Figured I’d take a slight departure and offer you my book on writing.
It’s not Bird by Bird. It’s not Writing Tools. It’s not Steven King’s On Writing and it isn’t Tracy Kidder and Dick Todd’s Good Prose.
It’s Denny O’Neill’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics.
This book was assigned/recommended to me by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas French.
There are universal lessons from this book that apply to any genre of writing, not just graphic novels.
Here’s a few great highlights I made throughout the book for you to chew on:
People are interested in people, not things.
In nonfiction, do your reporting. Talk to as many people as possible. Talk to those people as long as possible. People are more interesting than things.
Know the ending of the story before you writing the beginning.
In this week’s upcoming conversation with Cassandra King Conroy, we get into this a little bit, but you’ve heard me talk about the lighthouse in the distance. I love knowing the ending as early in the process as possible. You might not know it on Day 1, but the sooner you get a sense of the ending write to it with abandon.
Telling your story as clearly as possible.
My greatest weakness in my first ten years as a writer was trying to be flashy or showy, trying to light up the page with my prose. This is a mistake most of the time. The story is the star. Not you. Get out of way. Be the conduit for the story. Tell it straight. Tell it clearly.
Never write a scene, or a single panel, that does not contribute directly to your plot. … Every word should contribute to the emotion you’re trying to engender in the reader.
This often means you have to kill your darlings, right? Even if you love a scene, love that turn of phrase, that great quote you must ask yourself: Does it advance the story or reveal a critical character trait? Yes, it stays. No, it’s gotta go.
Look at DVD extras, ideally with commentary, and you’ll get some great insight into why things make the cut and the things that don’t.
So that’s it, my favorite book on writing, Denny O’Neill’s DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics.
