Comments on: SIDEWISE and Beyond: The Creative Process

By: Longbox Digital Comics, Life after Diamond and the new Whiteout Trailer | Optimum Wound

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:50:40 +0000

[...] MacPherson posts a quick and handy piece on his creative process and writing for Zuda [...]

By: dwightmacpherson

dwightmacpherson — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:46:10 +0000

Thank you for the well wishes, Caanan! We plan to duke it out till the bitter end.

By: Caanan

Caanan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:26:53 +0000

Wow, that’s crazy. That’s like hollywood-style crossing over into comics.

To me, that defeats the purpose of comics. Comics are the one place where it’s okay to pull stuff directly out of your brain and throw it on a page with minimal interference. Maybe I’m naive.

You look like you’re doing well in the Zuda comp, though! Then you shall be nurtured.

I tend to plot backwards. Work from the finale and figure out the ways all the characters get to where they end up. Endings have to be strong. Makes sense to me ‘cos the ending’s the last thing people read. First impressions count, but so do lasting ones.

Good luck Dwight! The month is halfway done.

By: dwightmacpherson

dwightmacpherson — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:25:59 +0000

waki and Caanan: I think the key is to find a way of plotting and organizing the story that works for you. The point of my post was to say that professional writers would do well to have the entire story plotted BEFORE moving to the scripting process. Believe it or not, I worked with a published who demanded that you write no more than the first five pages of the story so the editor could walk hand-in-hand through the plotting and scripting of the story. I was appalled, stating that I had already plotted and scripted the entire story.

Needless to say, I left that publisher.

By: Caanan

Caanan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:14:36 +0000

I heard about the bullet outline somewhere, saying if you can’t describe what’s happening on each page in one line, it’s too much.

Zuda is good that way. You have a 60 screen constraint, so I start by numbering 60 lines 1 to, um, 60 and do my descriptions.

If you’re just trying to come up with a story with no idea where to publish it, you could end up with 600 one line page descriptions and no end in sight.

Zuda forces you to be creative, and concise.

By: waki

waki — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:06:42 +0000

i’ve started doing something similar. i have the start & end, then i have certaiin scenes already done up, one of my hard parts is linking the scenes in a certain space of pages.
the hardest part for me is that i write in freehand so i can doodle the scene/layout, but then transferring it to type. i just feel more creative when i hand write the story. i wonder if it’s because i’m an inker?