Three Drafts Video Review

Finished Draft Two

There are twenty-five stapled packets sitting in front of me. Each packet contains between ten and twenty five pages. All tallied there are 428 pages. The stack is about four inches high (due to the fact that each page has pictures scotch taped to it). I am thrilled, happy, excited, nervous (what if my house burns down and I lose five months of work?), and eager to begin work on Draft Three.

Dr. Q has left the classroom and the TA has taken his place (panel 1) doing a wrap up. In the final edit I hope to draw walls, doors, backgrounds, full bodies seated/walking around, and in color. I also plan on giving pink slips to many of these stand ins and replacing them with full time actors more suited to the roles. Doing this casting will be a big challenge. How does one know what physical features cohere with the character of the characters? I don't know, yet.

The Serendipity Factor

I can’t believe I haven’t yet described the serendipity factor in writing this graphic novel. Every time I sit down to adjust this second draft I stumble upon some unforeseen witticism, plot twist, or character nuance. Here are some examples.

I just finished EU23 which begins with, “Cast your bread upon the water.” In response I wrote in Draft One these random word balloons, “Do I detect a note of optimism here?” “All these weeks of doom and gloom and Dr. Q is finally offering some practical advice.” “The generous person gets lucky.” “The person with many investments increases their odds of return.” And then the final panel, “Hey, turn off your music. This just got good.”

As pure text it’s boring as can be. But when I attached characters to those word balloons magic happened. One of the characters is named Rich, the money lovin’ guy. Those word balloons fit him perfectly in several ways.

• Dr. Q’s words agree with Rich’s values.
• It’s fitting that Rich and Dr. Q finally agree on something. As I bring this novel in for a landing we’re tying up loose ends of how these lectures have impacted each student. It’s been 381 pages of battle between Dr. Q and Rich.
• The narrative took a happy twist when one student (Rich) pitched to a fellow student (wearing headphones) the importance of what Dr. Q is saying. It’s a gradual but very important part of the story. Rather than telling readers some students are agreeing with Dr. Q, I’m showing it.

Serendipity number two: In a squabble between the feminist 

and the militarist I had this exchange in draft one:

She: I think you are an elitist snob.

He: You are an anarchist!

Which morphed into:

She: I think you’re elitist!

He: You’re an anarchist!

Which morphed into:

She: You’re an elitist!

He: Anarchist!

Which morphed into:

She: Elitist!

He: Anarchist!

Why didn’t I simply begin with one word jabs at each other? Because I’m not that good a writer. Some writers would know to economize; I start wordy and pare down.

A third serendipity: On page 375 Dr. Q begins by saying, “A feast is made for laughter; wine makes life merry.” In the earlier draft I bootlegged a quote from Charles Dickens and put it in the mouth of the heavy drinker. “Let’s fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship and pass the rosy wine.” Initially this was my homage to Dickens and a way to spiff up the brains of my students. On second thought, I expunged the whole quote and feel much better. Less is more when there’s limited space for dialog.

Each time I experience a serendipity I get a buzz. At some point I may take pictures/scans of a page from draft one and arrange it next to draft two (improved text), and draft three (penciled drawings) and draft four (ink and color). But I haven’t started draft three yet…so this task will wait. I anticipate artistic serendipities when I begin illustrating. Please stand by.

Revised Time Line

In a previous post I mentioned I'd like to be done with Draft Two by May 15. That's only two weeks away. My self imposed deadline was overly ambitious!

Today I'm finishing EU17 (Ecclesiastes 7), page 272. I've still got 144 pages to go. Editing Draft One has been a fun but massive project since it was atrocious. Here are the challenges of creating Draft Two:

