#dethkomic does writing

[dethkomic]

I just wanted to congratulate you on doing something I wish I knew how to do better, and that thing is to make characters have a slow burn on a long term basis. I love how you can tell that Skwisgaar is in love but not saying it and I love how Pickles never told Cherry his feelings but that he never really had to. You are a great writer and it's a releif to know there is more comic coming after this. Keep up the good work!

Gosh, thanks, man. That is high praise. There will be much more for me to write on this subject at a later date, but until then, I also got this ask, which can also be tied into an answer I can give for the time being...

So first-ish... yes. Will be doing more tutorials and that includes the metaphor/theme tutorial I have wanted to do for a while. Tricky business, those, so I wanna be able to devote a few hours to writing it instead of throwing together a quick response in an ask. Been a busy time for me, and just getting the 'komics out have pushed me to my limits for a while -- Thanks for understanding. :)

Second-ish... Writing all of these things successfully comes down to one factor, I think -- and that's leaving space.

If you're a writer, then you've no doubt heard the term "show, don't tell", and the whole concept of leaving space in a work of fiction is kinda the same thing, but in reverse. In this case, you're actively choosing not to show something, in order for the audience to put the pieces together for themselves. It looks like this:

Writers often think it's their duty to spell out every single detail of what's happening, or what has happened in a story. They worry that, in the name of pacing, they're not going to have time for everything. But pacing is a more nuanced thing - it's not about having time for every single thing as much as it is giving the important things the correct amount of time. This includes leaving out things which are unimportant enough that they can be inferred or assumed to have happened by the reader. This includes things that the reader is going to get a bigger jolt out of reading between the lines than they ever would if it was explicitly laid out for them.

Metaphors work in such ways, as do themes. Sometimes you don't even recognize them until your second or third read-through, but if they're there, a reader *will* go back to see if they carried further than they think they did.

I think interpersonal relationships between characters work really well when they're carried out over long periods of time for the same reason. If there's even a little bit of a spark, then the reader is going to go back and look at all the ways two people might have found that connection. Sometimes you don't even notice it happening, but I do drop little breadcrumbs that imply things more than they outright say them (go back and re-read the first Dethkomic series to see what I mean - there are too many to list, here).

And then, when it comes to characters, what you left out is just as important as what you write. Pickles doesn't have to say he loves Cherry - he does enough of that by following her into the kthulu-ocean. And the longer he doesn't say it, the more intriguing whatever it is they have, becomes.

Will-they-won't-they romances die by labels, I guess. Don't be afraid of ambiguity when it comes to the affection your characters show to other characters. Especially if you're going to go for a slow-burn. Especially, especially if what two people have falls outside the realm of romance.

Just have fun. :)

As promised - More on all this, later! But thank you both for the great questions and remember... Dethkomic loves you!

[chordsykat]

📚, ✍️, and 📒, please! (Gointothevvater 🖤)

📚 Who's your favorite author (or a few of them)?

Stephen King has been my longest go-to favorite writer. I joke that he's the reason I love cliffhangers so much, but that's probably true. I have been reading King since I was like 10 years old or something. I tend to like wild narration, thrillers, real-world-science, and general fantasy. From Kerouac to Tolkien and back again. Lately, I have been getting back into Jeff VanderMeer's stuff. Big fan of his Southern Reach trilogy, and the way he writes in general. Someone described Dead Astronauts as an exercise in telling a story that couldn't be told and I couldn't agree more. If you think you can't experience prose in four dimensions, that a monstrous flying bear can't be a villain you'll take seriously, or that you'd mourn an man who might actually be a pile of salamanders -- you'd be wrong.

✍️ What's your writing process?

I turn ideas into anxiety. Kidding :) A good rundown of my process can be found on Dethkomic's page, right here. It's your typical gather ideas, jot them down in a list of beats, start adding details to those beats sort of thing... but with a longer, more drawn-out timeframe thanks to the illustration work involved. :3

📒 Where do your jot down your ideas?

One of the places I put my ideas is in piles and piles of docs on Google and on my computer. I tend to keep one general "script" going on Google Drive, and at the very very end of it, I have little notes to myself like "This character does this to this character - find a place to put that in" -- especially useful if I have no idea where to put something BUT TOO -- useful even if I think I know where it'll go. Sometimes I hit points in my story where I can't figure out something, or there's a lull in the action or jokes... I look at my end-reel of notes and can immediately find something to put in there.

Thank you so much for asking!!

[chordsykat]

☀️❤️and 💕?

Woot woot! More very good ones!

☀️ Has anyone ever left you a comment that made your day? What did it say?

Honestly, truly, in addition to everything I have already said about how blessed I feel that you guys even want to leave me comments in the first place, I want to thank you, specifically, Fish -- you leave some of the best on here. As does @cruisingheightswithdragons and @gointothevvater and @needsmorezass and like, basically everyone who comments here on Tumblr and AO3.

The way you all are putting the pieces of the story together are just fantastic. I re-read them when I get down about whether or not something is getting enough illumination, because I sometimes bury my analogies and symbols pretty deep in the sand. Y'all almost always pick up on them and are happy to tell me - makes me feel good that the puzzles are as enjoyable to put together as they are for me to make and scatter around. It's in the top ten of really really good feelings I get as a writer.

❤️ Who is your favorite character to write for and why?

Sparkles. :) And again no... not because her dialogue is nonexistent. She's just super-versatile in all regards and a hoot to use as an "accent" to whatever may be going on at the time. I love throwing her in the background as much as I love focusing on her. Telling a story with a mute character can be a huge challenge, but I think of it as a huge blessing in a lot of ways. There's really no mistaking what she's feeling, and she can play audience surrogate so well, I can count on her to help push the audience's attention to the things they should be paying attention to, even when it's utter chaos keeping up with it all.

💕 What is the WIP that you are most excited about?

