Creative Bumps
No matter if it’s a story, a new character or a concept, it’s really odd how creations can morph and take shape to be completely different than what it started off to be. It takes on a life of its own.
I’ve been working on this one concept for a few years now and it keeps transforming and not in a cool 80’s robot kinda way either. This concept the way it has progressed could have been a movie, or a tv show or a novel and now it’s completely going in another direction altogether. For the most part, as I create, I visualize as I move along the creative line. What would be the best visual medium for this is how I envision a lot of my concepts that I work on. When I feel that it’s not working, I’ll go back and retool. So with this one concept, I’ve been stuck on a few things as far as progression, because it gets to a point where I go, “wow that’s not going to work at all” and then I have to start all over again.
So I’m working on the script for this creation of mine that has reached comic book status and I’m working on the dialogue and then it happens again, like just now and I instead of harping on it, I decided to write a blog about it instead. The concept is clear of what and who I want to write about, but I think I am shooting myself in the foot, because the words “longevity” or “shelf life” keep popping in my head. I'm writing a comic book, but I feel that I'm writing myself into a corner thinking that this can be some sort of monthly book that I can do, when in actuality this story is so self-contained, that I’d be lucky if I can a graphic novel out of it. It’d be a good 6 issues long. So every time I write a page or two of dialogue, I’m like having visions of future issues and then I say to myself, wow this will never do. Am I dealing with a self defeatist writers concept? You betcha!
The problem that I am struggling with is that, every time I write something, I think it starts to sound like something that has already been done before and so I think I start to doubt the task at hand. I don’t want to be compared to someone else work. So coming up with something fresh and new is actually really taxing and annoying when creating a new comic book. No matter the genre, some things have been done to death and I am looking to expand on the comic genre, by introducing a cool new concept, but yet get bogged down by already established ones. Yeah, who can work like that?
So I take a breather and hopefully, this little creation of mine stops turning on it’s head and I can actually finish an issue of it. At this rate, trying to pull a Joss Whedon (almighty) is not in the cards, but dammnit if it aint the hardest thing to do, when you don’t live and breathe writing comics or just writing in general. I need to get back to it.
When I was in high school or even in college, all I did was write and draw. I created a little universe, which I think I mentioned called D-verse. It’s where I created and dumped all of my creations (heroes, villains, etc.) I wrote backstory for everyone and included current storyline notes for future reference. Needless to say, many of those stories were canned, because as time went on, the superhero genre was changing and frankly my stuff started to read like rejected X-Men storlylines or some Image Comics, wanna be Youngblood crap. It would have been goofy, 90’s noir. Cheese and spandex people. Cheese and spandex.
So it started, the morphing, everything I had, started to change. I had a bucket of characters to choose from to create new tales to spin, but yet, all of it kept expanding. Situations would change, but yet the characters were all still intact, well maybe for small tweaks. So after years and years, I can never really find a clear and defined story until like a month a go, where a story was forming and for once it was working. Characters, plot, development, all of it was taking this new rigorous form and I ran with it. Oh did I ever. So I had a premise, which I scrapped, because it was the odd back story that was stopping it from flourishing. Now that we have that out of the way, when I realized that I finished at least 30 pages of dialogue and now, none if it works, because it just changed – again! The life of a writer.
I’ve been working on this one concept for a few years now and it keeps transforming and not in a cool 80’s robot kinda way either. This concept the way it has progressed could have been a movie, or a tv show or a novel and now it’s completely going in another direction altogether. For the most part, as I create, I visualize as I move along the creative line. What would be the best visual medium for this is how I envision a lot of my concepts that I work on. When I feel that it’s not working, I’ll go back and retool. So with this one concept, I’ve been stuck on a few things as far as progression, because it gets to a point where I go, “wow that’s not going to work at all” and then I have to start all over again.
So I’m working on the script for this creation of mine that has reached comic book status and I’m working on the dialogue and then it happens again, like just now and I instead of harping on it, I decided to write a blog about it instead. The concept is clear of what and who I want to write about, but I think I am shooting myself in the foot, because the words “longevity” or “shelf life” keep popping in my head. I'm writing a comic book, but I feel that I'm writing myself into a corner thinking that this can be some sort of monthly book that I can do, when in actuality this story is so self-contained, that I’d be lucky if I can a graphic novel out of it. It’d be a good 6 issues long. So every time I write a page or two of dialogue, I’m like having visions of future issues and then I say to myself, wow this will never do. Am I dealing with a self defeatist writers concept? You betcha!
The problem that I am struggling with is that, every time I write something, I think it starts to sound like something that has already been done before and so I think I start to doubt the task at hand. I don’t want to be compared to someone else work. So coming up with something fresh and new is actually really taxing and annoying when creating a new comic book. No matter the genre, some things have been done to death and I am looking to expand on the comic genre, by introducing a cool new concept, but yet get bogged down by already established ones. Yeah, who can work like that?
So I take a breather and hopefully, this little creation of mine stops turning on it’s head and I can actually finish an issue of it. At this rate, trying to pull a Joss Whedon (almighty) is not in the cards, but dammnit if it aint the hardest thing to do, when you don’t live and breathe writing comics or just writing in general. I need to get back to it.
When I was in high school or even in college, all I did was write and draw. I created a little universe, which I think I mentioned called D-verse. It’s where I created and dumped all of my creations (heroes, villains, etc.) I wrote backstory for everyone and included current storyline notes for future reference. Needless to say, many of those stories were canned, because as time went on, the superhero genre was changing and frankly my stuff started to read like rejected X-Men storlylines or some Image Comics, wanna be Youngblood crap. It would have been goofy, 90’s noir. Cheese and spandex people. Cheese and spandex.
So it started, the morphing, everything I had, started to change. I had a bucket of characters to choose from to create new tales to spin, but yet, all of it kept expanding. Situations would change, but yet the characters were all still intact, well maybe for small tweaks. So after years and years, I can never really find a clear and defined story until like a month a go, where a story was forming and for once it was working. Characters, plot, development, all of it was taking this new rigorous form and I ran with it. Oh did I ever. So I had a premise, which I scrapped, because it was the odd back story that was stopping it from flourishing. Now that we have that out of the way, when I realized that I finished at least 30 pages of dialogue and now, none if it works, because it just changed – again! The life of a writer.
posted by Dre @ 8:14 PM
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