Words for Pictures - Brian Michael Bendis

A gift from Alex. The book is mostly about trying to write for comic books. Not just how to write a script, or things to keep in mind about the nature of collaboration with an artist. But also how to write a pitch, interviews with editors about the best ways to get your material in front of them and the things you can do to help or hurt yourself once you get a chance (if you get a chance). A big one in the "hurt" department is missing deadlines, allegedly. I think we can all think of writers and artists that doesn't seem to apply to.

There's a whole chapter about the business side of it, the things you need to make sure you get hammered out in contracts, the value of lawyers for things like that, and so on. That chapter is presented as an interview between Brian Bendis and Alisa Bendis, who runs Brian's Jinxworld company because he is apparently terrible at that stuff (as are a lot of comic professionals, apparently).

As I'm not pursuing a career in the comics field, the book isn't of much utility to me in that function. And if I did try my hand at comics, it would be adapting the stories I've written, and I'd draw those myself. Which will never happen, since it would take me 1,000 years to finish even one of those stories. Plus, I'm kind of a dunce about a lot of this stuff. Bendis describes approaching Walt Simonson at a convention as a lad and asking whether he should focus on perspective first, or anatomy. He then describes that as dumb question. I suspect the answer is "perspective", but I don't know. I just try to get a general idea of what I'm doing in my head and then I start doing it. Hopefully figure shit out as I go along. That's my writing style most of the time too. But I'm not doing this for a living, so I can be as haphazard as I wanna be.

But it's still interesting, especially with the interview sections. There's a chapter where he asks over a dozen artists a series of questions and you get to see the range of approaches and preferences. Some of them like the Marvel Style of scripting, some dread it, some have never encountered it. One thing most of them agree on is that they hate it when writers don't think about how much they're asking to have put into one panel. Not in terms of detail, but in terms of too many beats. Character walks down street, character avoids dog peeing on hydrant, character opens door to meat market, character says hello to butcher, all in one panel. Or they want you to do a wide-angle shot establishing scene, but also zoom in on a particular pair of people, again in one panel.

Bendis is open about the odds against having a successful career - in the sense of making big bucks - and the need to keep working, keep learning all the time. I don't know if I believe he's taken every project on because it was something he really wanted to do, but I appreciate that he says that's something he tries to always do, not simply take a project for the paycheck.

'I wasn't doing it to be mean, and I wasn't doing it because I'm a megalomaniac (sort of). The truth is, as a writer/artist, I didn't know where the writing actually ended. It was all storytelling. The writing, the layouts, the finished art, the lettering - each was a piece of the story. So giving up some of that responsibility was difficult.'