Dethkomic III's promo animation. Oh, and the comic itself, of course :D

Prompt list is here!

[dethkomic]

Writin' Comics and Junk: Part 5 - Point-of-View Within Comics

Welcome once again, pals! We're now on the third issue of our second volume of Dethkomic, and I'm really excited to share with everything that goes down in this one! If you haven't guessed that the pace won't be slowing any time soon, then I have bad news. Anyway..!

The next Dethkomic update will be Friday, June 2nd, 2023!

For this tutorial update, I thought I'd share a little bit about something a little on the abstract side as it pertains to writing and specifically, comic writing.

Storytelling in the pages of a graphical media like comics, as I've alluded to in previous updates, is a multifaceted thing with a lot of different angles to consider -- and I mean that pretty literally.

More on this, under the cut!

Putting the Pieces Together

Last time we met, I went over the various panel layouts that are commonly found in comics. Before that, I talked about studying movies, tv, and other visual media as a means of understanding direction and decision making in that area. Way before that, we touched on the differences between plot-driven and character-driven stories.

What I'm going to cover today, and into the next string of updates, sort of mashes everything together. So if you haven't yet, take a moment to at least scan over some of the entries that came before this one. Here's a handy guide:

Part 1 - Covering the basics of the character versus plot relationship and the differences between character-driven arcs and plot-driven ones.

Part 2 - Covering story beats and sketching your plot.

Part 3 - Covering Comic Composition (Part 1) - General comic panel layout and decision-making

Part 4 - Covering Comic Composition (Part 2) - Types of panels and further analysis of how they drive the story

Good on all that? Wonderful! Onto our topic, then!

So we know that in a very broad sense, most stories fall into the categories of character-driven or plot-driven. In comics, as it is in all stories, what makes something come off as important is based on what may seem like insignificant choices the author has made. These push the reader to notice, often subconsciously, that our perspective should be riding behind the eyes of one character, or standing a few feet behind a few characters, or way out into space as we take a look at the entire world...

Who or What is in the Driver's Seat?

If I was going to write a story from an omniscient point of view, I might phrase a paragraph like this:

Charles stood atop the bridge in Copenhagen, looking at the hard-won keycard in his hand. He didn't know it, but somewhere else in the city, a doctor was taking care of his partner.

And if I wanted to write something similar but framed from a limited perspective, it'd be more like:

Charles stood atop the bridge, his muscles aching from the fight they'd just endured. It was worth it, though. The keycard in his hand proved it. He could only hope his partner had also survived.

Again, broad example. Don't @ me because of my syntax, English majors - I know there are objective, omniscient and limited POVs and that they come in numerical "person" states, hehe.

These examples are all well and good for prose (Dethkomic: The Novel is not something I'll be pursuing, but if you want to take a crack at it, by all means, go nuts), and depending on how you'd been inspired to write the rest of the story, you'd probably follow one or the other method based on that, alone. But comics are a bit trickier. We definitely do have places where plot is driving the story, and times where characters are taking over... but you're not always sticking to just one.

Here may come my greatest point of controversy, then: If you're going to write comics, you're probably going to be doing some head-hopping.

Still with me? Very well, and I appreciate you hearing me out, despite typing something so sacrilegious.

Learning how to Write Good Head-Hopping

First, if you're not a prose fiction writer or are otherwise unfamiliar with what head-hopping is, then I suggest a primer over here. Next - Is the term "good head-hopping" an oxymoron? You can decide for yourself, but I really don't think so.

Many a story has been written that shows an author's mastery of their craft in seamless jumps from perspective-to-perspective. Many, many a comic has, too. Not trying to toot my own horn, here... but let's take a closer look at the flashback scene we were referencing in our prose exercise, from page 40 of Dethkomic:

The panels are all laid out as you saw them in the story, but I've color-coded the two different points of view. In the red panes, we're in Charles' head. In blue, we've entered Caj's. Did you notice the shift? If I was doing my job as an author, you might have, but it didn't kill your immersion. So how is that done?

It's all in the transition.

As we saw, the scene above could quite easily handled by an omniscient POV. Want to tell the audience what someone is doing, then in the very next sentence, reveal what someone on the other side of town is up to? No problem!

In a limited perspective, however, things get trickier. We're in Charles' head, and if we want to know what happened to Caj - he simply doesn't have that information, so the author's not going to be divulging much. We'll need to shift scenes, therefore, and that probably means ending the chapter.

In a comic, though? I can't always cut a scene on a brand-new page. Hell, I can't always cut a scene in the same panel! But regardless, I have to communicate to my audience that we are, in fact, moving away from Charles' perspective and into Caj's. Several things help to do this transition in a clean fashion:

First, I kinda leave you hanging on poor Charles. He doesn't get a resolution, as nobody picks up the phone. Still, we're left to understand that his part in the story has ended.

Second, we start the panel shift on a new line. You don't always have to do this (especially if you want it to be jarring) but it helps to cut the scene in two.

Third, we literally place the camera behind Caj's eyes as she wakes up. There are few things more effective at showing we are now going to see how things go down for one character above all others than literally getting in their head.

Again, there are other ways of doing this, but paying attention to how your "jumps" occur can make a big difference in the comfort your readers feel when, inevitably, you have to have one character tap out so that another can lead the reader around for a bit. We're lucky in visual media, since we can employ a few more tricks than the folks who only work in words and lines of text - but we also have to take extra precaution so as not to be more confusing than intended with our layouts. If I had missed a beat, and just moved over to Caj talking with the doctor, that would have been too quick. If I would have lingered on Charles, that too, might not have been as successful. It's a balance, and your instincts about storytelling won't steer you wrong.

I think I'll wrap this little lesson up, here. Next time, I want to talk about the other ways a story can be carried, but not by the characters - by the plot.

