Comics Scribes to Screenwriters (and vice versa)

Alex Epstein asks: "Will you write a bit about your transition from comics to screen? A number of TV writers are moving in the other direction, and I'm testing the waters, so I'd love to know your thinking..." [Alex is head writer on an innovative show called Charlie Jade and author of the book 'Crafty Screenwriting: Writing Movies That Get Made'. Check out his blog at http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com - okay?]

Let's deal with the party of the first part first - me. I guess I am in transition from comics to screen, though it feels like I'm only a few steps down a very long road. I spent the 90s as a comics editor in London, first on the Judge Dredd Megazine and then on the legendary science fiction weekly 2000 AD. I quit to become a freelancer five years ago and have been banging my head against a wall ever since, trying to penetrate the magic circle of TV writing in Britain. I kept getting close but certainly lacked the craft to make a success of any opportunities that came my way. Who you know will get you chances, but what you know will turn those chances into commissions. I knew a few people, but lacked the craft to exploit my chances.

I'd almost given up on film and TV when earlier this year I heard Edinburgh's Napier University was launching an MA Screenwriting course, as part of a new Scottish Film Academy being established on campus. This was my chance to get the craft skills I lacked and to build up a fresh network of contacts. I'll be 40 next year, it was time to get my shit together or get off the pot. The fact I'd worked in comics was of no interest to my tutors when I applied for the course. But writing and editing scripts for comics do give you a lot of skills that are eminently transferrable to screenwriting [and I guess the reverse is just as true - but I'll tackle the other side of the coin in my next posting].

Like screenplays, scripts for comics are a blueprint for a visual storytelling medium. But comics are like watching a film during a lightning story or while standing beneath a strobe light. You only get to see glimpses, moments, flashes of the action. What happens in the gaps between the comic strip panels is almost as important as what is seen within the panels. This is particularly true of British comics like 2000 AD or the Megazine, which have episodes so short that sometimes resemble haiku to the rambling sonnets published by Marvel, DC and their US colleagues. An average story instalment in 2000 AD is five or six pages long - that's 36 panels at most to tell a tale with a beginning, middle and end, some plot progression if it's part of an on-going serial, some character moments, some stunning visuals to keep the artist interested and doing his best work. If it is part of a larger story, you have to resolve the cliffhanger from the previous episode, set up the cliffhanger for this episode and somehow include all that other stuff I mentioned in the previous sentence. Yikes!

It's no surprise that perhaps 25 writers in British comics have made enough money to call it their career in the past 25 years. It's even less of a surprise most of them end up working for the Yankee dollar to make real money - there simply isn't enough work on this side of the Atlantic to sustain them all. The UK is lucky if one great writer emerges each year. But it takes them several years and hundreds of published pages before they start producing their best work. Alan Moore wrote 50 one-off short stories for 2000 AD, Grant Morrison a not dissimilar amount. The need for such intense creativity in such a confined space is the perfect training ground.

Personally, I struggle to be so concise. My best scritp writing in comics has been for The Phantom, an old pulp character who's still going strong in places like Australia, Scandinavia and other random territories. I've written 20 issues of The Phantom to date and I thoroughly enjoy that as a job. Uniquely, each story is written as a full script, but I don't stipulate pages breaks. I simply write from panel 1 to panel 200 (or thereabouts), leaving to the artist to divide these into 32 pages of strip. Most stories are published as complete tales, singles, done-in-one efforts. It's remarkably liberating to start at the beginning, end at the end and not have to worry about cliffhangers, page breaks or trying to impress readers, reviewers and your peers with a stunning array of page to page transitions. With The Phantom, you just tell the bloody story and that's it - no airs and graces, no fancy footling, none of that post-Watchment look-at-me-I'm-so-bloody-clever bollocks.

Just tell a story! That's all the reader cares about, a good story, well told.

Got to go, time for coffee and cake (or probably a satsuma, to shift the post-xmas satsuma mountain).

I shall return to this subject in my next post. Honest.

Writing rituals - finding the right soundtrack

This may sound a bit hinky, but I find it a real struggle to write a novel unless I've got the correct music playing the background. Before I start on a new book I'll spend a ludicrously large amount of time searching for exactly the right soundtrack to my labours. Once I find it, the requisite music will then be played on a loop while I write. Doesn't matter if the book takes three weeks or three months, that music is all I'll listen to while I'm writing it - over and over again. In some cases that means I'll have heard the music hundreds of times before I'm done.

