Adam P. Knave: Let’s start off with a pitch! Tell us all about FHCS!

Vito Delsante: The way we’ve been describing it is “Archie meets 90210″ or “Love & Rockets meets American Pie.”  The hope, and this is a big leap in some cases, is that everyone will recognize the situations presented in the book and, without the benefit of introducing the characters slowly on a monthly basis, they’ll be familiar with the story, if not the individuals.  It’s a really big leap on the part of the readers, like I said, but I feel like it’s all there for them to absorb.

That’s the big picture.  To really sum up FCHS, it’s about a group of friends embarking on their last year of high school and the twists and turns that come with living with people you always see, but never really know.  Ooh, I gotta write that one down…

APK: How do you and Rachel Freire work together?

VD: I’m sure you don’t mean at the store.  We work full script.  I sit down all by my lonesome and hash out the plot.  I run it by Rachel, just to get her initial reactions, input, what have you.  She’s usually ok with what I come up with…I usually look to her (and my wife, Michelle) for input on what the girls would do since I’m fairly unfamiliar with the workings of the female mental process.  I take that plot, and in a separate document, I number one though 30, the number of pages per chapter, and take out all the beats of the plot, so I know what story beats I’m hitting on each page.  I did that for each chapter too…for example, I wrote down June of the starting year to August of the following year, and wrote down events that would happen in that month so I get a spark for what should happen in that month.  For example, in the first volume, June through September, we have the last day of school, a local festival around July 4th, football practice and the first day of school.  These are chapter sparks that lead to the plot, so this is the first step.

After scripting, I hand it off to Rachel and she goes to town.  I’m pretty heavy handed with references, and my script is full of URL’s and movies to watch…keep in mind that there is a 20 year difference between Rachel and me, so she’s not going to get every single idea I give her because it’s taking place when she’s a toddler.  So, I do a little bit of art directing in that respect.  After that, we FTP the art to Chris [Pitzer, publisher of AdHouse Books] and wait for his notes.

APK: How much of a free hand does Rachel have once she has the script for in terms of changing the timing of beats and layout?

VD: As with any artist I work with, I let them draw whatever they want, as long as it’s in the context of what I have set up for them.  My new buzzword is “micro-management.”  I don’t micro-manage the art.  You stifle creativity if you do that.  You have to let the artist be an artist.  Look, if she drew a guy where a girl should be, sure, I’ll say something, but for the most part, Rachel has good instincts, so I trust her.

APK: How does this differ from other projects you’ve worked on and what is, so far, your favorite way to work with an artist?

VD: It’s pretty much standard fare.  I write full-script with the caveat, “If you see something differently, tell me, and show me.”  Nine times out of 10, I’ll go with what the artist comes up with.  But I can’t work Marvel style.  Theoretically, I could, but I’m a bit of a control freak.  A script has to look like a script before it leaves my computer.

I also do rough layouts that are for me only.  It helps when plotting a page because I can see it better.  For example, I once wrote a two page sequence that was Eisner-esque.  It had a burning building with folks trapped in it, etc.  The hero enters in Panel One, top left of the left page, and exits with the rescued on the bottom right of the right side.  I had to draw this out so I could see the zig-zag, right to left eye movement.  And again, I usually keep these for myself, but if an artist gets stuck, I’ll show it to them.

APK: What is it about the High School setting that draws you in, as a writer?

VD: I think that, when you’re there, you’re oblivious to the drama of your own life.  I grew up watching 90210 and Saved By The Bell and all those other teen dramedies, and the thing you never see is the story of your life playing out before you.  We say that someone is full of drama now, but back then, there wasn’t a term for it.  The term “drama queen” wasn’t really around when I was in high school, so the obvious-ness of the situations you find yourself in are lost on you…as an observer.  High school is full of drama and comedy…it’s a virtual gold mine, story wise.

APK: Do you write to music, and if so what?

VD: Yeah, I do.  I write lyrics with arrangements in my head that I have to get actual talented folks to write for me, since I can’t write music.  I don’t think that I write any particular genre or style of music more than any other.  Mostly rock, but I’ve written a country song or two, a couple of punk rock ditties…Scooby-Doo #128 has an opera that was co-written with my friend, Nick Purpura.  I think that the musical…musical theater…is an often ignored art form because the story is told in lyrics and music.  You learn what’s going on by absorbing the music and yeah, there are usually cheesy lyrics, but the transfer of information is just as great as it is in verbal storytelling without music…it’s just harder to retain.

APK: FHCS is being published by AdHouse Books (Diamond code SEP09 0568), and was their Free Comic Book Day offering. How did that come about?

VD: One of the things I tell every writer to do after they hook up with an artist is to make a mini comic.  FCHS was offered online…for free…and still had a struggle finding an audience.  Our biggest fans were other creators who loved Rachel’s art and dug my story.  Rachel and I were really just looking to get more people to the site, and we made a mini comic of what was already online and handed these out…again, for free…at the MoCCA Art Festival a couple of years ago.  One of those found its way to Chris Pitzer.  And let’s be honest here, I handed one to Chris Staros, to NBM, to any and all publisher I could find there…I even handed one to the Minx editors just to get Rachel more work.  Did I think anyone would be interested in publishing the book?  Absolutely not.  I was under the impression that I’d still be doing the online strip and maybe one day, maybe, I’d collect it into one volume.

