Chris Howard's Writing & Art

New blog link

Please update your links. My new blog is here:

Chris Howard's Writing & Art

 

How do you eat underwater?

Food wasn’t high on the list of difficulties to tackle for a series of books about people from the sea, with at least half the action taking place deep underwater. If I divided up my world-building time for the Seaborn books more than half of it would go to undersea combat and the kinds of powers, “bleeds”, magic, breathing, as well as sorting out their limitations, how they are passed to children, and other details. Most of the other half was in cultural development, cities, history, interaction with the surface, social structure, why a people who are apparently successful have such a low population—in the millions.

But food proved to be more difficult than combat. Even if there’s magic involved in making things work in a fight, it can be applied to the weapon once. Everyone in battle-space doesn’t need to perform something crazy three times a day in order to sustain their strength and stop their tummies rumbling. Right off the bat I imagined—given their technology and powers—you could reduce friction and drag in the water for edged weapons and bolts from crossbows, and spearguns, so that battles didn’t look like thousands of free-falling astronauts spinning and fumbling in slow motion, taking mad swings at each other. And everyone looking stupid rather than dangerous or fierce.

Food wasn’t as easy to figure out. On the surface, Kassandra—the main character—can go to Starbucks or stop in for sushi and sashimi at Shizuko’s in Hampton. She was raised on the surface, but when she gets underwater and sees what the seaborn have out for what appears to be an edible arrangement, she’s disgusted by it. No potato chips, no bagels, no coffee. Just these little lumps or wrapped packages of something she has no need to try.

Raw fish, sliced and presented neatly, was an obvious choice because it didn’t require cooking and you could eat it with fingers—it worked underwater. But it was too obvious, too simple, and they can’t live on raw fish alone. In a typical surface kitchen you turn on the stove, you heat water, you make some pasta. In another pot you’re making a sauce. You serve it onto plates and you eat with forks, spoons, knives, chopsticks, sporks, fingers. Easy. In the deep ocean where the seaborn live I was looking at extreme temperatures, complete darkness, with most of the abyss cold, and water around hydrothermal vents reaching 800 F/426 C and NOT boiling because of the immense pressure. I had plumbing in seaborn cities to pipe this water and heat anywhere I wanted, but how do you cook with it? Food wrapped in ceramic containers, leaves? Where do those come from? Firing and glazing clay sounds difficult underwater. The seaborn have light—can make it—and so they can grow seaweeds, hundred-foot tall macrocystis—the large kelp forests you always see in video off the coast of California. Leaves were in, and they’re entirely plausible because that’s a common enough method for cooking on the surface, with food wrapped and steamed inside cabbage leaves, grape leaves, and others. Fish was clearly a center course—cooked or not, with many options for vegetable-like dishes.

I didn’t take eating much further than this in the three books because food didn’t play enough of a role in the plot, but it surprised me how much trouble it caused—more than breathing underwater, pressure, darkness, and combat, all of which could be handled with sufficient technology—or magic. Looking back, I wish I had given eating—especially the social aspect of gathering around food and drink—more thought. My logic went something like dolphins don’t know thirst and they don’t drink anything their entire lives, so why would the seaborn? I went with a limited approach to developing their eating conventions and left it at that—with some jabs by Kassandra and others about how unappealing their food was.

Overall it was the complexity around something as simple as what do you eat underwater that got me. The ocean’s a complex environment made up of many layered environments, and many are radically different meters apart. And stories set there have to deal with the environment. Even with something as complex as underwater acoustics, with negative thermoclines and capacity for changing over long distances I just had to do my research and let it play. Sound travels almost five times faster underwater than it does through the air, but apparently there’s no fast food in the deep. At least I didn’t find any.

 

Fear of Flying

Spent several hours painting yesterday, exploring a new story idea and some characters.  Here's where it is so far--the full work and a crop below:

I just found this link on Guy Kawasaki's G+ stream.  Everything you need to know about starting and operating a street food business in NYC, and I was thinking there's no end to the stories that can come out of being a street vendor in the City. Meeting hundreds of people every day, some of them regulars. The protag—the owner of the food truck or pushcart--can be a retired private investigator, an alien, a vampire, an impatient classically trained chef with a love for yakitori. Think what you can do with humor, information gathering, a front for crime or the CIA, horror--a street food vendor on Sept. 11.  What if we turn this vampire/undead thing on its head and suddenly every book and magazine publisher is getting dozens of stories centered on the street food business in NYC?  That would be worth writing and submitting a couple stories itself.

Who's with me?

Start here:
http://newyorkstreetfood.com/10085/the-basics-of-starting-a-street-food-business/

Go write something!

