NINC

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Nink Knowledge: How to Grow Voices ~ The Subtle Art of Facilitating Workshops

This article, written by Cat Rambo, is from the January 2020 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

Teaching is an art. A good teacher can help their students infinitely more than a bad one—and one expression of that is the ability to lead discussion groups and workshops, leading the students to come to realizations that will help them understand the concepts in ways they cannot learn through one-sided lecture.

Like any art, innate talent helps, but discussion and workshop facilitation definitely can be learned. Part of that learning is aided by thinking about it beforehand, during, and after. How do you, as a teacher, create a space in which as many students as possible will flourish, one in which no one is unable to participate? How do you build a process that encourages creativity while making sure everyone has their turn?

I have taught workshops of varying sizes over the past three decades and my process continues to evolve and change. Here are some of the more important things I’ve learned through experience or observation.

Every group is different, and every group comes with its own idiosyncrasies and voices. Enjoy the mix for the happy ephemeral phenomenon that it is, while drawing conclusions from its generalities in order to apply these in future iterations of the material. Many of your attendees will be very anxious. At least a handful will surprise and delight you with their talent, and sometimes staggeringly so.

I’ve always done introductions, having the students tell me their names and a little bit about themselves, but in recent years one thing I make sure to add is their preferred pronouns. Asking for those both allows me to accommodate their needs and acknowledge who they are as much as pronouncing their name correctly does.

If it’s a workshop where students are expected to critique each others’ work, attendees should have received both manuscripts and clear guidelines about how to structure their critique well in advance. Students can feel anxious about what’s going to happen in a workshop if they don’t know what the structure will be like, so I try to include an overview that lets them know what to expect: the class will go for two hours, with a 5-10 minute break in the middle; the writer doesn’t have to reply to comments if they don’t want to; we’ll have overall questions at the end. New writers in particular can be uncertain; there’s no shame in giving them a little handholding to encourage them into the water to swim.

Facilitating discussion means making sure people understand what the guidelines for participation are and how to take turns in conversation. Don’t let people interrupt each other but don’t be nasty about it, just be polite but firm. Don’t be afraid to pause in order to let people think of questions, even though it may feel like an uncomfortably long silence, and if you need to, ask leading questions like: Can you think about examples of what we’ve been talking about in your own life/your writing/media/literature? Or: How do you think you might apply this in your own writing?

When answering questions that someone has asked, repeat the question first. That helps people who didn’t hear it the first time, as well as allowing you to clarify things that may not be immediately apparent. I prefer to have the students asking questions and myself answering them, but there is a give and take to such things that will vary with the students and the circumstances.

Overprepare. You get better at judging how long things will take as you gain experience, but there will always be that class where things go awry and no one has turned in the work. Have a couple of writing exercises up your sleeve and while the students are working on it, use that 5-10 minutes to assemble discussion questions or other points to cover in order to get yourself through the class time.

You never stop learning from other teachers. Sometimes it’s a new technique or a good metaphor. Be good about crediting your fellows for the clever sayings. It’s also handy to listen to the students and find out what worked for them or not—one of the things I’m working on is following up better in 2020, such as asking students what parts of workshops they liked/disliked, as well as what was particularly effective. Learning from other teachers also keeps you from ossifying and just spitting out the same theories and observations over and over again.

Teaching writing is, I think, one of the ways you can become a better writer yourself. Often I do the writing exercises along with the students in my classes, to the point where I think somewhere between a third to half of my published flash fiction pieces were the result of such writings. It’s also something that makes you articulate and challenges your own practice of fiction and the rules by which you write. It’s never bad to look at those with an interrogatory eye in order to move beyond them.

When leading a discussion, don’t be afraid to go with the flow. Sometimes the oddest questions may be the most fruitful, or those questions may lead to additions for the future, sometimes even inspiring entirely new classes. The question of how to maintain a fruitful writing practice in the face of increasingly grey times, for example, led to a class on hopepunk that has become one of my favorites to teach and one which was even referenced in a Wall Street Journal article on the subgenre.

