From: Soaf1!wb3ffv!aplcen!jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu!wntrmute@uunet.UU.NET (August Paul Yang)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.info
Subject: "But I Digress" from _Comics Buyer's Guide_ #976
Date: 8 Oct 92 22:13:41 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.comics.misc
Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore


Thank _you_, Mis-tah David for responding so quickly.  (I was positive
that I was going to be buried under a pile of e-mail this week.)

Okay, ladies and germs.  This is it.  For those of you who don't
read subject lines this article contains, Peter David's "But I Digress"
from the _Comics Buyer's Guide_ issue #976.  (The source is written
before the actual article because three times a charm.)
This article gives advice on how to break into writing comics for the Big Two
(DC and Marvel for those who think Image and Marvel are the Big Two.)

Enjoy People!  And may thy fortunes go with thee.

August Paul Yang is putting his .sig before the article because he knows
that people will ignore it if he puts it after the article

***************************************************************************

But I Digress...
From Comics Buyer's Guide #976
By Peter David
	The most common question I get at conventions, the most frequent type
of letter written to me at Marvel or c/o this column,features a variation on
the following.  (The exact wording is takenfrom the letter of one young man
in Mansfield, Ohio.  I'm notrunning his name because the letter wasn't to the
column, and Idon't want to violate confidentiality.  But it was one of the
better written letters I've received on the subject.)  And it says:
	"I want to be a comic-book writer.  At the moment, I'm a 16-year-old 
junior in high school, brimming with ideas.  A question that seems to be
asked a lot of me is, 'What are you going to do with your life?' and 'What
are you going to be?'  To most of them I say that I haven't decided yet.
But, to those to whom I tell the truth, that I want to write comic books,
they say, 'No, seriously.' That, along with a girl saying she wants to be
just friends,defines the low blow.
	"The reason I'm writing is that I need a little help in knowing just
how to get there."
	Rather than answer the question over and over again, I figured I'd
write up for BID, make a bunch of copies of it and send them out whenever I
get asked.
	This is not any sort of absolute "How To" essay.  There is no
absolute way.  What there is is a very,very slim chance- and that's extra
emphasis on "slim," particularly if you're trying to breakinto one of the Big
Two.
	Unsurprisingly enough, though, I don't get a lot of people coming up
to me and asking me how to break into Valiant or DarkHorse or Image.  I'm
usually asked about Marvel, and it's usually plot outlines for Marvel
characters that I'm shown.  So that's what I'll focus on, using my experience
as a writer and also my time working for book publishers, as well as my staff
time at Marvel.
	There are two things to be considered here: the nature of 
submissions, and to whom (and how) you should submit them.

			Section One:
		Nowhere near everything
		you need to know in order
		to be a good writer

	I now give you some very brief, fairly practical advice in pursuing a
writing career.
	Rule 1:  Don't listen to friends and family no matter what they say.
They will either tell you that you goals are stupid or unworkable, which
won't help your ego.  Or they'll tell you that you're a wonderful writer,
which they're rarely in a position to do, because their feelings for you
cloud their judgement; you, however, will get delusions of grandeur.  I'll
never forget the first-grade teacher who sent a manuscript for a children's
book,claiming that it was a sure-fire bestseller because "I read it to my
class and they loved it."  Like the kids were going to shout, "Boy, Mrs. X,
your book really bites it."
	Rule 2:  Rule 1 is not absolute.  If friends or family give you
constructive criticism, take it.
	Rule 3:  Read.
	Rule 4:  Use a typewriter or computer with a letter-quality printer,
8 1/2 X 11 inches, double spaced, with at least one-inch margins all around
(a pica inch is 10 spaces, an elite inch is 12; a vertical inch is six
lines).  Don't hand write.  Don't write on anything other than standard-
weight white bond paper.  I don't care what Abe Lincoln or Jack Kerouac wrote
on; you're not Lincoln or Kerouac.  And for crying out loud, don't use
erasable bond.  That wasn't a dodge the writer used in _Misery_ to get Annie
out of the house; no real writer types on erasable bond.
	Rule 5:  Use a dictionary.  If you've got a computer, use a spell
check.
	Rule 6:  Read.
	Rule 7:  Include your name and address on all correspondence.
	Rule 8:  Read.
	Rule 9:  Note the repeated emphasis on reading.  Note that I don't
keep saying "write."  Many people will tell you that you have to write
constantly.  To me, telling a fledgling writer, "You should write," is like
telling a fledgling auto mechanic, "You should fix cars."  It's a given, it's
obvious, it's self evident.
	If you want to write, though, you should be reading as wide a variety
of things as you can.  There's no better way to absorb the basics of writing
than to see how others are doing it.  And for heaven's sake, if you want to
write comics, don't just read comics.  What will make your stories fresh,
vibrant, and, most important, noticeable is bringing techniques and subject
matter that you've learned from other writers along with you into the comics
world.
	The comics business needs new influences, not a recycling of the old
ones.  It's like all those artists who only learn art from comic books,
rather than learn how to draw from life.
	The more you distance yourself from outside influences, the more
cloudy your vision becomes.
	Rule 10:  When you get rejected, keep in mind:  It's nothing
personal.  Learn to mentally separate yourself from your work.  If someone
says, "Your writing is lousy," he's not saying that you are a lousy person.
	Rule 11:  Learn to type.  Learn to type well and learn to type fast.
If nothing else, you can pick up temp work to tide you over before those huge
royalty checks come rolling in.