Seaborn Family Tree - and some free elements

I've been playing with the idea of doing a fancy version of Kassandra's family tree for a while--it was a scribbled on page in my journal for a while, and then a quick colored version of it in photoshop, but here's the result of trying to make it look good. (This all comes from Seaborn and Sea Throne if you're wondering--and, hey, if you're wondering, go buy the book--available in print, Kindle and iBooks!)

Want to make your own tree?

Family Tree Elements in PNG and PSD format.  Get'em while they're hot!

Seaborn Family Tree Elements:  PSD (4.4mb) or PNG (1.6mb)

(Click on the PNG link above to see what the template looks like)

Here's Kassandra's Family Tree--click for the full view:

.

 

 

Saltwater Witch - chapter 8 and 9

Okay, it's taken me way too long, but everything's almost back in place.  It's not entirely what I want it to be--or wanted it to be, but it's there, some of it reworked, repainted, redrawn...some of it not.  I have half of one more chapter to put up, and then it's on to the new stuff.

Go to Saltwater Witch

If you haven't seen Saltwater Witch in a while, here's what it looks like.

.

Tutorial 1 - writing and illustrating manga, comics, graphic novels

A while back—sometime over the summer—I started thinking about writing and recording video for some tutorials on writing and illustrating comics, manga, graphic novels. 

Unfortunately, the 3.4 million other things I have up in the air got together and conspired against this idea.  But not until I wrote most of a Tutorial One.  It's been sitting in storage for a couple months, collecting dust. 

I don't know how useful it is in this state, but I thought I'd just post it and see what happens.  If there's enough response, I can certainly be convinced to do more.  If not, I hope this is helpful!

So...

My overall goal is was to create a set of tutorials that will be helpful to a lot of people.  I'm going to use concrete examples, but I am hoping to include enough general knowledge that most of this can be applied to any kind of visual storytelling format or style.

I'm also starting from scratch.

I've written a new story and chosen a graphical style, and they may or may not be anything like the things you're doing, but again, I hope to include methods and steps that will work for most comic and manga artists and writers. 

If I'm missing something or not digging deep enough, I'd love to hear from you.  I'd also like to hear any suggestions you have for the current tutorial as well as ideas for future tutorials—like what would you like me to focus on?

Here's a little bit of background—some highlights about what I've done before we get started: I'm an author and illustrator.  My first novel Seaborn came out summer 2008 from Juno Books.   I have several short stories in print and online zines, including one in the June issue Fantasy Magazine.  On the illustration side, I have some pen and ink work in issue 10 of Shimmer, and I've written and illustrated the weekly graphic novel Saltwater Witch for a couple years.  Okay, I'm sort of newbish in certain areas, and I'm hoping to learn as much as anyone from putting together this series of tutorials.

I plan to dig into lots of things, but I probably won't spend too much time with drawing and coloring techniques.  Lots of great tutorials out there already.  I assume you already love to draw, may even have your own web comic, or are working on a graphic novel.  Even if you don't, these tutorials should add to what you already know, and may even get you started—or at least get you thinking about different aspects of visual storytelling.

How is this structured?  Here's how I envision the tutorial series.  You can tell me if this works. 

I'm not going to start with a work in progress, but with a completely new comic.  I already have a complete story in mind.  I have characters, plot, style, some initial sketching done, and I'm going to build each tutorial from the progress I make.  Here's how I hope things go: you get to see--in real time--what I see, and I'm going to document what I do, why I do it, when, and even how in most cases.  I'm going to post my complete written story before we really dig into creating a graphical version, so you can read it and know where things need to go along with me.  I'm going to go through my own exercises for pulling out dialogue, developing scenes, building suspense, showing emotions, and driving the storyboarding and design from the plot.  I also have a few tutorials planned on cover design, character development, and storytelling in general.

Okay, let's get started.

I like to start with a story.  Even if it's not a completely filled out story, you should have a clear story arc, a beginning that pulls the reader in, a middle full of action, an ending that ties most things up for the reader.  And all of this done with compelling characters.

I'm starting with a story based on a couple chapters in Sea Throne (the sequel to Seaborn), with an existing character, Nikasia of the Kirkelatides.  She's pretty badass.  One of her family's claims is to be descendants of the goddess Kirke (Circe). 

I'm not going to go too far into the story right now, but before I get to the tutorial on storyboarding, I'll lay enough of it out for you, with a synopsis and the full text of the story, so you can see everything--as much as I can.  I think that will make it easier to understand why I'm selecting specific scenes, characters, and paths through the plot. At the same time, I'd like to hear from you—post on my blog or email me.  Go to SaltwaterWitch.com for my email, links to my blog, and other stuff.

