The Greatest Story Ever.

It's really easy to read a book or a comic or watch a movie and never think about everything that went into the creation of even the simplest of stories. There are plenty of stories that I've read that I have thought were, shall we say, less than stellar. And when you take in one of these stories you think, "Man that was terrible. I could totally tell a better story." And you might be right. But what you don't realize is that it is going to take a lot of work for you to prove it. Let me add some context to my rambling.

I am currently working on telling that totally better story. In fact I am currently on page sixteen of the first issue of a comic about Space Marines. Space Marines are awesome. And the conclusion I reached (somewhere around page seven) is that knowing you can tell a better story and actually doing it are two very different things. I think that, at some point, most of us who identify ourselves as human beings have had an idea for a story. It usually gets as far as having the beginnings of a shell of a plot before we become convinced that this is, in fact, the greatest story ever.

Maybe if you're industrious you scribble out some notes about this incredible plot, or you start making some character profiles or sketches. At this point you believe you have accomplished the really hard part. You have an idea. Other people don't have ideas. Certainly not ones as great as yours. Maybe you believe that all that's left is to flesh out the details and you'll have it. Your mind races around gathering up bits and pieces, "specifics" that you think are really important to making your world a believable one. You might even spend a long time compiling lots of these "specifics" which you collect in a notebook, or three-ring-binder. Now all you have to do is sit down and hammer it out. If you have ever done any of the things I have just described above, if you are that type of person, let me enlighten you.

You are not within a hundred miles of a great story.

I have been that person before. I may very well still be that person now. That is why I am writing this. I seek to chronicle the creative process behind the story which will eventually give itself birth from the loins of my mind. That is what this blog is going to be. At all of page sixteen I am hardly a hardened professional imparting trade secrets to the "green horns" who look up to me expectantly, waiting for tidbits of hard won knowledge to fall from mouth, like so many small flightless birds in a twiggy nest. I am, however, one step beyond that wide eyed phase of "specifics" scribbled in notebooks, or three-ring-binders. So that is where this journal begins. If lengthy analysis of the creative process of making comics does not sound like something you will be interested in, I recommend that you get off at the next station.

The ride will likely only become more turbulent from here.

Forthcoming will be my thoughts on the writing process for those first pages and the difficulties that comics present to writing a story "as you go." But for today, I will stop here.