A few weeks later, I get an e-mail from Pitzer, who assumed we had publishers waiting for us, which we didn’t.  I love AdHouse and their product(s), so for Chris to offer us the chance to publish the book…this was a big deal for me.  An absolute honor.  You can imagine what it was like for Rachel, who was this green but talented artist who had never been seen before we put the strip on The Chemistry Set.  Chris offered us the FCBD issue, and I think he had the same ideas as far as marketing…that we’d use it to introduce folks to a concept they’ve never heard before.  Chris was also the one who offered us the chance to get the book on ComiXology’s iPhone application.
APK: How is it working with ComiXology and their iPhone app.? Does it change the way you think about the comic at all?

VD: They’re a bunch of good guys and they have their heads on straight.  Working with them was pretty easy, actually.  We have this two page sequence that has times, counting down to the end of the school year in Chapter 1 (it was in the FCBD issue).  When I got the test run of FCHS, I noticed that they sequenced it to be two separate pages, instead of one big layout.  I sent them a note, and it was fixed immediately.  I have nothing but high praise for them.

My view on digital comics for next gen phones/smart phones is this: It’s a new toy that folks want to play with and so they’re just looking for content and apps to fill their commutes or pre-movie time.  If we get them reading comics, that’s great.  I just want someone to retrofit the ComiXology app to have a button to pre-order the book.  It’s probably days away, knowing those guys.

APK: What are your plans for the story, moving forward?

VD: Three more volumes, God willing.  The next volume covers October to January and there’s a big tragedy looming over the cast.  In the solicitation, I actually teased it (”Will they all make it?”).   The third volume, February through May, has a musical as it’s centerpiece and if we can get that far in the publishing…if interest is that high that we can actually do all four volumes, then I will have achieved one of the biggest goals in my life.  Seriously.  The fourth book centers around graduation and moving on into the real world, and that one, the whole series for that matter, will end with a very surreal piece that may put the whole thing in a different light, but that’s so far away, it may change…but then again…

APK: You do a lot of publicity for the book, seeming to never stop moving, or releasing something.  What methods of PR have you found the best so far, and what ones would you swear off?

VD: Well, the first thing you have to notice is that I am cheap.  No, not cheap, just…I can’t afford a publicist.  If I could, I wouldn’t solicit for interviews myself or have to send out my own press releases.  After that, I look at the biggest and best tool available to me, the internet.  I have to say that having a Free Comic Book Day comic went a long way to introduce folks to the concept of FCHS, and that, again, was all Chris’ doing.  Going back to what Rachel and I have done, we agreed to have the first 25 pages given for free on ComiXology’s iPhone app, we have a prequel comic strip on Facebook and my site, I’m doing videos on YouTube to promote the book…again, using the tools that I have available to me or the one’s offered to me.  I don’t mind giving something away for free…I wish it were different, but it’s not.  For me, it’s about having the most eyes on my product as possible.

I don’t know that I would swear off any method of PR.  If it works, I’ll try it, but again, I’d rather spend my money making the book the best book it can be, not on a full page ad in Wizard.  If I had the money to throw at an ad, I’d put an ad in Variety or some other trade magazine…something that will get new eyes on the book.

APK: You’ve written for Marvel and DC among many others, working on comics as various as X-Men Unlimited and Scooby-Doo as well as Superman.  If you could write any book out there for someone else, what would it be?

VD: I still want to write Wildcat for DC, but I’m finding that my time might be better spent writing my own version of Wildcat.  I’m getting to the point in my career, as young as it is, where my age is becoming a factor.  Can I really write comics forever?  The time to create something that lasts forever is now, not 10 years from now.  So, if I could write any book out there, I’d write my own.  And everyone would love it.

Go buy FHCS, tell your retailer you want a copy and enjoy it.  You can head to Vito’s site: vitodelsante.com for sample pages, and more!

Adam P. Knave is a writer and editor, living in NY.  His newest novel, Stays Crunchy in Milk, is out now.

But it also kind of works because it ties into what I wanted to discuss today. Which is, as you might have guessed from the title, ego! Not the Living Planet, though I did read the 90’s Quasar series and that had a lot of Living Planet goodness in it. No, truth be told in the battle of Cool Living Planets I’ve always been more of a Mogo guy myself. Part of that, I admit, is that Ego looks kinda like your crazy drunk uncle. You know the one I mean.

But no I mean ego, self-esteem, that stuff. The crap that warnings are made of. Well I’m here to tell you that you need a large and healthy ego if you’re going to create. You also need a lack of ego to get by. Which is why a lot of people seem to stumble. It’s a timing issue. Let’s take the big ego needs first!

