He’s crazy. This PhD student we’ve got in our place. Granted, we are living underground, in an abandoned missile silo, so we all have our eccentricities. But this guy has really lost it. We think he’s acquired a real missile–a fucking nuclear powered atomic bomb thingy. He keeps playing with the control room, like he’s setting up for something.

Days later:
He’s done it. This place is on lockdown. There’s apparently no way to stop the bomb. The whole system is rigged on a death-lock. If anyone tries to tamper with it, the missile goes off immediately. We’re certain he’s got it aimed at Moscow. He’s going to trigger the doomsday scenario. He’s on some kind of ‘world must reset itself’ binge. Bunch of fucking philosophy major bullshit. The whole world knows. It’s on the news. NATO was alerted that a formerly deactivated launch center has triggered an offensive attack and it’s gong down in the next two hours. Seems like a long time. Maybe the government will be able to break into the silo and stop this thing. Maybe they have a backdoor into the system and they can stop it for real. I’m kidding myself, of course.

I’m not certain but I suspect he thinks the russian defense system won’t work, like it’ll be delayed a few hours in responding. Just enough time for the US of fucking A to take full offensive and finish the job in fear of the final retaliation. He thinks some people will survive this thing. We don’t even try to argue the ecological impact that will undoubtably carry radiation and death to every door of the world. Even if half the world is destroyed. We are all members of a fragile web. He’s fucking with the web.

The radios are all scatter-cast. They hiss and jibe in a frenzy with broken reports and speculation. The World is onto this place. Everyone is kissing their loved ones. Ready for the end of the world.

He likes me. Some kind of comrade in arms thing. We’re bunkmates, telling stories of our childhood and fucked up upbringing. We know each other’s secrets. I should have known he’d go ballistic on the entire world. But he has some kind of escape mechanism.

We are going to the moon. He’s got this advanced military device that can teleport (or some crazy science) us to the moon in no time. I don’t know what to say but he’s invited me to watch the end of the world on some odd little secret military base with him. Before I know it, we are beach-towel-laying on the moon, just outside of the base station, staring at Earth and the whole thing just looks so sad and fragile. I ask him about space suits and he says he didn’t have time to pack them but the air filtration and ventilation system inside the base will allow us to breath outside within 20 feet of the entrance. It’s just blasting us with oxygen, faster than the void of space can rip it away from us. My hair is in a permanent wind gust pattern the likes of which Morrissey has never known.

I’ve got to get back home. This moon-base is freaking me out. It’s a dome that looks like something out of a James Bond casino scene. There’s a Jukebox and a sassy waitress, booze and billiards. I feel like throwing up. I jump for the transporter while his back is turned.
One of my housemates reminds me that I have an experiment brewing. It’s a form of nano-machine powered ectoplasmic fluid that will melt through just about anything, even heated enriched uranium, releasing safe, eco-friendly waste into the air. The missile is right in front of me and I drizzle the beakers all over it. The cap melts, revealing a super-hot plasma sphere. Canisters of all kinds of deadly crap are sitting inside the missile, melting together into the ultimate weapon. I don’t know what to do but I keep splattering the fluid all over the device. The timer is ticking. It’s getting hotter in here. I can see that if I continue to eat through the material, this whole place will fill with such heat and fire that all the oxygen will burst into flames. We will all die. I prod the goo, trying to get it to work but something in it has just given up. It’s just laying there in spatters like inert spit–a worthless affront to the inevitable. Like the whole of physics has just flipped a middle finger to this crazy species.

I envision the end of the world. The ecto-acid goo isn’t preventing the apocalypse. I can’t stop the timer. My flatmates are hiding themselves in self-flagellation, coming the form of last minute video game victories and alcoholic drinks–they’ve given up. I can hear the military, with their best men, banging on the top door. They want in–knowing full-well the best they can do is put a bullet in my flatmates and me. I can’t open the door from the inside. It’d be worth a try to give them a chance at stopping it. This is happening. We’re all going to die.

The timer counts down and I can hear, through the distant crackles of the kitchen radio, the cries of mothers holding their young. The missile fires. We watch it go up into the air and all we can do is hold our breath.

Russia has a hand on the trigger. The US has the same. Everyone ready to kill and die but not willing to fire until it’s set in stone. Thank fucking reason for that. Nobody in the face of the earth breathes for a long time.

The missile keeps going. It goes up–and when it should be turning toward Russia, it doesn’t. It just keeps going up, through the atmosphere and into space, off to detonate somewhere else.

I gasp for air as all the oxygen in the planet moves in and out at once.

I just pulled out Sketchbook Pro on my iPad and started doodling with a stylus. My current strategy is to just keep layering and reducing opacity on each previous layer as I go. I haven’t gotten into playing much with the brushes or colors so it’s all pretty simple.

