Since I wrote last night’s post about the webcomic format, I decided to try and come up with an idea for it. Maybe I wouldn’t do three 100-page books, but three 50-page ones (or one 150-page one), but I wanted to keep to the idea of a single story.
The original story I’d thought about for it was fairly episodic, because I’d had this idea that I could have guest artists come in once in a while. The problem with that ended up being that I had a lot of engine, but not a lot of heart behind why the story was happening that specific way.
So this time, I wanted to go for a single continuous story that I could tell with a single artist (though one that could be adapted to multiple artists if it came to that) but for which I knew the whys. I ransacked my notebook of old ideas, but nothing really fit. Then I went to bed, and I lay in the dark going through lots of ideas and combinations of genres and characters to see if anything sparked. I think I went through almost every genre I’ve read, let alone written.
And finally one coalesced into a nugget that I can start work from. It’s still quite rough, but I think it’s reasonably strong – I narrated the setup to a couple of people today just as a “Would you read this?” check, and it passed.
What led me to it was realising that in thinking of genre, I was sort of limiting myself to a framework that’s not helpful in generating ideas. So I started thinking about the visuals. After all, there had to be a strong reason I wanted to make a comic and not a novel here.
So I asked myself – if this has to be a comic, then what do I want it to look like? And I knew I wanted to do something that looked a bit like Moebius, something with that line and that colour, and from there, I started thinking about what I would want to do with visuals like that. I could work on something fantastical, or surreal, but also maybe do straightforward sci-fi.
Funny thing is, every time I read Moebius, the stories never give me the same thing I’m getting from the visual style. I want something solid, something grounded but strange, and the stories are mostly philosophical babble, abstracted from any kind of reality. Which is fine – those are the stories he wanted to tell.
But that’s one of the most fun exercises for a writer – you see something that has some interesting aspects, but you feel it doesn’t entirely work. And then you think – How would I fix it? You ask yourself enough questions, and you have a story completely distanced from your inspiration.
So that’s what I have for now – I’m obviously not going to tell you the story here. But I might use this log for more engine posts as I get going.