Post class, encourage your students to let you know about their publications and victories as they go forward. One of the nicest things about teaching is a chance to see the coming wave, and to know some of the voices that are rising in fiction and creating new stories. Watching a student succeed is one of the most satisfying feelings I know.

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Novelist and short story writer Cat Rambo is the founder of online writing school The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. Her 200+ fiction publications include works in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and Clarkesworld Magazine. Her space opera You Sexy Thing appears in January 2021 from Tor Macmillan. She is a former two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

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Nink Knowledge: Using GMC to Troubleshoot a Scene

This article, written by Colleen Thompson, is from the October 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

As wonderful as it would be, as writers, to have every word leap flawlessly from our fingertips onto the page, we sometimes get the sense or we receive feedback indicating that a scene we've written isn't working. When the reason for the issue—or a solution—isn't immediately apparent, I've found it helpful to go back to the building blocks, using lessons learned from author Debra Dixon's how-to classic, Goal, Motivation, and Conflict (Gryphon Books for Writers, 1996) to jumpstart the troubleshooting process.

Clarity of goals

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” —Kurt Vonnegut

The character's goal, his/her need or desire, is the true backbone of the story. If a scene feels aimless, ask yourself if you've clearly communicated what the protagonist hopes to achieve. An external desire, such as victory in some contest, the acquisition of a skill, or escape from danger is something tangible, whereas an internal desire, such as independence, acclaim, or fear, is emotional and often hidden, sometimes even from the character him/herself.

Though the character's purpose, as well as the scene's, may not initially be apparent, the author needs to know the purpose, at least when going back to revise the scene, sharpen it, and give it clarity and focus. Other goal-related weaknesses may occur when other characters in the scene have no apparent needs or desires, leaving them to float as aimlessly as dust motes.

Though not every character's goal must be known to the reader, the author should consider these goals carefully. Think about how each character’s goal might serve the scene or the story as a whole if an antagonist or any other character were acting at cross-purposes or in opposition to the protagonist because of a conflicting goal.

Takeaway troubleshooting questions:

  • Is it clear what the protagonist of this scene wants?
  • Do I know what every character in this scene wants?

Motivation

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”— Archimedes

When a character's motivation—his/her reason for needing to achieve the goal—are strong enough, the writer can move the mind of the reader to accept nearly anything the character does to achieve this goal. The trick is convincing the audience to fall under the spell of the character's desire, to give this desire both plausibility and an urgency that resonates without becoming a hyperbolic bludgeon. (The audience will eventually succumb to adrenal fatigue—or perhaps eye-rolling—if the main character is saving the universe from annihilation or dangling off the edge of a precipice by his/her fingertips in every scene.)

As with the goal, motivation may be external, making it easily perceivable by other characters, or internal, playing out within the realm of character emotions, some of which may be deeply buried. To cite a well-known example, in the movie Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke Skywalker's goal of rescuing the princess and aiding the rebellion (a call to adventure he initially resists) is an externally motivated goal that receives impetus when his aunt and uncle are slain by Imperial stormtroopers. Though Luke wouldn't be able to articulate it, he's also driven by a hunger for adventure, romance, and the yearning to connect to something larger.

To turn up the heat on a scene's motivation, ask yourself what circumstances would make your protagonist want or need to achieve the goal more urgently? Alternately, what could more strongly motivate the antagonist, or any other character in the scene, to thwart the main character, often in the pursuit of his/her own goals?

Motivations must not only be believable but broadly relatable to an audience. To achieve the latter, work on strengthening the link between the characters' motivations and one of what psychologist Paul Eckman referred to as basic human emotions: anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and happiness. Though moviegoers viewing Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time will never find themselves in young Luke's identical situation early in the movie, they are able to connect to his sense of loss, his terror, and his fury, and they can put themselves in his situation, imagining themselves behaving heroically (even if in reality, they'd run screaming to hide out in the desert caves) to fight back against this wrong.

Takeaway troubleshooting questions:

  • Are character behaviors adequately and plausibly motivated?
  • To what universal human/reader emotion does this motivation relate?