I hope you enjoyed these insights. I realize they are a bit more advanced than the things we've previously covered, and therefore, a little trickier to understand and employ. But, as it is with all things, being aware of the rules and putting in a little practice should be all you need to master them.

Join me soon! And remember, Dethkomic loves you!

[dethkomic]

Writin’ Comics and Junk: Part 4 - Comic Compositionin’ (Part 2)

It sure looks like things have finally begun to pick up in our ongoing saga of heavy metal people and their friends! Things just get more interesting from here, so don't miss the next one!

The next Dethkomic update will be Tuesday, April 25th, 2023!

At this time, I'd like to give a special shout-out to all of you who have offered up your OCs to the Dethkomic overlords! I'm working on getting everyone's cameo appearance into the book for issue #7!

Right now, though, we have another comic book tutorial to share. It'll be a briefer one than usual, today, but covering a very important part of comic book composition, regardless!

The Art of Sequential Direction

Last week, we covered the general aspects of comic book layout, so I thought this week would be a good place to go over the more detailed bits that make up the panels in a page. Check it out below the cut!

Take a look at the two page layouts, below. Which is more interesting to your eye, at first glance?

The first page doesn't offer much in the way of variety, while the second page is chalk full of it -- it's not hard to understand why the second example looks and feels more exciting to read.

One of the things I tell creatives who are starting out in comics, who usually are coming from a background that's full of one-off pieces of art and very little sequential work, is that comic books -- especially action/adventure comic books, work best if you look at them through a director's eye.

This was one of the first things that was told to me as a young comic book artist and fan, and it's something of a never-ending journey. I love to watch movies and shows while my mind picks apart what the director was trying to convey in the way the camera was set, how the scene pans or stays still, what music was playing, how the dialogue carries -- all of it! Comics may not have as many moving parts as a movie, but you can probably guess that when it comes to conveying emotion through scene-setting, they are basically the same.

Just like the movies, comics have some ground rules that can help you make them more inviting and simultaneously exciting for your readers. Each one of these isn't terribly hard to do, but you'll be amazed at the impact they can have on your comic. I have three very, very simple ones that you can do, immediately:

Change the Size of Your Characters.

The above advice was handed to me in the same era, if not the same week, if not the same sentence as the advice about looking at your story as a director. One of the easiest things you can do and indeed, one of the most important things you can do -- before you even start to get a grasp on what types of scenes evoke what type of mood (we'll get to that...) --is to change how big or how small your characters appear, panel to panel. Basically -- pan the camera out, or in. Your readers' eyes will be far more likely to stay focused on what's being said and what's happening, if the scene changes just a little bit in this way.

Change the Camera Angle.

That horizon line that tells us where the end of the world is? The one that separates the ground from the sky? Move it up or down, chief. That's it. That's all there is to this one. Sure sets the scene differently, doesn't it? Notice how your characters, no matter what size you drew them, now look either really big (if your horizon line is low) or really small (if the line is up high) in the panel. That's what we wanna see -- make those guys change size!

Change the Panel's Tilt.

Okay, so now some of your characters are really big on the panel while others are small, and your horizon is way up, way down, or completely off the panel! Good work. Now pick one or two panels and turn them at a 45 degree angle. Or a 90 degree angle. Or if you're really bold and are making some kind of statement, turn them upside-down. Especially the panels where you're going to have trouble fitting the necessary dialogue balloons in -- this is a great trick to find yourself some more space.

Now that you have those down, you have a go-to for when you are just dragging it on finishing a page. Especially the pages that don't offer any particular points of interest and are just there to move the story to its next, more interesting part (shoeleather, as they're sometimes called). Even boring pages can be made way more interesting with the use of those three easy tricks.

Getting into the nitty-gritty, comic book professionals have a wide variety of shots that we typically fall back on when it comes to directing our stories. Each one can be used for different purposes, and to convey a different message. Another piece of advice given to me early on, was to treat my comic pages as if I had to tell the same story that was written out, but without the dialogue. If I could do that -- if I could look at what I'd drawn and get a good impression of what has happened without the characters saying a single word -- that was a good indication of a successful page.

So what are these types of shots and how do we use them? While this is by no means a complete list (Just google "types of comic book shots" or similar), I'll do my best to examine some of the more common ones, and give examples:

The Establishing Shot:

In the above example, we can see that Nathan is head of the table, in Charles' usual spot. Dethklok is on one side, Baen-Shee is on the other, and Toki isn't shown, but that's the joke -- he's so far away his speech balloon is coming from off-panel. Murderface is conspicuously absent. Establishing shots are important because they show the reader, at a glance, where everyone is and where they are in relation to one another and their environment. You should strive to have one establishing shot per-scene. Some people say per-page, and I think that's also good advice, if not a little extra work.

The Long Shot:

Oftentimes, long shots are establishing shots. The camera is far enough away from the subject that it gets most of/all of their whole body in the panel, as well as a good chunk of the environment. This gives both entities equal "weight" in the storytelling. What's that? Did I just call the background an entity? I sure did! Remember that.

The Medium Shot:

A pretty standard shot. Here's a guy. He's talking now. Maybe he's saying something important, and maybe he isn't. Whatever is happening, it's not doing it with great impact, and that's the point. Use these basic halfway-up-the-body angles when you're just establishing that something is being said or done, and by whom.

The Close Up:

Now it's getting interesting. We're zeroed in on one or two characters' faces to the point that we're forced to consider their facial expressions above all else. Must be some real tension going down, here.

The Extreme Long Shot:

Hey! Where'd my freaking house go??? Sometimes the environment is more important than the characters in it.

As I said, these are but a small sampling of all that's available to you as a comic book creator, when setting the scenes in your story. Next we meet, I'll go into some of my thought process when it comes to putting a page together and how I'm making decisions regarding the flow of the story, transitioning, layout, and more.

See you then!