When you’re writing, or drawing or generally creating you need to have an ego as large as the sun. You need to feel that what you’re working on is worth your time. There’s only so much time to go around and most of us, we don’t have much of it free to waste on creating things we think aren’t worth doing. But that means you need to know, to truly know, that you aren’t wasting your time. Now will everything get sold, be a hit, be worth your time in a monetary sense? No. But so long as it is worth for you, creatively, you’re doing all right.

And of course you have to learn to hold that ego in one hand and also hold up critical facilities in another. Because even while you’re a living god shaping worlds and giving birth to the greatest thing since sliced atoms, you need to make sure that it is working and not just ego talking. It’s the slightly harder part. But you still need to like what you’re doing.

A friend of mind, DKM Marlink, said it best the other day: “When you hate everything you create, you’re BEGGING for it to suck. And really getting on my nerves when you respond to my “I really like this!” with “No, it sucks. I don’t know why I even posted it.” [Because you're fishing for compliments and then being ungracious about the ones you get. Duh.])”

I’ll leave her point about taking compliments alone. I don’t feel like dealing with it, but she’s right. Learn to take one. Anyway!

An ego the size of a planet. It’s not a bad thing to have when you’re working. I know the entire time I was working on Stays Crunchy in Milk (buy it now) I kept myself assured it was well worth my time and was, in fact, the best thing I had ever written. I approach every single story that way, every script. If they won’t be better than anything I’ve done before then why I am doing them? My time is worth more than half-assed attempts. Also, as said above, when you feel you’re doing something awesome you have a much better chance of it actually being awesome.

The flip side is knowing when to let go of the ego. This is the “don’t be an ass” principle. When you talk to other people you don’t want to tell them your stuff is crap, that does you no good. But you also need to keep the ego in check. Don’t tell a writer you could write the series he’s working on much better than him. Don’t announce that your new story is the best thing ever written by man or beast. It may be your best, I really hope it is in fact, but too much hype makes people feel wary.

It also makes you sound like an ass. Being polite, acting like a professional and generally not being an ass are conductive to having a career. Yes, we all know people who are asses and have careers. But why would you want to be one? What does it get you? Seriously, if you enjoy being one of those people, I want to know why. How does it enrich your life, and the lives of those near you? Where’s the gain in the behavior?

Every creative industry is secretly very small. They may look huge from the outside but they really aren’t. Word spreads fast. Think before you act and act with grace when at all possible. I’m not saying that you let people walk all over you and never have confrontation. Just that even when things get ugly, be aware of your surroundings and what it can and will cost you.

Because everyone out there is full of ego and they are all creating works they adore. Kicking them repeatedly because it might make you feel taller doesn’t do much in the way of actual good. I would argue it does the opposite. And that’s not going to be worth your time. You have important, major works to create, remember? Don’t waste your time.

Adam has a new book out and he’s overly excited by it. You can read sample chapters, hear what other people think of it and more at adampknave.com if you’d like.

I write a bunch of prose and one of the things that can be easier in comics than in prose is the fight scene. The action! The tenseness! The blood, sweat and tears! The complex moves! The exclamation points! When you’re writing a comic script you can lay it out like a movie. You need figure one doing this, figure two doing that and so on. It isn’t easy easy, but there is a language to it that movies have shown us over the years. As well as comics.

Also you have your artist to help. I won’t lie, that’s a huge help. They’re your director, end of the day. Between the two of you getting an action sequence composed is fairly straightforward.

With prose it can seem the same at first but it truly isn’t. Trying to describe complex action to a reader can cause you to slip up. You start detailing the action. Dryly. Telling people that Bob punched Joe in the face. Then Joe kicked Bob in the shin. Back and forth, dry as a bone, a catalog of parts. It’s choreography, but it doesn’t work without something to interpret it.

Instead, I have found that using the shape and structure of your words is the key. With comic art you can control the speed of a reader’s eye (to an extent) and you can do the same with prose. Spillane knew this better than almost anyone. Reading a bunch of Spillane is like reading a boxing match.

He’ll use short jabs of sentences in a cluster. They come at you fast, your eye and mind devour them with uncanny speed. Then he’ll let loose with a longer, more complex sentence. Naturally you slow down some when you read it. That long hard slam caps off a moment.

Using shorter words, smaller sentences and simpler concepts, grouped right, can really lay some fast track down. You want, for big exciting breathless moments, the reader to feel the same speed that your scene accelerates to.

Of course you don’t want the language to become too simple and sound clunky. You have to play with it some. I once wrote a kick in three parts, if I remember right. I don’t have it here with me so forgive me if this is clunkier than I mean, I’m working from memory and I’m old.

Quick breath. Hold it. Release. My leg arced around and up, foot pointed. Impact and follow-through. The back of his head snapped forward and lead his body in a neat arc, lifting him a good three inches off the ground as he sailed across concrete. He landed hard. Face down.

I wanted the moment of the kick to be quick, but the kick itself to extend a tiny bit. Then the impact, fast, but the reaction of the person being kicked is the big slow down. Then he lands and it’s quick and sharp.

