By Paul Kupperberg
As you may have surmised by
now, this column’s less about the nuts and bolts of writing than the broader
ideas behind writing. Not that I don’t think that stuff’s important. It is. It’s
vital; plotting, narrative, characterization, the three-act structure, pacing,
et al are the mechanical parts that all go into building the engine that drives
the story. I guess I’m more about the design
than the engineering.
I’ve always seen writing as
a craft, a skill you possess and hone through practice and repetition. Like
your first efforts at whittling or painting a portrait, your early writing is
not going to be good. Not at all. It will
be the best you can do at the time with those native, undeveloped skills.
Ironically for the writer, the beginning is not the word but the desire to tell
a story. And on the second day comes the story to tell.
Every writing manual will
tell you it’s okay to write a bad first draft; get the story on paper first and
then go back and polish everything up pretty and nice. When you first start, a
bad draft’s the only kind you’re going to write, but that’s okay too. Keep
writing, keep looking for what doesn’t
work and learn how to fix it. Don’t ever think there’s something you can’t
learn, ever, from anybody, at any time. I have walked away from conversations
with four-year olds which resulted in wonderful ideas and insights. Don’t stop,
don’t ever stop. Keep writing even when no one’s paying you because even though
this may be or turn out to be your full time job, you should never be writing
for money.
I’ve said it before: You never write for the money but you turn
in the manuscript for a check. The money, necessary though it may be, is
not the objective of your writing; writing your ass off is. The check’s a perk.
So is publication. That’s the frosting on the cake of the opportunity to
practice your craft: To actually have it read by someone besides your friends
and parents. (Wanna know a secret, and I know it’s not just me because when I
get together with my fellow old-fart writer friends we all cop to it: I still get a thrill when I first see a
new publication, a comic book, a novel, a short story, whatever, and there it
is: my byline. Almost forty
years after my first sale and following some one thousand more. It’s that good.)
But, just because I don’t
discuss the nuts and bolts here doesn’t mean you should ignore them. That’s where
reading comes in.
Me, I read a lot. History, science,
history, non-fiction on strange subjects (salt, cod fish, oysters, the screw,
books about the evolution of the book), biography, along with a healthy dose of
fiction, ranging from literary to pure mindless pleasure reading. A lot of the
biographies I read are about writers: J.D. Salinger, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack
London, Mike Royko, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Charles Bukowski, Pete
Hamill, Robert E. Howard, Jimmy Breslin, Philip Roth, Jim Thompson…those are
just a few I plucked at random from my shelves. And I don’t necessarily have to
be a big fan of the author or, in some cases, even have read anything by them.
There are lots more.
I think self-help books are,
for the most part, for suckers. Really, how much personal insight can you gleam from such broad generalizations as are required in best-selling
books by Dr. Phil and others of his ilk? But I become one of the suckers when it’s books by writers showing other
writers how they do what they do.
Which brings us back to
broad generalizations. How likely is it that your process is the same as my
process? Or even resembles it a little? More likely, you and I approach how we
write with polar opposite processes. You’d probably look at my methods and
shudder and I’m likely to do the same with yours. But I’m still curious how you do it. Who knows, maybe there’s
something I can steal from you that will help me. It’s happened plenty of
times, and, at the risk of repeating myself: Don’t ever think there’s something you can’t learn, ever, from anybody,
at any time.
F’instance, I can’t read Stephen King. I just don’t care for
his stuff. It’s not a critical judgment, just that as a reader, I don’t connect
with him as an author...
...But, he’s Stephen King. He’s sold more books than
I can ever dream of selling, so, whether he’s to my taste or not, he’s
gotta know something that I can hook
into in my own writing, so I read his book, On
Writing. And, you know, I walked away from it with insights.
I would be remiss if I didn’t
at least point you towards some must-read books on the nuts and bolts of
writing. You can’t build an engine if you don’t know what the parts do and I’ve
found these books to be instructive, even reading them after I’d been doing
what they’re teaching for a good number of years.
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, by Dennis O’Neil (Watson-Guptill, 2001): I read
this book in manuscript stage and kept that copy of the manuscript until I had
the actual book to read. Denny is one of the best writers this field has ever seen and if you don’t know his credits, you don’t know your history and
that’s a no-no (and we’ll get to that,
boys and girls, in some books below!). His work on titles such as Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Batman, Iron Man,
Azrael, and The Question set
standards that make most of the rest of us go “D’oh!” a lot. Denny’s a thinking writer, one who looks at his
craft, dissects his efforts, learns from his mistakes and shapes sharp, crisp
prose that seems too simple to crackle, but son of a gun if it don’t. I’ve
recently reread the first two volumes of The
Question by Denny and Denys Cowan and find it’s fresher than almost
anything being done today, twenty-five years later.
Think Zen, think Alex Toth,
who spent years learning what to put into
a drawing before he started taking things out of them and strip his
style to the cartoon’s bare minimalist essence. Denny’s writing says what it
means, but the beauty is, he never tells you what that is. Instead, he trusts
his readers to follow along and figure it out. He’s also a generous teacher who
has taught at the School of Visual Arts and lectured at universities…and at DC
Comics, where he tried to impart some of his knowledge to the staff. These DC
101 classes were ostensibly for the assistant editors and younger crew, but
when Denny spoke, even us older farts listened. Denny quite simply knows what
he’s talking about and is worth listening to. Quite intently.