			Section Two:
		How to give submissions to comics

	Rather than break this down into rules, I'll break it into questions.
Keep in mind that there is nothing official in any of this.  I'm not giving
you word handed down to me from Marvel or DC management.  In fact, future
_Oh so?_ columns may have letters from comics companies stating that I'm
completely off-beam.  All I can provide is my opinion on how best to proceed.
	"Do I have to learn how to draw?"  No.  No more than you have to
learn to letter of color.  Learning how to draw does make your work more
accessible to the editor, in that it takes much less time to look at a few
pages of art then it does to read over and critique a story.  But does that
make it easier to break in?  No, not if the best you can be is a lousy artist.
	Go with your strength.  If you have a talent for writing and drawing,
by all means, develop both.  Obviously, the more things you can do well, the
more chances you have at success.  If you have no talent for drawing but you
know you can write, then focus on your strong point.  Why become a lousy
penciller, if you have it in you to become a great writer?
	"Do I submit a whole story?"  You submit the gist of the story.  You
initial submission should, ideally, be no longer than one page.  It's not the
easiest thing to do, and you'll find that it becomes almost an art form unto
itself.  What you do is boil your story down to is essence.  Ask yourself,
"What is this story about?  What are the themes?  What does the character
have to deal with that makes this story interesting, important, and, most of
all, unique to this character?"  Present the essence, the themes and
conflict, and the resolution in the broadest of terms (you don't have to
describe every moment in the story.  Simply making it clear that you know how
it begins and ends is fine.)
	If your story consists of "Wolverine runs around, fights guys, and
comes up with a neat way to beat the villain," I can guarantee it won't sell.
You need to come up with some new slant, some new perspective, some new
vision, that is both consistent with what's gone before and, at the same
time, different enough to catch the attention of the person who reads it and
make him or her say, "Hey, that's a neat idea.  I like that."
	I don't care if you've read stories that saw print and weren't about
anything.  Stories that had no subtext or depth.  Stories that had no
conflict other than people running around hitting each other.  How many times
have you read a story and said, "Hell, I could write better than that"?
Well, if you want to break into writing you _do_ have to write better than
that.  Sure it's not fair, but it's true.  Besides, you don't want to aspire
to mediocrity.  Who wants to use the lowest common denominator to justify
their work?
	"I have great ideas for all these new characters.  Should I send them
to Marvel?"  No.  Not if your goal is to break into Marvel.  If you have a
great idea for a three-part story, save it.  If you dreamed up a 12-part,
star-spanning mega-series that incorporates every hero in the Marvel
Universe, don't bother.  You have to remember what it is you're trying to do.
	"So what am I trying to do?"  You're trying to make yourself useful
to an editor.
	An editor has one job and one job only: To get the titles he or she
edits out the door to the printer.  Everything editors do - the phone calls,
the meetings, the running around - everything funnels down into that one
imperative.  And if you come along and seem to be someone who can help them
achieve that goal, then you've got a shot at getting on their good side.  Not
a great shot, mind you.  The odds are still long, because editors don't
always have time to nurse would-be writers.  But it's a shot nonetheless.
	"So do I submit the stuff to the editor of a specific comicbook?"
They may kill me for this but my answer to that would be yes.  Official
policies may be otherwise but, as I said, I'm not official.  And me, the
smart-aleck freelancer, I figure, what've you got to lose?  If the editor
doesn't want to deal with it, he'll kick it over to someone else, anyway.
	My reasoning is this: What an editor needs most is inventory
material.  Stories that do not have an immediate side effect on the
continuity.  Stories that, after 22 pages,  will leave the lead character the
same as he was at the beginning in terms of his status and relations with the
other characters.  That way, if the regular team blows a deadline, the editor
is prepared with a fill-in story.
	The trick is that any good story is about - to some degree - change.
Someone in the course of the story should, ideally, go through some sort of
change.  Something should happen to him wherein, at the end of the story he
views the world a little differently than when he began.  So either the lead
character (a superhero, presumably) has to have an experience that makes him
think differently about something when the adventure is over, or else you
have to create a new character to interact with the superhero so that, by the
end of the story, the new character is different than when he began.
	It's very difficult.  It's not impossible.  And when it's done well