[dethkomic]

Writin’ Comics and Junk: Part 3 - Comic Compositionin' (Part 1)

Well, hey there pals! Are you stoked to be starting Issue #6? I sure am! The pages to come will be kicking our story into high gear in very short order, so make sure you stick around!

The next Dethkomic update will be Friday, April 14th, 2023!

That's all we have for announcements right now! So if that's all you came for, you are dismissed! For the rest of you, I thought we'd talk about the specifics of turning a story into a comic book, today!

A brief primer on comic book anatomy

Comic books, like most things, have their own language when it comes to describing their construction. So that means I'm going to start saying some words that might not make a lot of sense to everyone. But fear not! I have come with visual aids!

1. The Panel - Just what you think it is. A pane of story. Each panel is itself a whole "beat" while simultaneously being part of a bigger picture. Storytelling with comics means putting the best snapshot of a scene into each frame and stringing them together in such a way that they remain cohesive, no matter how different each one is.

2. Dialogue Balloon - Or word balloon or speech bubble or whatever other name you want to call it. A lot of times, your panel layout and the decisions you make for what to include within your panel will rely on your dialogue (or absence thereof - see panel one). I don't just mean what's being said, but also how much. It's important to leave enough space for your words, after all!

3. Gutter - The space between panels. Sometimes stuff crosses into these areas, but usually this just serves to break up each scene. In this tutorial, I'll mostly use the term gutter to describe the "border" or "edge" of a panel area.

4. (Pointy) Dialogue Balloon - This is here to show you that dialogue balloons can come in many shapes and sizes! The edge here implies there is shouting. Have fun with these when you feel like doing so... Me personally? I've kinda taken the lazy approach on Dethkomic II's word balloons. They're all circles. Which is also fine!

5. Action Lines - Or motion lines, or whatever other words you might have for them. You wouldn't see these in real-life, but they help to push the idea of something in action, or something hitting with great impact.

6. Sound Effects - Just what they say they are. Use liberally in a comic about heavy metal.

7. This is a Bear.

8. Dialogue Boxes and Voiceovers - I play it pretty loose with these and the rules of when to use one over the other. Basically, they're the same thing as a Dialogue Balloon, except the person speaking isn't in the panel. Typically, I'll use boxes when someone is so far away from the panel, they'd need to travel a significant distance (or through time) to be there, hence giving the feeling of a voiceover. Sometimes, though, if someone is close by, or what's being said is a continuation of something said on a previous panel, I'll just throw a balloon around the dialogue and leave the tail off. The speech is usually attributed to the last person who was talking, but so long as it is clear who's saying the words (or if it doesn't matter/needs to remain ambiguous), you can use either to great effect in "carrying over" a scene to the next.

9. Text Boxes and Captions - In Dethkomic, I color these darker than the dialogue boxes so it's clearer that they're meant as footnotes and not being "said" in the story. Good for things like editorial asides, translations, and setting-shifts.

As usual, there's more stuff that makes up a comic than just these thingies, but you'll see me refer to the above list of items the most when I talk about drawing up a comic page.

So, now that you know a little about the components of a comic book page and some of the basics about using each, effectively -- let's get down to the business of:

Laying out the panels in a way that best tells the story

As I said in the definition, panels are their own little beat and their own composition. While they can capture a moment on their own and make a great big sexy impact when they do -- they must stay true to the overall big picture of the comic's story as a whole. You probably don't realize it when you read most professionally published comics, but a lot of work goes into the ease by which you travel from one section of a page to the next. Transitioning is a hard thing to teach, but it's an integral part of making a comic successful. To that end, there are several pointers for working out an entire page of visual story, and getting it to translate seamlessly from top to bottom.

First, it's imperative to understand how comics are read. I'm going to be using the same page of story from Dethkomic's first issue to illustrate my points as I go. Feel free to check it out, here.

In the above example, we see how the page "flows" to the reader. And just in case you don't know, comic books in the United States typically read left to right, then top to bottom. The reader would read the first row of panels, first, then they would move on to the second and third.

Within each panel, the reader also reads left to right, top to bottom. Generally, you want to try setting up your word balloons with this in mind. There are exceptions (like the fighting that goes on in 5th panel of page 16 -- you can read any of those balloons, first. The order isn't the important part) Occasionally having your eyes go to the left is pretty forgivable (and sometimes necessary) in a panel, but note that the only time the reader's eyes go *up* is noted by the arrows, moving to the next panel.

Keep these things in mind, as one of the best ways to assure your panels are making sense and everything is coming together correctly as a whole, is to layout the entire page, first. That is -- treat the whole comic page as a picture. You can go in and work on individual panels, after the page layout is complete.

I start by making thumbnails -- little sketches of the layout, based on my script. It's a good way to see if things will work and fit the way I like.

I actually did an ask on this back here, and there's a few pointers in that post that might be of use to you at this point, too. The basic points are to convey the page's overall "beat" first, and work on the nuances of layout while keeping things as a whole in focus.

Basically, by this point you are going to try cramming as much of your script into the thumbnail as possible. Notice I say "as much of it..." because yeah -- edits will happen. The way I write, this usually means cutting things out, but it could also mean extending them. You begin to get a "feel" for storytelling in this way the more you do it, so don't be put off your project if it's not natural for you to try to work visuals and story together in this way. It just takes practice.

As to how you go about laying your panels out, I like to build on one panel and work around it as a focal point. I tend to think about a page this way:

What is *the scene* for this page? If there's one very special scene that ties everything going on within the page together, consider making this your focus point.

Are we entering a new area? If so, it'd be nice to have an establishing shot to establish exactly where the characters are. This is a shot that pulls the camera back a bit, letting the audience get a good glimpse of the surrounding area and where everyone is within it.

Is there any other important information we should be paying attention to? If you don't have *the scene* and if you don't necessarily need to establish where people are, then consider focusing on the point in the page that'll otherwise have the biggest impact on the story, going forward.

