Jon and I signed up for a writing workshop held by Serena Valentino (GloomCookie, Nightmares and Fairy Tales) at Slave Labor Graphics HQ in San Jose, CA. We live all the way up in Olympia, WA, but we both decided to go for it since we’re a) huge fans of SLG and b) more than a little insane. There was no way on this green earth that we could drive 13 hours to get to San Jose and retain a single word Serena would say on Saturday, but thankfully we were able to break the trip up into 10 hours on Friday and 3 hours on Saturday morning by spending Friday night at Leigh Dragoon‘s house.
Saturday, April 11th, was the first in a series of 4 workshops taking place over subsequent Saturdays (skipping over May 2nd, which is Free Comic Book Day). During the workshops, Serena is going to guide is step-by-step as we write the scripts for the first issues of our comics (mine is actually going to be structured as a one-shot, but we’ll see what happens).
For workshop 1, she had us each tell her how far we were in the creation process. Several people already had ideas in mind for which they needed to flesh out character descriptions and series summaries. Others had way too many ideas to pick one; her advice to them was to choose the one they genuinely felt was their favorite or the best developed – no use in working on something you don’t have faith in! There were also people like me who had only the vaguest of themes in our minds. I told Serena the process I had gone through to take my idea from something daunting and aloof to a more personally-driven narrative with a single main character, and she said I was off to a good start. Next week she wants to see a at least a plot summary (plus a condensed version) from everyone. Her main suggestion to us all was to think in terms of 6 issues because it was highly unlikely that any publishers would be willing to commit to anything longer given the current state of the economy (works for me). The woman was just overflowing with valuable advice that’s easy to forget/not think about, plus she is incredibly down-to-earth and friendly.
We watched a silent film called Sunrise directed by F.W. Murnau (of Nosferatu fame) as an example of visual narrative techniques. The film was very well made, but the dated acting and sexist undertones made for much hilarity. She wants us to practice never saying anything that could just as easily be portrayed through imagery. And at the end, we got homework! YAY!
My homework was to write a 1 to 2-page summary of my plot, write a one paragraph condensed version, and start fleshing out my main characters. On top of that, I have a pile of books on race relations I still have to read for class. Good times ahead!!
We just got back last night from our second craaaaazy trip to San Jose for the writing workshops. We’d all reached the plot synopsis/condensed summary/character bios phase of the operation, so we all got our first critiques from Serena. She says that she really loves my idea and that I’m off to a great start – hurray! Now I’ve just gotta finish all of the character bios and art, plus finish polishing the plot synopsis so I can begin writing the script. :D
-Joamette Gil