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First Books - Simon Oliver's The Exterminators |
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Written by Caleb Monroe
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Tuesday, 06 March 2007 |
Simon Oliver is the writer of The Exterminators from Vertigo which, while I normally don't think in these terms, may very well be my favorite monthly book hitting stands right now. If you haven't been reading it, it's a real treat. Issue 14 hit stands last Wednesday, and the Volume 2 TPB will be in stores tomorrow.
What was the first comic you ever read?
You know, I may end up being lynched at Comic-Con or something, but I have to admit I've never really been much of a comics reader. I grew up in England, I remember reading a few 2000ADs but most of my comic reading was Tintin and Asterix, which I'm now reading with my older son.
In the late eighties I read Dark Knight, Watchmen, and Electra in trade, but that was it. I mean, I thought they were good but there was a lot of other crazy stuff going on around me. Then in the early '90s I lived in the 3rd world for 5 years, 100% shut off from any popular culture. This was before the Internet, so for example I was 25 in 1994 and I had no idea who Nirvana were (it was all kind of blissful now I think about it).
Who are your influences?
I guess it comes down to stuff I like to read. Out of the box of comics that Vertigo sent me when I started The Exterminators, Grant Morrison was a standout. Don't ask me to break down the plot of The Filth, but I enjoyed it and in that way it reminded me of William Burroughs, it loses a lot in translation. I read a lot of books, fiction and non-fiction, a lot of Ian McEwan, Graham Greene, Hemmingway. Non-fiction stuff is really broad, a lot of stuff I like to research and then finds it's way into my work somewhere.
Comic book wise there is a lot of good stuff out there, but it kind of feels like the comic book world is about ready for the next ground breaking thing that will push the medium to the next level like Frank Miller and Alan Moore did 20 years ago.
When did you first decide to write comics, and what was your first project? Is it The Exterminators?
I started writing just over 4 years ago. It was never something that had ever occurred to me to do up till then, and living in Los Angeles, working in the film business as I was at that time, I've seen my fair share of deluded souls with unreadable scripts who just know that they're the next big thing.
But also I'd spent enough hours on set listening to terrible dialogue and plot holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through to think that maybe I couldn't do any worse. I did make a deal with myself that if I thought it totally sucked and I hated it, it would all go in a drawer and I would never do it again. I was kind of shocked how much I enjoyed the process and realized something that had never occurred to me in creative writing at school 20 years before, that it's all problem solving, you have a story that you want to tell, this is the character that you have invented to tell it, so how do you get from A to B to tell the story that you set out to tell?
So back to the question, I had picked up the first 3 trades of 100 Bullets, the first comic book I'd read in 17 years or something and it really blew me away and reminded me what was possible in comics. I wrote two scripts, a movie and a TV pilot, had some meetings, got some encouraging comments. I then started working on The Exterminators idea as a TV pitch but in the back of my mind was, "This would make a great comic."
How did The Exterminators come to be?
As I mentioned it was written as a TV pitch and pilot outline, but it was specifically written to please me, so, as you can see now, it wasn't really network material. I started to notice that the Vertigo name kept cropping up on the spines of most of the books that interested me at the comic store so I figured that was where it should go.
Did you pitch The Exterminators to Vertigo in person, or through the mail (either snail or e-)?
I had given 100 Bullets to a movie producer friend in New York, she had then meet with Karen Berger and developed a relationship with her, so she handed over the pitch to them.
What materials, exactly, did you include in your pitch/submission?
It was a pile of stuff in TV format: character bios, 15-page outline for the pilot, article references, an outline of the premise, it was a lot of stuff and kind of jumbled and dense. Jon Vankin, (Vertigo editor) was on his second day on the job, picked it up and I got lucky. Then came the long job of reshaping it into the comic form and trimming it down.
Any personal pitching secrets to share?
That's a tough one. Who knows what anyone wants on a particular day? I think having a very clear 3-line premise is a good idea and that's where I stumble compared to most other writers because The Exterminators is such a messed up jumble of ideas it's a hard sell. That 3-line premise not only sells it as a book to a potential publisher, but sells it to a reader.
I think just write stuff that you believe in and enjoy writing and you'll win out in the end.
Can you describe your creative process, from first idea to completed pages?
I had to learn the comic format from scratch. With no writing training to draw from it was hard (thank God for Jon Vankin for bearing with me). The first issue was 7 full drafts and to be honest if I had the chance I'd still rip it up and start over again. I'm still developing a definite process, but at the moment, at the start of each arc I spend a couple of days brainstorming ideas and getting them on paper in a rough order.
Then for the individual issues I've taken to using index cards to lay out the scenes, shuffle them around and to stare at the thing as a whole, see if it stands up as an idea, kind of looking at it from different directions. Some things I've taking to asking myself are "Does it have drama?", "Does each scene build on the last?" or “Does it feel like a series of bolted together scenes?” Don't be afraid to tear out pages and start again, it's a process and I've never done a rewrite that didn't make it better.
Then I start transferring those scenes and notes to paper and start to break the pages and scenes down by panels, all the time asking myself “What is this scene ‘for’?", "How does it start and how should it end?" and "What does it cover between these two points?" You have to ask these questions over and over during the process. Another thing I've been working on, because comics are such a lean medium, is, "How can you make one scene work double duty?" For example, in the dialogue they can be talking about one thing and have their actions add another meaning, we rarely stand still and talk in real life.
Then to the computer and I make a couple of passes, the last one is to just tweak the dialogue up. It takes about 5 working days from start to finish, give or take, then it goes to Jon, he gives me notes and then it's usually a day to rewrite.
The one piece of advice I can definitely pass on is, if you don't have to, don't send something in the same day you finish it. You type in "THE END", e-mail it and then that night there's always one new thing that comes to you. Sit on it overnight.