Now that you have your point of ultimate impact on the page, it's time to think about its individual layout as well as the layouts of all the other panels that go around it...

Laying out the story in a way that best tells the story

I'll get WAY more into this next time, but there's a lot that goes into comic book layouts beyond just "character A and character B are shown talking to each other". So what do I mean by this? Basically, laying out the story is laying out the nuances your audience can pick up on in order to tell how things are proceeding and where their eye should go next, etc. These are small things, but again, they can have a big impact on how your story is told. Some quick tips on story layout:

Change the size of your characters

Move your camera around

Don't cut characters off

Leave more room than needed

And I think this'll be a good place to pick up on the individual nuances of "directing" a comic, next update! As usual, thanks for reading and I hope you found this tutorial to be useful!

See you in a little over a week! And remember! Dethkomic loves you!

[dethkomic]

Writin’ Comics and Junk: Part 2 - Let's Break Down a Story!

Welcome, my favorite goofballs, to another edition of Dethkomic talks way too damn much about how to write and stuff.

Before we begin --

Next update to Dethkomic will hit the internets on Friday, March 17th. It'll be another 6-page update to wrap-up this chapter and issue #5 will officially be in the books!

Okay... now onto our really big show!

We're going to get into the meat of how I actually compose the scripts for Dethkomic, this time. I think it might be easiest if I did a sort of "deconstruction" on the first Dethkomic. Therefore, if you are reading this and happen to not have finished Dethkomic I and do not wish to be spoiled -- I suggest coming back after you're through with it. :)

Everyone good? Okay then! First thing's first -- How did I get the idea for Dethkomic's first... dethkomic?

The simple answer is, I cheated and used an old fanfic I wrote. The longer answer is, I wanted to have a story I could point people to, if they wanted to be introduced to my characters. I wanted it to be heavy on the action and drama (because these are the types of stories I like to read, myself. See last entry). I wanted it to establish the relationships between my characters and the canon cast (duh. It's fanfiction). And lastly but perhaps most importantly, I wanted it to establish an interesting world I could add on to with other stories, as the mood struck, while simultaneously being *enough* of a story on its own if I never ended up doing that.

The long and short of it is, I wanted to do Dethkomic to be a hobby story. No cares about hitting a deadline. No worries about profiting from it. No real reason to give a hoot if nobody liked it, actually. I was writing for me.

And here we are..!

Part 1: Roughing Out an Idea

Once you've got a general idea of the type of story you're writing, roughing out the plot is kinda like sculpting. You start with a big brick of clay and you start manhandling it into shape.

To start a script, I like to plot out beats. They start extremely vague but get tighter as I go on. If I worked from the very beginning of Dethkomic I, my first beats might look something like this:

[We need to introduce Baen-Shee] [There is some kind of conflict] [The conflict is resolved]

Intense, right? Granted, my first pass was a little more detailed than this... but honestly, not by much. This is really all the more my brain knew about this story, at its conception. For me, just getting the parts that absolutely have to get done down on paper, helps me stay organized. It doesn't matter how blurry they are. Feel free to put your beats down in whatever fashion makes the most sense to you -- all that matters is that you and your brain are not getting paralyzed by the fear of losing your train of thought when you look at your beats. They are there to keep shit together, not tear it apart.

Though it wasn't much, it *was* a place to start, and having a structure, even in the most basic sense, kept my mind free to wander. Eventually, the beats branched out:

[Dethklok needs a reason to associate with Baen-Shee] [We establish new and old relationships between characters] [Stuff needs to feel pretty normal, here. Nothing weird.] [We find out Baen-Shee are more than just musicians] [Maybe the Tribunal is in on this?] [We get to show their real talents during the conflict] [Relationships are re-established as the conflict ends]

So now things are starting to feel like they could actually become a story. Notice how the conflict still isn't established? Don't get caught up if you don't have one in the very early stages. I see so much writing advice about "figure out conflict first" and yeah, you absolutely should have *something* going down, eventually... but details can remain vague until you get excited about what that is.

Worth noting too, since not everyone reading this is bound to be thinking in terms of Lit Class 101: the term "conflict" in this sense, doesn't mean "a fight" or something similar. With the beats above, the conflict could have been the epic battle we ended up getting or it could have been the bands shopping for matching shoes (and nobody can agree on a style). Seriously.

Part 2: The Detail Work

Remember that stuff I said last time about character arcs? Now's as good a time as any to start introducing things like that. In Volume 1 of Dethkomic, Nita's arc was your basic "the normal one turns out to have super powers" thing. So when I get to a point in the script where I want to play on that (and I should be trying to at least think about it a little bit, each time Nita appears) I can write it out. Take the scene where the Tribunal reviews each of the girls as an example:

[We get a panel each, introducing each member of Baen-Shee. Each panel should go over a bit of their less-savory pasts.] [Except Nita. Nita's a sweetheart.]

That will be enough for me to remeber that this is an establishing point for Nita's character. I can write it however I want -- the important thing is that we get the sense that nobody suspects Nita is anything but a normal musician.

The point of doing things in this way is again, to simply vomit your ideas onto paper for a while, jotting down what you absolutely want to have happen, and letting it stew until that sweet point of contention finds its way into your brain. You'd be surprised how nice it is to have all your thoughts collected so you can freely read them. I find with the jumbled mess my brain is prone to becoming at any given time, reading things in sequence often gives me just enough lead-in to know where to turn, next.

At this point, you might be the type of writer who will plot the whole of the story from beginning to end with enough detail to know what you're writing, down to the last bit of dialogue.

I am not this type of writer.