Conflict

“…the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.” —William Faulkner

Whether it's among rivals for a prize, characters struggling for survival, or a host of other familiar variations, conflict is the accelerator that drives both a story and a scene. Within the larger structure of a novel, some scenes will require a heavier foot than others on that gas pedal, but every scene needs to contain some element of tension to keep it from falling flat.

When a scene feels too static, it's often a relatively simple task to, at least metaphorically, “put another bear in the canoe,” creating another complication, crafting a betrayal, or shortening the timeline available for the completion of the goal. To prevent the conflict from feeling arbitrary, check to see if it's closely related to the protagonist's or another character's goal and if motivation is apparent or alluded to, even if it's to raise questions about what the reasoning might possibly be.

Conflict is also essential in revealing the real character beneath the veneer. Anyone can put on an act when things are going smoothly, but under enough pressure all sorts of flaws are exposed. Put enough pressure on an individual in the form of conflict and character transformation may occur, allowing the protagonist to achieve the goal—or perhaps to recognize it as unworthy.

Takeaway troubleshooting questions:

  • Does the scene contain adequate and relevant conflict?
  • Does the conflict serve to motivate character growth?

Many novelists come to take for granted the concepts of goal, motivation, and conflict, just as drivers take for granted their preferred mode of transportation when the engine's running smoothly. It's during a breakdown that it's worth going back for a peek under the hood—or even taking a few moments to sketch out a GMC schematic to help you once more get all the basic parts back in alignment and get both your scene, and the novel it's a part of, running smoothly once again.

Resources

  • Goal, Motivation, and Conflict, Debra Dixon, Gryphon Books for Writers, 1996.
  • "Writing 101: Internal Vs. External Conflict," Writer's Ink: the Official Blog of Shannon Curtis, 11/13/2013.
  • Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, Paul Eckman, Times Books, 2003.

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A former teacher and frequent speaker on the craft of writing, Colleen Thompson is the RITA-nominated author of 30 romantic suspense and historical romance novels and novellas written for Montlake, Harlequin, Dorchester, and Kensington Publishing. Look for her next release, Deadly Texas Summer (Harlequin Romantic Suspense) in March 2020.

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Nink Knowledge: Mixing Traditional Publishing & Self-Publishing

This article, written by Lindsay Randall, is from the July 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

(Editor’s note: For the purposes of this article, hybrid is defined as having published front list in both trad & indie during 2018-2019.)

Is it double the trouble or worth the effort to publish front list titles both traditionally and indie?

Several of NINC’s hybrid authors shared their thoughts, words of wisdom and warning, and how each times releases to widen her reach.

Why publish trad and indie simultaneously?

For author Katie MacAlister, concurrently publishing indie and trad offers the opportunity to push beyond boundaries of style and storytelling while reaping the benefits of publisher support and a conduit to a larger readership.

“It’s the best of both worlds, allowing me freedom to write whatever twangs my strings, yet remain in the traditionally published world,” she said.

MacAlister’s most recent trad title is Day of the Dragon, the second book in the paranormal Dragon Hunter series (March 2019, Hachette Group). Her latest self-pub book is the contemporary romance Ever Fallen in Love, released November 2018.

While the genres may differ, MacAlister noted that she sees an uptick in her self-pubbed sales whenever a new trad book is released.

“My publishers have connections and abilities that I either lack or don’t want to spend time doing. They put books up on NetGalley, arrange for reviews in trade journals, organize blog features, run ads and contests, coordinate PR campaigns online, and so on. They usually have a longer reach with subsidiary sales and contacts within foreign publishing companies,” she said. “It's also nice to be able to write a book and hand it over for editing, production, and cover work without having to arrange for all that myself.”

Indie publishing also netted her a new publisher. She released Fireborn in 2018, the first book in a new series she wanted to write regardless if a publisher wanted it. She’d no sooner posted news of the release than Kensington made an offer. It was a bid MacAlister liked. Kensington will re-release Fireborn in June and two other books in the series.