Stage 1:

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

Every blue moon there’s a comic that really speaks to modern culture. Atomic Robo (written by Brian Clevinger and art by Scott Wegener) fills that gap for me at the moment. I mean, Nikola Tesla invents an immortal AI robot who grows up to kick ass with Carl Sagan (on one particular adventure). But the real kicker for me is in Vol 4, Revenge of the Vampire Dimension, with the introduction of Dr. Dinosaur (AKA Lord Raptor) who explains how he will dismantle Atomic Robo:

Atomic Robo - Vol 4 - The Revenge of the Vampire Dimension 3x4 - With Science!

Plattribution [pla-truh-byoo-shuhn] –noun

- The polar opposite of plagiarism; rather than taking credit for someone else’s content, it is the act of attributing original content to someone who did not create it.
- Also, riding on another’s fame to publish content under that person’s name.

- see plattributious, plattributed, platribution

Examples of Use:

Martin Luther King Jr never commented on the loss of thousands in contrast to the death of one. It is a plattributious quote by some internet user.

The plattribution of twitter content to historical characters has become a plague in recent years as the youth have become increasingly disconnected with historical fact.

Sample plattributions:

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

“People believe anything they read on the internet if it fits their preconceived notions.” -Thomas Jefferson.

This is the three-act character arc & story structure that I’ve been using, boiled down from many online sources. It is now packaged in my template for creating new scripts, stored under the handy research folder in Scrivener–but I figured I’d share it here for posterity. Please comment with any notes, or suggestions for alterations.

This is a pretty standard formula. If you run through any major Hollywood movie, you can map it pretty much directly to this set:

• ACT 1 – Introduction, contentment
  • Introduce protagonist who will resist change (inner conflict), being perfectly content—or at least having no reason or will to change
• Plot Point 1 – Event that throws the character’s life off balance.
  • Surprise shifts the story in a new direction
  • Reveals the protagonist’s life will never again be the same
  • Introduces an obstacle, which forces the protagonist to deal with something he/she would normally avoid
• ACT 2 – Emotional Journey
  • Challenges — the protagonist struggles toward the goal/McGuffin
  • Conflict! – Each conflict appears and resolves to move the story forward
  • Inner and Outer conflicts, working together, alternating between hope and despair/disappointment
  • External conflicts seem solvable then insurmountable, then solvable.
  • Get into trouble. Raise the stakes. The character will make bad decisions.
  • Ends with the hero’s dark moment—utterly beaten, abandoned, all hope of achieving the goal is lost
• Plot Point 2 – Throw the story in an unexpected direction, allowing the goal to be reachable
  • Rally the troops, head for the goal
• Act 3 – Resolution
  • Draw upon new strengths, realized by lessons learned in overcoming Act 2 conflicts
  • Obtain the McGuffin / Achieve the goal.
• Denouement
  • Wrap it up
  • Show the character’s change

I’ve now been trying to get inZomnia finished for a while (as a 12 issue volume) and I’ve been rolling this other idea around in the back of my head for almost as long. I’m not really putting off inZomnia but I have to admit it is an ambitious first entry into the comics space. This other idea is much simpler and allows me to create a single issue to introduce the world without worrying that later issues might need to revise the first.

Something about the comics industry that I find so strange is that writers don’t usually have the full story mapped out. They might have the current arc fully bulleted (hopefully) but they typically write an issue, it goes to the artist, they write another issue, and so on. Usually this only happens with ongoing series like The Walking Dead, DMZ, The Boys etc, which are three series that have been really disappointing to me lately–I find that any series pushing past 60 issues is just going on too long. But imagine writing a novel where you write the first chapter, polished and complete, ship it off to press and then start writing the second chapter, knowing that you have no ability to revise character interactions, manners of speech, plot devices, etc in previous chapters–those are set in stone. The really minor things are what get me. Since I’ve been writing inZomnia, I’ve revised the first issue script 3 times–and they are very different versions. Perhaps it’s just an issue with having all the characters and story fully mapped–something I’m still working on–but I keep thinking of subtle things that I issue #10 or #11 will have that need a little foreshadowing earlier on. It would be a pity to press those and not have the ability to include that. So, since I’m new to this, I’m not just outlining–I’m going to at least write a prose page for each issue, fully flushing out the details before I go back to revise the actual scripts again.

In the meantime, as advised by my virtual mentor Antony Johnston in his fantastic articles on writing comics, it’s good to step back and work on something else to give your brain time to come back with a fresh perspective.

If you are unfamiliar with Antony’s work, he is currently writing Wasteland and the following articles on his site are required reading for anyone wanting to write comics (or even if you are just into writing anything at all, the first article is for you):

• Getting Things Written
• Antony Johnston’s Process
• Scrivening Comics (I highly recommend Scrivener as well–it’s a beautiful writing tool for writers of all kinds–and I get no money for saying that).