The music creates a mood, gives me a shortcut back into the story and the style of writing I've adopted. It blocks out any extraneous background noises. And it helps me focus on the task ahead. Sometimes the music itself can infect the speed at which I write. My third novel (an undistinguished Dredd effort called Silencer) was written with Michael Nyman's score for The Piano as my soundtrack. That mixes up slower, moody pieces with uptempo jigs. I found myself typing languidly in the slow sections and machine-gun fast while the jigs were playing. Strange but true.

I almost always opt for instrumental music while I'm writing, otherwise lyrics from the background start to infect the novel. The sole exception to this is if the soundtrack features singing in a foreign language. Being decidedly mono-lingual, people singing in German or Latin or Elvish makes no difference to me - their voices become just another instrument. Film soundtracks are a popular choice for me, although I will program out any tracks that could be distracting. I want smooth, seamless background music, not quirky tracks that call attention to themselves.

When I first started writing novels, I could remember the soundtrack for each of my tomes. John Barry's Dances with Wolves went with my first Dredd novel, while Philip Glass's Low Symphony matched the second. The score for Sneakers by James Horner was a good match for my first Doctor Who novel, Who Killed Kennedy. But I've written another dozen novel since then and subsequent soundtracks have begun to blend together.

Among my favourites are Han Zimmer's Backdraft, The Lost Prince by Adrian Johnston, Jon Brion's score for Magnolia, the Leon soundtrack, John Barry's The Last Valley and thomas Newman's The Shawshank Redemption. (His efforts on The Road to Perdition are great too, but - like a lot of movie composers - the differentiation between that and his earlier works becomes harder to distinguish over time. If you've heard one John Barry score from the last 20 years, it can feel like you've heard them all.)

My current project, Fiends of the Eastern Front: Twilight of the Dead, is being written to Michael Giacchino's score for the video game Medal of Honour: Underground. It's the first time I've chosen a video game soundtrack as my accompaniment, but the WWII vibe fits nicely with the book, especially now I've screened out the more overtly Parisian tracks.

Giacchino provides incidental music for the TV show Lost - now there's a soundtrack I wish they'd hurry up and release! In the meantime, my search goes on for fresh background sounds. I don't know what my next novel will be, but I'm already looking for the music to accompany it...

You only miss something when it's gone

Some survey somewhere (let's face it, there are thousands of these things happening at any given moment) has determined that British television watchers rate Star Trek as the series they most miss on television. Poppycock! If they missed Star Trek so much, wouldn't the retro series Enterprise have done better? Of all the recent Trek incarnations, it was the only one to get cancelled after year seasons, instead of earning itself the previously obligatory seven-season run. Me, I never watched Enterprise but then I lost the knack of watching Trek during DS9 and Voyager. They were entertaining enough if I stumbled across them, but the basic premise of those series never gripped me enough to make me watch every week.

There's a delicious irony in the fact that shortest-lived of all the Trek TV series (excluding the animated run - hell, have you ever watched any of that? Me neither) was the 1960s original version a.k.a. Star Trek The Original Series. Or Star Trek: TOS, if you prefer unfortunate acronyms. That almost got canned after two years but an early example of fan power got it renewed for a third season. No such luck for Enterprise, but I think people were simply weary of the formula by that point. You need only look at the problems Doctor Who faced at the back end of the 1980s to see a similar problem. The BBC was making the show and couldn't seem to care less. That's not to say the programme makers themselves weren't passionate about the show - but the suits upstairs had Who marked for death.

Now Who proves there is a way back for Trek, given enough time for the soil to lay fallow and fresh creative energies to be found. Of course, the success of the 2005 Who revival has to be balanced against the misfire of the 1996 Who revival when Paul McGann became the 8th Doctor. Get your resurrection wrong and it's back on the scrapheap for you. But good ideas are still good ideas, as long as you've got somebody with the talent, passion and revision to breath new life into them.

I'm waiting for the Inspector Morse spin-off Lewis with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. It'd if the new story proved a success, establishing a new franchise from the ashes of the old. I'd love to see something on British TV with the quality of writing, acting and directing that Morse had. But is Lewis the solution? I guess we'll find out next month. According to the les than totally reliable website Wikipedia, Lewis: Reputation is due to be screened on January 15, 2006. Watch this space...

Icing Sugar

Somebody's been out in the night and given our town a light dusting of what looks like icing sugar. Bloody cold icing sugar, to be precise. Other parts of the country got a good few inches of snow last night, we got sprinkles - and I don't mind the kind that accumulate near toilet bowls in Men's conveniences. So much for the blanket of snow currently featuring prominently on events-starved news bulletins. Apparently Scotland may get some real now by Friday, closely followed by a thaw on Saturday. Since Saturday is also New Year's Eye (a.k.a. Hogmanay north of the border), let's hope the snow gets itself gone good and fast. I don't fancy going to the traditional Biggar bonfire in a blizzard, as happened two years ago.