Learning to control your speed and sentence length/use/complexity is a great tool for controlling how fast or slow a scene reads and where it speeds back up. The better your control the more visceral you can make your action scenes. Of course, you also want to remember to keep tone to the rest of the work. If something never breaks into sharp quick moments and then does only for a fight it can sound out of character or tone for the piece. Which is bad.

So think ahead to the type of scenes you’ll need and see how you can pace them. Work out what your fastest and slowest moments will be and work with them until your speed range for a project is set. Then you can really begin to play with it.

Adam P. Knave is a novelist, comic writer, editor and more. Visiting adampknave.com to stalk him. Or to send him flowers.

One of the pitches is a strange one. Structure-wise. So I want to use those issues as a basis for what I’ll talk about here. See, we are pitching this to a company but also to the artist. I’ll get into how that works later one. For now the main pitch document itself.

I like to start it off with a simpler “This is the name of the project by these people” bit and follow that with a log line. It’s that one sentence summation you see a lot. A handy quick way to get people interested.

CHAIN GANG
Written by: Adam P. Knave
Art by: [Your name in lights!]

In the 80’s a group of bike messengers secretly controlled large chunks of New York. One day, they were found out.

So that’s it. A tale about bike messengers controlling New York? Well I don’t know, maybe it makes you want to read on. Hopefully it does. So next is a longer pitch, the elevator pitch, really. That’s, for the few of you who don’t know, the pitch you would give if you have exactly the time of an elevator ride to sell your whole idea. It’s longer, but not by much. What it should do is build off your log and keep interest growing.

The Chain Gang was an secret society of bike messengers. By withholding, delaying and otherwise tampering with important papers they kept a number of political people in New York uncertain as to why some people went free while others seemed to have the bad luck of missing information that would lead to their incarceration. Things went smooth for years, until the mob got wind of the operation and decided they wanted to control it.

And now we have bike messengers versus the mafia in the New York 80’s. Hopefully people are still reading. At that point I like to go into characters. Listing the main characters and discussing what motivates them some, how they are and give a feel to the reader for the general tone. Don’t give people too much cruft – useless detail.

ROLAND HASSIT: Leader of the Chain Gang. He loves ice cream but only strawberry.

What? Why is that there? Does it really help the know the character? If not, lose it. But if it pays off in the section below, keep it.

After character comes the story. I find a good length is about a paragraph for every issue sized chunk of story. So for a graphic novel, maybe six to eight paragraphs. Feel free to break it up, too. The big thing, I find, is to make it exciting to read. Write it like you feel it, let your excitement for the project bleed onto the page. Not every line should end with an exclamation point, but choose your words carefully and convey how much fun this story could be.

Also, make sure you don’t hold back surprises. These aren’t readers that you are trying to get to buy the next issue, these are the people you will work with and who will pay you. Let them know what they’re getting. Also, enjoy playing that card you dropped earlier.

After Rolland stops to get his usual ice cream cone, but gets delayed because they have no strawberry, he misses the meet. That minute difference, Roland will find out, cost Ralphie his life.

Anyway, that’s what you’re after. Fun, information and engaging stories to keep people reading. Now above I mentioned that the pitch Kirkbride and I are actually working on is a bit different. The artist is on board but he also wants to help with the timing and plot a bit. Great! I love engaged artists. But the complexity comes in because we have two pitch documents. The one we send to publishers and the one we send to the artist. The artist gets a document when all the same story beats laid out for him, except they have approximate page counts.

This way he can get a feel for how long we were thinking a scene should take and he can mess with that and get back to us and change things. Maybe he wants the fight scene to take longer, or the time we spend with Roland’s family, that really sings for the artist and he wants an extra ten pages focused there. Well, all right, but then that changes things. Not from a pitch view, the story remains the same. But the weighing of it changes. Which is why we need two documents.

One for the overall top down look and one for the nuts and bolts view. Keeping both up to date allows us to really work out what we need to do when we start writing. We have templates and a battle plan. The artist will be on board and on the same page (literally and figuratively) and the publisher will know what they’re getting.

And now I kinda wanna write CHAIN GANG. Anyone want to publish it?

—-

Adam P. Knave is a novelist and comic writer and editor who, among other things, works for Image’s POPGUN anthology.

The comic?  BASTARD ROAD by Dave Curd and Brian Winkeler.  Dave makes with the awesome art while Brian delivers on the scripts and plots.  So far only two Bastard Road stories have seen print, the first in Popgun vol 2 and the second in Popgun vol 3.  

To explain the concept I’ll turn to Dave an Brian:

DAVE: In my mind, Bastard Road is a mixture between two childhood fascinations: The ‘80s hour-long adventure show (A-Team, The Incredible Hulk, Knight Rider) and the post-apocalypse. It stars two uneasy companions: Bastard, a violent, 450 pound amnesiac with an addictive personality, and Farel, a skittish stoner who wants more outta life and is willing to wipe the occasional busted anus from his hair to get it. Together, they walk the wastelands searching for bruises, booze and broads. Oh – they’re also being tracked by a mysterious stranger, so that’s always fun.

