Writing comics...

So in my time in the land of Sheffield I have encountered many a person and among them is the ever curious Owen Watts, who bloggers may already follow as the Crazy Fox Machine http://crazyfoxmachine.blogspot.com/ an exemplary artist whose work you can see here http://crazyfoxmachine.deviantart.com/.

Now when you meet someone who is that completely into their art, talented and looking to produce more I’m generally left thinking how I could work alongside them. The mighty O is oblivious to this as I have never taken my comic ideas to him as they are all far too overblown for the amount of time I can commit (I had visions of a 24 parts series, each one entitled and themed after a major arcana of Tarot detailing the overthrow of a Pedro Paramo type figure in a forgotten human outpost in space. I still have all the plans somewhere...) or are interesting ideas which never truly gained form.

So when Owen announced that he would be creating the comic, Doctor WTF – a series of comics by a mixture of different artists and writers – and asked if I would be interested I jumped at the chance. When confined to a story loosely themed by the Doctor Who mythos, an idea for a horror story came relatively quickly for me but the major learning experience was actually typing it up.

Everyone has their moment where they say they could write a better script than that etc but you really can’t appreciate how deceptively hard it can be. The main content of what would be said and the visual pieces was never altered but the exact wording and the number of panels was constantly changing, ranging from 2 to 3 pages in length and the text getting progressively smaller until I could make the content take up the least space without raping the English Language or damaging the character.

Its certainly given me a lot more respect for the medium, a better understanding of how to write it and a sense of anticipation for what the artist will make of my script and for potentially working on more of them.

So if there is anything that you’ve thought you’d want to try, something you could do better then go for it! It will be a unique experience and you never know what you might learn...