’re going, otherwise you can veer into…

3) “I can’t get there from here!”

“Can’t Get There From Here” is a good song by REM

CARROT: “I… I just can’t get to the end. I mean, I know what it theoretically is and I still like that idea but I just can’t… I don’t know, it’s been hidden behind spontaneous plot additions and mountains and that total eclipse…”

STICK: So the next transition just won’t come. You’ve written yourself into a corner, then built walls around that corner, locked the door and only now wondered about what happens when you next need the loo. You still want that ending, but (possibly thanks to the previous step or perhaps just general drift or oversights in your plan), it won’t work. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just unavailable. Like your celebrity crush or becoming an astronaut.

Unfortunately, this means making some hard choices – probably either deleting one of your beloved off-the-cuff plot points or changing the ending. The degree of the change might be negotiable, though – I’ve usually found a way to have my cake and eat it with only a few nips and tucks. I tend to go for tweaking the ending rather than removing plot twists, because I find my initial plans are often overly linear and a sudden sharp move livens them up.

4) “I can’t get here from there!”

wibbly-wobbly-planny-wanny or something like that

CRIME: “Ever since my brother Lols got into that time machine, I’ve felt like everything has changed, y’know? Like none of the previous passage of my life actually points to where I’m now going? Like once upon a time, maybe my Mum wasn’t a hamster, but now everything hinges on the reactor fuel I’ve squirreled away in my cheeks.”

PUNISHMENT: Okay, this might move into time travel logic, but stay with me.
So, you’ve worked your way through a string of plot problems – maybe the above-mentioned, maybe others – and you find yourself with a clear run to the end. And you’re gonna make it, but… but… you’ve made so many on-the-fly changes to the current set-up to make the new ending work, you’re now aware that huge chunks of the earlier part of the book need to be rewritten in order for everything to flow smoothly.

Good news: this doesn’t mean more work right now, but it does leave that hanging over your head for when the next draft comes around. It may even be tempting to go back and make changes now, even though conventional writing wisdom nowadays tends to gravitate towards finishing the first draft and then tackling this eternal to-do list.

Personally, I lean towards the standard POV, partly because if I go back and do extensive changes before I get the ending down, it’s entirely possible I’ll then make spontaneous changes to the ending, which will cause more butterfly effect ripples back into the past, thus causing me to rewrite the start yet again, trapped in an endless vortex

And at that point, time to collapse and scream. If it were an episode of Doctor Who, I would stop watching it.

5) “This is a pile of shit and I’m going over there to cry.”

My post-novel-abandonment selfie

BLOODY: “This is terrible. I definitely didn’t plan on making it terrible. I don’t even remember when it became terrible. I can’t even point to a specific scene which isn’t working out. It’s just everything. I have built a tower and the foundations are rotten – now I can only cower below as the girders tumble, punching red, gushing holes in my prone body.”

HELL: No, you won’t be the first writer to have these emotions. Again, conventional wisdom dictates you push ahead to end of draft and assume you can fix it in edits, and that will probably work most of the time. No-one but you can judge whether your worries are real or if it’s just a momentary wobble you should shake off, Taylor Swift style, and fight on to fix later.

I wrote the first 20-ish thousand words of a novel recently and it’s come to a halt – partly because other projects demanded the time but also because I really think some of the foundations are fundamentally wrong. I need to rethink some stuff rather than piling more and more dirt on top of myself until my bones start to splinter and crunch.

I stress, I don’t think the problems are unfixable, but still, they’re pretty extensive. And, much like the first point in this post (man, remember that?), it’s mostly experience that teaches you when you’re at that stage. Reading posts like this on the internet might get you looking in the right direction, but ultimately you need to hone these instincts. This is why most writers have at least one ‘trunk’ novel they worked out their issues on and eventually gave up, moving on to apply the lessons to book plans with stronger foundations. Personally, I have,.. at least four, maybe more than that.

And there is the five-step love-hate-love-hate-hate-love relationship between me and my novel plans. If any of this made someone out there feel less alone, it was worth writing. If it made you worry about my well-being (or if the tone appealed to you and you want more), feel free to buy one of the Hobson & Choi books to make me feel better. They are darkly comic London crime stories and quite a few people seem to like them – review quotes also on the page linked above.

But don’t feel like you have to, I’m just throwing that out there. Now, I’m off to rewrite a book plan for the seventh or eighth time.

Filed Under: Writing About Writing Tagged With: amwriting, my writing process, planning, writeblog, writing, writing about writing

I finally read Age of Apocalypse – Was it like a smaller Secret Wars?

June 1, 2015 by Nick Bryan

Just recently, I crossed another item off my list of stories to read on Marvel Unlimited – I rattled through the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse mini-epic. I don’t know what spurred me to go for that precise one, but after the fact, it seems topical – after all, Marvel are about to pull an Age of Apocalypse on their entire universe with the mega-massive Secret Wars event.

That’s before we get to next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse movie, which probably won’t adapt this storyline but might, and recent DC event Convergence, also an AoA-style move, albeit shorter.

So it seemed a good time to talk about it, maybe discuss how these new events are using (or abusing) the legacy of Age of Apocalypse. Spoilers follow for twenty-year-old X-Men comics!

The Age of A-WHAT-alypse?

Style icons of the Age of Apocalypse

It turns out, Xavier was crucial to everything and the causation ripples from his non-existance caused the Marvel Universe to whip from a standard modern-day setting to a hellish dystopia ruled by longstanding Survival Of The Fittest X-Tyrant Apocalypse.