BRIAN: I like to describe Bastard Road as The Road Warrior meets Futurama with the violence of The Itchy ‘n’ Scratchy Show. What’s great about the world we’ve created is that anything can happen at any time. Bastard and Farel can run into lizard bounty hunters, sexy lumberjack gals, leather clad fascist government agents, societies of naked, obese men melted into their La-Z-Boys and the occasional one-eyed, giant mutant gamecock that spits fire.

So that gives you some idea of what you might be in for.  Hopefully if I’ve done this right there will be bits of art throughout the column, as well.  So why do I think, outside of “It’s a fun read” you should pay attention to this one?

Let me tackle the writing reasons first.  Brian can go after a joke like a rabid dog.  He spends most of the second Bastard Road story doing just that.  It’s joke after joke after joke and just when it starts to feel like maybe he’s gone too far and should pull back he twists and gives you a payoff laugh.

That twist, the deft handling of the turn, is a masterful bit of work.  It’s one of Brian’s gifts.  The other being dialogue.  I’m a sucker for conversation that sounds like real people.  His never fails to ring right for my ears.  So even though you’re in this strange setting doing impossible things it is grounded by the back and forth of the characters, even if you don’t realize it.  Doing comedy is hard. Frankly, Brian makes it look easy.

Dave’s choices, as an artist, also manage to speak highly of the work.  That very distinctive style that recalls rockabilly graphics and old 50s cartoons while maintaining this Kirbyesque energy level really help to push the whole affair over the top.

So, seriously, check out Bastard Road (www.bastardroad.com) and study it.  It’s well worth your time and devotion.  And now a few more questions for Brian and Dave!

ADAM: Do the ideas for a new BASTARD ROAD story occur to either one of you?  Assuming that’s the case what’s the next step for it once an idea is thought of?

DAVE: Oh yeah, it’s a true collaboration. Usually, Brian knows where he wants a story to go, and during our initial conversation, I try to gross him out. He does the heavy lifting, and I’ll try to sweeten a gag, or inject some inappropriate violence. We then go back and forth for a while, punching it up until we’ve got some good story-gravy. This weird back and forth carries on well into the art stage. During fight scenes, sometimes I’ll add a word balloon, knowing that Brian will have the perfect joke to insert. It’s definitely not a Brian First Half/Dave Second Half kinda deal, our process is blurry and messy in the best possible way.

BRIAN: A while back we brainstormed a TON of Bastard Road stories and characters, so we have a huge well of ideas to pull from at any time. Our only problem these days is that our ideas usually expand until they’re far too big, so we add those to our big pile o’ future stories. We’ve got a strong grasp of the Bastardverse and all its citizenry so right now the hard part is just deciding which characters to roll out and which to save for future tales.

ADAM: How do you two plot out a tale?

DAVE: We have a chat about our hopes for the story, versus the reality of the deadline. After we cut the motorcycle derby (again!) we figure out which characters to use from our little stable, and what we want to accomplish with the story. Then, Brian vanishes for a little while, and magically, I get a script in my inbox!

BRIAN: A majority of the craziness bursts out of Dave’s head, so when we get the chance, we just get rolling with some brainstorming and once we have the characters in play and the basic concept for the narrative, I hunker down and put the pieces together, trying to find just the right balance between fight scenes and the heavy dialogue funny, character stuff.

ADAM: Dave, once you get a script, what’s the next move?

DAVE: Brian gives me flexibility to push and pull the pacing to maximize the setups and punch lines. So I might compress (or even add a page) to give us enough real estate to really show some meat. But for the most part, I just follow Brian’s lead. I draw the whole thing in thumbnail form, deviate a little for pacing if needed, and then move on to final art.

BRIAN: My role is to serve Dave’s art. I want to give him just enough so that he can get his hands around the story and squeeze all the delicious juice out of his mind grapes and do some killer art that is just right for the story and that Dave has a ton of fun creating.

ADAM: How much of your work is done by hands versus on a computer and how has that ratio changed over time?

DAVE: All of my work is digital, and has been throughout my freelance career (started in ‘01). The line work is vector, and the colors are raster.

ADAM: How did the two of you start working together?

DAVE: Brian and I met through a mutual friend, director Christopher Sharpe (for whom I played a cowboy sexgimp in the B movie Sex Machine – yes it’s on Netflix) and collaborated on an animated clean water TV commercial (Brian’s a big time advertising dude, like Mad Men, or I guess Trust Me if you’re a Tom Cavanagh fan) . We’ve got a real similar sense of humor, so we clicked and became fast friends. Sometime later, Brian was interested in putting together some animation pitches, and was kind enough to bring me along for the ride. During this collaboration we stuck mindgold with Bastard Road, and it’s been one great big cock joke ever since.

BRIAN: I’d started writing in my spare time – scripts and such – and my best friend (a former marketing director with Adult Swim) encouraged me to play around with creating concepts for animation. When I first came across Dave’s art I couldn’t believe someone with that talent was a local, so once we connected through friends, I worked with him as often as I could on professional stuff. He was game when I threw out the idea of us brainstorming together, and through that we’ve got Bastard Road, plus a couple of other concepts we hope to unveil to the public over the next year or two.

