Nick Bryan

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Comic scripting – Invisible words? Too many words? Words? (WriteBlog #9)

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And now, a change of pace: a blog not about NaNoWriMo. About six blogs ago, I wrote about a bunch of short pitches I was putting together for some comic stories. Well, while I busied myself with bashing out a novel-third in Nov, I also heard that two of those had been accepted. So, yes, if all goes well, two shorts by me will appear in GreyHaven anthologies in the future. Good times.

Now, since I only had to write paragraph-long summaries originally, this news also means I must now write the scripts for both these stories. So, that’s been my project since NaNo finished. How’s that gone?

I haven’t written any comic script since my failed Script Frenzy effort of 2012 (Remember Script Frenzy? Remember the awful portmanteau “screnzy” which used to send a shiver up my spine?) so these muscles have needed to creak back into life. I’ve read a lot of comics lately at least, so remember how the storytelling works, but describing stuff? In detail? To an actual collaborator? New territory.

Lots of words no-one will ever get to read. Lots of trying to get across what needs to be there without imposing too hard on the artist’s freedom to do something interesting with the page. Lots of reading comic scripts and script notes by comics writers online to see if it helps. I don’t yet know who the artists will be, so I’m trying to make the script as everyone-friendly as possible.

Trying to also avoid the rookie comics writer’s mistake of overloading panels with text, because even if it seems like nothing to me on the script, count up the words and compare them to an existing comics panel and I suddenly realise that, yeah, put those bad boys down in word balloons and the art may as well be a blank space. Which, at least, saves a lot of work by the artist.

So, hard work, new skills. Nonetheless, I still love comics as an art form and the idea of seeing my stories in arted and printed form makes it all seem worthwhile. So I’ve gotta finish the first one, start the second one… maybe buy some Christmas presents or something too? It’s strange new territory, but after burning the candle at both ends prose-wise during NaNo, it’s kinda nice to be working in this different structure for a while.

Hobson & Choi Podcast #14 – The Outsider

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This week, Hobson heads back to the Social Awesome office and shines the spotlight on one of the other suspects. What will he turn up? Meanwhile in the back matter, a little NaNoWriMo post-mortem, maybe talking a tad slower now I’m not in such a rush over that.

You can listen on Mixcloud here, download the MP3 here or subscribe on iTunes to have it thrown at you every week. Or if you hate iTunes on principle, you can point your RSS reader at our Libsyn page to get every episode.

Thirty Nine Thousand, Six Hundred And Thirty Four Words – NaNoWriMo Ends Here! (WriteBlog #8)

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Calendar fans will note that National Novel Writing Month runs another few days, until this Saturday, but for me, it is all over. Because, well, I finished my novel, and as discussed in these WriteBlogs at some length, that was the job.

I could probably find a few thousand words to put me over fifty thousand, maybe a between-chapters diversion where my characters embark on a lengthy game of Scrabble. But I don’t really care. I have finished my novel.

Well, the first draft, anyway. As blogs are currently lining up to tell us, finishing your NaNo draft of a novel is not the same as having a complete book, and it’s probably best to at least read over it a few times before sending it out to everyone. Chuck Wendig did a better blog about this than I ever will.

But as discussed here last week, I’m well aware that my book is not ready for primetime, both due to prose clunkiness and the jarring “How much did I just drink?” plot revisions between each chapter. So, yup, got the need for editing, thanks. What other notable feelings can I record on finishing the NaNo novel?

Well, fear mostly. I’ve managed to finish a book without hating it, which is a big step, but I’m also aware of the sheer scale of the rewriting required. I’m not necessarily exaggerating when I say at least a third of it needs to be redone. The level of change involved might be too massive to really qualify as “editing”, but I’m going to call it that anyway to keep calm.

I was coping with this better when I hadn’t finished the draft, to be honest. Now I’m faced with the need to set about doing it, I’m starting to panic properly. Fortunately, writing convention dictates I put the book in a drawer for at least a short time to get some distance from the story (and the terror) – not to mention, Christmas is coming which is always a helpful excuse to avoid work.