1. Characters: I wrote the words first and am now figuring out who said them. This task is sheer bliss but it's time consuming. God invented people in seven days. It takes me a little longer.
2. Character depth and consistency: My hope is to create characters readers care about. I gotta keep them "in character" and hopefully multidimensional (as if comic book characters can have depth).
3. Staging: who is on stage (in the panel), what's the fewest number of characters necessary to complete a thought unit, how often do I reveal a new character, and have characters storm out of classroom?
4. Text: the rough dialog in Draft One had potential. In Draft Two I'm sharpening the philosophy, theology, psychology, and humor sometimes eliminating the dialog entirely and rewriting from scratch.
5. Word balloons. I'm putting Publisher's Basic Shapes boxes around each text box. Six boxes per page times 272 pages (so far) is 1632 boxes too many! Again, highly time consuming. But this will save me having to hand draw them. Uniform and crisp text boxes will add a touch of gravitas and hopefully will subtlety accentuate the words; hand drawn boxes will be distracting.
6. Cutting and pasting. Rifling though my file of 20 characters, cutting out each face, scotch taping them to Draft Two is all very time consuming. 
7. Emailing. I do all this work on my lap top which is not hooked up to a printer. I therefore email finished files to my desk top (in the next room) and print hard copies there. 
8. Mulling. These first seven challenges are peppered with my ongoing inner dialog, "What's the time line of this thing? Do the characters change clothes? How do I get drop outs back into the classroom? How will Mr. Q respond when challenged by students? How will I divide the printed book? 416 Publisher pages will become 208 Paint pages. But there's no 208 page graphic novel. Do I print this as a four part trilogy? A ten part mini comic? Do I print hard copies at all or is it pure digital? Who will I get to proof read this? Do line editing? Evaluate the plot, humor, coherence, etc?"

Despite all these challenges...I'm still shooting for the May 15 deadline to complete Draft Two. 

I suspect I'm going to print a hard copy Draft Three on which I'll draw penciled layouts. (I'm anticipating the joy of designing pages, getting creative with panel shapes, and drawing detailed spreads of the whole class room). I dare not ink/color Draft Three however. That will be Draft Four. I'll give Draft Three to some folks for their feedback. Sigh....that puts me months behind schedule. Oh well. 

First Full Pages

I've been creating this graphic novel on Microsoft Publisher. Each phrase from Ecclesiastes is printed in the word balloon of the first of six panels on an 8.5" x 11" (landscape) page. My plan from the beginning was to clip and paste two landscape pages on top of each other in the Paint program. Having just reached page number 250 I thought I'd combine two landscape pages for the very first time.

Disclaimer: the faces are provisional, the word balloons need a new font (Comic Sans is over used) in all caps (as seems to be the industry standard) and they lack the tail thingy that lets readers know who is speaking. The coloring is haphazard, the pagination is convoluted (250 Publisher landscape pages = 125 Paint pages; not sure how to number them yet). My point in this exercise is to check the readability of the word balloons and to see if the background color makes them more legible. The text is in its second draft so further editing is in store.

Background. There are four characters in this thought unit, Mr Q (speaking the words of Ecclesiastes), the evangelical Christian girl who is sweet on the militaristic vet, both of whom are chided by the feminist with big hair.

Here are the results.

Addendum: Now that I see what a completed page looks like on screen I see I've got much more work to do to make it legible. I'd planned on posting the finished pages on this blog but I think I'll need my own domain name. That means more expense but after all the work I'm putting into this thing (30-40 hours a week) I want to show case the work in a quality way. Setting up web sites is relatively easy these days but I'm not yet ready to launch something new.

Progress Update and Boomer Reflections

After a difficult week slogging through EU5 (Eccl. 3:1-15), I finished touching up the gen-y-affirming script, carefully positioned and outlined each word balloon, and attached appropriate characters to all the word balloons. 

Sample page from EU5 (page 74)

Then this weekend I finished EU6 (Eccl. 3:16-22) with script and characters. I'm happy with the results, confident that another edit or two will make a good script even better. 

Sample page from EU6 (page 96)

I've printed EU 7 (Eccl. 4:1-12) and EU 8 (Eccl. 4:13-16) with placed and outlined word balloons awaiting dialog editing and assigning speakers to each word balloon (my delightful project this week). 


What slowed me down last week was the realization that the dialog I'd created was straight from my boomer brain and too antiquated for my intended audience (20 somethings). Thankfully, I've got a character (working name: Aging Hippie) who will be my voice concerning all things 60s related. 


Interestingly, I watched The Way this weekend. The main character, Martin Sheen, is a man in his 60s who traveled to Spain and he met a woman in her 20s (?) who was angry and said to Sheen,

"Hey Boomer! You know, as in Baby Boomer? You have all of the signs of that desperate generation taking its last breath trying to screw the rest of us over one last time. The only thing missing from you, Boomer, is one of those stupid looking pony tails and collection of James Taylor songs on your ipod."

He said, "I love James Taylor, and I don't have an ipod."

I was somewhat taken aback by this jab. Either I'm naive, or blessed with friendly acquaintances in their 20s. I'm not used to being the butt of another's animosity. With no recollection of any attempt on my part to screw anyone over I feel I've been unjustly criticized. (Maybe I'm being too sensitive; after all, she didn't say it to me).