Will Eisner’s Shop Talk is a series of interviews conducted by (need I say
it?) legendary Will Eisner, creator of the Spirit and of sophisticated modern
narrative in graphic storytelling (y’know…growed up comic books). Previously
published in magazines, Will’s style is less interviewer/interviewee as it is
two pals, sitting around and talking shop (!) and the old days. We learn as
much about Will as we do his “subjects,” a precious resource considering what
he brought to the medium. Neal Adams, C.C. Beck, Milton Caniff, Jack Davis, Lou
Fine, Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, Phil Seuling, Joe
Simon, giants all, and giants pushed to think, dissect and analyze their work
and their process by the guy who set the standards for their field. It doesn’t
matter that none of us can draw like Eisner or Kane or Kubert; these guys are
giving the gift of gold to anybody in any creative field. It’s hard not to be
inspired when sparked by men of this creative caliber.
I can only hope some or all
of these books are still in print because when it comes to the sheer mechanics
of the craft, there are few better than Lawrence Block, author of dozens of
mystery and suspense novels, including many starring such enduring characters
as recovered alcohol P.I. Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbar, sleepless
do-gooder Evan Tanner and Hitman John Keller. Block writes in what I call the “Mind-F***
School,” playing with the readers perceptions and expectations to shock,
surprise and twist the story in ways no one ever expects. His plotting is tight
and controlled (although that’s nothing a casual reader would ever pick up on;
good construction like that should be so natural, you don’t even notice it’s
there), his characters sharp and well-defined but always entirely human. And he
writes some of the best dialogue out there. Natural, funny, smooth. There’s
much of his prowess of which to be jealous.
Fortunately, the prolific
Mr. Block is a sharer. He wrote a long-running column in Writer’s Digest magazine from which he pulled together his books on
writing, of which I own and have read once or five times, Telling Lies For Fun & Profit (Quill Books, 1981), Writing The Novel: From Plot to Print, and
Spider and Spin Me A Web: Lawrence
Block on Writing Fiction (Writer’s Digest Books, 1979 and 1988); there’s
another, it seems, entitled Write For
Your Life, which I seemed to have missed but will be seeking out.) I don’t
care if you’re writing a comic book story, a novel or a short story, Block’s
advice is on the nose. If you’ve read enough of his novels (and I have; all of
them), you know before you crack the covers of any of these books that you’re
in for a treat.
I also recommend Natalie
Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones,
Annie Dillard’s Bird by Bird: Some
Instructions on Writing and Life, and Ray Bradbury’s Zen In The Art of Writing. Solid, sensible books that respect the
process and the individual paths to creativity. And the brilliant William Goldman's (another author in the “Mind-F***
School,” a prolific novelist and screenwriter of The Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Great Waldo Pepper, All The President's Men, etc.) indispensable trio of behind-the-scenes reminiscences, Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tel/?, and The Big Picture.
For those of you looking to
go the comic book route, there are a ton of books you can read, but a handful
of must reads, to give you a true
sense of the breath, depth and history of your chosen field. I don’t want to
hear that you don’t know who Midnight is or what comic book company published
him in the 1940s. You should know this stuff. These books should whet your
appetite to learn more. If they don’t, what’re you doing trying to get into
this business anyway?
The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer. Published in 1965 and heap full of
Golden Age origin stories and other tales of heroes rarely glimpsed in those
days, the book’s true treasure is Feiffer’s reminisces of his discovering
comics in their infancy and his eventual successful quest to join the industry
he loved. The book is charming and filled with the types of observances and
stories that make you wish you had been there, slaving over a 64-page comic
book that needed to be created, written and drawn over a weekend. Ah, the good
old days! (Fantagraphics published, within the last few years, Feiffer’s essay
sans the comic book reprints which are, anyway, easily available in reprints
and even online these days.)
Steranko’s History of Comics Volumes 1 & 2 by Jim Steranko. Extensive,
exhaustive, brilliant. We’ve been waiting since the 1970s for more!
All In Color For A Dime and The Comic
Book Book edited by Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff. These came out in 1970
and 1974, reprinting articles on comic book history by then-fans (many, like
Ted White and Lupoff, who went on to writing careers) from the early-1960s
fanzine, Xero. Great, well-researched
and fannishly-enthusiastic (but in a good way) from guys who did it all out of
love. And, for one of the best, most thoroughly researched histories of the
business, you can't go wrong with Gerard Jones' excellent Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.
There are many more books
out there, how-to books, creator biographies and retrospectives, websites
dedicated to any and all characters and creators, histories of the industry and
art form you've chosen to dedicate your creative energies to, biographies of
favorite (non-comic) authors, whatever. When you're not writing, you should be
reading, these books and books by the writers who inspire you in whatever field
you enjoy; just because you don't write science fiction doesn't mean there's
nothing you can learn from Arthur C. Clarke or Greg Bear. It is all fodder.
Okay, you’ve got your
homework assignment.
There will be a test. Open
book, of course.
© Paul Kupperberg
