Creative thinking for a comic book script, pt.IV
I might have a situation.
Plan was, let’s go slow and have this one planned out right from the start, and turns out I might have gotten carried away and written the first SEVEN pages into the script already.
Creativity both rules and bites at the same time!
The idea for this installment was to plunge headfirst into the plot itself, so let’s do it anyhow:
As discussed previously, Act I has to do with a rather lengthy conversation at a Diner between Path (who’s still an active superheroine) and Peer (who is visiting old friends after being totally absent ever since ’00 or ’01).
Peer, mind you, used to be this superhero called the Centurion ever since he was a small kid, kind of like Captain Marvel. He quit for good by the time he was say, 18 or 19 years old, and now it’s years later, he’s in his late-20s, an adult, with no interest whatsoever in resuming his past life. Still, why is he visiting Path after all this time? –He just won’t say it.
Path herself came late into the game, she’s a little older than Peer, she has been a superheroine for slightly more than six years; she’s also in her late-20s but has stuck around with the life.
Anyway.
They will talk and it’s basically some catching up. We’re not showing the two old friends meeting and hugging, no, the idea is to place the reader straight in the middle of the conversation, we’ll fill in the reader as we go.
Then we’ll split the story twofold:
From one side we got Peer visiting Anton Riley, corporate mogul (previously known as the anti-hero “The Antagonist” but we’re basically ditching most of the characters’ heroic personas for this one). Riley is worried by Peer’s sudden and unexpected return, because he (Riley) is the link between the still-active, “free” superhero community and the United Nations.
The UN’s post-human operatives department is headed by Marcus Pictor (also known as the Praetor, one of the Centurion’s past mentors). Marcus has mostly forfeited his superhero role, choosing to spearhead the metah-human effort towards international politics… so it’s a safe guess to say he’s getting very annoyed once Peer, who was once a loose-cannon, seemingly returns to duty.
Or does he? The plot itself, especially in #1, will dwell around the big question of what Peer’s doing back in town and why.
(We have talked in previous posts about the way Path as a character will act as Virgil to Peer’s Dante, she’s like her spiritual guide in a sense her questioning will lead him to a personal revelation- and those very questions she’ll have to Peer should read like a leitmotif to his own revelation)
So.
On the other side it’s Path and her commitment to an old friend (which is the main plot, and will eventually intertwine with Marcus’).
Elisabeth Foster, who was once a superheroine known as Stardust (and also an old flame of Peer’s), has married into Faerie royalty, see. Yes, as in “land of the fairies and elves and etc”. And she had a son with the elf-prince of that dimension. Yes, that’s it. It’s particularly silly, I know, but we’ll make it work.
So once their baby son gets ill on Earth it’s this HUGE political situation for everybody, for the United Nations and Marcus himself, because the baby cannot be moved to his father’s dimension due to his fragile condition, and he’s gotta be treated on Earth. The baby is ill, and it’s not a curse nor anything, it’s just that he’s ill because he’s a half-breed and so on. It’s important to make that bit very clear because it should automatically imply a lack of opposing force to the protagonists, which is very intentional from our part.
So we got a sick baby on Earth and there’s this only thing that can restore him to health: The Dreamstone, which was like the lynchpin to reality itself and the keystone to the existence of the Universe.
…We are, by the way, relying 100% on past continuity. Or rather, 100% of our characters come from existing (past) stories and past continuity which I created many years ago when I was a kid myself- we’re only giving a completely new spin on them, for a new, different, more adult audience.
…So Path, who’s this huge friend of Betty Foster, is asked to go on a mission into deep space to retrieve the Dreamstone- and nobody is really aware of its exact location- and off she goes, on Marcus’ blessing (and unofficial behalf).
And Peer, who doesn’t have anything better to do, to put it bluntly, and wants to spend some quality-time with Path, tags along for the ride.
…So by the end of #1 we have Path and Peer going to outer space in a quest for this so-called Dreamstone thing, and that’s our plot for the first issue.
…and that, it’s important to point out, happens on a Friday night.
Our whole story’s supposed to happen in say, three or four issues (22 pages/each, a total of there about 70 pages- a gross average), starting with the tail-end of a Friday (#1), and ending on the tail-end of a Sunday (last issue).
Issue #2, and most of #3, will happen in space. The end of #3 and #4- as we wrap up the tale- it’s back on Earth… but THAT’S a subject for future posts.
As a plot-device, though, we’ll not open #1 on said Friday night; page 2 will start at the Diner on a Friday night, the conversation between Path and Peer, but page 1 is two days in the future, on a Sunday morning, to give the reader a peek of what lies ahead.
We’ll open the story, #1 pg 1, somewhere else entirely:
It starts in the Middle-East, in Lebanon’s border with Syria, two days in the future, with Peer in what seems to be his old superhero costume, and he’s just slept with this girl, see…
NEXT: Writing the first issue…
Plan was, let’s go slow and have this one planned out right from the start, and turns out I might have gotten carried away and written the first SEVEN pages into the script already.