On my next edit I plan on expunging all gen-y, off-putting comments from my ancient brain. To replace them perfectly I'd need to interview current university students but do not plan on doing so. This project is growing in size and I'm going to sacrifice perfect dialog in favor of completion. A graphic novel with less than perfect dialog is better than no graphic novel at all. 


First draft: 68 or 69 large pages with hand written dialog.
Second draft: Publisher pages with six panels and typed dialog.
Third draft: Publisher pages with polished dialog and Scotch taped characters (EU6 brought me to page 97).

The Characters Are Taking Shape

The last few days have been a blast creativity-wise.

The first draft of Ecclesiastes U contains many, many pages of word balloons each of which are filled with dialog. While writing that dialog I had no clue who the speakers were. I wrote without specific characters in mind. It was a stream of consciousness process. I’d read a phrase from Ecclesiastes in Mr. Q’s word balloon, then reflect, respond, and riff on each phrase, writing down my rough ideas like mad and eventually typing them into the Publisher template of six panels per page.

I'm now sorting through and categorizing those word balloons according to speaker. Some word balloons are best suited to the hedonist; others are best suited to the scientific materialist. Some to the Teacher’s Assistant. In the first 40 pages I’ve come up with 11 or 12 main categories of comment meaning I’ll now have 11 or 12 main characters.

Here’s a pictorial survey of the convoluted process of creating words before pictures.

Here's page 11 of the first rough draft; speakers of each word balloon are unidentified

I drew a dozen or so random cartoon faces using a brush pen; the final drawing
will be rendered in Micron .05 pen and then colored with Prisma Color pencils.

I cut and pasted those faces onto sheets for easy clipping

I scotch taped faces to appropriate word balloons in each panel (pages 1-40, so far)

FYI: The guy in the first panel is Mr. Q. Panels 2, 3, and 6 is a rapper (Hispanic or black, haven't decided yet). Panels 3 and 4 is a cartoon depicting the Teacher's Assistant. As mentioned, there's no guarantee the final characters will look anything like this. 

I was always under the impression one created characters with values, histories, temperaments, and idiosyncrasies first. Then writers put those characters together in a variety of situations and let chemistry do the rest.

I on the other hand reversed the sequence. I first juxtapose the philosophy of Ecclesiastes with the musings of university students. This in turn creates reactions of puzzlement, anger, outrage, confusion, humor, and so forth. And then finally, to make sense of those reactions, I isolate the speakers according to character.

Here’s the challenge: Those thumbnail sketches look nothing like the final character, size, gender, age, facial hair, hair dos, or attire. Their facial expressions are inert and they’re all talking heads. The finished product will include wide angle shots, long shots, close ups, facial expressions, full body action (in a classroom), and color. These thumbnail sketches are useful to distinguish one speaker from another but I am working hard not to allow these pictorial references influence how the final characters will look.

This is all wonderfully complicated. If there is an easier way to create graphic novels I don’t know it…which is understandable. I’ve never drawn one before. 

Let the Editing Begin!

I've laid aside my 69 hand drawn pages with doodles, scribblings, and first draft text and am now working exclusively with the 25 Publisher files, each page of which has six panels.

The first of those 25 files was opened this week for the first time since I wrote it last December. As mentioned, I did NOT review what I wrote on purpose; I wanted to "flesh out" the whole narrative arc first.

That first file (named EU1) contains the text from Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 and is 19 pages long. Here's what I'm discovering.

1.  One of the characters in this fictional graphic novel speaks text that I did not write. This is perhaps unique in story writing. I am given dialog I cannot change, alter, or edit. Mr. Q speaks and I deal with it.

2.  As a writer I react to, interact with, and make my actors act upon Mr. Q's words. Think of a grain of sand in an oyster....I hope to create pearls around that often aggravating irritation.

3.  The me who interacts with Mr. Q has one brain, but that brain has neural multiplicity. Just like a shopper looks at a used car through various lenses (cost, mileage, color, MPG, leg room), I looked at Mr. Q's words through a variety of lenses, none of which was explicit or discreet. I just read quip from Mr. Q and jotted whatever came to mind. After 3 months I came up with 400+ pages of random reactions.