On average, what percentage of your writing time is spent on research? Plotting? Scripting? Communicating with your artist(s)? Promoting the book?
I did a lot of research on The Exterminators before starting it. I still do some if it's called for, or if something specific comes up, but not as much as I did. It was more of a preparation thing. I get the trade magazines and stuff like that.
One script is about 5 days. I don't talk that much with the artist, everyone who has worked on the book has been great so I haven't had to worry about the art side of things. I try to make the script pretty clear and from my film camera background I use standard film terms to explain the panel. It's unusual to have an issue, but if there is I try and clarify what I meant, but to say the least I've been lucky with the quality of artists.
I try and make time everyday to brainstorm on a new idea and just have fun with something as an exercise. Get an idea and give myself, say, 10 minutes to write down everything I know about it. Creating like this is the inspiration part for me, the 10%, it's the 90% perspiration that follows.
How, exactly, do you as a creator go about promoting your own work?
Promoting? Well, I suck at that. I was so naive when the book started. I had no idea what to do and how to go about it. I'm a little wiser now, but still it's not really my thing and I really wish it was.
This is something that I still learning. I do interviews, podcasts and that kind of stuff, but I'm still learning and honestly it's not really in my nature. I keep planning to start a website, and I think I will. I think I lack a gene or something when I look at the lengths over writers go to. More power to them.
Do you have “office hours,” so to speak: specific set times during the day or week when you write, or is it a more fluid situation? Have your years as a writer taught you any secrets to budgeting writing time?
I'm married with a 4-year-old and 2-month-old: both boys. Before writing comics I was working crazy hours in the film business as a camera assistant. It was very important to me to get control of my life back.
I now write 9 am till 4.30 pm, Monday to Friday. I heard that Hemmingway wrote 4 hours a day, that his relatives had no idea when he did it because he was over with his workday by the time they got up. I'm not by nature a morning person but that would be my ideal.
I found distractions, the Internet, a phone call, were killing me, so I developed a system. I divide my day into 30-minute blocks, during that time any impulse toward distractions is put off. In that 30 minutes all that matters is the task at hand, writing is all I am allowed to do. When the 30 minutes is up I take a few minutes to make whatever emails and calls I need to, then reset the timer and start again. Sometimes I do one-hour blocks, too. It's not exactly rock n' roll, but it's made me much more focused and productive.
So I try and purely write for 5 hours a day, that's about my limit for actual writing. Outside of that is calls, emails and reading for research.
And I live and die by to-do lists.
I've tried to write at night. Wish I could, but I just can't do it.
It’s been said that to make writing a career you have to sell more than just your script: you have to sell yourself. Do you agree, and do you have any insight to share on how to go about such a thing?
I guess. The comics business is really good at setting up writers and artists as personalities, I just can't see that happening to me at anytime soon. The Internet and having somewhere for fans to post seems to be the way to go. I guess I'm afraid if I built it and they didn't come it would be pretty deflating.
Have you learned any lessons on The Exterminators that will affect the way you write or create on future projects?
Hell yes. What are they? Just have to wait and see. No really, the #1 thing is that 3-line premise. The Exterminators is a really hard sell and an uphill battle. Hopefully people know the kind of stuff I do now and will be interested in future work. Oh, and maybe a little less cursing in the first issue.
What would you say is the #1 mistake you see aspiring writers making?
Hard, as I'm an aspiring writer too.
I think no matter what the medium, people take a look at what is already out there and try and work some kind of new angle and reinvent the wheel, and it comes across as contrived.
The only way to get anywhere and, most importantly, better, is the hard grind of facing and defeating that blank page, day after day.
Oh, that and make sure at least the first sentence is spelled correctly,. Someone once gave me a treatment that had the worst spelling mistake ever in the first line. (Then again I misspelled my own name on a treatment header once).
What’s the best advice you could give someone looking to break into the comic industry as a writer?
See above, I think. Do something that you would want to read, and the same with everything, keep trying and try and improve and learn with everything you do, even if a project goes nowhere, you learn from the process and what people have to say about it.
I assume you’ve been to your share of conventions. How can an aspiring writer make the best use of their con experience?
Once again, 3 trips to San Diego and that's it. See above sucky promotional activity, and add conventions.
What advice would you share with other writers about finding a balance between writing and other aspects of life, like family or friends?
You have to have a life outside whatever you are doing.
When it comes to writing, if over dinner you're thinking of how to get character X through scene Y, no matter how sly you think you are your other half is going to know and resent your mental absence.
Try not to drag it around with you all the time.
I have a movie writer friend who would literally spend 12 hours a day at least in his office writing, 7 days a week for months on end. Lets just say his wife and kids were not amused. It wasn't pretty and his health suffered. You have to find that balance.
Any final advice on the life or craft of writing in general?
Don't try and chase what's popular, because it will show.
A lot of writers are born writers, I don't really think that I'm one of them, I didn't start till my 30's but I have the advantage of having done a lot of other things that I can draw from.
Try and use the world and the characters around you for your work. Most of the characters in The Exterminators are based on people I've known, even Stretch, who is basically a crazy Texan I met on a bus in Malaysia 15 years ago, who hustled bets at the race course and spoke 3 different dialects of Chinese, "'cause his Daddy in Modesto thought it would be a good idea."
There's a story in the most mundane things.
Do you have any current or upcoming projects you want to plug?
I have a graphic novel that's just been approved at Vertigo, a crime noir set on the Southern border.
Also, a couple of movie scripts that I'm pretty excited about and two other comic projects in various stages of preproduction.
I'd really like to write a novel at some point soon and I should be done with the weather machine next month.
Thank you, Simon!
Caleb Monroe bought Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #16 when he was 11 years old and it was all over after that. You can learn some more about him here.
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