“I’d highly recommend being hybrid to any author,” said Bronwen Evans, who writes and publishes historical romance through indie and trad channels. “This market is ever-changing—in fact, it’s more like revolving and spinning. I think it’s good to ensure you have a foot in each camp.”

Attracted to the Earl is her most recent trad release (May 2019, Random House), while her latest indie offering is To Tempt a Highland Duke, released in April as part of the Dukes By the Dozen multi-author boxed set.

Evans said she loves the freedom found in self-publishing and appreciates the marketing available through her traditional publisher.

Words of wisdom and warning

Both MacAlister and Evans said they must deal with non-compete clauses.

“My agent works hard to eliminate any non-compete clauses in my contracts, narrowing the language so that I can write outside of a series whenever the whim strikes me,” MacAlister said. “I do try to remain cognizant of how many books are coming out and when. Since I'm not a rapid release sort of writer, I like to make sure I have a new book dropping every few months, and I will shift my self-pubbed books to make that happen.”

As for Evans, the non-compete clause nearly made her walk away from traditional publishing.

“In the past two years, non-compete clauses began to pop into my contracts and the non-compete period got longer and longer,” she said. “I have a good agent, and we tweak most of the clause now and work around it with my release schedule.”

Lyn Cote, who has been hybrid since 2010 and traditionally published for 12+ years before that, said “being a hybrid is a juggling act” of positioning indie titles around the release of trad titles.

She, too, worked through an agent to deal with the non-compete clauses, remaining with Harlequin’s Love Inspired Historical line until its end in 2018 (her last title was Suddenly a Frontier Father, part of the Wilderness Brides series). She stayed because most of her readers purchased their books in Walmart “and Harlequin could get me into almost every Walmart in the U.S. and Canada.”

She noted that sales for both increased whenever an indie book released around the time a traditionally published book came out. (She writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and historical novels. The Heart Hopes is her latest indie title.)

Today Cote said the biggest reality in all retailing is that more people are shopping online.

“When an author looks at a traditional contract, he/she must ask these questions: ‘Where will my publisher sell these books?’ and ‘What will they do to actively make my books visible?’” she said.

Cozy mystery author Lynn Cahoon, who indie writes in romance as Lynn Collins, said “keeping your foot in both worlds gives you an edge over other authors.”

“I now have a better understanding of the entire process for publishing a book, which gives me the ability to ask for things I know the publisher can do and not look stupid asking for things they can't do,” Cahoon said. “As authors, sometimes we don't know enough about the entire book publishing cycle.”

Cahoon’s most recent trad title is Mother’s Day Mayhem (April 2019, Kensington), part of the Tourist Trap Mystery series. Her most recent self-published title is Country Hearts, book five of the Castle View romance series.

“You have to plan your time and energy well,” Cahoon said. “Make sure you’re taking as much time writing and editing your self-published books that you do with your trad. And think about marketing. You can't just put a book up on Amazon (especially under a new name) and expect it to sell.”

For Lea Wait, the model of pubbing both indie and traditionally offers her a larger income (to date, her trad books out-earn her self-published titles), while allowing her the freedom to write what she wants in whatever genre she chooses.

She traditionally publishes mysteries (her latest is Thread on Arrival: A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery [April 2019, Kensington]) and indie publishes historical and young adult fiction (Justice & Mercy: A Post-Civil War Mystery in February).

Wait markets all of her books together, regardless of genre. When speaking or signing, she has both types of books available, plus blogs about both, and features them on postcards she shares with fans.

Timing releases/widening the reach

Each author said they time self-pubbed titles around their traditionally published titles and take care not to dilute the market.

“My traditional books come out about every nine to 12 months,” Wait said. “I try to have indie books come between them.”

For Cahoon, she tries to avoid releasing her self-pubbed romance in the months she has a mystery releasing on the traditional side.

“My trad contracts all say I can't give a book to another publisher before I complete this contract, except anything written under Lynn Collins,” she added. “In a perfect world, I'd love to have one release a month—trad or indie.”