So, here's what I think I need to get started--in no particular order, because I think you need them all.  For this first tutorial, I'm going to focus on 2 through 4, but I'll give you enough of the story to get going:

 

1. Story (at least a clear story arc)

2. Hook for your opening scene

3. A very clear look, voice, and motivation for your main character.

4. Establish where and when the story takes place as early as possible

 

I even have a working title for my story:  Syren Tears.

I'm not sure if this is the final title, but it works for now—and on a few levels.  Syren gives the reader the impression that the story is probably about the sea and may have a female main character—mythical sirens were female.  I'm going with a funny archaic spelling of Syren to distinguish my syren from the purely romantic or seductress aspects of the word—focusing on the much more fun ship-wrecking and destructive aspects instead.

On to the story:

Let's start with the core idea. You should be able to boil everything down to something like this--in one line:

 

Syren Tears is the story of a vengeance-driven descendant of the goddess Circe, who learns something important about the nature of revenge and what a destructive cycle it can become.

 

This is the heart of the story.  I've distilled it all down to this one line, leaving out important plot points like the chain, a time and place, and characters like the dragon and that fisherman's son.  I didn't even mention the main character's name.  You could, but unless the name is important to the plot, at this level, I'd just leave it out.

The important thing here is to understand that even at this level you can see what the reader has to experience and realize before everything's done—that this "vengeance-driven" character is going to learn something valuable, and when she does, it should be important enough for the reader feel that the story is complete, or maybe even to think, "I hope she learned that lesson."

That's enough of the story to go on—more when we dig into plot mining—that's the process of going through the story and determining what absolutely needs to be shown to the reader to drive the plot, and what can be left out.

I put Hook second on the list.  This is about hooking your readers, showing enough to get them into the story, giving them more questions than answers. 

My own preference for writing is to make sure the reader comes out of the first scene or chapter thinking, "I need to know more about this character or place" and I even like to push the reader into thinking, "what the hell just happened?"

A balance somewhere between the two is probably best. You do not want to raise so many questions that the story appears inaccessible or bewildering.  You also don't want to come anywhere near answering most of the questions raised. 

When I say "questions", I mean what's going through the reader's mind at each step through your art and dialogue.  The reader's mind is going to ask a lot and take in even more than most of us think—raising questions about details like hair and clothing styles, ways of speaking, details in the background, colors, facial expressions—like why is the main character smiling when she clearly should be scared?

You want intrigue, you want to build interest in your world and in your characters, but you also want to leave a lot of gaps—especially in the beginning. 

What's the hook for Syren Tears?

I think in most stories you want a "hook", something sharp, shocking, interesting, or perplexing to draw the reader in.  The opening hook I've come up with for the opening scene in Syren Tears is my main character turning in circles, cart-wheeling in the ocean somewhere, scowling straight out from the frame, and the word "DEAD" repeated over and over.

I sketched a quick set of ideas for the opening panels, and then went through each one with some detail:

 

 

I'd like to hear what you think, but to me this seemed like a nice way to get readers into the story—one out of a million possibilities, but I grabbed this one up, and I'm going with it. 

In a matter of seconds, readers get enough to understand where things are happening—in the ocean (see the sharks?), may even grasp the when, judging by how contemporary they see her clothes.  This is clearly a woman who looks angry, is thinking, repeating the word, or in some way surrounded by the idea of "DEAD". 

It also raises a lot of questions, like what's up with the word "DEAD" and why is she obsessing over it?  Who is this woman?  Why are her eyes orange?  Why is she so angry?  What the hell's she doing in the water?  Why isn't she afraid of those sharks?  Why, why, why.

That's exactly what we want from the reader at this point.

As the artist and storyteller, it's your job to get your readers to ask these questions.  And you definitely don't want to answer them all at once.  When all the questions are answered, the reader closes the book and goes home.  Keep the questions coming in your reader's head by dropping a steady stream of hints, plot devices, dialogue and other story elements.

But not too many.

It's the balance between these two—readers understanding just enough about what's happening with questions piling up—that pulls them into the next scene or chapter—looking for answers.  On one level, storytelling is all about keeping that balance, dropping hints for questions on the front when the ones on the back have been pulled off and answered.

Point number 3 in the list of things I'm going to cover in this tutorial is about establishing a clear look, voice and motivation for your main character.

In my mind, the "look" is about two things, the style and reproducibility.  Unlike Saltwater Witch, which is a painted style, rich shaded colors, some lines showing through, heavy use of the palette knife, with Syren Tears, I'm going with a flat look, solid colors, very little shading, and scene depth in a few distinct layers.  You probably already have a favorite style, or one in which you're comfortable working.