ADAM: When you did start off, how was the collaboration different than it is today?

DAVE: In the first story, Carnage Asada (Popgun2), every panel was meticulously described/plotted by Brian. This was awesome, but I couldn’t imagine it was easy on him. Now he focuses more on the narrative (structure/jokes/characters), and graciously provides a rough skeleton for the action scenes, allowing me to flesh them out. We’ve been living with these characters now for over 3 years, so we are in a creatively comfortable zone. I think we started with some work-earned trust, but now we share a certainty – a creative bromance!

BRIAN: I realized during the first story that I had to let me be me and let Dave be Dave, so at this point, my directions for a page can sometimes be simply: “Giant cock fight. Kill as many villagers as you want.” We do know these characters backwards and forwards and whatever Dave gives me, I can write to – and, in fact, some of the most well-received dialogue came out of me writing stuff to the art at the last minute.

The biggest difference now is that I’m in Oklahoma City and Dave’s been up in Madison, WI for the last year and a half. We regret that we didn’t capitalize on the time we spent in the same zip code, but luckily we’re just a phone call or an email away, and whenever we get cooking, there’s no stopping us.

And to close we have a sneak peak at the newest Bastard Road story! Meet Elle! Ouch! Looks like she’s gonna leave a mark.

———-

Adam P. Knave is a Bastard, but not THAT Bastard. Also note Brian will be at SDCC and will frequently be around the POPGUN table (look for Image, it’ll be part of the group). He likes it when you walk up to him and yell ‘BASTARD!’ – really.

Editors make me look good. It’s true. I’m not saying that my unedited drafts are crap and that I can’t write, no of course not, just that editors add a layer of polish. They smooth down the edges and help draw everything out correctly. It’s a goodness that only helps my work. So why do so many people not like them?

They think editors interfere. It takes a lot of ego to write. You have to be convinced that what you are doing is worth people’s time and worth your own time. So when someone else steps in and says, “This part is wrong,” well, it can sting sometimes. Because you thought you had that right and you meant it to be that way and who is this person to say otherwise?

They think editors are angry people who can’t write themselves. Well, there are a few bad apples, you know? Sure. There are editors who suck, who are adversarial for no reason or envy the fact that you have work or whatever – but these are, quite honestly, a minority. But when you add the first concept, that they are meddlers, to the reasons of the second bit people can start the relationship off on the wrong foot.

And make no mistake – working with an editor is building a relationship. They are different people and no two editors will help you shape your story in exactly the same way. And isn’t that a tricky patch of thought. You want your story to be the best it can be. But what does that mean, if every editor you work with would treat it differently? It means you find the one that seems most in sync with that story, to the best of your ability, and you go for it.

Still a few things to keep in mind:

* The relationship should not be adversarial. There are a few people out there who seem to think that the best way to edit is to attack. Insult and tear down and it seems to prove to them that they aren’t coddling anyone or being too nice to a piece or an author. This is, flat-out, stupid. I mean, I guess if you like abusive relationships then “Hey Kids! Editors!” but for the sane and functional in the crowd – spot this and run. An editor should be firm when they need to be and friendly when they need to be. Shit, they’re your partner in this story telling game. They should act like it. Some things need to be changed, and if you fight that, they will fight back. Some things don’t. A good editor isn’t a pushover or a totalitarian dictator. They’re what the situation demands.

* Don’t get angry at an editor for doing his or her job. It’s easy sometimes. Sometimes you have that phrase, that moment in a bit that you think just kills. And you’ll get a note back saying it doesn’t work. Tempting to dismiss it with a wave of the hand, but the right way to deal is to either read the reasoning, or if one isn’t right there, ask for it. Any good editor should have a reason for changes. Then you can discuss it. Try not to be defensive; there’s no profit in it for you. It will also, one hopes, stop the editor from getting defensive, as well. Remember – they wanted a change for a reason! So even if you don’t use it, being rude about it stings just as much as it would coming in the other direction.

* Find ways to bond with your editor about the story. Talk about it, if at all possible, but only after their first read. Let them have that unspoiled so they can get a sense of it, but then talk to them. Discuss where you wanted things to go and the emotional and timing beats you had in mind. It gives them a better shot at pulling the work into the shape you had in mind. It also gives the editor a chance to say, “Well what about… ?” which is a fun game for the whole family and may unlock bits of story you hadn’t seen but really want to explore. Score!

* Be honest.

It takes a lot of ego to write. It takes a lack of ego to get along with editors. You need to be able to handle both ends of that spectrum to really get somewhere. Editors can be your safety net, your last shining hope, and your story’s best friend.

If you let them.

Now, I am lucky, I admit that. I grew up with parents who were writers and editors, so I have been surrounded by them since day one. I am deeply used to the idea of being edited. The things is until recently I wasn’t an editor often. Oh sure, sometimes you edit stuff for friends but that’s all. I would do a lot of the jobs an editor does, when I ran sites, but I also managed to not do all of them.

