Bendis Comic Advice For Writers

brianmichaelbendis:

Empathy.

 you need to have empathy or sympathy for every character you are writing about. and it’s not what they’re saying, because even good people say bad things, you have to focus on what they are doing. what choices they are making.

 and then, to really get into it, to really understand what you are writing about, you have to ask yourself… why?

 why are they doing this and why are they like this.

 that doesn’t mean you forgive them. it just means that you understand them.

brianmichaelbendis:

 roll with it! roll with it until your fingers hurt from typing.

 this is the good stuff.

 it has been my experience that when things like this happen is because you have done all the work and preparation. your brain is now ready to let the characters do what they need to do. let your subconscious transcribe all the things the voices in your head are doing and saying.

 then, later, go back in and read it and see if any of it is any good. but it is happening to not stop it.

brianmichaelbendis:

I come from crime fiction and one of the unbreakable rules of crime fiction is that the city is a lead character in the story. 

not a supporting character, not a backdrop, a lead character.

 so you have to give as much thought to that character as you do any other. even more so when it is a fictional city. I’m talking about things that you may never actually get to in the writing or that would be obvious to a casual reader. but these are important things that you know

 for example, I know every square foot of Tony Stark’s laboratory. I never write about it in detail. but I know everything that’s in there.

brianmichaelbendis:

it will be rubbish.  so free yourself of that fear. 

everyone makes rubbish. gaiman, sorkin, shakespeare. they sit down and write and its crap.  they just don’t show you that part. 

so sit down and write.  it’ll be crap and then you’ll try it again and again and revise and polish and think it over and teach yourself and train yourself and you’ll figure out another angle and rinse and repeat and before you know it you’ll be a writer. 

that feeling will never go away but you’ll be living your dream and i can tell you first hand its worth it. 

here’s one of my inspirations for just getting to work.  read this amazing transcript of the raiders of the lost arc story conference. they had good ideas and shit ideas and they sat down and worked it out. 

http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconference1978.pdf

brianmichaelbendis:

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

Comics & Sequential Art by Will Eisner

On Writing by Stephen King

Words for Pictures by Brian Michael Bendis (yeah, i know)

Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

brianmichaelbendis:

the formatting falls apart on tumblr but here is the script…

Page 16- 17 

Double page spread 

1- Ext. Asgard

High looking down on Iron Patriot. He is flying up to the battle. Moonstone/ Ms. Marvel at his side. She is as shocked to be looking up to see the horror that is about to happen.

MOONSTONE @#$%, is he going to-?

2- Ext. Sky

Ares is struggling. Fighting with his last breath. The Sentry has him in a death grip.

ARES Ggkk!!

3- Big panel. Across both pages.

The Sentry pulls Ares apart. Just Like he pulled Carnage apart in the first New Avengers arc. A bloody, horrible explosion. The Sentry’s face a blank emotionless void.

Ares is dead.

Olivier- the rest on this spread looks like a crossword puzzle of little square reaction shots of all the players. With a smattering of the squares blacked out completely. Representing the void.

If you want to bleed this motif under the larger panels. Go right ahead.

The pieces of the reaction montage include:

17.

4- Hawkeye/ Bullseye has his arrow up, but he saw it. Ares is dead. Even the psycho Hawkeye takes pause at the shocking sight.

5- Maria hill at the window of a hotel with high powered binoculars. Mouth open.

6- High looking down at the stunned gathered townspeople.

7- The press on the ground. Their mouths wide open.

8- Venom is eating a horse but pauses to see the insanity.

9- The reporters on the roof. Not sure what they have seen.

10- The Ufoes. Look at each other. Is this where they want to be?

11- Balder, his sword covered in blood, is horrified.

12- Sif is getting her second wind but stops to see…

13- The Taskmaster is looking for his next fight. Panicked

14- Iron Patriot is stoic. Emboldened.

15- Heimdell is feeling every second of the mental and physical pain. He cries out in anguish.

16- Tight on the Sentry. Who is now almost completely the void. He turns and looks down. Right for us. Like the reader may be next.

brianmichaelbendis:

too late? You’re about to throw in the towel at 22?

 stop it!!

 what you should be doing is drawing every day, working on your craft every day, trying to figure out who you are as a person and as an artist, you should choose your goal and focus on it like a laser. Learn from your mistakes and be thrilled you got them out of your system while you were still relatively young.

 there is no age limit on any of this stuff

 ultimate spider-man number one came out when I was almost 30 and I had already made 10 years of crime graphic novels and thousands of illustrations before that that no one will ever see. I had dozens of false career starts in between.

 it takes years of practice, years of rejection, years of false starts that end up teaching you who you are.  this goes for everyone.

 the only thing you do by giving up at 22 is making it that much easier for the person next to you to live your dream.

 at 22 I was working on a graphic novel called fire. I figured out a lot of stuff putting those pages together. nobody bought it initially but in the process of making it I met everyone who became my best friends today,  I met 19-year-old David Mack at a convention and he took my pen away while I was drawing and drew a line on my pencils that showed me a better line for my style. it changed my life.

 twenty something years later, universal recently optioned fire to make a movie out of it for Zach Efron and the screenplay is being worked on right now.  marvel just released a hardcover of it

brianmichaelbendis:

Forget your plot for a while and just do writing about your characters.   

 what I like to do is put the characters in a room with each other with no agenda, with no preconceived plot, and just have them start talking to each other.  I discovered that eventually one of them will say something to annoy the other one or make the other one uncomfortable and before you know it you have something along the lines of a one-act play. you also have something along the lines of a story maybe better than the one you are planning on

 I’m starting a new book for Marvel very soon and I just did this with a established character and a brand-new character. just for me. just to get to know them and just for them to get to know each other. it felt very good.  I handed it around just to show some of my collaborators what I’m thinking about and the whole creative conversation elevated.

 character is so important.  focus on this. focus on their voice but also focus on the choices they make. what a character is is a series of choices. not what they’re wearing.

 if you’re still stuck try basing the characters on people you know very well.  or at least your version of them. no one will know and you’ll be writing something you know.

 ultimate aunt may is a dead on impersonation of my mother