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The Art of Collaboration - Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir on Co-Writing Comics |
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Written by Caleb Monroe
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Monday, 18 December 2006 |
This week is all about, well, what the title says. Collaboration.
So I have interviewed Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, a prolific pair of collaborative comic writers. Their co-written work has been published by Marvel, DC, Oni, Seven Seas…the list goes on. Aside from collaboration, they also have some wonderful insight into other, more practical aspects of the writer’s life. Because they’re more than just writing partners: they’re married!
How did you meet, and when did you start writing together?
Nunzio DeFilippis: That's a pretty long story, one that we could write a book about, I guess. Christina and I met in college. She was into me, and I was into... well, myself, I guess. Still, she stayed my friend and we were pretty close, the kind of close friends that everyone assumes have to be secretly involved. She knew she wanted to write since she was a kid. I was pretty torn between writing and acting, but a few weeks into college realized that acting sucked something fierce, and moved away from that. We both graduated with psychology degrees and every intention of writing for a living. I went to graduate school in Los Angeles for screenwriting. She went to grad school in Boston for TV production. But as soon as she finished grad school, she came to LA to pursue the writing thing. She needed a roommate, and I did as well. As roommates, we spent even more time with each other than we did in college, and as we didn't then kill each other, we became a couple. Christina got a job as a writer's assistant on the show ARLISS. And when they offered to look at her scripts, she suggested we team up to write one. It was the first time we wrote together, and it worked well enough to get us a job on the show for 2 seasons. So, since we clearly worked well together, we've never looked back.
What was your first published comic?
Christina Weir: Well, when we started doing television together, I didn't know from comics. Nunzio was a big fan and slowly sucked me in, giving me his favorite stuff to read. Consequently, he was published first in comics by himself. He did an issue of Detective Comics that was part of the Officer Down event. He wrote the issue that involved the Gotham MCU interrogating the suspect and had a lot of fun with that as he was a big Homicide fan. Our first comic together was Skinwalker published by Oni Press. We'd had this idea and were going to write it as a movie as that was the medium we knew. But our friend, Greg Rucka, thought the story would make a great comic miniseries and introduced us to the guys at Oni. They liked the idea and the next thing we knew, we were writing comics.
There are many different ways that writers can work together. Would you describe what your own process is like?
DeFilippis: We have two different methods. Our preferred method, which we rely on when we have enough time to take things a little slow, is to do everything together as a default. We talk plot together, we do complete breakdowns together, then write the scripts together. This usually involves Christina sitting at the computer doing the typing while I pace and talk a lot. I still think she just nods, ignores me, and writes whatever she likes in the actual script. But that method means talking everything out, step by step, and is a more methodical way of writing which doesn't work when we have a lot of jobs all at once. And since that has been the case a lot lately, we've gone to method two.
Weir: Method two still involves us plotting together. In many ways, that's the most important part of the writing process. We nail down the story we want to tell and who the characters are. Then, as a form of multi-tasking, one of us will take a pass at writing the script (or a portion of the script) and the other person will look at it after and give their feedback and make their changes. It allows us to work on two different projects at once and also keeps us from arguing over every single line. At this point, we've been writing together for ten years and so we tend to be on the same page and it's easier to let go and trust the other person to take a pass.
Do you write at home or an office?
DeFilippis: Our apartment is a two bedroom apartment, and we use the second bedroom as an office. So while we work at home, we have a space dedicated to our writing, which I guess means we have a little bit of
both.
Do you find there are any particular obstacles or advantages that come with working together, not just as co-writers, but as spouses?
Weir: The obvious advantage (as spouses) is that we get to spend time together. This was particularly important when we were working on ARLISS. A typical day on a television show can be fourteen hours long and many people just don't see their spouses all that much when a show is in production. We felt very lucky that it wasn't the case for us. The obvious disadvantage would be spending too much time together. I can't tell you how many people have said to us "Oh my god, I'd kill my husband/wife if I spent that much time with them." That just isn't the case for the two of us. We're each other's best friend and we learned a long time ago that we are capable of spending that much time together without getting on each other's nerves. Which is not to say we don't fight. But we have found that in all our time together, 99% of our fights have been writing-related and not spouse-related.
