Hello, Reader!
Let's talk a little about a moment from SHE WOLF #1 that shows off a writing technique that I like to teach.
Recently, I was looking at the book again, because I found my personal copy that I'd lost (copy 6 / 66) and added it to my archive.
In that issue, there's a moment where Lee, the She Wolf killer of the title, is about to slaughter her friend Dante in the woods.
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CA$7.00
She Wolf - Issue 1
SHE WOLF is a new comic series about Lee, a female serial killer who believes herself to be possessed by the spirit of... Read more |
In the early drafts of the book, she got down to business and then moved on to her real objective, which was to open a doorway and descend into Hell.
(You have to wait to find out what she wants out of a journey through Hell.)
One of the comments I got back about the script was that nobody could really understand WHY she was killing Dante.
Of course, there was a good reason for this confusion: I wasn't planning to reveal the full reasons until a later issue. I knew, for sure, that I didn't want to reveal the full reasons yet.
However, this kept flagging for people. I assessed the concern, then ignored it, at first. Then, within a week of each other, both Chris Staros (editor of Top Shelf Books) and Scott Snyder (most recently of ABSOLUTE BATMAN fame), who I had the strange luck to get looking at the script, separately gave the same note.
I realized that, even if I was still going to hold back the full reveal of Lee's motivation in the story, I had to at least give the reader a clear SCENE motivation. It had to make sense in the NOW of the story.
Is it not enough that a psychopathic killer wants to kill someone? Not really, because it doesn't answer the question of why THIS person, and why NOW. It does not answer the question of why HERE. It does not explain what's DIFFERENT about this kill. What makes it worth reading about vs. every other kill she's made.
The odd thing to understand is that readers don't really care about a character's motivations, just so long as they have three qualities. (1) They exist. (2) They have logic. (3) They don't contravene previous motivations.
Lee had previously been speaking to Dante in a way that showed she liked him. So why was she killing him? She needed to have a LARGER motivation in the scene that SUPERSEDED her previous motivation to NOT kill him and hang out with him.
How to get at that motivation without having it bog down the whole scene? After all, this comic was about Lee killing Dante, about action. Not about them talking about their feelings and her explaining all the reasons to him.
In short, I had identified the problem (with help from friends and mentors) and I had realized the solution (in concept), but I was stuck.
Coincidentally, Chris Staros is the editor of Alan Moore, and just worked on Moore's massive tome about magic and writing. As it happens, I was going through Moore's BBC Maestro class at the time, and in it Moore talks about a bunch of the ideas he would later put into that Top Shelf book.
All this reminded me that Lee was a witch, as well, and I had already decided the killing of Dante connected to the magic she was wielding. He was her sacrifice, and by definition we do what we DON'T WANT to do when we make a sacrifice. I needed to explain that to the reader.
So, how to explain it, in a way that helped the story and the scene, rather than dragging it all down?
Often, when I'm stuck, and trying to come up with ideas, I find it helpful to think through the OPPOSITE ideas. My ideas thus far were: (1) Lee would enjoy killing Dante, (2) Dante would try to escape Lee, (3) why this was all happening would remain a mystery.
I had already decided to reverse (3), at least enough to explain that Dante's sacrifice related to Lee's magic. What if I reversed (1)? What if, while she killed him, Lee apologized?
Of course, Dante would need to try to escape, at least at first. But what about when that became clearly a waste of effort? When he was face to face with his killer? What would he say?
Again, I came up with a host of ideas, all of which I rejected for one reason or another. Finally, I went back to my technique of asking, "What if I did the opposite of these ideas?"
What was the opposite of trying to reason with your killer? The opposite of begging them to spare you?
Weirdly, I decided, it would be to ask them for help. As if some other person was killing you. In a sense, that was what was happening: the SHE WOLF had come for Dante, and he was asking Lee for help.
Even though he knew they were the same person, in his panic and the chaos and the pain, he would call on his friend Lee for help.
This gets us into Lee's apology/explanation. Like the reader might be, Lee is confused. "Help you? I need you to help me."
Then she lands the killing blow.
Try the opposite!!!
Stay strange,
Jonathan
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CA$7.00
She Wolf - Issue 1
SHE WOLF is a new comic series about Lee, a female serial killer who believes herself to be possessed by the spirit of... Read more |
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