So I’m shoving the book away until January, when my fear will hopefully transform into a newfound commitment to high-speed editing/rewriting/whatever I’m calling it. Regardless of my nerves, I’m pretty chuffed to have finished well inside my self-imposed deadline, anyway. A 100K first draft novel in seven months is pretty good for me.

And don’t worry, WriteBlog fans, I never actually stop working – not only will Hobson & Choi continue, I have an entirely different writing project to type now. More on that next week, probably.

HINT: it involves something I’ve mentioned here before.

Hobson & Choi Podcast #13 – Lunch Club

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Thirteen really is turning out oddly lucky for our heroes, as this week they don’t have to eat anything disgusting! There is still food though. Meanwhile, I am doing NaNo whilst making out of date Who comments. You can also now read my actual review if you’re so inclined.

You can listen on Mixcloud here, download the MP3 here or subscribe on iTunes to have it thrown at you every week. Or if you hate iTunes on principle, you can point your RSS reader at our Libsyn page to get every episode.

NaNoWriMo Week Three – So it wasn’t just a phase? (WriteBlog #7)

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NaNoWriMo - 21 Days In

So, as of this writing, I am 31.3K words through NaNo, and the bad news is: barring a miracle, I am unlikely to make 50,000. I know, I was disappointed too. It’s still possible I might finish the novel, then crunch through about five chapters of Hobson & Choi in advance to take me over the edge, but realistically I am probably going to pound out the final scenes early next week, then spend the rest of the month partying.

And by partying, I mean watching DVDs and tweeting. Nonetheless, there is good news too, and it was kinda spoilered in the last para: unless I break all my fingers in the next few days, I will most likely finish the first draft book I am working on. So that’s nice, for reasons I already outlined last week. See adjacent graph for more detail on my word progress.

This will be my fifth or sixth stab at NaNoWriMo, and I’ve almost always made the 50K, but 2013 will be the very first time I’ve managed to complete a novel during the challenge. If only I’d started said novel in November (rather than April), I would be living the NaNo Fairy Tale.

As it is, I’ll have to be happy with just meeting my own personal deadlines. However, I’m also gathering up a towering, looming monster of an edits list. Last week, I also ruminated on how many planning and plotting problems I’ve run into as I’ve tried to make the final act of the story work, but concluded that I thought I’d finally arrived at a new plan which got me out of those particular woods.

Turns out, that particular oasis was a mirage, and beyond the woods, there were just similar woods, with spaces between them to catch my breath. They’ve become easier to traverse with practice, but nonetheless, steering this fucker to its close is akin to wrestling an octopus. You just can’t seem to pin down all the arms.

Please don’t ask me what an octopus is doing in the woods, I do not know. Clearly it is a member of the less well known octopi species Mixus Metaphorus, which dwells in whatever environment a rambling writer requires.

Basically: I had to re-plan chunks of the ending between every chapter. Each one now refers to a version of the story which doesn’t completely exist. If you tried to read my current draft, you’d wonder if you were having blackouts.

Despite all that, I’m going to press on until I’ve finished the story, for all the reasons I said last week, and then, come 2014, I’m going to take the whole damn thing in hand. And I’m still not going to refer to it as Draft 0.5 or anything like that.

Hobson & Choi Podcast #12 – Bad Breakfast

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It’s the Bad Breakfast episode! Can Hobson finish the world’s worst breakfast to win some info from his source? It’s the episode my girlfriend told me not to let her listen to, as we go into full on anti-food-porn.

And back in the back matter, the never-ending NaNoWriMo battle still has not ended.

You can listen on MixCloud here, download the MP3 here or subscribe on iTunes to have it thrown at you every week. Or if you hate iTunes on principle, you can point your RSS reader at our Libsyn page to get every episode.