Creativity both rules and bites at the same time!
The idea for this installment was to plunge headfirst into the plot itself, so let’s do it anyhow:
As discussed previously, Act I has to do with a rather lengthy conversation at a Diner between Path (who’s still an active superheroine) and Peer (who is visiting old friends after being totally absent ever since ’00 or ’01).
Peer, mind you, used to be this superhero called the Centurion ever since he was a small kid, kind of like Captain Marvel. He quit for good by the time he was say, 18 or 19 years old, and now it’s years later, he’s in his late-20s, an adult, with no interest whatsoever in resuming his past life. Still, why is he visiting Path after all this time? –He just won’t say it.
Path herself came late into the game, she’s a little older than Peer, she has been a superheroine for slightly more than six years; she’s also in her late-20s but has stuck around with the life.
Anyway.
They will talk and it’s basically some catching up. We’re not showing the two old friends meeting and hugging, no, the idea is to place the reader straight in the middle of the conversation, we’ll fill in the reader as we go.
Then we’ll split the story twofold:
From one side we got Peer visiting Anton Riley, corporate mogul (previously known as the anti-hero “The Antagonist” but we’re basically ditching most of the characters’ heroic personas for this one). Riley is worried by Peer’s sudden and unexpected return, because he (Riley) is the link between the still-active, “free” superhero community and the United Nations.
The UN’s post-human operatives department is headed by Marcus Pictor (also known as the Praetor, one of the Centurion’s past mentors). Marcus has mostly forfeited his superhero role, choosing to spearhead the metah-human effort towards international politics… so it’s a safe guess to say he’s getting very annoyed once Peer, who was once a loose-cannon, seemingly returns to duty.
Or does he? The plot itself, especially in #1, will dwell around the big question of what Peer’s doing back in town and why.
(We have talked in previous posts about the way Path as a character will act as Virgil to Peer’s Dante, she’s like her spiritual guide in a sense her questioning will lead him to a personal revelation- and those very questions she’ll have to Peer should read like a leitmotif to his own revelation)
So.
On the other side it’s Path and her commitment to an old friend (which is the main plot, and will eventually intertwine with Marcus’).
Elisabeth Foster, who was once a superheroine known as Stardust (and also an old flame of Peer’s), has married into Faerie royalty, see. Yes, as in “land of the fairies and elves and etc”. And she had a son with the elf-prince of that dimension. Yes, that’s it. It’s particularly silly, I know, but we’ll make it work.
So once their baby son gets ill on Earth it’s this HUGE political situation for everybody, for the United Nations and Marcus himself, because the baby cannot be moved to his father’s dimension due to his fragile condition, and he’s gotta be treated on Earth. The baby is ill, and it’s not a curse nor anything, it’s just that he’s ill because he’s a half-breed and so on. It’s important to make that bit very clear because it should automatically imply a lack of opposing force to the protagonists, which is very intentional from our part.
So we got a sick baby on Earth and there’s this only thing that can restore him to health: The Dreamstone, which was like the lynchpin to reality itself and the keystone to the existence of the Universe.
…We are, by the way, relying 100% on past continuity. Or rather, 100% of our characters come from existing (past) stories and past continuity which I created many years ago when I was a kid myself- we’re only giving a completely new spin on them, for a new, different, more adult audience.
…So Path, who’s this huge friend of Betty Foster, is asked to go on a mission into deep space to retrieve the Dreamstone- and nobody is really aware of its exact location- and off she goes, on Marcus’ blessing (and unofficial behalf).
And Peer, who doesn’t have anything better to do, to put it bluntly, and wants to spend some quality-time with Path, tags along for the ride.
…So by the end of #1 we have Path and Peer going to outer space in a quest for this so-called Dreamstone thing, and that’s our plot for the first issue.
…and that, it’s important to point out, happens on a Friday night.
Our whole story’s supposed to happen in say, three or four issues (22 pages/each, a total of there about 70 pages- a gross average), starting with the tail-end of a Friday (#1), and ending on the tail-end of a Sunday (last issue).
Issue #2, and most of #3, will happen in space. The end of #3 and #4- as we wrap up the tale- it’s back on Earth… but THAT’S a subject for future posts.
As a plot-device, though, we’ll not open #1 on said Friday night; page 2 will start at the Diner on a Friday night, the conversation between Path and Peer, but page 1 is two days in the future, on a Sunday morning, to give the reader a peek of what lies ahead.
We’ll open the story, #1 pg 1, somewhere else entirely:
It starts in the Middle-East, in Lebanon’s border with Syria, two days in the future, with Peer in what seems to be his old superhero costume, and he’s just slept with this girl, see…
NEXT: Writing the first issue…
posted by 186282mps at 7:20 AM
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