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Making Comics
Oct. 23rd, 2022 04:23 pmMaking Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud
This book is aimed at the aspiring comic-book writer. I read it as a comic-book reader and a prose writer. So a bit of an interesting review. . . .
Discusses all sorts of elements. Angles, characterization, details, choice of focus, story time. Tools for hand and computer. Collaboration. (Actually that one struck me as short, given its frequency. Writerly proverb: In any collaboration, you have to do 90% of the work. The other collaborator does the other 90%.) Expressions and body language. and more.
This book is aimed at the aspiring comic-book writer. I read it as a comic-book reader and a prose writer. So a bit of an interesting review. . . .
Discusses all sorts of elements. Angles, characterization, details, choice of focus, story time. Tools for hand and computer. Collaboration. (Actually that one struck me as short, given its frequency. Writerly proverb: In any collaboration, you have to do 90% of the work. The other collaborator does the other 90%.) Expressions and body language. and more.
Understanding Comics
Oct. 13th, 2022 11:15 pmUnderstanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
The classic analysis of the medium.
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The classic analysis of the medium.
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the series as a work of art
May. 3rd, 2016 07:27 pmA series can be viewed as a unified work of art. Something that hangs together.
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fairy tales in pictures
Jun. 8th, 2014 12:56 pmBeing reading a number of fairy tales in picture book form. Enough to get philosophical about the medium.
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chesterton on "chocolate-box art"
Feb. 23rd, 2013 03:29 pmMany moderns will be heard scoffing at what they would call "chocolate-box art"; meaning an insipid and sickly art. And it is easy to call up the sort of picture that might well make anybody ill.( Read more... )
A Preface to Paradise Lost
Jan. 3rd, 2013 07:41 pmA Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis
A book rather like his Discarded Image in many significant respects. Fro one thing, it opens up with discussing what an epic is, on the logical grounds that's the only sane way to evaluate it.
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A book rather like his Discarded Image in many significant respects. Fro one thing, it opens up with discussing what an epic is, on the logical grounds that's the only sane way to evaluate it.
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on bleeding into the inkwells (again)
Nov. 12th, 2012 10:06 pmWas pondering again a question on writing on what you feel passionately about -- and remembering that I had written on it before.
So I dug it up here and realized I was thinking of stuff I had not mentioned before about the dangers of sitting down at the typewriter and opening a vein.
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So I dug it up here and realized I was thinking of stuff I had not mentioned before about the dangers of sitting down at the typewriter and opening a vein.
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As some of you might conceivably have deduced, I liked Tangled. I still flinched on the scenes about Rapunzel's birth -- ouch, ouch, ouch, this isn't Rapunzel!
Which inspires speculation about what it takes to retell a story and if there are any real rules besides the obvious and unhelpful one of if you do it badly, it will turn out bad.
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Which inspires speculation about what it takes to retell a story and if there are any real rules besides the obvious and unhelpful one of if you do it badly, it will turn out bad.
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rebellion and reflections
Aug. 18th, 2012 10:55 pmWas pondering a post I read for a long time. . . about contempt for not being a good girl and questioning all the authorities you were told to question, and how you have to be transgressive to be cool, man, and the conformist rebellion. . . how you really should rebel for real against all these mindless pushing of rebellion.
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Some of the hardest things to convey to a reader is a mindset different from his in a way where he never thought they might. Like, say, aesthetic theory.
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The mood of a piece can be the hardest thing to define and still change the work entirely.
When the movie Abyss came out, some people told me that it would be just the same if they had put a Russian submarine in the abyss rather than the aliens they did. I could quibble about plot details, but fundamentally the whole thing would have been changed had it been other humans and not aliens. Not only the mood but the theme.
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When the movie Abyss came out, some people told me that it would be just the same if they had put a Russian submarine in the abyss rather than the aliens they did. I could quibble about plot details, but fundamentally the whole thing would have been changed had it been other humans and not aliens. Not only the mood but the theme.
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revising on the edge of the void
Dec. 4th, 2011 01:56 pmA story needs to be the length it needs to be. A great aesthetic principle.
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too many rabbits
Nov. 10th, 2011 12:40 amOpening a novel with shifts between wide-separated, aparrently unconnected characters has its virtues.
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ordering the world
Oct. 29th, 2011 08:58 pmThere's a limit to how you can arrange the sequence of events that confronts your character. Even if you send him on a road that runs according to its own internal magics and can do the loop-de-loop if so inclined. Even if you confine him to a city where he can run around and around in circles.
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continuing characterization
Aug. 26th, 2011 08:32 pmAh, the delight of a series. It's not even the major characters. My muse is firmly convinced that when a character's story is done, it's done.
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aesthetics and axes
May. 25th, 2011 10:20 pmSome literary critics analyze works thematically. Can be interesting stuff, especially if they are forthright about what they are doing. When they are not. . . .
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