I’m going to try and keep the outline brief: Age of Apocalypse began after someone went back in time and killed X-Men mentor, inspiration and Patrick Stewart lookalike Charles Xavier, long before he became a living legend.

In real-world publishing terms, this meant the seven or eight monthly X-Men comics were replaced for four months with retitled series following the AoA equivalent of their regular characters. So Wolverine became Weapon X, Generation X became Generation Next, X Factor became Factor X, Excaliber became X-Calibre (???), and, best of all, X-Force became Gambit and the X-Ternals. Because they’re external to the mainstream, or something?

Some characters investigated signs that all wasn’t right with this reality, others fought in escalating conflicts that threatened to destroy the world before the first lot could save it. And that, basically, is the premise of Age of Apocalypse.

The Knightfall of Jack Batlin

More like DARKDevil!!11!*

This is far from the only superhero comics story in the nineties where a popular property was replaced with a different (often DARKER) version. There was Batman: Knightfall, the Death of Superman, Spider-Man’s Clone Saga, new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and, of course, the time Daredevil faked his own death, wore black armour and started calling himself Jack Batlin.

Not got time to discuss all those in depth, but the point is: many of these stories are not well-remembered. Age of Apocalypse, however, gets quite a good rap. Like: people talk about it as if it’s good and worth reading, rather than a “guilty pleasure” or a fascinating study of nineties excess.

So, what did I think when experiencing these comics?

Honestly, if I take one thing away from Age of Apocalypse, it’s a certain respect for the editorial planning and world-building. The comics consistently take place within the same world, there’s a steady rumbling story through everything despite the dozen or so writers and artists involved. There aren’t that many moments of memorable writing voice – even an early-in-career Warren Ellis on X-Calibre doesn’t impose his style on the finished product much – but everyone is clearly on the same page.

It has a lot of momentum, the characters are consistent, it’s paced at just the right length to get everything in, do its thing and end the story with a bang. The art is always strong, clear and getting the desired effect, finding time for memorable showings from Joe Madueira, Steve Skroce, Adam & Andy Kubert and Chris Bachalo, among others.

Obviously, I wasn’t involved in running the Age of Apocalypse story, for all I know it was utter bloody chaos behind the scenes. But if I had to compare it to other nineties comics events, I would say this is the USP: it feels like a story at its natural length with a pre-planned beginning and middle, then an end which brings back the status quo without feeling like a depressing reset.

Infinite Leather Jackets and the Apocalypse

90s Cyclops is 90s

Of course, I can’t pretend that Age of Apocalypse is some formal comics masterwork on a par with Watchmen. It is an event story from the nineties and comes with all the try-hard “kewl” moments you’d expect, along with over-muscled men, over-endowed women, awful haircuts, too many guns, too many pockets and infinite leather jackets. If you’ve tried nineties comics before and found all the above too much to deal with, I can’t say Age of Apocalypse will necessarily change your mind.

As a pre-2000s comic, there’s also a narration-heavy, tell-don’t-show approach to storytelling that seems clunky compared to the streamlined dialogue-driven cinematic stylings of nowadays. With a whole universe to introduce, it can’t avoid a huge amount of info-dumping in captions, not to mention characters turning up and delivering huge monologues which just happen to explain their entire motivation and history in a single text-filled page.

Of course, even if it doesn’t read silky-smoothly, it’s possible this TAKE THIS EXPOSITION AND EAT IT! approach is one reason Age of Apocalypse works. Fully dramatising all of this background material could take twice as long, and even if it would be functionally better, stretching out the story would damage momentum. Let’s face it, fun though this alternate reality replacement game is, we all know the status is gonna quo in the end. Better focus on the key moments.

Secret Wars – Secret Marvel Unlimited promotional tool?

The Many Thors of Secret Wars

Which brings us on to the happening-right-now Secret Wars, in which a Massive Cosmic Event destroys the Marvel Comics universe and all its alternates, leaving only a patchwork reality made of bits from all of them. It’s very AoA in many ways, and not just because one of the themed regions on the new “Battleworld” is Age of Apocalypse-based. In fact, this is a bit like a theme park isn’t it?

But the main thrust is that the whole of the Marvel line of comics is on hold, bar a few exceptions, leaving only comics set on the various new worlds. Some of them are ‘continuations’, others are ‘preparing to die’ stories set back in the pre-destruction universe, others just writers having fun in the weird new setting without much concern for what it all means. Those might be the ones I’m most excited by, although as a Marvel Unlimited subscriber, I get to read any I fancy without needing to make “purchasing” decision.

Which, actually, might be the best way of experiencing the event.

I don’t know whether Secret Wars will work or not – I can see how it might be annoying to followers of ongoing series which are now being heavily disrupted due to a story which doesn’t relate to them. Age of Apocalypse, at least, was shorter, more self-contained and confined to a smaller group of books which were heavily interrelated anyway, so tight continuity wasn’t a hard pill to swallow. Will Secret Wars lack the tight focus and plotting that made Age of Apocalypse work? I’ll find out in about a year when the whole thing is on Unlimited.

But even if it turns out comics companies learnt the wrong lessons from Age of Apocalypse about what they need to do to sell, the original remains a fun read. A testament to how obvious gimmickery and a bombastic nineties aesthetic don’t have to be bad if there’s a compelling story in there. Worth a look.


FOOTNOTE *: Yes, I’m aware Darkdevil is an actual character from the alternate-future MC2 continuity. He’s the son of a Spider-Man clone possessed by the spirits of both Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and the demon Zarathos. In many ways, this innocuous pun was a homage to him.

Filed Under: Comic Reviews Tagged With: age of apocalypse, comics, darkdevil, marvel comics, secret wars, x-men

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