In other news, the latest issue of Comics International arrived. Endless revivals of old characters and 'hot' creator teams taking over existing characters. Old wine in new bottles should be the industry's slogan, but that might get a bit wearing in the long term. My trips to the nearest comic shop (30 miles away in central Edinburgh) have shrunk to once a month at most, and DC is canning the last monthly book I could be bothered to collect, Gotham Central. There've been times in the past when I gave up comics altogether, junked my collection and went cold turkey. Can't help wondering if I'm fast approaching that point once more...

Morse-Watch continues. I'm revising the text for my reference book to Inspector Morse and re-watching all 33 of the TV stories. Since I wrote the first edition back in the winter of 2001/2002, every episode has been issued on DVD complete with sub-titles that handily identify nealry all the music featured in the show. To my horror, I'm discovering a slew of errors in the first editon of the book. Happily, the new edition should correct all of those, while - no doubt - adding some new ones.

Here's a chilling thought: I started work on the first edition of The Complete Inspector Morse on a Monday, but didn't make much progress. The next day I was trying to knuckle down, make some progress. It was a beautiful spring day, nary a cloud in the sky. My spouse was home sick with flu, so I had to keep popping next door to see how they were getting on. Some time in the early afternoon I activated my internet connection and first heard about events across the Atlantic. The date was September 11, 2001. So that first edition of TCIM is always going to associated with that terrible event.

Let's hope the second edition doesn't gain a similar association.

Snow? What snow?

Now it's bright sunshine, blue skies and glorious come-outside-you-know-you-want-to weather. Bastard.

Sigh. Back to work for me...

I'm dreaming of a white day after the day after xmas

A few flakes of snow have just started to fall here. Can't tell yet whether this is merely a passing flurry, or the leading edge of a more substantial fall. The east of England has already had an inch or two with more to come today and tonight. As always the weather forecast was delightfully vague about how much - if any - of that would reach us here in Biggar. Geographically speaking, we're in the Scottish Borders, although for local government purposes this is part of South Lanarkshire, draggin us into the west of Scotland. Drive half a mile east and you're in the next district council [where the council tax is considerably lower, natch]. So, we're on the border of the Borders, as it were.

Put it this way - I can still see the hills in the distance from my study window, so the snow can't be too heavy.

Yet.

Sci-Fi is the new reality

According to an article in The Times today [click the headline above to see the piece for yourself], science fiction is the new reality TV. As is often the case, the premise put forward by the article's headline bears little resemblance to the thrust of the article. In its quest for a fresh spin on Doctor Who's strong ratings performance on Christmas Day, the paper has joined the dots and come up with a thesis that stretches credulity somewhat. The successful revival of Doctor Who in 2005 has jump-started some commissions - Primaeval on ITV being the prime example - but several others were already in the wind. To say the expensive genre of SF will replace the far cheaper reality TV is a leap of faith, to put it mildly.

However, Who's success is a great boost for the genre and for the likes of me who hope to one day write drama for TV. Over the last five years it seemed the only way into TV was via soaps, and that path then led only to cops and docs drama. Given the choice of those two, I'd rather write police drama - my favourite shows are things like CSI, The Shield and the classic Bochco entries such as Hill St Blues and NYPD Blue. House is cracking, but that's essentially the CSI of medical dramas - a Holmes detective whose quarry happens to be viruses, infections and elusive medical traumas.

So, hurrah for Doctor Who. Long may it reign, once again.

And so this is Christmas

Before starting at college, I decided there were two gadgets that I wanted, but which I didn't need - a laptop and an ipod. When you work from home, you already have a computer and it plays music perfectly adequately. Why bother with pointless toys, not matter how enticing they might be? Once I decided to go to college, I quickly decided to scrape together the cash necessary to buy a laptop. It seemed like a luxury (and not cheap, especially since I'm an all-things-Apple junkie), but has proved a boon. I type up class notes as they happen, something I never manage to do afterwards on days when I haven't taken my laptop in.

Travelling back and forth on the bus to college, I soon discovered I could neither read nor watch DVDs while sat on a bus. Both activities are fine on planes and trains, but buses and car throw me about too much and the contents of my stomach fight for a quick exit. So I started taking a CD player on bus trips, but it's clunky and heavy and changing CDs is a pfaff.

So, no prizes for guessing what my adorable spouse got me for Christmas. That's right, kids, it's a shiny new black iPod - al singing, all dancing, with video-playing facility and Grud know what else. Can't wait to play with it. Ahh, Christmas - when credit cards come home to roost.

Actually, no, that's January, when the bill arrives...