What I mean is, to untangle that a bit, I would manage writers, help them out when they needed it, but I would also be hands off and stand back a bit more than may have been smart. Part of that was a time issue, but the rest of it was that I never thought of myself as an editor.

And then came POPGUN. Come on, it is hard to tell yourself you aren’t an editor when you’re editing four a bit every day. Strange mind shift to make. On the one hand I hadn’t edited professionally pretty much ever. On the other I had been doing it all my life, regardless of labels. So I threw myself into it with everything I knew and everything I felt and found out that I truly enjoy being an editor. I like writing more, to be fair, but I can happily lose myself in helping to make someone else’s story everything they want it to be.

It’s a strange thing, editing. I have to remove all ego. I can’t go “I would do it like this,” but I still have to hold that in my head, along with the author’s intent and every possible way to achieve it I can possibly think of (including my own). Then I get to help them find the way that works best for them given their desires, style and intent.

I’m still learning, of course, but like I say about my writing – the day I stop learning is the day I’m doing it wrong.

They all vary but recently I worked with an artist in a way I never had before. And that’s why we’re here today. That other stuff, up above? Yeah eventually we’ll get there, too. Trust me. Just not today.

Anyway! I got asked to write for an artist for a short comic pitch. I said yes. I also decided to pitch something else, but had no artist attached. And due to things I can only refer to this stuff as “a pitch to a place,” sorry.

Anyway I looked through artists I’ve met or worked with and thought about who was free and who would do the story I had in my head the right kind of justice. I hit, fairly quickly, on Maximo Lorenzo. Hell of an artist, really nice guy to boot. I sent him email asking if he would be interested, he said yes we traded some more things back and forth and then he called me.

Now, my original concept for a story was big and flashy. For a lot of reasons, but the idea was to open huge and then go smaller as the story progresses. Little 8 or 10 page thing. Seemed like lots of fun.

Now, Maximo calls me and we start talking and he was just shooting out things left and right. Most artists I’ve worked with – hell they want to be involved, otherwise what’s the point, but Maximo just kept going off in all directions at once. I am not saying this is bad. I had to hold on tightly and try to see if a common framework was emerging and something did and we bounced ideas back and forth a while and found the nut of the story. It was quick and explosive work, that first time shooting ideas with Maximo. He’s like a kid in a candy store. It’s madcap and glorious, frankly. The enthusiam he shows for every inch of a story just revs you up.

Anyway. I went off into my cave to write. This is where things turn sideways. Bad week happened. I had deadlines for one of my webcomics coming up behind me, some Popgun work and a bunch of work to help pre-sell the new novel all jumping on me. What time I thought I had left over was quickly eaten alive by personal issues.

So I had a thought. I mailed Maximo and asked if he wanted to just thumbnail, really loose, his idea for the story. From that I would build a script and we could come to a merging point. He agreed and went off into his cave. Sometimes he televises his cave on-line. Brave, crazy man. But this was sideways because that wasn’t my job. My job was to take the material we worked on and write it not do a handoff shuffle and then write it on the return pass. I dunno, I felt bad about it, personally. On the other hand, people do work that way, so there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m a ball of quirks, however, and feel guilt like mice like cheese.

Right! So a few days later I get a bunch of thumbnails and open them and … it wasn’t the story we were going to tell. I mean it was but it wasn’t. The big epic scope was gone. The closer beating heart remained.

I admit to a bit of shock. Remember: Going in to this idea I had started with only the big scope. So here I was, a week later, trying to script a story that echoed what I thought I would be doing but also managed to blast away what I sat down to the table with.

And it did so by focusing on other aspects. Neither story – the original idea or the one we ended up with – is at all wrong. They are both good, strong valid stories. Maximo did exactly what we had agreed on. He found the story in him based on our combined efforts and laid out a roadmap for it. One hundred and ten percent on the money. Remember that.

I wrote the script based off the thumbnails I got and enjoyed it and had a good time and as of this writing I still don’t know if it will be accepted or not. That doesn’t matter though, I still think the story is good and stand behind it.

But it did show me that sometimes you work with people and you expect things to go one way and then wow they don’t. I had never just let an artist go utterly nuts and picked up my work at the back end, missing the middle part of the creation. I don’t know that I’ll do it again. I might. And that is not a relfection on Maximo at all, rather me. I’m a bit of a control freak and somehow it surprised me to have exactly what I knew would happen, happen. See the problem there? I handed him the reins, stood back and then seemed, even for a moment, a bit shocked that the horses weren’t where I left them.

Well of course not! That would’ve been the mistake! The correct thing was to create a story with the blocks we laid out. Which is what he had done. All the wrong on this is mine and most of that is only in my head. But that’s the sort of thing you have to learn to deal with and untangle for yourself, at speed, every day.

It wasn’t a bad experience, hell I’m trying to work with Maximo again. So obviously it isn’t like this was a bad time for either of us. We talk all the time, actually. So yeah.