DeFilippis: As co-workers, the advantage of working as a team is that we hit the proverbial "writer's block" far less often. If a writer working alone sits down and faces the dreaded blank page with no thoughts on where to go, getting started can be an issue. But with us, there's always another person to bounce ideas off of and to talk through the problems with. Also, if you have a day where you're just not feeling the discipline to sit down at the computer, there's another person to encourage you or to step in and do the work. The other advantage is that you're not writing in a vacuum. It's easy to start down a road and think you're writing the greatest story ever told and not see that you missed a step along the way. With someone else there to step in and give feedback, you can catch mistakes (hopefully) a lot sooner. And of course, the disadvantage of writing with someone else is that there's always a measure of compromise. Again, you're not writing in a vacuum. The other person isn't always going to agree with you. For us though, it's never a matter of having to concede a point to the other person. If someone doesn't like something, we don't just do it the one way and move on. We find a solution that works for both people.
Weir: So, in short, there are pros and cons on both sides. For us, the pros far outweigh the cons and we continue to work together.
When I’m writing something, I can find it hard to ever stop working on it, at least in my mind. I imagine if I co-wrote with my wife it would be even more difficult, since I spend as much time with her as possible. What can you share about separating life from writing and balancing the two? Are boundaries necessary?
DeFilippis: Well, we talk story all the time. It is the main form of communication between us. When we met in college, Christina was visiting my dorm suite because her friend was dating my roommate. That roommate was stoned in the other room and Christina's friend left her to tend to her guy. That left us alone in the room, and I told the story of my recent hikes into a haunted building with Greg Rucka to keep her entertained. I then turned those experiences into a script in my film class the next year. So telling each other stories became a part of our life together. And talking about those stories with each other was always our way of getting the stories into shape for writing. That has stayed the case even after we started writing together. Plus, we play Role Playing Games (the dice and paper ones), which provide us with a lot of character ideas (Jessie Parrish from The Tomb started as Christina's character in an RPG). So when we're not talking about stories, we're talking gaming, which means we're talking about characters. Basically, there's no boundary for us. Our lives and our stories are all completely intertwined. We're pretty lucky we can make a living as writers because we have no idea what we'd do with our lives otherwise. Everything is about telling stories for us. Is it healthy? Who knows? Maybe there need to be boundaries, but we're pretty happy, so probably not.
What does your schedule look like? Are there specific hours each day or week when you write, or is it simply whenever inspiration or opportunity strikes?
Weir: It can be hard to keep a schedule when writing because there is that sense of working when the inspiration hits. But it's a job like anything else and requires a certain amount of discipline. We decided that we needed to treat the week like a work week and set our alarm to make sure we're up at a decent time. But neither of us are really morning people, so we take some time to wake up and then go to the gym. We're back by midday, shower and eat lunch and then we sit down to write. At that point, we write until we reach the goal we set for ourselves or until we run out of steam. We used to say that since writing is often a non-stop process we would try to keep the weekends for ourselves. But that hasn't really panned out. There are either deadlines that need to be met or errands that we'd rather run during the week when stores are less crowded that cause us to work on Saturday or Sunday instead.
Having also written for television, what would you say the main creative difference is between the two mediums?