Half a million words later

Decided to do a countback, see how productive 2005 has been for me. Here's a list of all the paying work I've done as a writer this year, thus far: four novels [two Nikolai Dante, two Fiends of the Eastern Front with a third in progress], five audio dramas [four Sarah Jane Smith and a double-disc Sapphire & Steel] five issues of The Phantom comic for Egmont, three-part interview features with artist Cam Kennedy and writer Robbie Morrison, a seven-part history of the Judge Dredd Megazine, sundry shorter features for the Megazine, and the first two scripts for a Fiends of the Eastern Front serial for the Meg.

My grand total for all of this? A shade under half a million words during 2005. Since I aim to work five days a week, that's about 250 writing days a year, so I'm averaging 2000 words a day. Not too shabby and certainly productive.

Of course, that excludes all the plotlines, synopsis and pitches I had to write to get that work, the research required for many of those projects and the creative thinking time needed to come up with them in the first place. If a project is well researched, well thought and well plotted, the writing is the easiest part. That probably explains why it's been taking me forever to get Fiends 3 rolling - the opening chapters were woefully under-plotted and researched. Shit like that leads to writer's block, but you simply have to keep going and hope you'll emerge from the other side. Happily, I seem to be crawling from the wreckage now and, hopefully, the road ahead will get easier. We'll see.

Looking at my list of paid work, the genres tackled have been science fiction, horror, war, contemporary thriller, contemporary fantasy, historical adventure and action-adventure - plus a lot of non-fiction too. Not too bad a mix, though I'd like to spread my net wider in 2006.

What work have I got lined up for the New Year? Fiends 3 is now due January 16. Egmont wants more scripts for The Phantom from me, with perhaps three of them based on supplied plotlines. There's my exciting new project about which I'm not talkign till I've signed the contracts. Got to finish off the Fiends comic strip. Been asked to pitch something new for Big Finish, so that needs thinking about. Need to find time to pull together my proposal for a Warhammer novel. There's talk of a non-fiction project for Black Flame. Got to revise and update my Morse reference tome for Reynolds & Hearn.

Plus, of course, I'm studying for an MA in Screenwriting during my copious spare time.

Methinks 2006 is filling up fast already. Better hurry up and finish 2005...

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year, Everybody!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, but it looks like it'll rain instead.

Ho, ho, ho-hum.

Unexpected but good

Yesterday was one of those happy days when you get a pleasant surprise. I was grappling with Fiends 3, trying to resolve problems with the second chapter, when the gas man called. He wanted access to the local Corn Exchange building to read the meter and, as a board member of the Biggar Theatre Workshop which uses the building as its theatre, I was listed as his contact number. So I schlepped down, opened up and he read the meter. And that was the morning shot to shit, with nothing productive to show for my efforts. So far, so vexing.

But I got him to a phone message from a prospective employer, someone who could open up a whole new medium for me. Could I call him back? But of course. Was I busy? Well, yes, there's the Fiends novel and revising my Morse book, but if he had something exciting to offer me, I'd stop sleeping for a few weeks to make it happen. He sent me the relevant details, I had a think about it for twenty minutes, went downstairs to the dining room table and scribbled some notes into a yellow legal pad, then came back up to the computer and knocked together a two-page synopsis. Emailed it off, called him to say it was lurking in his inbox, then waited. Forty-five minutes later he called back to discuss a few points, but essentially it was a big, fat yes. It looks like I've got my foot in the door of something new, exciting and potentially career-changing.

All in the space of 173 minutes.

By now you'll have noticed I'm being delightfully vague about the details. Well, I've been disappointed before with things that almost happened but never quite did, like the media tie-in book for which I almost got commissioned that would have put my name on the bestseller lists. Alas, that wasn't to be, so seeing my name on a bestseller list in The Bookseller remains an ambition as yet unfulfilled. Give me time, I'll get there. So, until the contracts are signed and I know this particular project is set in stone, I'll say no more about it. But I had to share the anecdote.

A lot of this business is about who you know as well as what you know. But sometimes, it's also about dumb luck - being the right place at the right time and saying 'I can find time' when someone offers you an opportunity. You've got to grab the chances life offers you with both hands, otherwise you'll only have regrets to look forward to, and they aren't much comfort.

Three days to Christmas and back to Fiends for me...

Amazon rankings

Like most people working in a creative industry (hell, like most people), I crave validation. A nice review on Amazon can bring a smile to your face, a song to your heart and a cliche to your fingertips. Conversely, a one-star, 'this book blows chunks' review on Amazon can be terribly debilitating. A sage acquaintance of mine suggests avoiding all reviews, as each one merely represent the opinion of a single person and thus has no greater validity than your own opinion. Fair enough, and I wish I had the strength of character to follow that advice. Sadly, I am a shallow being and crave validation wherever I can get it.

