|
Comic fans can't help but hear the name of Antony Johnston these days. The writer of Spooked and Queen and Country: Declassified has an ongoing-series, Wasteland, that's a hit with critics and fans alike. Also out is Texas Strangers an all-ages western that is already generating positive buzz.
1. Professional writers stress again and again the importance of reading outside the genre. What other types of material do you read and how has it influenced your own writing?
To answer the second part first, everything influences my writing in some way. Even bad stuff can’t help but have an influence, and this is one of the things I always try to tell people who ask what they “should” be reading. I don’t know if people are afraid of reading the “wrong” things, but to my mind there’s no such thing. I find bad books (and bad stories in any other medium) very useful, because as a writer they help you see what doesn’t work, and potentially why something doesn’t work.
I don’t really regard myself as that wide a reader, but I suppose it’s all relative; I know of people who’ve read less than ten books in their entire lives, so to them I’m some kind of walking library. But most of the people reading this are probably more widely-read than I am. In fiction, I tend to read sci-fi and fantasy—William Gibson, Michael Marshall Smith, Jeff Noon, Greg Egan, George RR Martin, Philip K Dick, Michael Moorcock, John Brunner, the usual suspects. I also read the occasional crime novel, but I’m more discerning about that—Tony Hillerman, Derek Raymond, Lawrence Block, Greg Rucka. And when I was younger I read any old tat so long as it was either fantasy, sci-fi or war fiction. I read a lot of modern pulp in those days, leaving it up to school to teach me about classical literature like Shakespeare, Forster, Milton and so on. I can’t say I really regret that decision.
These days the bulk of my reading is taken up by non-fiction for research, much more so than fiction. I don’t have any specific areas of interest (apart from “weird shit” and popular theoretical science, I suppose, but mainly because they inspire story ideas), but I read whatever I need to get into a subject while I’m writing. And, of course, that has a very direct influence on my work.
I think the main thing to remember is don’t just read other comics. It’s not specifically about reading The Great Works so much as, you know, just get out there and have a life. Watch movies and TV, read books, play videogames, dance like an idiot, get drunk, get high, do things you might regret, have sex and experience the world. All your experiences will find their way into your work, and the richer those experiences, the richer your work will be.
2. As something of an aside, many writers are also avid movie-goers. Does this hold true in your case? If so, do the movies you enjoy have any effect on your writing?
I used to be. For a good few years I watched several movies per week, every week. But a combination of poor films and location (I now live in a very rural area) has slowed my movie consumption down a lot. And as I said, everything has an influence on my work. A great story is a great story, regardless of the medium, so there’s always something you can learn from a great movie.
3. The “where do you get your ideas from” question is, obviously, an effort in futility. But once you get that killer idea, what do you do with it? Using Wasteland as an example, could you give us a little behind the scenes as to how it was developed?
WASTELAND’s an odd case study, because it took so long to develop. I had the basic idea for the story fifteen years ago, and it spent the intervening time gestating at the back of my mind. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, when I first pitched the idea to Oni, that I began thinking about it in detail.
The first thing I did, and this is something I often do, was write a script to issue #1. Now, that’s not the same script that ended up being the published #1 (although it’s surprisingly close), but doing that helps me get a handle on whether or not the type of story I’ve got in my head is going to work on the page. And, in this case, it did.
So then I sat down and brainstormed. This is something I guess all writers do, and it’s a pretty essential part of the process—just throwing ideas down on a piece of paper, making a note of anything that comes to mind and letting your imagination go for a ride. With WASTELAND, I knew there were three things I wanted it to be: long, a journey, and full of mystery.
So that informed the brainstorming phase, and once that stage was done I sorted through what I had, seeing if any of it fit together coherently. And while I was doing that, more ideas came to mind, and so on. I’m still brainstorming WASTELAND now—with an ongoing series I don’t think you ever really stop. The difference is that the background was all set during that initial phase, and now I’m only brainstorming plots and future events. But it’s the same principle. Eventually it coalesces into a plot, which becomes an outline, which becomes a script.
4. Along the same vein, how do you go about writing a story? Do you outline first or do you jump in and see where the story takes you, worrying about the details in revising?
I’m a planner, a plotter. I like to know where I’m going before I start scripting. That’s why the brainstorming phase is so essential to the way I work.
I never work without some kind of outline, but the detail of that outline can vary a lot. With WASTELAND, it’s relatively loose from issue to issue, because I know the characters inside out and know roughly where I want to go. But with, say, THE LONG HAUL it was extremely detailed, because it was an original cast and the book revolves around a heist. If I’d jumped in and started without a plan, I would have ended up rewriting the entire first half of the book a dozen or more times just to make sure plot points were foreshadowed and that the heist plan would work. I’ve never seen the point of that, when you can deal with all that in an outline.