I tackle what I see in my head, first, so the things I know I really want to work on can help shape the stuff I haven't figured out, yet. I don't have the originals, but the first pages of script for Dethkomic I looked very similar to this:

[Chapter 1 - Part 1] [Nita is at a desk, filling out paperwork. She notes how much there is] [Charles says some reassuring things to keep her from fretting too much about the accidental death clauses in the contracts]

[Dinosaur interlude - introduce when the comic takes place] [Big establishing shot of Mordhaus]

[Charles calls a meeting. All of Dethklok present. Establishing shot in the meeting room. Charles' dialogue: "Gentlemen. I just got off the phone with Crystal Mountain Records and got some rather surprising news. We're blowing away every one of our quarterly goals except in one demographic. There's going to be some changes around here in the coming days." Nobody is impressed.] [Charles needs to do his best to convince the gang things are in a dire state and in order to do this, he employs the usual visual aids. Maybe the remote for the TV has spikes on it.]

[Part 2]

We need to meet Baen-Shee

[Part 3]

Something happens

Notice that some of the pages are more "put together" than others. The last fully fleshed out page of part one (page 3) even includes dialogue -- but I haven't figured out what happens at all in Parts 2 and 3. It changes, depending on how much stuff I'm trying to keep track of, and how important the details are, but this is basically all the more there is to a Dethkomic script before I start making thumbnails of the page art. It covers what I have to be showing at that point, any important dialogue I figured out (usually, I leave the dialogue until after I've done the art unless someone has to say something that establishes an important point), and any other pertinent information. Eventually, notes like "We need to meet Baen-Shee" get replaced by page-specific beats that are way more detailed.

And that's it. What you see in the example above is all I need to start drawing. As I go on, things will come to me or ideas will change which might shift the story a bit, but I tend to write out as much as I can, ahead of time. It's cool if stuff changes because I have everything I need to accomplish ahead of me in my notes, so I'm once again just whittling away at that same clay block. That said, I have a few pointers for you as you write your beats...

Part 3: Pointers

Let's start with one I will not shut up about and you've already heard me say a thousand times by now...

Get the things down you're likely to forget.

This is why it's important to always have access to a notebook or an app on your phone for writing shit down. There's stuff I look forward to writing and it's unlikely I'll ever forget to write it (and yeah -- I'll jot those ideas down, too...) Meanwhile, there's stuff I think up in passing. My brain will say "Oh holy shit. There's that connection I was looking for when I need X to do Y." Or maybe it's "Oh holy shit. There's a plothole here if I don't explain Z." And you know what happens if I don't write stuff like this down? Poof. It's gone by the time I get to it.

For every cool idea, there are a million points of connection, and disconnect, and plothole patching that come into my head as there are big scenes. Write them down so they exist somewhere and you can feel secure as you concentrate on the cool stuff. And speaking of the cool stuff...

Use your good ideas ASAP.

I know you don't want to "run out" of these... but you'll have more good ideas. Promise. Keep yourself motivated by using the ideas that excite you about your story right now if possible.

Let's say you can't wait to reveal that Character A is Character B's father but there's 15 chapters between what you're writing now and that point in the story. If it's not a major turning point (those are different), consider throwing it in now, homeslice. Or maybe hint at it if it is meant to be kept as a big reveal. Why are you writing, again? To have fun? Take every opportunity you can get to go have fun, then. The more you care, the more your audience will care. And it beats slogging through a story until you get to that magical point you've been waiting for, only to have your readers turn disinterested because there just didn't seem to be as much going on through those chapters as there was during the fun parts... that is, if you yourself can even stay interested long enough to get to that point.

Start to look for themes.

Once you get to the point in your story where you have begun to figure out the details of each individual scene, you might start looking for a running theme through your tale. You don't have to have them, but they're nice little bonuses for the people paying attention.

I didn't do a ton of work with theme in Dethkomic I, but I do a hell of a lot with it in Dethkomic II. A lot of the same themes exist in both stories. See if you can spot them:

The things that count as "family"

What makes someone "a hero"

Angels and demons

Individual power versus collective harmony, Corruption versus innocence, Life and death, etc.

Accepting a greater destiny beyond "normal life"

As always, I'm sure I'm forgetting some. A lot of these themes are universal while some of them seem to only follow a certain character or characters around. Their part in the story could be totally muted and no damage to the plot would be done since they don't exist for any purpose beyond giving attentive readers the occasional "holy shit, this again!" feeling. But boy is that a fun thing to impart to your audience as a writer. I highly recommend starting to play with metaphors in your stuff, if you haven't before.

On plot holes and other scary things...

As I said -- sometimes you'll make one of these roadblocks and if you're not careful to patch it, it might ruin your good time. The easiest way to work this out is to re-read your whole script from beginning to end, occasionally. If you're the crazy writer who is plotting the whole thing out early on, then you have a duty to go in and fix things as soon as you spot them.

If you're like me and are doing a bit more of the "writing as you go", then your job is to read what you have up to the point that you have it written, and see if there's anything keeping you from connecting what you have to the way it ends.

Look for things like missing character motivation, "magical fixes" (stuff that is too much of a stretch to allow for believability), time travel (how did they get here and/or what time was it when this happened versus what came before and after), etc. And above all else, remember this:

Most plot holes aren't a big deal, and the ones that are might just be stories that haven't been told, yet.

That's it for this edition of writin' with dethkomic, I spoze! So far, the advice I've been giving here has been pretty universal as it pertains to writing just about anything... But next time, we'll dive further into the plot and begin doing the other half of the work that comes specifically with working in a visual media. I am of course, talking about the art!

See you in a little over a week, pals!

[dethkomic]

Writin' Comics and Junk: Part 1 - Getting Absolutely Started

As usual... I've been going on and on and on about doing more tutorials/at-length discussion on my writing process with Dethkomic... and I say it's high time I got around to doing that!

But first... A few announcements:

Dethkomic's next update will be Tuesday, March 7th, 2023! Be there!

A couple more days remain to get your OCs in for the open casting call! Note me with those!