Evans plans her release schedule each January. She also watches cover design on the trad side so that it doesn’t clash with the indie side, and she makes use of her self-published work as giveaways and free reads for newsletter signups, marketing all of her releases to all readers.

MacAlister said she staggers books to release three or four times a year, and adds a link to all works in the end matter of every indie book. “Being very, very organized is a must,” she said.

Wait summed it up like this: “Take a lot of deep breaths and don’t overcommit yourself in either direction. Make sure you meet contracted deadlines. Have fun with the whole idea!”

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Lindsay Randall serves as assistant editor of Nink, and while she has indie published front list and backlist, she hopes to once again work with a traditional publisher.

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Nink Knowledge: Tricking the Limbic System into Giving You the Right Drugs at the Right Time

This article, written by Patricia Burroughs, is from the J 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

In last month’s Nink, I explained how procrastination isn’t simply a matter of willpower or character, but rather a product of a brain battling with itself over who’s the boss—the executive in the prefrontal cortex or the bodyguard in the limbic system.

Most if not all of the time, we procrastinate because doing The Thing is not fun or pleasant, which means we have a negative feeling about it. It happens quickly:

“In 1/32 of a second we become fearful and we can’t think! THAT is what procrastination really is.”
– Maribeth Blunt,, Psychotherapist & Life Coach

But we are not without weapons, although nothing will work all the time and some things may never work. One of the best and often immediate ways to connect with your prefrontal cortex is to conjure up a good mood. The limbic system is designed to play nicely with your executive functions and even fuel them with stuff that helps you stay focused, energized, and happy with what you’re doing. One suggestion is to visualize happy times with the activity you’re avoiding, simply because doing so establishes the good mood and lack of stress you need to write.

One reason video game designers let people pile up the points before the game starts getting tougher is to give repetition, practice and confidence, so that when the game gets harder, you don’t just walk away. Yes, they get you hooked by letting you win a lot before they make it hard. Creating a habit of writing is similar.

Break the writing or project you’re avoiding into small bits, and recognize that if it’s not working, you haven’t broken it down into small enough bits. If you’re not writing at all, any progress is good. Remember, you’re tricking your brain into doing what you need it to do. No matter how ridiculously small you have to make your goal, do it. You may do this more than once in the day. Or start and go a little further. Or a lot further.

Or get to the very end of that goal and stop—even if your 100-word goal ends in midsentence. Do it. That was the goal and you aced it! Setting a goal that you know you can achieve is vital.

Gamification

If your brain has a hyperactive rescue mode and wants to fight-or-flight you away from anything that makes you feel tense, stressed, or just plain negative, the key may be to cultivate habits that are as entertaining as video games or YouTube.

No, really. It’s a thing. There are a wide selection of apps that turn establishing productive habits into games, or close to it. (If you want a fun and motivating introduction to gamification along with some unexpected games to turn loose on your life [zombies!], let Jessica at HowtoADHD tell you How to Turn Your Life Into a Video Game.)

Habatica is a full-fledged RPG (role-playing game), complete with the ability to level up, buy gear, earn gold coins, etc. However, to reap those and other fun rewards, you don’t fight battles. You get experience or health points each day for each “habit” you are able to check (you did the good habits, refrained from the bad ones). You write the habits (write a chapter, write a newsletter, write two sentences, however you’ve set it up). There’s a to-do list for one-off tasks that don’t repeat, and the rewards you set for yourself, whether it’s a treat, an episode of your favorite television show, or time on Facebook. When you reach a high enough level you start accruing money and pieces of armor. It’s  a real game that even lets you form a “party” with other people you know, adding a social element.

SuperBetter (overview of book and app) (tutorial)) may have the most dramatic storyline. Dr. Jane McGonigal had been developing games for 10 years when she suffered a debilitating concussion that wasn’t healing, was causing horrific pain, and left her so depressed she contemplated suicide. Instead, she developed Jane the Concussion Slayer. That game became SuperBetter, and it’s designed to work for you while you play.  You create Quests (daily tasks and habits), create a Secret Identity (which is half the fun), challenges, Power Ups (tiny moves that give an emotional or physical lift) and more. Your negative habits or mindsets are Bad Guys. Is there something you’ve always wanted to do? Make it a Quest you’re working toward. This app also has a social aspect.