A kind word from an editor, a nice mention in some publication or on some website, it all helps.

However, trying to discern anything from the rankings listed on various Amazon websites is like trying to form a cogent philosophy of life from studying the movement on clouds on Thursday afternoons. For example, my most recently published tome is - as of this moment - apparently ranked 6,712 amongst all book sales at Amazon.co.uk. What does that mean? Probably that somebody ordered a single copy of the book in the last 24 hours. God forbid ten people rush out and order a copy in the next 24 hours, I'd probably have what momentarily qualifies as a bestseller on my hands. [Feel free to do so, if you wish, but it'll make no ftangible inancial difference to me - Black Flame pays no royalties on its books, so I don't stand to gain anything directly from Fiends of the Eastern Front: Operation Vampyr selling five copies or 55,000 copies this month.]

To put the Amazon rankings in perspective, The Complete Inspector Morse [see previous blog posting] has been out of print for two years. Prices on second hand copies range from £31.08 up to £146.94 on Amazon. Yet, despite the fact Amazon has not been able to sell a new copy of the book since 2003, it is ranked at 68,775 - supposedly outselling most of my other books.

Amazon rankings - about as meaningful as clouds.

Morse decoded in hardback

I'm beaming with pride because London publisher Reynolds & Hearn is issuing a revised and expanded edition of my book The Complete Inspector Morse next spring - in hardback. The first edition was a paperback that came out in 2002 and sold out within a few months. I subsequently discovered no shortage of minor errors and glitches that I wanted to correct, along with plenty of new material I wished I could add to the book. But the the television series at an end and Colin Dexter writing no more Morse novels, the publisher was reluctant to issue a new edition. TCIM went out of print and by this year near mint copies of the book were commanding prices in excess of £100 on second hand websites.

But hopes of a new edition were revived last year when ITV announced it was commissioning a one-off drama about Morse's long-suffering sergeant, Lewis, with the approval of Colin Dexter and the participation of actor Kevin Whately. Filming on the story begin this past summer and the two-hour drama is scheduled for broadcast next month, in January. I decided to give R&H another nudge to see if they were interested in a fresh edition of TCIM, including a new chapter on the Lewis special.

Last month publisher Richard Reynolds confirmed the new edition was go, with 48 extra pages, more colour and more illustrtions and in hardback. My first hardback! Having a hardback published with my name on the cover has been a long held ambition of mine, but I must admit my hopes were fading it would happen before my 40th birthday next September. Now, it looks like that another ambition I'm going to fulfil - and on schedule.

Before news came through about the revised tome, I had worried working on the first edition had left me Morse-d out. But ITV has been repeating a run of Morses on Saturday afternoons. When I chanced upon one recently, it took me nearly two minutes to identify which of the 33 televised tales it came from. Now I'm re-watching all the Morses as I go through the manuscript, correcting factual errors that crept into the first edition. I'm happy to report I'm enjoying Morse as much as ever, particular the quality of the acting [the late, great John Thaw is much missed on TV these days] and the writing.

Thinking about all this, it reminds me the Morse tome was originally offered to Virgin Books but they turned it down. the TV show was dead so there was no market for a Morse programme guide. Thank god they spurned the book, as Marcus Hearn encouraged me to write a better book than Virgin would have published. Even so, I was never quite satisfied by my first crack at TCIM, especially after I worked on my book about the films of Michael Caine. I did much more research for that and produced a far more comprehensive volume as a result.

Since then I've been collecting material for TCIM, in the vague hope of a new edition. Now's my chance!

Once more, with feeling

So, last week proved to be something of a washout on the writing front. Three days of feeling like death warmed up, unable to concentrate for more than five minutes at a time, interspersed with dizzy spells and doziness. By Thursday I was sufficiently on the mend to drag my sorry arse into college for the last teaching day of 20005 for part-timers on the MA Screenwriting course. On Friday my kindly editor at Black Flame, Christian Dunn, agreed to give me an extra week to deliver Fiends 3, taking the pressure off. I'm now back on a four-week clock, but feel like things are under my control again.

Went surfing on the internet and discovered Amazon.co.uk has already posted the cover for Fiends 3, Twilight of the Dead. Hey, I haven't written the book yet! Hell, I haven't finished the first chapter yet! Sheesh, give a scribe a chance, will you?

Saddened to read about the death of actor John Spencer, best known for playing Leo in The West Wing. He was a stunning character actor, able to invest his roles with a reality above and beyond the quality of the writing. While most people are praising his keynote roles, I love his smaller cameo appearances in things like Sea of Love or Hiding Out. No matter how good or bad the script, John Spencer seemed to bring his best to the part. Now that's class. He'll be much missed.