Not that I don’t rewrite or revise at all. I do, a lot. But that’s because I tend to write scripts with increasing amounts of detail in each pass; basic blocking and dialogue first, then a second pass to add detail and revise pacing if necessary, and a final pass for overall polish. These stages all inevitably end up incoporating revisions as I go.
5. What is the most important element of a story? What makes a story grab you?
That depends on the author and the story. I’m a pretty easy audience; if the characters are good enough, I’ll let plot mistakes pass; if the plot is good enough, I’ll let character mistakes off the hook. The main thing I insist on is good dialogue. I can’t stand reading lumpen, unrealistic dialogue, and it’s put me off more than a few comics, books and movies over the years. So I guess you could say that’s what initially grabs me, but it has to have either good character or plot to keep me going.
6. What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard for an aspiring writer?
“A professional writer is just an amateur writer who never gave up.” I can’t remember who said it, and I’ve probably got the exact wording wrong, but I think that sums up the requisite tenacity for an author’s career very well.
7. I see information about Wasteland all over the net. A lot of the publicity, of getting your name out there to potential customers, seems to fall on the creators. Did you develop a marketing plan to spread the word? If you did, could you summarize what it consisted of?
If you can call carpet bombing a plan…
I went all-out for WASTELAND, contacting every area of the press I could think of, offering free previews to the public over the web and through BitTorrent, giving the press sneak peeks of the entire first issue, doing interviews on podcasts and websites and blogs, building the official website to support it all… even making the first issue double-sized was about trying to give people as much opportunity as possible to hear about the book, to give it a try and decide if it was for them.
It worked, which is great, but I couldn’t tell you which part of it was the most successful, or if it was all just a critical mass. And, of course, publicity means nothing if the finished product is no good (Well, not if you’re an indie book, anyway).
8. A lot of fans and creators alike talk of the need to draw in new blood (i.e. kids) into the industry but very little seems to be done successfully. How do you plan to reach a younger market with Texas Strangers? What are the differences (other than the exclusion of mature themes) to writing an all-ages title as opposed to a more adult story?
Actually, the exclusion of mature content is the biggest difference of all. Note I said content, not themes—some of the themes we’ll deal with in TEXAS STRANGERS will be quite mature, but presented in a kid-friendly manner. I mean, this is a magical Western. It’d be a crap Western if you couldn’t deal with things like death and violence, and a crap magical story if you couldn’t deal with the abuse of magic. But there are ways of dealing with such subjects that kids can relate to (and that won’t alarm their parents), which is the major difference.
The only other difference between scripting TEXAS STRANGERS and something like WASTELAND is the amount of compression, and the storytelling shortcut devices we’re using. Each story is just two issues long, and the worst thing you can do in a kid’s eyes is bore them. So the storytelling is fast-paced and heavily compressed. We’re using expository captions and even thought balloons, two things that went out of fashion long ago with older readers, but that are really helpful for us to tell the story in the quickest and most exciting way possible.
But besides those, there’s not much difference at all. I like to credit kids with a good amount of intelligence, and I’m not going to patronise them by ‘dumbing down’ my storytelling style.
9. Could you go into a little detail on how you developed the different slang or languages for Wasteland?
For the corrupted words and slang, I use a process that I like to call ‘reverse etymology’. This is a needlessly pretentious way of saying that I take modern words, and then imagine how they might be corrupted and changed over time according to usage and loss of context. I'm a word nerd, and creating the slang is one of my favourite parts of writing WASTELAND.
The accents and mannerisms of something like the Sand-Eaters is a different process—that's more a case of working out how a creature's physiology might affect the way they speak. Alan Moore used to do something similar when he wrote SWAMP THING, and it's very effective.
10. What other projects should we be on the lookout for?
TEXAS STRANGERS, of course, from Image. My second novel, a fantasy/sci-fi crime caper called STEALING LIFE, was recently published by Abaddon. My second Alex Rider graphic novel adaptation, POINT BLANC, will be published some time in fall this year by Walker in the UK and Penguin in the US. WASTELAND continues throughout 2007, and there are a lot of surprises in store for that. I have a story in the POSTCARDS anthology from Villard Books, due out in the summer, and hopefully another in the second volume of 24SEVEN from Image. And I’m working on an unusual secret project with some great talent that should be announced in the summer.
Keep an eye on my work journal at www.antonyjohnston.com, basically. It’s all there first.
11. What’s one comic story that every fan should read?
I’d say that’s a toss-up between THE INVISIBLES and FROM HELL. Both use comics in unique ways to tell compelling stories, with brilliant execution.
12. What is the one issue that you’ve written so far that you’re the most proud of?
Whatever I wrote last, which at the time of writing is WASTELAND #13.
But ask me again next month and it’ll be an issue of TEXAS STRANGERS, or WASTELAND #14, or something else entirely. Authors are always most proud of whatever they just finished. Which is the way it should be, otherwise there’s no incentive for us to improve. And the day I stop trying to improve is the day I may as well give it all up and go flip burgers.
|