DeFilippis: Television gives you a lot less control, even less than the work at DC and Marvel (which is pretty tightly regulated). On ARLISS, we would be lucky if 5% of what we wrote made it into the script. Senior writers would rewrite our scripts, and then the creator/star would rewrite it again. And we'd watch the show and get excited about the handful of lines that had stayed the same. On the other hand, the sense of collaboration was incredible. You were down the hall from the costume department and the set decorators. You could watch the sets being built. You ate lunch with the stars. You talked about the episode with everyone. While 95% of the script came from other writers, you were always in the room with those writers, influencing the spirit, if not the exact words, of the final draft. There was a team vibe, even on a show that was as top heavy as a star driven show like ARLISS. Comics are isolated. There's great collaboration, but your collaborators are in different states, and the editor is talking to all parties and conveying the responses. You rarely talk directly to your artist - at least, so far in our experience at DC and Marvel. We do talk more with our Oni artists, but even so, it's all e-mail or phone calls. I miss the team vibe of TV. But I don't miss having everything rewritten. It's like being on the bench of a great team - you love what the team's doing and are excited to be a part of it, but you wish you had a bigger role. Comics allow that bigger role, but It’s often in a vacuum.
What would you say the main practical difference is?
Weir: The money. It's as simple as that. Comics can pay they bills if you're writing enough but TV goes far beyond that. After we left ARLISS, it took us about a year to find work and we were able to live off our savings during that time. TV paid enough to allow us to put quite a bit of money away. I suppose another difference is that in television, you have an office to go to. There are set hours when they need you. You don't make your own schedule. In comics, there are deadlines to meet, but how you do it is up to you.
I’ve noticed you have “adapted by” credits in several Del Rey manga, meaning, I presume, that you took a literal translation and turned it into an engaging script for English-language readers. This is an aspect of writing that I don’t think many aspiring comic writers think about. What is this like compared to writing original material?
DeFilippis: There's always a balance between staying true to the original writer and improving the readability of the script. We heard a story about a published comics writer doing manga adaptation and telling their manga editor that changes were made to character motivation and attitude because 'that's what my fans expect when they pick up a book with my name on it.' That's the absolute wrong way to do an adaptation. Nobody picks up a Del Rey manga to read what WE wrote. At best, some of our Marvel or DC or Oni fans will pick up a Del Rey manga to see what we're up to. But it's not our story and they're not our characters. We're just trying to make someone else's work cross a cultural divide smoothly. That's it. The peril inhenerent in that, though, is that you sometimes fear making changes that the script really needs. Sometimes, directly translated text is too clunky. You have to not just sub in a few different words, but change the order the thoughts and sentiments are expressed. Or choose a different metaphor if the one in question doesn't translate. Still, manga fans know and like the Japanese feel to what they read. We have to try to make it readable to Americans, and not to actually Americanize it.
How did you end up adapting manga in the first place?
Weir: Our friend Dallas Middaugh heads up the Del Rey manga department. We'd worked with him while he was at Seven Seas and he knew we enjoyed manga and were familiar with the world. So he asked us if we'd like to do adaptation work and we happily agreed. It's introduced us to several series that it turns out we like as fans as well as being the adaptors.
You also write original manga. On the writing side of things, do you approach manga any differently from “mainstream” Western/American comics like what you’ve done for Marvel and DC?
DeFilippis: Well, there's nothing specific we try to do. And we definitely don't have a formula. That would lend itself to stereotyping manga storytelling. It's just a mindset, I think. There's a certain amount of focus on the character, especially in shojo manga. And the story can take its time to develop, yet sometimes still moves way faster than modern American comics. But again, for every rule we could think of, there'd be dozens of exceptions. So we go by feel. We've read a fair bit of manga - not nearly so much as many of Seven Seas' fans, but still a decent amount - and we just try to write in a way that appeals to people who read those same manga. We don't want to change everything about how we write, and we're lucky that our storytelling is influenced enough by manga that writing, say, New Mutants and writing Amazing Agent Luna just feel like logical points on a seamless spectrum for us.
Do either of you have any plans for individual projects, or do you think you’ll stick with co-writing all the way?
Weir: No plans right now. It's not that we would be opposed to the idea, but I don't think either of us has had any ideas that we haven't wanted to work on together. So for the time being, we're staying a team effort.
What are you reading right now?