And we now have a significantly more fleshed-out entry on just what the heck Dethkomic is, over at fanlore! Check it out, here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Dethkomic_(comic) I'll be making edits to it as we go on, but Dethkomic readers are equally welcome to join Fanlore and edit the page. Go nuts, if that's your thing!

With all that out of the way, let's do a little deep-dive into making stories, shall we? Tally ho!

Where to begin?

I think a lot of tutorials out there take the "where to get ideas" thing to mean coming up with a subject matter, specifically. But if you're here reading a thing like Dethkomic and bothering to hang with me as I show you some behind-the-scenes stuff, there's a good chance you yourself are a fanfiction writer or are otherwise already acquainted with the whos and whats of your story. In other words, you're more or less looking to get to penning a plot. And even if you are still figuring out who your cast is going to be and what kind of world they're living in, I still think coming up with a storyline itself is a very solid place to lay a foundation. You can plug characters and junk in later. Trust me.

But how do you get ideas for a whole freaking story?

Some people like to look for ideas in their daily lives, pull from a lesson they've learned, or simply put their own spin on a story that they once read/watched/heard which stayed with them. To be inspired in this way, all it takes is an awareness of what turns you on.

If you're going to get good at writing, you're going to need to get good at critical analysis of the types of stories that really catch your attention.

It's an interesting self-exploration exercise to examine the components of what makes something conceptually interesting. If you can find what it is that has you intrigued by any given story trope or piece of media that you can't get enough of, then you're going to have a better time figuring out what things your own stories should include. They'll be the most fun for you to write and because you're having the most fun you possibly can while writing them -- your audience has a higher probability of enjoying them too.

That said, where you find this sexy idea is up to you. Some people like getting out and trying new things as much as getting into a favorite book, movie, tv show, or whatever... If you're an auditory person like me, maybe put on music and see where it takes your brain. In every instance, it helps to keep a journal or anything that'll allow you to jot down notes, when something comes into your radar as a good idea for a story.

And yeah... Just like the world-building thing, there's a good chance you already have a basic idea of what your plot is going to revolve around. But if you don't -- a notebook or some kind of way to remember what it is that good idea was, will be a huge help to you. At certain points in my process, it's going to be absolutely necessary, too. So get one now if you're going to have me as a tutor. *wink-wink*

And one very important aside: don't freak out if you come across something that seems wildly out there, too far-fetched, silly, or unbelievable. Take it from someone writing about a supernatural heavy metal band -- Ridiculous stuff can be awesome. In the same vein, so can something totally mundane and normal. It's all about what you want to write.

In the end, the number one goal of a good storyteller is...

You have to make the audience believe it!!1!

You can do this by playing it safe and keeping the characters and their setting pretty basic (or in the case of fanfiction, keep it close to established canon), or you can go nuts and write about cowboy alligators from outer space. Show the characters who are living it acting accordingly, and you're 90% good to go. The rest is understanding stuff like physics, history and other pieces of lore, which aren't as scary as they seem. And yes, there will be much more on this concept of getting your reader to believe your story throughout my tutorials, here. It's that important.

Character Progressions

A lot of writers take the opposite approach from the one mentioned above, and make a cast of characters first. They then write their stories around them. I do this too, and can definitely say that stories which are set up to introduce a character or characters are great springboards into working out a plot.

In all cases, your characters will have their own stories within your story. And I'm not necessarily talking about things like their history or whatever -- I'm talking about their progression through one single moment in time that is the story you will be writing. Lots of people will give you lots of advice about writing character arcs, but to keep it simple, I stick to this basic formula at the beginning of the writing phase, for each character:

A character's arc is what is going to happen to them versus what they want to happen to them.

That's it. You can answer a lot of questions about your character as you write them, by going back to that outline. Some people will tell you that you must always pick a conflict that is in direct opposition to some intrinsic component of a character, but that's not really how things have to go down in every story. More to the point, I think you'd find with any cast of more than one guy, you'd have so much in terms of conflicting challenges that the plot could easily take a back seat (more on this in a minute but you might have guessed, that's not a good thing). However, if you do find the major point of conflict in your story to align with a certain character's nature in particular -- don't be afraid to put that character front-and-center. Exploring them in such a way will feel like a natural fit and is loads of fun.

Now, again, throwing away the idea that every character conflict your cast comes up against is going to challenge them on a very personal level, we come to another basic but very huge very big thing that I figured out very late in my writing career but has been a game changer ever since:

Overall plot > Character plot

But what the hell does that mean? On the surface, it's saying you shouldn't sacrifice the story at large for any one (or all) of your characters' personal dilemmas.

What I found it really meant, however... was that in the interest of keeping my audience engaged and yes, the all-important keeping them believing, a story about Mary-Sue's camping trip to Arizona probably wasn't going to end up being the time to write about her upbringing in the jungles of Vietnam and how her dad fought in the Great Big War of 1988 on his home planet of P'Shoo and that time she rescued her cat named Begonia from rabid sea otters who escaped from prison.

...did you get that? Don't force a story within a story (force is the key word, there. You can absolutely have a story within a story but they've gotta tie together somehow). If you're reading what you've written and in your honest opinion, you seem to be forgetting about the camping trip the more it goes on, then maybe consider giving Mary her own story, later. Is this hard for you? Good, because that means you care about your characters and your writing. But also, it means you're going to have to work on chillaxing a bit when it comes to how much reveal you reveal. And that's cool, because we all do it. Hell, even professional script writers do it. Often.

The reality is, you gotta keep that plotline front and center, but it doesn't mean you can't have fun. Using the example of Mary-Sue's camping trip, we might be able to show that her dad taught her how to pack a camping bag like a pro, because he used to do it all the time during the war on his home planet. That kind of stuff is sooooo nice to throw in as a little interlude and works great to show your audience some sweet backstory. Want another quick and dirty trick for figuring out if you've got too much *extra* going on in a scene? Ask yourself:

Is it (relevant to the situation) character development or is it straight-up plot development?