On my radio

Blahhh - still suffering the lurgy that will not sod off. Managed to cobble together 2000 words on Fiends 3 today, in between dizzy spells and my nostrils pretending to be taps for snot. It's off to college tomorrow, which means by 9am on Friday I'll have written a grand total of less than 3000 words for my novel. That leaves me three weeks to write the other 67,000 words, a three week period that includes Christmas and New Year. Ho-ho-bloody-ho.

To relieve the frustration, I've just written three one-paragraph pitches for possible radio plays and emailed them off to David Ian Neville, a radio drama development producer at BBC Scotland. I've met him several times over the past couple of years and he's been gently encouraging me to pitch stuff for radio. Earlier this year I got myself on to a radio drama mini-lab in Dundee run by David and Dundee Rep, two days of working with other wannabes to find out if we've got what it takes to write for radio.

Since then I've been invited to pitch for two gateway slots designed to bring on new talent - and struck out both times. That's part of the reason why I'm doing the MA in Screenwriting, to improve my craft. I believe I've got enough good ideas for stories, but convincing others to pay for me for privilege of doing this in film, TV or radio is the problem.

Anyway, three radio ideas from me are now clogging up an inbox at the BBC. I won't spill the beans on the plots, but the working titles are Prejudice and Pride, Shooting the Dead, and Forgive Us Our Trespasses. It should be interesting to see which (if any!) of this arouse some interest...

Post-panto bleuuggghhhhh

Feel like crap. Some bastard has installed a tap inside both my nostrils, so a thin stream of mucus will drip down my face without warning. Constant use of tissues to stem the flow has turned my nose into a red, angry, sore thing. Drugs are having little or no effect on this lurgy that's nothing major, merely debilitating and demotivating.

I guess illness was inevitable. I'd been keeping it at bay for weeks while the Biggar Theatre Workshop rehearsed its Christmas pantomime. This year we presented The Scarlet Pumpernickel, a jaunty joke-fest set during the French Revolution. I directed and stage managed. Due to scheduling clashes, the show effectively had five weeks to get pulled together, a ridiculously short amount of time. Somehow we managed it, but now half the cast and I are paying the price. Colds, flu, sore throats - all were held in abeyance while we got through our five sold out performances. But now? Not so much.

To make matters worse, I was planning to start writing my thrid FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT novel yesterday. Instead I was struggling to stay conscious on the sofa, feeling like death warmed up. Must knuckle down and make a start. Happily, I printed out the plot synopsis and discovered there was no shortage of incident to write about. But establishing a house style is proving less simple.

The first FIENDS novel [Operation Vampyr, on sale now, kids!] was written in third person and proved a tough assignment. For the second FIENDS novel [The Blood Red Army], I switched to first person and found it much easier. IIRC, it was thrashed out in three weeks and was all the better for it - down and dirty, fast and furious, etc and etc.

So now I have to make a decision about how to write FIENDS 3. And quickly. The book is due in 27 days and I haven't written a word of it yet. That's why I'm posting to my blog instead.

Writers - we never claimed to be sensible.

FIENDS 3, REST OF THE WORLD ?

So I'm girding my loins to plunge into writing my next novel, FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT: Twilight of the Dead. It's the final book in a trilogy about vampires in World War II for Games Workshop's Black Flame imprint, based on a strip from 2000 AD created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra. If memory serves, the original title for this volume was Twilight of the Undead, but the letters U and N seem to have fallen off somewhere along the way.

The first book in the trilogy, Operation Vampyr, is already on sale. That deals with three German brothers discovering that a cadre of Transylvanian warriors fighting alongside them against the Russians are - you guessed it - bloodusckers. The second volume, The Blood Red Army, takes the Russian point of view and is set during the Siege of Leningrad. That book's safely delivered, copy edited and due for publication in April 2006.

Now I've got to wrap it all up in the third book, featuring both sides of the battle for eastern Europe and the future of mankind. This afternoon I'll re-read my plot synopsis, skim some reference tomes and watch a few DVDs to get a flavour for my setting. It's a curious situation to be writing something so obviously fictional while trying my hardest to be historically accurate. Anyway, I've got a DVD of Downfall awaiting my attention, along with several documentaries about the fall of Berlin.

Monday morning I have to start writing, with four weeks before I'm due to deliver. I've cleared my desk as much as possible, getting rid of all my other ongoing projects. I'm sure a few will intrude, but from now to January 9th my focus has to be getting Fiends 3 done. Everything else comes second.

[In case you're wondering, the wonderful logo shown was developed by artist Chris Weston for use on the novels but was not ultimately used. So I've rather cheekily included it here, for your delectation.]