The second part of "look" is about the artist's ability to consistently draw or paint the same characters over and over with a range of expressions, clothing, and action.  I added this to "look" because this is a particular problem of my own.  All you brilliant comic artists out there, I envy you the skill of consistency, your ability to make a character look alike page after page.  For this reason, I'm going with the simpler style with Syren Tears.

On to a character's voice.

Voice is about consistency, too.  It's also about character development and plausibility—the belief your readers have in your character's actions and manner and words.   It's not just about how a character sounds, but the words and actions your character uses and performs. 

Here's a very obvious example: If you've already established that Dwight doesn't know anything about cars, it will throw the reader off when Dwight starts talking about engines and replacing a camshaft sensor.

But voice is much more than that.

I have to think about this some more, but it seems like one aspect of voice is the written analog to consistency in the way characters appear.  So, voice is consistency in the way characters behave and speak.  When you read a novel, and you think "this doesn't sound like Angela" you could say the writer "lost Angela's voice" for that chapter or line of dialogue.

So this is one more thing to keep in mind: readers will notice even subtle differences in appearance and tone in the way characters look, act and speak.

The character development aspect of "voice" is around making the dialogue work for your character.  The way your characters speak to each other establishes them in the reader's mind.  Part of me wants to tell you not to waste words, because it's powerfully crazy what you can fit into one line of dialogue.

Here's an example:

 

"Yeah, I didn't think this would work either, but then Zeke showed up with his toolbox and like a kilo of C4."

 

You don't know who said this, or why, or in answer to what, but let's look at what's been said...really said.

 

Yeah –you just know the character is youngish, maybe twenties, casual, especially when combined with the "like" a kilo of C4.

 

The fact that this character appears to be comfortable talking about a kilo of C4 (explosives) and that things are now expected to "work" because of it, tells us a lot.

 

What does the "I didn't think this would work either" phrase  mean?  It could mean this is a fairly reasonable person, who thinks things through, who projects some kind of outcome, and then weighs what he or she knows to determine if it's worth pursuing.  It could be this character is a pessimist, and thinks most things will fail.

Overall, it tells us you'll just have to read on to find out.

There's so much the writer in you can put into motion in the reader's head with one line of dialogue.  Don't miss any opportunity to plant the hints and details about who or what's going on.  Don't answer every question—a few of them is okay.  As long as you're giving the reader more to wonder about.  Don't beat the reader over the head with info dumps.  Readers are smart.  They pick these things up.

And to wrap up, a tiny bit about character motivation.

The story teller needs to know what drives a character.  I don't think you need the reader to know everything in your main character's head.

In fact, by the end of the first scene, I think readers should have a hint, just enough to give them an impression of direction and drive in your character. 

Motivation is tricky for several reasons.  For readers to really buy into your character's drive, they may need to be with your characters for a while.  You should expect that, and in that case you may want to take your time divulging everything.  One the other hand, in many many stories the motivation is a reaction to whatever the bad guy's doing. 

If you take away one thing from this tutorial, it's that the bad guy will be driving much of your plot.  It's the bad guy who wants to take over the world and your hero is the one who's in place to stop him.  It's the bad guy who has wronged your heroine, emptied her bank account, broken her arm, hacked her iPad, stole the most valuable thing in her life.  What's she going to do?  Hmmm...  That's right.  Go after him in a big way, get her stuff back, and if possible, hand the bad guy a big plate of justice.

Back to my example story, Syren Tears.  I love internal struggles more than any other plot type.  You may have noticed in my one line core story description, I don't mention an enemy.  That's because it's inside the heroine Nikasa.  She is both the good force and bad force in this story, and the clash is entirely with herself.  Her out-of-all-proportion drive for vengeance is what gets her into trouble, and what drives her to act.

In some ways, this makes the story more difficult to tell.  Let's see if I can pull it off.

Okay, that's it for tutorial 1, an intro and a first scene overview—but a lot of ground covered very shallowly.  I hope I didn't bore the crap out of you, and hope that you'll check out the next tutorial!

 

web: www.SaltwaterWitch.com

email: [email protected]

Writing process at a high level

I sent off the final manuscript today.  I can't tell you the title...because it's a secret.   I can tell you this is my sixth novel, it took me a little over three months to write, it's YA contemporary fantasy, set mostly in California--and it's very California.  Except for that bit in Nova Scotia. 

