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Scryptic Dojo: A Bite To Eat |
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Written by Jeffery Stevenson
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Wednesday, 13 April 2005 |
Let's start off with discussion on last week's exercise.
What makes a character special? Powers? Well, having powers in the Marvel universe means you share something in common with probably millions of other people. Powers, skills, intelligence, gadgets... it takes more than that to really bring a character to life. It takes more to show us why a character does what he or she does.
Look at Spider-man's origin. It's more than just powers. If it was just him gaining powers, he could have just become a big-time wrestler or a star of some kind. But he didn't. He became a hero because his Uncle Ben got killed when he didn't use that power to stop a criminal. That's what drives the character to do what he does. And Plastic Man started out as a criminal. He nearly died when he gained his powers, but after his life is saved by a small group of monks, his faith in mankind is restored. He decides to atone for his past crimes, so instead of becoming a super-powered criminal, he becomes a super-powered crime fighter.
Now, last week's Scryptic Dojo assignment was to create a character origin. Let's take a look at the entries that made the early deadline. My primary comments will discuss the character and the execution of the character origin in the stories.
NOTE: If you included character descriptions outside of the script, I didn't read them. These comments on the characters were based solely on what was in the story/script.
Richard Cosgrove - Silver Ghost Airfreight & Couriers
Who's story is this?
Is it Jason's? The aircraft mechanic that could possibly also be a pilot. The guy who jokes with someone about lying and then takes offense the second time Lucy insults his plane (and felt so insulted that he quit a job and decided to return money already paid). He seemed shocked when Joey was shot, but there's no relationship established between the two. What makes that death meaningful to Jason? Does he even care about the other character? There's no interaction between the characters to give the readers a chance to gain association with the characters. And while the death does drive the story, what does it do to drive the character? You don't establish a lot of Jason's personality, and I don't see much that actually establishes his origins.
Is it Lucy's story? The uppity traveler hiding a secret and not afraid to insult an aircraft. Again there's no personal motivation established for the character. Why is she in a hurry to leave? Why are these people after her? What is she hiding? These are great questions to help build intrigue in a reader to make them want to read the rest of the story, but they're not really the kinds of questions you want to see when establishing the origins of a character.
Is it the Silver Ghost's story? It's the most prominently featured item in this story... getting the majority of a double-page spread in this four-pager. Sure, it's important to Jason and important to the story, but I doubt it's the character you wanted to establish with this piece.
This is a decent opening to a story, but it doesn't really feel like an origin story. It shows us what will probably drive the story forward, but it doesn't do much to show us what makes these characters tick... what makes them do the things they do?
Notes:
• It's called a "hangar." ^_^
• The Jeep was developed for the military for WWII, and civilian versions weren't available until 1944.
Warren Peace
What do we learn about the character, Warren Peace? Orphan. Shy. Does what he's told. Gets an instant crush on good-looking girls with cookies. He's the Buchanan's son that can't reunite with the Architects and must not find out who he truly is. This is also an opening piece. He gets thrust into a new environment, and he's the subject of some secret plot... but what happens to him to make him the person he is? What drives him?
And you introduce a lot of characters in this story, but how do they influence who Warren is.. or who he'll become? It's an introduction piece. "Hi, I'm Warren." But you're looking more for something like, "Hi, I'm Warren. Let me tell you how I got to be the person I am today... how I got to be so special."
Shannon Fay - The Citadel
Yep, that's a story about how she got her powers, but it doesn't really tell us much about the character except that she can pick up groceries. It doesn't give any background on who she is, what she's like, or why she'd even use the powers she got (or whether she'd use them for good, for evil, for laughs, etc). For all we know, she could run off and go, "I'm glowing... the people at the rave are gonna love me." Or, she could go into hiding, "I'm a freak. No one's gonna want a glowing freak girl around." She gets powers and then... end of story. What's so special about her getting powers?
Notes:
• The Campbell's label shouldn't appear on cans of chicken broth. The Campbell's Soup Company owns the Swanson's Broth line of soups, so there's no reason for them to create a line that would just cut into the sales of their own product.
• With a man standing and pointing a gun at someone, it's a pretty impressive feat for a teenage girl to jump from a crouched position on the ground and take a shot in the abdomen. It would have been much easier for her to knock his arm up to throw off the shot or take him down with a can of chicken broth to the privates.
Act of Thought - Brazillionaire
Yay! An origin story. I can actually see a rich man sitting back and reflecting on this tale with some friends about what changed his life and how he came to be who he is today. And it was all driven by the fact he truly cherished and appreciated what little possessions he had. The story does a good job at giving us insight into the character, but I only had one thing that got to me. The story goes on that the rock is nothing special except that it's his. The story could dive a little deeper into the emotional waters if there was something special attached to the rock. Maybe a special story someone told him about the rock. Maybe it reminds him of something or someone from his past. Maybe it was touched by someone he admires. In a world where people can easily find rocks anywhere, it'll be tough for people to grasp the boy's emotional attachment to this rock. Add a little emotion to it, and it can raise the drama of the story. It could make the reader root for him more when he's trying not to lose the rock and make the reader feel a little bit of his loss when it's tossed into the ocean.