Let the blood flow free!

The Old Order Changeth

So, Judge Dredd Megazine editor Alan Barnes has left the building. He's off to join the ranks of freelancerdom and 2000 AD editor Matt Smith takes the mighty Meg under his wing. Alan performed miracles with the Meg over the past four years, turning the title round and making it a vital, challenging read for the first time in a long time - he'll be missed. It'll be interesting to see how Matt copes with the added burden of the Meg. I've no idea whether I'll feature in his plans for the title.

My working career seems to have been inextricably linked with the Meg for all of its 15 year history. I joined the comic as assistant editor in July 1990, seven weeks before the first issue went on sale. By the end of 1991 I was editor, having been mentored by Steve MacManus. I departed the comic a week before Christmas 1995 to take over 2000 AD, but six months later I been given the Meg to run in my copious spare time once more. I managed to pass it on to my then-assistant Andy Diggle in 1998, but kept a paternal eye on the comic's progress. When I quit to go freelance in the Summer of 2000, guess what my first job was? Yep, editing the Meg once more. Fast forward to the end of 2001 and I thought my association with it was finally coming to an end as Alan Barnes took charge. But his first commission was aking me to write what turned into four years of features for the title.

Now Alan is gone and I've just delivered the last feature he commissioned from me. I've been contracted to write a six-part FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT strip for the Meg, with Colin MacNeil attached as artist. I handed in the first two scripts this week. Maybe my association with the Meg is finally coming to an end, but I've thought that before. Me and Megazine is like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III: 'Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in."

If this is the end, it's been quite a ride. Some torments, many delights and I've gotten to work with a lot of talented, stunningly creative people. What more can you ask for?

Distinction, Rejection, Distinction

The last week's been something of a mixed bag. Two Thursdays ago we got our first piece of assessed course work back for the writing module of my MA in Screenwriting. We were asked to submit a story report, analysing a story of our own choosing and determining its suitability for adaptation as a screenwork. I picked the graphic novel Button Man: The Killing Game by John Wagner and Arthur Ranson, which was optioned in May 2005 (not the first time) as a film project. BM:TKG is a clever piece of writing with some stunningly cinematic art. I thought I did okay on my story report, but wasn't sure.

So, anyway, each student was handed a piece of paper with some tick boxes, a few comments on what we did well and a grade. In my case it was D3. D doesn't sound that promising, until I remembered reading about the scoring system in the MA course handbook. Napier divides marking into three main categories: F for fail, P for pass and D for - you guessed it - distinction. Within each category is five numbered sub-categories: 1 for least, 5 for best. Suddenly my D3 was sounding a bit sexier as a result. Guess I did okay, especially as several other people on the course asked to read my story report to see what I'd done to get such a grade.

In all honesty, it's the sort of thing I ought to do well. While editing the Megazine and 2000 AD, I must have analysed hundreds of unsolicited submissions, so that kind of critical anlysis comes fairly easily to me (though I'm a bit out of practise after five years as a freelancer). Plus my journalism background means I find non-fiction writing relatively painless. So, all in all, my D3 was a good result. The tick boxes all came back as excellent, too.

This Thursday I heard back about 'Idle Hands', the 15-minute radio idea I was invited to pitch for BBC7's The Seventh Dimension slot. I thought it was an intriguing idea, with a couple of good twists in the tale and a spicing of black humour. 50 wannabe radio writers were invited to pitch for 10 slots, so I had a one in five chance of getting selected. I didn't get the submission guidelines until a week before the deadline, but that's neither here nor there.

Alas, the reply was a rejection. Apparently I easily made the shortlist but due to the high standard of entries - blah, blah, blah. Frankly, your eyes glaze over once you get past the bit that says 'Welcome to Rejection City, Population: You'. Somebody at BBC7 will contact me with feedback, which will be useful but doesn't change the fact I've failed to make the final cut. Rejection sucks, no matter how you dress it up. I know I shouldn't take it personally. I should tell myself those who did get picked were obviously just that bit better than my idea. But all the platitudes and cliches in the world don't stop me wanting to kick the cat. We don't have a cat, so I'll try venting here on my blog and see if that makes any difference.

Nope, it's not working yet.

I found out about the BBC7 rejection during lunchtime at college, then had to go back into class for the afternoon session about Development Financing and Loans. Hip, hip, hooray. After 100 minutes of trying not to stew in my own joices, we got dismissed early so the full-time production students could practise pitching for a session on Friday. Just what I needed, an extra hour to brood. I am enjoying the course for the most part, but I do feel the part-timers sometimes get treated as after-thoughts. Oh, the joys of being in the minority.



