Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, HRL, kickstarter

Finding the Time to Write When Life Gets in the Way

Published Sat, 09 Dec 2017 14:30:03 -0600

James Stimpson writes:

As a father of two very young children and working a full-time job as a games designer, I was finding it difficult to find the time to do anything, let alone write a comic book. We all think we've got a great story in us, but actually getting it on paper is one of the toughest things to do. I managed to find enough time to write a comic, find an artist and then set up a Kickstarter to try to fund the first issue!

The first stumbling block to writing anything is inspiration. Unfortunately I can't tell you how to be inspired; it'll just happen. My inspiration came while I was wondering about what less fortunate people do at Christmastime when they don't have any money to spend on Christmas. This led me to think about how horrible Christmas must be for children who are in danger, which led me to my One Line Concept: "What if Santa saved children instead of delivering presents?"

Having a young family, routine is my way of life. I needed to find a way to work writing into my routine and still find time to cook, clean, and everything else that comes with having a family. I managed to find about an hour per night after the kids had gone to bed and before I needed to start winding down. Luckily, my wife was quite understanding and let me off a few chores.

Once you've got an idea, it can be daunting to sit down and work out a storyline and characters. I didn't know how to write a comic at all, so I read some comic book scripts and Alan Moore's How to Write Comics (take it with a pinch of salt, as it was released a long while ago; it was very helpful, though). That's how I initially started using my hour each night.

I then sat down and wrote an outline for my comic. I started with a large overall narrative and then broke it down into individual comics, working out the cliffhanger endings for each. At this point, I was quite happy and ready to begin writing — or so I thought.

When I tried to start writing, I found I had lots of questions about how things worked in this world: How many Santas are there? Are there elves? Is Jesus involved? I wrote down every question I asked myself and created a World Building Document — something I could always refer back to if I couldn't remember a particular detail. I would add to this document as time went on and I came up with new questions. I put this on Google Docs so I could access it wherever I went — something I highly recommend.

I won't bother telling you how to structure things or about character development — there's lots of information out there from people a lot more qualified than me.

It took me a long time to write the comics, and my three-comic mini-series turned into four, the plot changed and characters were added; all for the better, I'd like to think. I tried to write four pages a night. Sometimes I did fewer, but if I had a free evening I made time. It took me about three months from the initial idea to finishing my first draft of 88 pages of comic.

I wrote the first draft by hand, but then I needed to type it up. Again, I wrote it on google documents and used this process as an opportunity to re-write what I'd already done. Instead of doing this at home, I did this at work during my lunch hour because I didn't have the space at home to have an A4 pad of paper near my PC. Now I could access my comic wherever I was and on any kind of device, which made rewriting much easier and faster.

Then I took any opportunity I had to do some rewrites; on the train, sitting in bed, on the toilet — you can do it anywhere now.

If you're interested in what I ended up with, then head over to my Kickstarter and have a look. If you like what you see and want to back it, then you have my sincere gratitude.