No, it’s the blindsiding that got me. The fact that I was out of touch enough, for just long enough, to be taken by surprise by what was supposed to happen. To me, that feels wrong. I don’t know if it is a function of working that way or new collaboration or what but I know that it unsettled me and confused me for a few. And again, it is my own issues there at work.

Every collaboration is different and surprising and when you forget that you end up blindsided and lost. Getting complacent and assuming a groove when you haven’t built one up is a dangerous thing to do, and I did it. If you’re lucky and you’re working with good people the confusion is short lived and turns out just fine, thanks. Still, it isn’t something you want happening and you have to do your diligence to ensure it doesn’t happen to you.

Thankfully I was working with Maximo and it turned out quite well. Still, it worries me a bit that I let myself get that hit from a direction I didn’t see. And that’s the way it is. You have to always be willing to learn from your mistakes, own them, and not beat yourself up over them – too much.

It’s 2am on a Sunday right now, and I’m a bit out of it. It’s been one hell of a week, but I can’t really say it was totally out of the ordinary. I have to get up at 7am to go to the day job. I’m sitting here, staring out my window in-between typing sentences, looking at the darkened playground that sits out there. I bet I could break in if I wanted. I could use that slide. It would be spectacular.

But I won’t. I’ll stay here and talk to you. Some kind of introduction thing. Right. I’m Adam P. Knave. I write things. Fiction, non-fiction, comics of the print and web variety and, well, columns. I’ve reviewed books for Publisher’s Weekly and SF Reader. I’ve also been writing biweekly columns since around 2001 or so. And blogging. And … yeah I write a lot of things. Which is why I’m here I guess.

You see, I’m a process junkie. I love knowing how things work, even things I don’t care about. You give me a good documentary about how they made shoelaces in the 17th century and I’m a happy guy. Writing stuff excites me even more though. I mean it’s what I do, right? So that’s what this is. Me writing a column that takes apart things I love, making a space that I would love to read. Sometimes I’ll talk to other people about how they do what they do, and sometimes I’ll meander along about a project or six I have on the fires at a given moment.

And I could go on but let’s get right into it!

Back when POPGUN Volume 3 was in production we were doing what we always did: checked stuff. This was late in the game, I only came in late in the game, actually, and deadlines had passed. We had a ton of material, some 600 pages of it, and it all needed to be edited, proofed and sworn off on.

So we would go through each story and mail out changes and send them to creators and list things as fully ready and keep moving. Sometimes this went smoother than others. This is about one of those “others.”

Volume 3 was edited by Mark Andrew Smith and D.J. Kirkbride with me as their assistant. Thomas Mauer and Stephen Finch were the production guys, and both of them know their way around an editing table as well. Just so you know the players involved.

There was a story. It was a good story and we liked it. There were a few minor suggestions, some ellipsis stuff and a few commas and all and we would be good to go. Except for this one word balloon.

It was oddly vague. Uhm, I don’t have it in front of me but the line was basically “Driver leaving now.” and that doesn’t look vague, does it? Except that the characters weren’t ever named, and if the line was “Driver, leaving now” it meant that the person speaking was repeating and approving a course of action for the other guy, but if it was “Driver leaving now” then the guy talking was the driver.

Lord this sounds so simple. Mail the creators and ask them! Except they weren’t responding to email and English wasn’t their first language. So that was, oddly enough, out.

We looked at the art. We each formed an opinion on which way that sentence had to go, meaning-wise. And we started discussing it. No less than 50 emails flew back and forth on the subject of a single comma. We laid out logic, and it would be countered. We would agree in small clutches and groups only for someone to be swayed again to the other side.

I mean, seriously, this was some sort of epic thing going on. Over a comma. And when all was said and done, hell I can’t remember which side ended up “right,” and I put that in quotes because well … who knows.

We’re all crazy over here. We spent hours, all that time, over a single comma. And we would each do it again. The Great Comma Debate isn’t a single event, you need to realize. It is constant. Everything counts, everything matters. And I am sure there are things that we missed on that book. I don’t look at it often because if I see any I will get mad at myself.

Now this isn’t a big speech about how we are heroes. No, we care too much, it is true, but I think it is symbolic of straight-up madness. It isn’t glamorous or sane or quiet, doing these things. It’s a pack of people who all want to produce the best result as possible, each of them fighting for what they are sure, at that moment, is right. And on top of that there are deadlines and the need to do other things and other projects and … only so much time! And yet each single, tiny, piece has to be right.

Worse yet you know it never will be. Spend six hours on a huge email thread about a comma all you want – something will get by you. And you can’t ever get it 100% and you can’t ever stop trying.

All you can do is fight for what you think is right, quietly and respectfully, and do your best and keep moving.

Behind the scenes we’re all sharks. If we stop moving we die.

Adam P. Knave is the assistant editor of Image’s POPGUN anthology. He also writes two webcomics: Legend of the Burrito Blade and Things Wrong With Me. On top of that he writes fiction, comics and more. You can stalk him at adampknave.com but bring your own unicorns.