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Christie Golden:
So, I didn’t really set out to be a novelist. I set out to be a
playwright. And before that, a musical theater actress, but that’s
another story.
Getting back to playwriting—I’ve always been most interested in creating
characters and giving them things to say. I know my strengths, and I’m
good at this. That to me was the fun stuff. I was more than happy to
leave the costume, prop and set design, blocking, fight choreography and
other stage directions to others. Give me some interesting characters,
the spoken word and a good story, and I was in heaven. I took a few
courses in playwrighting, produced a musical that is probably best never
heard or seen again, and then moved into novels and short stories. Alas,
my thoughts were accurate—when you write a novel, you are everything. I
found myself having to, gulp, describe places! Write detailed action
scenes! Man, scriptwriting seemed so much easier. I got better with
practice and now enjoy being able to manage it all, but I did miss
scriptwriting.
So when last year I was approached by fellow Warcraft author Richard
Knaak about writing Warcraft Manga for TokyoPop, however, I felt those
old stirrings for just dialogue and action again. And was it a blast! I
wrote the first script, “I Got What Yule Need” (out in Legends 3 in
March) in four days. It all just came together—the angles, the
characters, the storyline. The second, “A Warrior Made,” was a bit more
challenging, but no less exciting to do.
My editor seemed very dubious that I had never written manga or comics
before. I guess those classes in playwriting, and a natural love of a
story told visually as well as with words, came in handy.
It was wonderful to see the artwork and see how the artist had captured
my ideas and vision and yet added his own unique flair. It’s a
fascinating collaboration, and one I hope to do again some day.
You see, I have this musical, and I think it would be a great graphic
novel...
David Mack is a fantastic writer and strategist. I say the latter, because you can't help but think when you read his work how cleverly all the plots, counter-plots and characters come together. He's here today talking about:
Comics as Art by David Mack
I’m not what one would call an expert in the field of comic books. I have friends who are—who can rattle off the names of artists, writers, editors, and storylines dating back to the dawn of the medium. On a scale of one to ten, with one being a person who has never heard of comic books and ten being Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, I’d probably merit a three.
That said, I like to think that I know high art and true genius when I see it.
People who refuse to acknowledge comic-books as a serious art form remind me of people I learned about in my film history classes, layman critics who decried the cinema as a “vulgar” form of entertainment, not to be confused with “serious” arts such as live theater or literature. Though motion pictures have long since become mainstream enough to be “taken seriously,” the same degree of respect often eludes much of the sequential-art medium.
David Mack is the national bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Wildfire, Harbinger, Reap the Whirlwind, Road of Bones, and the Star Trek Destiny trilogy: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls.
In addition to novels, Mack's diverse writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic books, computer games, radio, and the Internet.
Upcoming novels by David Mack include the supernatural thriller The Calling, his first original novel; Promises Broken, a novel of The 4400; and Precipice, the fifth installment of the acclaimed Star Trek Vanguard series.
Mack has been to shows in every Rush concert tour since 1982, and he finally met two-thirds of the band in 2007. He currently resides in New York City with his wife, Kara.
Last week Sarah A. Hoyt gave us a fantastic blog on the difference between short story and novel writing. This week, in honor of New York ComicCon, we're talking comics, leading off with the man, the myth, the legend, Keith R.A. DeCandido.
Just how many words is a picture worth, really?
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Back in the mists of prehistory when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (okay, it was the 1990s), I edited a line of novels based on Marvel's superheroes. Over the course of 45 novels and seven anthologies, I hired a good number of comic book writers who had little to no experience writing prose.
One of the first things I realized was that these guys tended to a) not always get point of view (because comic books, like television and movies, are omniscient thanks to the visuals, so it wasn't anything they ever had to consider before), b) sometimes have difficulty in differentiating character voices (perhaps relying on where the word balloon was pointing…), and c) have their dialogue all end in exclamation points, resulting in stories filled with characters who all sounded like they were being played by Brian Blessed.
( Read more... )
Keith R.A. DeCandido is currently writing several four-issue Farscape comic book miniseries (most in collaboration with series creator Rockne S. O'Bannon) and a StarCraft manga series, in addition to the reams and reams of prose he has been perpetrating in a variety of media universes, most notably Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, World of Warcraft, CSI: NY, Supernatural, and (again) StarCraft. He is also a brown belt in Kenshikai karate and a cohost of the podcast The Chronic Rift. Feel free to annoy him at his blog at kradical.livejournal.com.
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