DeFilippis: Comic-wise? I'm reading 52, which is the best comic being put out, and has managed to pull that off on a week to week basis. Some weeks are stronger than others, and some of the plot threads hold slightly less interest for me. But on the whole, the writers of 52 are managing to pull off epic comic storytelling, told in intimate character moments, and still show the entire broad expanse of the DC Universe. That book has been everything it should be, and I love it. I also read Birds of Prey, Checkmate (even the issues we're not helping to write), New X-Men, Runaways, Queen and Country, and most anything that Oni puts out merits at least a read.
Weir: Everything Nunzio said, plus I've started reading Nightwing since Marv Wolfman took over. I'm a big fan of the character and have been enjoying what he's done so far.
Any final advice on the life or craft of writing in general?
Weir: Mostly to just do it. (Not to sound like a Nike ad.) The only way to get better at writing is to keep writing and learn from your mistakes. If you have an idea, it's all well and good to toss it around in your head, but until it hits paper, it can't grow into anything else. Also my big problem way back when was working up the courage to show my writing to other people. It's important to get feedback and constructive criticism. So hopefully you have someone who can give you that. But a large part of writing is discipline and persistence. It's very easy to feel defeated so you have to be passionate about what you're doing.
Do you have any current or upcoming projects you want to plug?
DeFilippis: We have a potential project from Oni that we can't talk about until it's 100% certain to happen. But we're excited about that possibility. Also, a new artist has been found for our Private Investigator character, Amy Devlin (the lead in last year's Past Lies). We have a plot that we like, and if everyone at Oni likes it, then expect a new Amy Devlin mystery in the coming year. Also, 2007 will have the release of Destiny's Hand Volume 2 and Amazing Agent Luna Volume 4 from Seven Seas. Both series were picked up for distribution by Scholastic in their Book Fairs. That is pretty exciting for us. Original English Language Manga has a small (but passionate) fan base, and something like this can get our stories into the hands of a lot more kids.
Weir: We have two more issues of Checkmate coming up. We're writing Issues 11 & 12 with Greg Rucka. It's going to be a story about Fire that uncovers some secrets from her past and also forces a closer look at the politics within Checkmate. It's been a fun story to work on and we're very excited about it. We're hoping that we can do more with the Suicide Squad down the line. We had fun with them in our earlier issues of Checkmate. So we're pushing the DC folk about a Squad miniseries. Beyond that, we have another proposal for a miniseries in at DC, but it's so far in the early stages that we can't really talk about it.
DeFilippis: And we have a horror television pitch that we're shopping to the cable networks. Nothing set up yet, but we have a producer and a director attached, and we love the idea, so we REALLY want it to happen, and not just for the obvious financial reasons. That same producer is also helping shepherd some of our original ideas to a cable network for potential romantic comedy TV movies. Plus, a screenplay of ours has been optioned, and once the producer announces it, we can talk about that too.
Weir: And lastly, because we leave no genre or medium untouched, we've got a proposal for a non-fiction book that tells the story of how Nunzio and I lost a serious amount of weight in the last two years. One of the things we didn't mention about being writers is that when you spend a large portion of your day in front of a computer it's very easy to fall into a sedentary way of life. Add to that the fact that we live in Los Angeles, a car town, and we were getting no exercise. Working long hours at ARLISS and having non-stop access to craft services meant that we gained far too much weight. We finally took the problem into our own hands and managed to lose it all. We were told that it might make a good book and so we've given a proposal to our agent that we're waiting for feedback on.
Thank you so much!
Be sure to stop by the Making Good discussion thread. Share your own co-writing secrets or horror stories, if you have any.
Ground Floor
Ground Floor is a column-within-a-column here at Making Good where I am developing a brand new comic, from scratch to publication, right before your very eyes.
So far you have voted for me to do a historical comic, and I have brainstormed and believe I have both a story and an artist in mind. More to follow regarding both.
I'm afraid things will probably remain slow here on the Ground Floor until after the holidays. But next week's entire column will be Ground Floor related as I begin my Genre Series by interviewing Ande Parks on the craft of writing the historical comic!
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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