The Fabulous (overview) (tutorial) is described by Girlboss as a sleek app that will help you stick to your goals.

Daylio (overview) (tutorial) is a daily mood and activity tracker that lets you monitor the patterns of your emotions and establish new habits.

Finally, and perhaps saving the best for last, productivity consultant Denis Duvauchelle said, “Dopamine can be triggered with meaningful rewards, funny jokes and pleasant pictures. Have trouble motivating yourself to write? Kitten every 100 words!”

Rituals

Some writers find grounding and motivation in rituals that are creative, sensory, sometimes spiritual and/or religious—and can be designed to get you into the mood.

Remember the ongoing battle chronic procrastinators have? There are many ways to elevate that mood, and rituals are amazing tools.

One writer decided to take the plunge and write full time but quickly discovered that, since he didn’t have to cram all of his writing into stolen hours from work and family, the new sense of freedom led to him frittering away his time. His solution was a simple two-step ritual. Every day once the house emptied, he quieted himself and stroked a mallet down a set of desktop chimes. As their vibrations slowed, he lit a candle, one that would burn for four hours. The chime was his attempt to establish a Pavlov’s dog affect. Chime equaled time to write and he soon had no trouble diving into his work. But the candle was even more vital as once it was lit, it indicated his writing time. As it burned, his time grew shorter. He did allow himself to break as necessary, but even then he was aware that he was burning time, not to mention he had a burning candle he had to keep an eye on! His simple two steps provided a trigger [time to write] and mindfulness [time is burning].

Your ritual could be starting with a prayer. Or turning on music that fades into the background. Or using essential oils or incense.

“Make it so.”

Finally, one of the most helpful tools has to do with establishing new habits—fast.

Not after 21 days or 60 days, but almost immediately. That may sound impossible but this technique is recommended in many academic and psychological circles and is worth trying.

Program yourself to take a positive action or to avoid a negative one through self-talk, either aloud or mentally.

Isolate the precise action you want to take. Then create the sentence—the mantra, perhaps—that you’re going to start saying. It can be a straightforward plan, simple in its execution. “After I finish loading the dishwasher tomorrow, then I’m going to sit down and write for awhile.”

That may sound unimpressive, but if you start saying this in the morning the day before, and if you write it on a post-it and stick it on your computer, or wherever you will see it most often, and if every time you see it, you either speak the words aloud or read them silently… I think you can take it from here. It’s unassuming, direct, and not exciting. But by the time you’ve matter-of-factly and repeatedly reminded yourself of your intention, after you load that dishwasher, sitting down to write is going to be a lot easier than it has been. You’ve been preparing your brain for it for over 24 hours. Have fun with it, if you want. Roll your eyes, laugh about it. Next morning you may laugh all the way to the chair.

Need some extra motivation? Link the action—in this case, writing—to something you want to do, before and after.

“After I drink my expensive, special occasion coffee that I only use for guests, then I’ll sit down and write [two sentences, two scenes, two chapters, two hours]. And when I’ve done that, I’ll go to the coffee house and pick up another bag of those special coffee beans.”

You’ve outwitted your brain because you sandwiched your writing between two things that will make your prefrontal cortex purr happily in anticipation.

Hey, you may have not only gotten yourself jumpstarted, but you might have just established an effective new writing ritual: bestowing yourself with alone-time and the “good” coffee before and after writing because you deserve it.

Because one of the most vital things you can do is develop habits and rituals that take care of you.

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Patricia Burroughs has ADHD, dyscalculia, and associated cognitive disorders, all of which are disorders of executive function and the prefrontal cortex. She generally manages her issues through self-education, medication, and therapy. She is not a neurosurgeon nor is she a psychologist. She encourages you to seek more information if you want to understand the nitty-gritty of brain function beyond their squabbles, which may include professional help.