So, as I was saying, I took a little break today and created a 3 act outline for a 1-shot comic called “Asher Evans isn’t Real.” Of course, it’s a 1-shot that sets the stage to grow into an ongoing series or, as I prefer all media to be, a more flushed out and conclusive graphic novel. Asher Evans has a twitter account if you are interested in following the progress of a fictional character living a fictional life within his own fictional world: http://twitter.com/AsherEvans

Next steps with this one-shot are:

1. Writing a prose summary for the issue
2. Converting the prose summary into 3×5 cards (using scrivener to create 22 cards that also double as script pages)
3. Expand those cards into scripted format
4. Find an artist to do some character sketches

Well, I’m still here, more or less.

It’s been a tough year so far in terms of finding writing time–I know everyone makes excuses so I won’t bother to drop them here. On the other hand, I’ve found a good amount of time to think about writing–and specifically think and dream about character and plot development, back-stories, panel layouts and specific sequences within my story, etc… and I’m pretty happy with what’s coming out.

Currently, I’m putting off the actual script writing to spend time developing my Pitch, which includes way more details than would go into a real pitch–it’s mostly a guide for me to organize the characters, tone, audience, plot arcs, issue spines and the like. Eventually, this is what I’ll be showing to an artist who might want to join up with me to produce inZomnia. Yeah, you read it right, I won’t be drawing this graphic novel (most likely). My drawing hand is not at the place I want it to be for the look and feel of this story and I’d really like to work with an artist who has comics experience. Besides, writing comes first and it’s going to take me long enough to get that where I want it.

I do terribly miss having time to myself and anyone out there who has broken into the comics scene with full-time job and a family (and specifically a 2.5 year-old), I welcome your enlightened suggestions.

So, on to a brief diversion wherein I actually talk about the topic of this post:

In The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, Dennis O’Neil talks about the Levitz Paradigm, which strikes me as a simple way to organize and track multiple plots and their development within a series. Basically, as I understand it, you create a table with plots on the left (rows) and issues on the top (columns). Then you simple write out the plot spines as they develop within the issues, staggering in new plot arcs (be they subplots, major plots or diversions) as others fade away, keeping about 3-4 live plots running at any given time. By the way, I’m quite shocked that Wikipedia doesn’t have an article on the Levitz Paradigm but I’m not going to write a page for it–I’ve got enough procrastination projects.

Since I sadly, did not pursue and English, Literature, Creative Writing or any related degree in college, I hadn’t given much analytical thought to the development of serial TV, comics or other forms of fiction. O’Neil’s book talks a bit about soap operas and how they keep viewers interested and I noticed that many of the TV shows on at any given moment use the same techniques–generally something that looks like the Levitz Paradigm. The core of the idea is that you can end a plot, satisfying the audience with its completion but by having other plot lines flowing unfinished, you keep them interested in whatever comes out next.

Now, I’m really not into long, unending serials. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed with The Walking Dead, which I thought hit its peak of interest a dozen or so issues ago. When I started reading it, I didn’t expect it to go to 80 issues and beyond–and I don’t see any reason they would ever stop (it could go to hundreds of issues). I like stories that end. Endings are dear to me. But I like the idea of using the Levitz Paradigm to help me get through 12 issues (I think) of inZomnia, allowing the plots to trickle into closure toward the end.

It occurred to me today that I could start writing a blog called ‘Code to Comics’ but then I realized that if I spent the time needed to truly blogument the process I’m going through, I wouldn’t have any time to write, which is already a problem. So, I’ll leave that blog title for someone else. Really, take it. I’m going to keep this name just in case I need to experiment with sleep again (fairly likely).

So, I’ll leave you with a simple list of the bedside reading I’ve been enjoying for the past several weeks–and then I’ll get my ass over to writing.

• The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics’ by Dennis O’Neil
• ‘Come In Alone’ by Warren Ellis
• ‘Writers on Comics Scriptwriting, Vol. 1′ by Mark Salisbury

Just wanted to drop a line to say I’m not dead–and though I haven’t been drawing every day, I’ve been doing a little bit. I’m focusing all my spare time now writing the scripts for inZomnia, the Graphic Novel–and I even just created a Facebook page for it:

In the meantime, I was going to write during my lunch break today but I got distracted by David Lanham’s awesome new Steampunk Icon Pack–so I was forced to revamp my GeekTool widgets to work with the feel of the metal desktop wallpaper:

Got a chance to sketch a bit on the plane ride over the weekend.

Well, it’s been a crazy week and I missed several days of drawing but here’s what I did just before driving up to Seattle: