Your graphic novel writing exercise for the day: Take a tracking shot from a movie or TV show– one long, unbroken take that runs for a minute or more. If nothing immediately comes to mind, we’re going to take the opening from the last James Bond film, Spectre: Your mission, 007: select the single…
So you had a story idea and you’ve worked it up into a plot. The characters are defined, you know who is doing what, the twists and turns and even the theme. Now you have to put words into everyone’s mouths or, more precisely, into their word balloons. For some would-be writers, that’s where the…
All right now, settle down. Here it is, already the new year and we haven’t even started yet. Started what? That’s just about the kind of question I’d expect from you, mister smarty pants! We can begin with a gripe, follow with a premature digression and then maybe segue into a topic. Ready for the…
Recently on Facebook, a father asked me what advice I could give his 13-year old daughter who wanted to be a writer. I had to be succinct but I think my reply was moderately useful and I thought I’d repeat it here. As I’ve done columns about writing before, some of this may be familiar…
ThereâÂÂs a rule for tightrope walkers: donâÂÂt look down. If you look down, youâÂÂll fall. Focus instead on the other end of the wire, where youâÂÂre headed. Focus on the goal. IâÂÂve always felt thatâÂÂs good advice for writers as well. DonâÂÂt look down. If you doubt that you can write, you canâÂÂt. If asked…
It was a pretty doggone swell affair, last Saturday night at the Garnerville Arts Center â the best kind of swell affair, the kind that doesnâÂÂt require abnormal behavior or unusual threads. Remember Thoreau? âÂÂ…beware of all enterprises that require new clothes…âÂÂ? Well, nobody needed to beware at Garnerville. But I think we all enjoyed…
Once again Iâm a JohnnyO-come-lately to a pop culture phenomenon. I donât know why I avoided watching Downton Abbey on PBS outside of general cussedness. I get like that. Even something I think I might enjoy Iâll not watch or read because everyone else is doing it. Perverse. Mary decided she wanted to watch the…
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” • Dorothy Parker “I think there are two types of writers, the…
Here’s a tip that you may rarely need, but when you do, hoooo boy. Let’s say you’ve been flatting a page for coloring, or you’ve sent it out to be flatted. The page comes back, and it looks decent– except when you go to select an area, you discover that the page was created with…
For over three decades, Joe Kubert has been nurturing talent and helping them make their way into the world of comics. We talk to the master and see just how his teaching techniques have evolved over the last 30 years, plus: — Cable gets King-Sized and Thor goes after The Skrulls — Disappointments for fans…
How to Make Webcomics goes on sale later this month, but CBR managed to track down the book’s authors, PvP creator Scott Kurtz and cabal of webcomickers known as Halfpixel, for a great discussion of why the book is necessary, who it’s intended for and the state of the comics scene today. “I’ve toyed with…
People have been speculating that we here at ComicMix were going to start up with a webcomic any day now, but we had a secret shame — we didn’t actually know how to create 21st century cutting edge webcomics that all the kids read today. But thanks to Ridiculopathy (with a hat tip to Dirk…