I finished this book in June, put it away for a couple weeks, and then picked it up again for an edit pass in the middle of July, handing out copies to a few readers, including my daughter Chloe, who is like a reading machine. She reads twice as a fast as I can, with complete comprehension.  So, when I give her a book, she'll have it done in one day with feedback the following day.  Crazy.  I think she should be an editor.  Or a lawyer.  She's pretty good at arguing her points and suggestions. 

I wrote this book almost entirely in the Pages app on my iPad, using the dockable keyboard.  (Yes, the on screen keyboard is impressive for what it is, but it would be torture to have to write a book on it).  This was an experiment, and I have to say it was completely successful.

At a high level, here are the steps I take to write a book. 

1. Idea.  We all have story ideas, and they can spring into our heads at any time.  I keep a journal so I don't lose them.  Story ideas are all around us.  Look at this (Mystery trader buys all Europe's cocoa beans) and this (Man detained at airport with 18 monkeys) and you try to convince me the news isn't full of stories.  You don't even have to look very hard.

2. Characters.  I always--always--draw or paint my main characters at least once (See my painting at the end of this post for a typical character study).  I think it's necessary to see what your characters look like.  If you don't want to draw them, find people in the world who look like your characters, and use those--cut them out of magazines, do a google images search and print them out.  I also interviewed my primary characters in this book, which really helps to nail down personality and motive--which then drive the plot. Here's a tip: if you're stuck on a particular scene, stop writing the story and interview the characters involved in the scene, pretend you're the director of a movie and you've said "cut" to take dinner break. Even better, pretend you're an outsider who's wandered onto the set and doesn't know anything about the story. Write it all down. Ask them questions, and answer in the characters' voices--why do you have blood on your hands, what's with that ridiculous t-shirt--don't you ever wear anything nice?

3. Plotting.  I usually write my query at this phase of the process--and I always write a query, at least a paragraph in language that sells the story.  Even if you have an agent who will do his or her own pitching, or you're writing this for a proposal that's already signed, it's important to give everyone including yourself the means to briefly tell your story to someone else. 

4. Writing.  This also includes some plotting because unless you're an outline god who can document every footstep of every character before the first line goes on the paper, there's just no way the concrete of your plot is entirely dry when you start writing.  (At least that's the case with me).  I always leave some sea room to maneuver in the outline.  That said, I started this book with a mostly clear and complete plot, with less room to wiggle than I've ever left before. 

5. Put the manuscript away for a little while.  Go off and write a short story or two.

6. Do an edit pass.  Read your story all the way through, make corrections, cut, move, expand scenes, scratch your head over that paragraph that makes no sense.  Every book I've written has at least one of these.

7. Print out some reading copies.  Get some feedback on plot, characters, everything.  Print out the book because you will see and read your words differently on paper.  My standard reading format is two columns per page.  I usually do this in Word.  I'll format the whole thing into two columns with a .2 inch gutter, Times Roman, italics, no underlining.  I guarantee that you will find textual problems that would go right by on the screen.

8. Read aloud.  To yourself, or even better to your friends, spouse, kids, complete strangers.

9. Second edit pass. 

10. Format the manuscript.

11. Send to your agent, editor, submit query to publisher, all that other good stuff.

12.  Go back to step one.

Here's the original sketch and painting I did for this book, with my POV character in the middle:

Go tell a story!

Comic / manga / graphic novel tutorials...

Just so it's clear that I wasn't totally slacking off over the weekend, I'm posting a bit from a series of comic/manga/graphic novel tutorials I'm creating—as much to help me learn more as to share anything I have learned with everyone else.

This is a new story--still under the sea, but with a character from Sea Throne.  I'm starting from scratch, with a new drawing book, new style, taking this one step at a time, and documenting each with video and drawing and story building. 

Looking at Youtube and all over the Web, there are a bunch of drawing tutorials—so I'm not going to tackle that. I'm also probably at the stage with drawing and painting where I'm learning more than I could ever teach. 

One thing I can contribute is the storytelling, taking an existing story, breaking it up, doing the storyboarding, going through the steps, making tutorials out of the processes I've been using for a couple years with Saltwater Witch. 

Please send along suggestions, anything you think would be cool to cover in a tutorial.

I want these tutorials to work and appear somewhat polished, so I'm putting some planning into them (yeah, I know, that's unusual).  More on all of this later in the week.  I'm expecting to post the first one next weekend.

In the meantime...some panels of the opening scene in the works, with the first two showing my main character Nikasia and the style I'm going with for art, characters, and color. 

.

Tweaking and atmospherics

Spent more time tweaking and expanding this piece, raising the sky and strengthening the background, light and shadow, atmosphere.  I think I'm done.  Definitely a story to tell in this scene--a whole book in fact.  What do you think?

.