I Have So Many Poems Memorized For The Right Moment But What They Don't Tell You Is That There's Pretty

Your efforts were valiant, if futile.

Were there any extraneous scenes that you considered putting in the new Hellbent video but ultimately cut? If they're not spoiler-y, care to tell us a couple?

Unfortunately Muppet vivi didn’t make the final cut, but I want you all to know that I tried.

(Art by @isaiahdjstuff)

Bias

smbc-comics.com

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Narrative

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Narrative

If I'm reading this page correctly, it's the next morning and Ruffles is coming to wake Duane up. I'm curious if Duane was self-aware in the khert during the night or if he was stuck in his memories the whole time?

You read it correctly. I wanted to try doing a page with just sound effects and no dialogue, I’m glad it reads okay <3

Duane was stuck in memories all night. In the script I had a cut-away to him in the khert really mired in his worse days to hammer home the darkness of his present state, but it got chopped. I think at this point we’ve got the idea anyway :)

KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS

SIEGE OF YRE

This thing is about 44″ by 17″ in realsize, please for the love of god go see it on the main site (or you can click here). In comic terms it’s a 4 page spread. It is easily more than 100+ hours of work and 4 weeks of time. I was inspired by the famous screen painting ‘The Siege of Osaka’. Hope you enjoy poring it over!

Hello Ashley! Returned to an old story of mine and trying to rebuild large parts of the plot that didn't satisfy me. I figure it's best to detail all the major story beats before I fill in all the icing around them. From chapter 1 to chapter 15 (so we're not considering spoilers!), what major story beats would you say you finalized first? Was it hard deciding which little bits needed to come up and when, even after you had scripted the major steps?

–You’re definitely on the right track, I also used that method. I had a beginning and an end point for the first book, then looked backwards from there, mapping the major beats in each chapter. It’s also personally important for me to know the WHY of everything. I need a Why for everything I write and do, I find it motivating.

So it’s been a while and my memory is foggy, but I believe the broad outline was like:> Duane & Sette have misadventures that help them understand each other. Why do they need to understand each other? Because they are lonely, broken people and the goal is to better them.> They make it to her cousin’s along with the macguffin, which results in a climax, but macguffin escapes. What is the why of the macguffin? The macguffin isn’t just an antagonist; it’s all antagonism. It is the ultimate macguffin, and is motivated by the misery and misdeeds in the story itself.> They chase the macguffin and wind up isolated in a situation that forces out the best of Sette and the worst of Duane, with disastrous consequences. Why is the worst of Duane important to see? Because if there’s hope for the worst of us, despair is only an excuse. Why is the best of Sette important to see? Because it’s not so very Best, and she needs to see all the room she has to get better.> They reunite with the macguffin for another battle.

Easy-peasy. But now let’s flesh out that first step and mark out the milestones:

engage and fight the wand’ring root, introducing their respective characters in very broad strokes

encounter the RBB, enter the crypt, still in-character, but each gradually starts to crack. Duane goes super violent, Sette shows fear

fight each other at the waystation, Duane’s veneer of civility is fully shattered by admitting he’s a closet cannibal with control issues, Sette’s veneer of roguishness is shattered by admitting she’s scared of failing her da

True selves semi-revealed, Sette has an adventure in town, starts trouble, leads to…

Duane battling Quigley, coming face to face with Alderode

Sette sneaks Duane over the border, enters his memories

By seeing who Duane truly was, Sette fully understands who he is now

During their fight the next day in the toyshop, Duane fully understands what Sette needs of him (he doesn’t fully understand who she is, he’s not as insightful as she is)

And bam, that’s how I outline. It’s a pretty simple structure when you lay it out like that, but then you start adding in B and C plots, two dozen secondary characters, and it becomes deceptively complex!

Otherwise yeah, figuring out where to move the plot forward, where to cut away to other storylines (and how much to devote to them), where to pause and meander for character building - that’s all the most difficult stuff. Most of us can sit around and write cute dialog or character studies all day - fanfiction is FULL of amateur writers who can do this marvellously - but the BEST and most successful writers are able to tell an engaging narrative with lots of moving parts and suspenseful story turns. Maybe they get panned because their prose isn’t elegant or maybe their characters are hackneyed - but they still sell mountains of books because they know how to keep readers turning pages by structuring a suspenseful story.

Good luck with that, ‘cause it’s the hardest part! And personally, I have particular considerations I have to make that you probably don’t have to in prose, particularly prose meant to be read all at once. I need to try and make each page at least mildly engaging and end on a hook wherever I can, since there’s no guarantee the reader is going to come back to progress the story in two days :D

This is for you, Rainwalker! You asked for it, baby!

The road infrastructure in Sharteshane must be appalling, good thing Rilursa can always count on GEICO Roadside Pickup :)

john berryman, this is a poem written from the pov of a sheep

Here's the full artwork I did for the upcoming Avatar concert! Thank you for having me🎶

Tour dates and info: https://avatarinconcert.com