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Nink Knowledge: Converting Your Books into Comics/Graphic Novels — A One-Page Experiment

This article, written by Jennifer Stevenson and illustrated by Elizabeth Person, is from the May 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

With graphic novels and comics all the rage, I worked with Elizabeth Person, an illustrator, animator, and comic book writer-artist on a three-panel experiment. This will show you how author and artist collaborate, a different exercise from drawing one’s own.

Original 250-word story

At three in the morning of March first, 1893, the moon rode high in London’s sky over the old mansion in Grosvenor Square. All was still: no hansom cabs rumbled over the cobblestones, no policeman’s whistle sounded, and even the gas lamps burned with a fainter hiss, around which bats flitted noiselessly. No house thronged with a private party, no orchestra was heard behind the tall, darkened windows. The only sign of a disturbance was a window ajar on the ground floor at number 12, its curtain blowing outward.

Inside the darkened drawing room, Miss Emmeline Moriarty stood behind the curtain, her pistol raised, listening for telltale sounds of the householder’s return. It had been simplicity to enter. She knew Lord Jowles to be at his club that night, celebrating the success of his plan to seize her father’s criminal empire. The servants would be in their attic rooms. The square was silent. She hadn’t even had to break the glass.

Lord Jowles was still drunk; he had walked all the way home from his club and the unseasonably warm night air had nearly put him to sleep. He never noticed the curtain blowing out of his own drawing-room window. He had spent the evening drinking whatever friends bought for him, eating roast duck and oysters and pudding and everything his medical advisors had forbidden him, accepting congratulations from his cronies until they had tottered home one by one, the slackers. Unsteadily, he now paused on his own doorstep and scrabbled at the keyhole with his wayward key.

Let’s turn it into a script in three panels. In my directions to the artist, I sent the following:

  • Establishing shot: London city scene, full moon in a starry sky, and below, small, a house lit in front by a street lamp. On the first (ground, if you’re British) floor front, a casement window (door-style, not opening up-and-down) is a little open, and the tail of a light curtain is hanging out and fluttering slightly in a breeze.
  • Interior closeup shot: Mostly dark. Half of a young woman’s face illuminated by moonlight from the window. She is standing behind the curtain inside that room, but all we see is half her stern, lovely young face, perhaps a curl beside her fiercely narrowed eye, her small hand raised, holding an enormous service revolver circa 1893, pointing up, and perhaps a bit of the street, sidewalk, streetlamp below. If you can’t fit all that in, just give us a bit of her face, the hand holding the revolver, the curtain, and maybe the moon beyond it.
  • Interior closeup shot: A bit lighter. All we see is Lord Jowles’s plump bare hand trying to thrust his key into the keyhole. The key is attached to a fancy key chain with a fob and a couple of other keys dangling on it. Lord Jowles wears a gaudy man’s jeweled ring.  Small speech bubble comes down into the picture: “Damned keyhole moves around on a feller.”

I also told Elizabeth “There’s no room for her clothes as you’re showing how tiny a keyhole image an artist can work with to create the mood, illustrate character, set the time of day and setting. You’ll notice the backstory doesn’t mention whether she’s working for her father’s criminal empire or working against it, so the artist is at liberty to make her look villainous or virtuous, as well as pretty and young and well-bred and determined.”

Elizabeth then sent me some draft images.


Feedback

At this step, as the author, I provided the following feedback: “This is lovely! Street and house are the right kind of architecture. Emmeline looks ladylike, resolute and fierce. The revolver is terrific—huge in her hand, and clunky like army revolvers of the period. The doorknob & keys are excellent. Also, Lord Jowles’s hand is nicely masculine without looking ‘stevedore.’”