At the end of Thursday we got back our second piece of assessed course work, this time from the Business of Screen Production Development module. That was a Case Study into the development of a project of our choosing. I selected the little-senn Michael Caine film Quicksand, having previously interviewed director John (The Long Good Friday) Mackenzie for my book Starring Michael Caine. With a bit of digging around I managed to contact the screenwriter, Timothy Prager, and he agreed to be interviewed off the record. Lots of web-based research turned up some useful information, but I never did track down the producer, Jim Reeve, or his company Visionview Ltd.

My mark for the Case Study was D1, with all my tickes in the Very Good section rather than Excellent. That was somewhat dispiriting, especially after one kick in the teeth a few hours earlier. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, several other students got marks in the low range of P so D1 is probably quite good. But it wasn't the best way to finish the day.

So, the week broke down into Distinction, Rejection, Distinction. My MA is toddling along nicely, but career-wise I'm still fouling out. Even a single or a bunt would be gratifying at this point...

Why cracking comics isn't easy - at all

A friend of a friend sent me an email, asking how to break into comics. Here's what I said..

Cracking writing for comics - that's a tough one. Let's talk about market realities first. In Britain, there's very little work going. Perhaps five writers make a living solely from scripting for British comics. The main publishers are DC Thompson (terrible pay - I've no contacts there, so can't really help you), Redan (not gret pay, only nursery titles so not even really comics - again, I've never worked for them), Panini (very little work going but apparently there is some - I honestly don't know who should you target there) and the 2000 AD titles.

Since 2000 AD's my field of expertise (or, at least, experience), I'll talk about that. Matt Smith is the weekly's editor and your first port of call. He's a relatively shy, introverted type of guy, so don't bother cold-calling him. You're better off sending an email to matt.smith@rebellion.co,uk asking if he's looking for anything at the moment. Indicate you're williing to have a crack at Future Shocks or other one-offs (Terror Tales, or 2000 AD's alternate history tales).

Don't bother sending him your idea for a great 12-part series. Even if Matt is looking for new blood, you'll need to prove you can come up with great five-page stories with a beginning, middle and end, compelling characters, fresh ideas and a dazzlingly new approach. Every week. Week in, week out.

And you'll need to be patient. 2000 AD's pretty much a one-man-band, Matt's a busy bloke and he hasn't got time to tutor wannabe scribes. Tough love, but it's the truth. He's got more than a dozen experienced scribes on tap, all fighting for five slots a week. You're up against award-winning, major talents like Wagner, Grant, Mills, Rennie, Morrison, etc. You've got to be good enough to displace them from the comic.

Even if you do, the money's not great. Newcomers are lucky to get 50 quid a page. Say you write a five-page strip, that's 250 quid. Say you write that strip and it's in every issue, every week, you're still only grossing 13 grand a year. Trust me, nobody got rich writing for 2000 AD alone.

But it's a good portfolio for trying to crack other markets (e.g. the US). Get a couple of series published in 2000 AD (ideally with a great artist attached) and DC might be willing to acknowledge you exist. Of course, it takes years of knocking on doors to crack the US market. You need to hustle, hustle, hustle. You need to network, go to the cons, the pub gatherings in London. You'll need your own website and blog. You'll need to hang in there, get past all the rejections, keep going when you haven't had any money for weeks or even months.

And you'll need talent, great gobs of it.

Sadly, there is no magic key, no special door that leads to your own Vertigo series, a cult of personality, graphic novels with your name on the spine and all that stuff. If you thought cracking screenwriting was tricky, comics is much worse - simply because there's so little work going at any given moment.

As an example, look at 2000 AD scribe Si Spurrier. he started off when he was 15, sending in two or three Future Shock ideas a week. For three years. Constantly rejected, constantly kicked in the teeth. He stuck in there and now is one of the comic's rising stars - nearly ten years later.

Don't believe you can crack comics quickly or make any money out of it. The work is poorly paid, irregular and in no way glamorous. That's why I also write novels, audio dramas, non-fcition books and articles, and anything else I can get my grubby little mits on. That's why I'm doing an MA in Screenwriting, to push myself to be a better writer.

Most of my comics work? It's for Fantomen, a Scandinavia comic featuring costumed hero The Phantom. I write 5-6 issues a year for that and it's a nice little earner. But I doubt I'll ever make my living principally from comics, simply because I'm not willing to do the spadework required to make that my career. I'd rather write novels and TV and films and radio drama and anything else that takes my fancy. I love comics, but not to the exclusion of all else. You want to crack comics, you have to love it to the exclusion of all else. Once you've cracked it and become the next Grant Morrison or Garth Ennis or Mark Millar or Andy Diggle, then you can flirt with other media.

Hope that's of some help - good luck!