LNH: 58.5 #6

[Martin Phipps]

On Jul 11, 11:54 pm, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some of you outside the Authors group may not know, but I have
> two limits for this series, as I'm using it as an exercise in
> writing discipline (preparing to return to professional
> writing).  First, I'll write at least one a month; which hasn't
> been a problem yet, as this stuff pretty much writes itself :-)
> And second, each one will be between 400 and 500 lines, not
> counting the credits section and bonus feature (if any).
>
> This part is what caused this issue to show up almost two weeks
> later than I wanted.  It seems, by some bizarre effect worthy of
> happening in the Looniverse myself, I would write, write, and
> the thing would never get longer, no matter how much content I
> crammed into it.  In the end, I came up with the Transformers
> spoof, and moved up the actual encounter with the Lion Pack that
> was supposed to be in the next issue.  It was hard to make it
> "fit", without pushing the story forward too much faster than I
> planned -- after all, there's a pace to be kept here!
>
> Overall, I'm finally happy with the result; if it took me a long
> time to get where I wanted, it also resulted in a story-packed,
> even story-crammed issue.  It really does advance the plot(s) in
> a number of ways, although that may not be apparent yet.
>
> However, I'm the writer.  It's ok for me to like it :-P If you
> disagree, if you think it sucked, by all means let me know.

It was okay.  It's a bit off formula though.  I mean, everything seems
like a set up for next issue.  When I studied English in high school,
I was told that a story has a major climax and minor climaxes along
the way.  I didn't spot a minor climax in this issue.  The thing to do
is, rather than set things up and then leave things hanging until next
issue, have a cliffhanger follow a minor climax in which a minor
problem gets resolved and then DA DA! something new pops up out of
nowhere and you have to wait until next issue to see what happens
next: it's a compromise between writing self contained stories for
each issue and maintaining a sense of continuity between issues and
making readers come back for more.  It's also a big problem with
mainstream comics because they are writing for trades nowadays so a
lot of issues really are just set up and people who read the issues
monthly and have to wait another month to see how things turn out
might end up feeling empty, feeling that nothing has really happened.

Martin