I then gave her more specific feedback on what I had envisioned:

  • Panel 1: I had imagined looking down on the house from up above, but this works fine! When you polish, might add a tiny bit of light from the streetlights, and a sliver of a moon above, to help signal “nighttime.”
  • Panel 2: I imagined this closer up. Perhaps show us maybe less than half her face, and the revolver in her hand or even just part of the revolver (barrel & cartridge-cylinder), the rest of her face partly concealed by the edge of a closed curtain. Because you’ve made her hair, face, collar, hand, and revolver perfectly signal all the things I wanted, if you zoom in, you will still give us everything we want, nice and large, without wasting extra space on the room décor or much of the street view. Also, Emmeline should be behind a curtain. Probably not behind the one that is blowing open. Although it adds continuity to have her standing beside the open window we saw in panel 1, it isn’t logical. The implication being, she is waiting for Jowles to enter the room, and she expects to ambush him when he is inside it.
  • Panel 3: The third panel, another extreme closeup, brings the promise of the waiting menace of the revolver-holding woman closer to a moment of actual conflict. Lord Jowles’s hand is just right. How about you take out his thumbnail and add a seam on his thumb and a button at his wrist, to indicate a white glove (surely a sign of the upper class!) and add his ring.

Elizabeth responded that she could see what I meant in the wider shot feeling less intimate and dramatic. She then offered her thoughts and sent a cropped copy of the second panel that approximated what she had in mind for my feedback.

 

 

At this part in the process, I found what she had done interesting, and let her know that the shorter, wider frame looked better. I also noted that perhaps we needed to consider putting the door on her right so doesn’t have her back to the door and that the view through the window of the buildings across the street confused me. Logically, I knew that the houses across the street very likely look like that, but my immediate assumption is that she’s in a window across the street from the house with our blowing-curtain-open-window. This is because I am a lazy reader. Since there’s no action or dialogue, I think we should expect lazy reading.

I then proposed some solutions, giving her three possible solutions. She chose the third, which was to use the short, wide panel-view she’d sent, and changing it to put her behind the curtain and shift the camera angle toward sky.

After a bit more back and forth emails, Elizabeth sent me the cleaner versions of panels 1 and 3, and three compositions for panel 2:

Panel 1:

 

Panel 2, three versions:

  • Top: The same as before but with the door right next to the window on the right. Architecturally, this might seem weird, but visually it read well.
  • Middle: The view from a lower camera angle with the door closer the reader. The light draws reader eyes to her immediately before seeing the door, so it works narratively.
  • Bottom: A lower camera angle, but parallel to the wall. It’s dramatic but the door is a bit hard to read.

 

Panel 3:

 

The minute I saw panels 1 and 3, I knew we were good there. I also thought the second of the three options for #2 was most effective, because she takes the eye! But I thought that she should have the pistol should be bigger, and she should give the reader a stern eyeball.

I also noticed what seems to be a pole in the room, because the view is of being in the room looking out. As we discussed this, Elizabeth realized the lamp post didn’t have a grounding point in the image, which made it look odd. We decided adding the moon might give a better idea of the camera angle without mistaking the lamp post for some kind of indoor pillar.

Here is the final shot for panel 2:

 

The final series of images comes out like this, then:

 

 

A few takeaways from the process

  • Your story shifts shape on its way out of your head and onto a page. First, you imagine a series of images and words. Then you convert those images and words into fiction. Then you revisit the fiction to convert it into a comic book script. So your story moves a lot between right brain and left brain, and you may find that what you imagined when you originally wrote the story is not on the page, perhaps has never been on the page.
  • Don’t be afraid to try drawing your comic book yourself first, using stick figures, to block out the story you want to tell. “Thumbnailing” your script like this will help you learn about communicating with the artist…and learn about your story as well!
  • Listen to the artist. You have your expertise and they have theirs.

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Jennifer Stevenson is the author of five series, nineteen novels and twenty short stories. Her story "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" appeared in Jam! Tales from the World of Roller Derby, a graphic anthology. Her paranormal women's fiction series Coed Demon Sluts was nominated for the James Tiptree Award and featured on John Scalzi's "The Big Idea" blog. She lives in Chicago with two cats and a stagehand.

 

Elizabeth Person is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. She graduated from Allegheny College in 2017 in fine arts & computer science. She has been illustrating covers, maps, and characters for writers since 2011.

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