4.  Now that I'm revisiting my random reactions I'm sorting through them, bunching them according to common themes, and shaping characters from those common themes. For example, many student quotes were silly, off the cuff comments (like Chandler on Friends). Other quotes were absurdly serious, deferring, and loyal to Mr. Q (like Dwight Shrute on the Office). Still other quotes were panicky and reactive (think of the anxious Chicken Little). There is also an aging hippie, a vegan foodie, and a scientific materialist who embraces atheism. There are also bit parts played by an agnostic, Earnest Hemingway, a pregnant student, and even me in a cameo role (a conceit I copy from Alfred Hitchcock).

5. This seems like an odd way to create characters. I've never taken a creative writing course or asked any novelists how they come up with their characters. Maybe they all start with words/point of view and then figure out age, gender, costume, back story, and appearance later. I somehow had the notion that writers start with a body and give it attitude and then words; I'm staring with words, giving the speaker of those words attitude, and someday will flesh them out in 2-D. (If this were a play or movie it'd be 3-D).

6.  As I plow through those 19 pages of random quips and quotes I'm adjusting the size of the word balloons so they are uniform (Publisher has a nifty "shapes" tool which I use to outline the text boxes with round edged rectangles). I'm also mindful of pagination; I'll start EU2 with page 20.

7.  I then printed a paper copy of those 19 pages and read and reread them all in one sitting trying to imagine the flow, how this narrative arc is getting launched, and the trajectories that are being established. Since this is the first scene, readers will be making many important assumptions, so I gotta get 'em right. I want all the loose threads to eventually be tied up.

8. The decision to not draw anything yet (faces, rooms, desks, lap tops, costume, etc) forces me to stick with character development via ideas. I'm imagining characters as pure thought (like Plato's or Jung's arch types). Only later will the word become flesh (or in this case, ink).

9.  Since I do not plan on including any chapter divisions (a decision I may reverse), I do plan on helping readers distinguish each passage (what Bible scholars call a pericope) by coloring the backgrounds differently. In the case of EU1, text 1:1-8a will have a different color background from 1:8b-11.

10.  Editing text on paper is easier for me than on a screen. Seeing my dialog on a page as future readers will see it (the finished product will be a book, not an eBook--another decision I may reverse), I have greater empathy with my readers. Consequently, I'm astonished at how much editing I did on EU1. The text is now (so it seems in this moment) crisper, snappier, and funnier. This is evolution at work; much of the first creation survived, but natural selection has not been kind to many other of those first words--extinction! The remaining words are fit for survival. During this geologic era at least.

It strikes me just now (as it often does when I mix metaphors or create clunky prose) that if I were an English teacher teaching creative writing I'd love to stumble upon this blog wherein students can listen to one guy's creative process.

But then, I've been overly influenced by that nutty quote by Edgar Allan Poe, "If you find yourself being burned at the stake be sure to jot down all your experiences." I not only love to create but I love to describe the creative process, an experience very unlike torture.

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2 (second draft)

Tasks Accomplished So Far

I've read six commentaries on Ecclesiastes as well as a number of related works (I'm currently reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and just finished Tom Sawyer where Mark Twain puts in Huck Finn's mouth these Ecclesiastic-like words, "Bein' rich aint what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and  sweat and sweat and wishin' you was dead all the time").

I've plotted the "story line" of the graphic novel as follows:

Setting: university classroom packed with students of all and no philosophical/theological persuasions.

Professor: Mr. Q. Q stands for Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes.

Dialog: Mr. Q will stand in front of the class and his word balloons will contain every word/phrase of Ecclesiastes. Readers (hopefully) won't know his "lecture" is really taken from a written manuscript; few things are as boring as listening to someone read their speech. Students will then discuss with each other their impressions, reactions, and puzzlement over Mr. Q's unorthodox philosophy.

Title: I began calling the graphic novel ANGST 101. I then changed it to HAPPINESS 101. I dropped that and settled on ECCLESIASTES U. This is subject to change as well but that's the working title at present.

Humor: I'm no Conan O'Brien but I do aspire to balance the pessimism of Mr. Q's lectures with the wit and wisdom of class members.

Layout: As I create this classroom dialog between Mr. Q and a variety of students, I'm typing text into six panels in Publisher 8.5" x 11" (landscape). Mr. Q gets first panel, each of his sentences beginning with a capital Old English font. Student reactions take up the remaining five panels. Here's a sample taken at random.

Current status:  I have written the dialog for Ecclesiastes chapters 1-6. I've six chapters to go.