it can be extremely memorable.  Roger Stern's "The Kid Who Collected Spider-
Man" for example, could easily have been a fill-instory, since it filled all
those basic requirements, and I still get choked up when I think about it.
	"So what's the ideal scenario, if it all falls right?"  You submit a
one-page story outline to the editor of the respective comic book.  He loves
it.  He uses the self-addressed stamped envelope you included to write back
to you and asks you to flesh it out into a full plot (presumably sending you
a sample so that you have an idea of how to do it).  You develop it as a full
plot.  The editor loves it, you get paid for it, and it gets sent off to an
artist.
	"Do I get to script it myself?"  If you want to, sure.  Remember,
you're trying to make it easier for the editor.  If he or she has to find
someone to script your work because you can't handle it, you have that much
less value.
	"What if they steal my idea?"  The only thing slimmer than the odds
of your breaking in is the odds of your ideas being swiped.  There's simply
no motivation for the editors to do so.  Remember, ideally the editor wants
writers to help him get the comics out, not would-be writers who are angry
because their ideas got filched.  You must also keep in mind that you might
submit something that someone else has come up with independently, and it's
already in the works; many a tyro has assumed that his idea was usurped, and
went around bad mouthing the writer and editor of a comic book.  That's not a
way to make friends and influence people, and it's also generally unfounded
(unless you're Art Buchwald).
	"Is there any way to improve the odds a bit?"  Well, $10 clipped to
your story submission might help.
	Just kidding.
	Yes, there are ways to improve the odds on becoming a writer for
Marvel or DC.  In fact, almost anything you do will improve the odds, because
frankly, they can't get much worse than what they are when you submit a story
cold.
	Three commonplace ways to have a better shot at being a writer for
the Big Two:
	1) Get writing credits somewhere else first.  It doesn't necessarily
have to be one of the independent comics publishers. [As a pure digression, I
must admit I'm a little fuzzy on the term "independents."  Is Marvel still a
British colony or something that it's not independent?  Is DC a British
colony (well, maybe, yeah now that I think about it).  As for the so-called
"independents," sometimes they don't own the characters they publish.  These
alleged independents have less control over their fates, particularly if they
are dependent on such things as the whims of licensor.  Go figure semantics,
huh?]
	If your cover letter can list professional experience in other forms
of writing - news writing, copy writing, published short stories - anything
that proves that you now how to put sentences together and meet a deadline
will be of help.  Not that you have to submit your resume with every story.
A couple of lines on the cover letter will suffice.
	2) Go to conventions.  Try to give an editor a face to put with a
name.  At smaller, less-crowded conventions, it's possible for editors and
writers to read and comment on your stuff.  If you're going to a larger
convention, such as San Diego, I suggest - as difficult as it may sound - to
boil your ideas down to verbal pitches of 25 words or less.  If you grab an
editor with a neat verbal hook ("Daredevil's hypersenses inform him that a
politician's pacemaker is actually a time bomb - but the politician hates
superheros and won't trust them!") and get the editor going, "Yeah?  Yeah?
And then?" - you can pull out your one-page outline with a flourish and hand
it to him.
	On a personal note: I will never read a plot outline, if it deals
with characters I write.  It's my way of avoiding possible hassles.  But if
time and circumstances permit I will read outlines involving other
characters.  But please - if you see an editor go into the bathroom, don't
follow him in and slide your story under the stall.  I can't speak for others
in the industry, but you won't like what I do with anything handed to me in
that manner.
	3) Get a job at Marvel or DC.  To be honest, that's what happened
with me.  Except when I got a job at Marvel, it was in sales, and I didn't
get the job because I hoped to angle into writing.  My career was genuinely
in sales.  I tried the writing on the side just for kicks.  I had no idea
that it would develop in what has or that eventually I would be writing in
trade newspapers, trying to advise others to emulate what I laughingly refer
to as my success.
	If you're lucky enough to land an office job, it becomes that much
easier because, of course, people will get to know you.  Even if you don't
get a job, the whole trick is to make a memorable and _positive_ impression
on the people to whom you hope to sell the story.  Come up with clever,
dynamic ways to get yourself - and your stories noticed.  What sort of way?
You're supposed to be a writer.  Use your imagination.



--
-Hades (Brian V. Hughes) 
   "You know Television has gone to hell when, with every commercial,
	 you find yourself hoping to see the Energizer Bunny."