Notes:
• The third boy (the hoodlum) seemed to come out of nowhere. It could have been the one boy's plan to entrap someone, but it seems like it would be impossible to figure out which direction a panicked person would bolt. This might work better if both boys were there at the beginning and after seeing where he's headed, one of them breaks off to cut him off.
DamonX - Fusion
Let me tell a small personal story here. When I was younger, I had a friend that had her cousin die. I'd never met the cousin, so I couldn't really get into the emotions of the situation. I knew why she was sad, but there was no emotional attachment for me to actually feel any sadness. A few years after that, I had a friend that lost one of her friends in a car accident. This time, my emotions got to me, and I was sad. The difference... I'd met this person once over lunch. One brief meeting. That's all it took to establish enough attachment to get that emotional feeling.
In this story, the emotions behind your character going after those two guys can probably be understood by most people, but there's no attachment to the wife and child for the readers to really get a chance to feel any of that emotion themselves. And there's nothing established about the wife's character to make anyone believe that she really isn't capable of doing what she did. We just have to trust the word of a man with burnt flesh and fiery hands that's been buried under a collapsed building for a week. It could be a driving factor for the character's actions, but it doesn't really have a lot of emotional impact for the reader. Now, one last question dealing with this... why would they kill the wife and kid? Unless the wife helped him develop the technology, there's no real point to it, and I'm sure the little kid wouldn't know much about it. This makes it feel forced.
Notes:
• I tried thumbnailing out some of these pages, and I would not envy the artist that had to draw this. Let's look at the first page. Start off with this big impressive panel of an auditorium where we can see everything on the stage. That would work best as a wide shot, which requires a bit of real estate on the page. Now, this first panel also has about forty words of dialogue. The artist will need to leave room for that where it won't cover up any important artwork. Next, we have a smaller panel with one character and part of the equipment in view... except the nearly thirty words of dialogue means the panel will need to be bigger to accommodate that. The third panel shows Randall on the stage while also showing Jim walking in from the side door of the auditorium. That's another wide shot. Add in another fifty words of dialogue for effect. Panel four contains a view of all three men and over forty more words of dialogue. Panel five is a closer shot of Jim and Randall with almost twenty words of dialogue. Panel six shows Jack and Randall talking with another thirty plus words of dialogue. Panel seven... wider shot of all three men and another thirty words of dialogue. Panel eight shows Jack opening the briefcase and adds another thirty some words of dialogue to the page.
Eight panels. At least two really wide panels and throughout the panels, the artist needs to leave room for around two-hundred and seventy words of dialogue (for comparison, an average page from a novel runs about 250-300 words).
Keep in mind that while prose can just go on-and-on with story and dialogue, a comic book is restricted by what can physically fit on a page. Art has to remain clear and dialogue needs to be legible on a piece of paper that's generally smaller than a letter-sized sheet of paper. For a good exercise, take a regular sheet of paper and draw a rectangle that's 6 7/8 inches wide and 10 1/2 inches tall. Now, layout your panels with really simple sketches for the objects in it (feel free to use stick figures for people and boxes/circles/triangles for different objects). With that sketched out, go in and start writing out your dialogue in a rough balloon shape in each panel.
Once you try it for yourself, you'll see it's a lot to ask of an artist. Sure, it could probably be done, but the page will probably look really crowded... and your artist might not be very happy.
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Exercise #2
Characters will generally encounter a slew of unusual situations throughout their adventures, but how well can they handle the mundane? Something like... the food court.
In four pages or less, have your character grab a quick bite to eat at a food court at the mall. Think about what kind of food they'd like, how much their patience would be tested in long lines, or how they'd react to an overly annoying fast food employee. Be creative with their sustenance gathering and have fun!
Deadline (for article): Saturday, April 16th at 6pm (central)
Deadline (normal): Wednesday, April 20th at Noon (central)
Please post your questions, comments, and entries in the appropriate threads in Scryptic Dojo forum.
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Jeffery Stevenson is one of the Scryptic Studios co-founders. He's generally considered a bit off kilter by people that meet him in passing, but he just looks at it as "giving them something to talk about." He likes his caffeine bucket-sized, goes to bed when the sun starts rising, and knows the trick to producing three feet of sparks with the same flint and knife they use on Survivor. He also writes (and letters) some weekly mythology webcomic. Oh, and this horror one too. I think he also does some weekly satire thingy. Check his member page here at Scryptic for more details.
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