If it's either of those, you're good to go. If it's not, then it's probably fluff. And fluff is fine -- just don't let it get overgrown. Get comfy with leaving some stuff on the cutting board. I promise there'll be time to show it, later.

Also, I use Mary-Sue lovingly. If I had a dollar for every time one of my characters was called a Mary-Sue, well... maybe I'd be building my own space ship to P'shoo instead of writing Dethklok fanfic right now, I dunno... Don't come at me..!

Plot Development

I'll formally get more into the ways that I break a story down into beats, next time. Some of you can probably guess what that's going to be about, but before I do, I thought it'd be incredibly important to go over a few "points of etiquette" when figuring out how your plot is going to lay out.

So you've got your Arizona camping trip story or whatever running in your head. You've now got to consider what your major conflicts are going to be, and how they're going to be resolved (and if they're going to be resolved). Here's my honest opinion on how to make that interesting so your audience stays engaged and has the highest probability of maintaining their belief in the story as a whole:

Raise the stakes like it's an ABBA song, baby.

Seriously, folks. A lot of the advice I give to writers has often come down to some variation of this. And it's because if I'm reading your story, I need to care about what's happening. Simple as that.

Now, does that mean you have to hold all your characters at gunpoint, make them the only hope to save humanity, and position a meteor somewhere in the sky that will ultimately collide with the planet and destroy us all if someone (namely, our heroes) can't do something about it?!

I mean... it works for me... but no. No, you don't have to do all that. Conflict can be as big or as little as you want, so long as it is important to the people involved. A peanut butter shortage is no big deal until you have a cast whose diet consists solely of peanut butter. You dig?

And for the love of God, if you're new to writing especially, don't feel like you have to have more than one conflict at any given time. Characters are easy. Interactions are easy. Conflict is an absolute bear. Because you have to resolve it, and if you want to be a good writer, you have to give it a resolution that's satisfying. Now would be a good time to mention that whole thing about making your audience believe extends to the point after the story has ended. Sure, a big chunk of any reader's takeaway is bound to be how cool their favorite character behaved throughout the story, but the thing that'll stick with them for years, even if they never liked any of your characters, is how the conflicts were resolved (we all have that fanfic in our heads -- you know the one -- that made you rethink whole seasons of the canon? Yeah... yeah, that's the one...).

How will the peanut butter shortage end? What will the characters do if it never does? How will the world (as they know it) change? There's lots of things to consider when writing out a conflict, and indeed, it can be scary. I understand why a lot of people shy away from epic problems! I absolutely do! It's devastating to build up a huge story until you finally get to the point where you have to have an ending... and you just can't think of one...

And that's why you guys have heard me say this one over and over and over again:

Conflict is made worlds easier if you figure out your ending, first.

Especially, ESPECIALLY if you do want to write multiple conflicts. Because they gotta all come together eventually, pals. And no, I don't mean you have to have it perfectly written out -- but the more you know about whether or not the major conflict will be managed and how you see your cast coming through it all, the better. You miss a huge opportunity to tie things into neat little bows if you have no idea where all your strings have run off to. Plus, think of all the missed opportunities to throw in some allusions to what happens at the end! Think about the theme! The metaphors!

Well... think about them, eventually... Let's talk about that for a minute and we'll move on to what's happening, next time:

Themes, Metaphor, and other Artsy Crap

You don't need to figure this out yet. Stop sweating it at the beginning of the writing process.

There we go.

The Next Steps

Next time we meet, I'll start to show you my actual process for turning an idea for a story into an actual comic. We'll get more nuanced about all the things we touched on, here, and rest assured -- it's okay if you haven't gotten everything figured out by this point. I sometimes think writing is akin to performative art -- the audience isn't privy to the performance, but they do get snapshots of the best parts at the end. Often, you just don't know where everything is going to end up until you get going. And for that reason, I want to end with this most invaluable piece of advice for any and all writers:

It's okay if you don't have every step along the way clearly mapped. It matters that you start walking.

Seeya next time, goofballs!

[chordsykat]

Joy of joys! It's the Where Can I Read the Dethkomic?! Master Post!

Hello and welcome to all the new and returning Metalocalypse fans here on Tumblr. Been quite a pile of excitement in the MTL fandom, lately, and I understand some of you have interest in reading my as-of-now 2 volume, ongoing, action/adventure/drama Metalocalypse fancomic. In order to make it easy on you all (and me, who has been providing links like crazy on an individual basis for more than a hot minute, hehe) I have compiled the following for ease-of reading!

What is Dethkomic? As it (kinda) says on @dethkomic's very own Tumblr page, this is a fancomic, written and drawn by yours truly, unassociated with anything official. As of this writing, there are two "Volumes", each consisting of 4 issues a piece. The story follows Dethklok and their all-girl-lady-centric counterparts, Baen-Shee, as they discover the magic of friendship... as they go on an epic quest to restore the kingdom of... as they deal with the highs and lows of superstardom, relationships, loss, bears, assassins, world domination, literal and emotional transformation, and the prophecy that ties them all together. I made it as a way to pass the time back when the movie was first announced and it continues to keep me entertained as we wait for the Army of the Doomstar's premiere (EDIT: We are no longer waiting and it was brutal!) Hope it does the same for you! Here's where you can read it:

Volume 1 (issues 1-4, complete):

On Tumblr: https://dethkomic.tumblr.com/komic

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2479018

Volume 2 (issues 5-8, complete):

On Tumblr: https://dethkomic.tumblr.com/komic2

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3355594

And there's also a groovy entry on the whole thing over on the MTL Wiki, if you're interested. That said, hope you like it! Will there be a third Volume? Depending on how the movie goes, and whether or not interest tanks (happy to say I don't see that happening anytime soon - thank you, readers!) there just might be. :) (EDIT: There definitely WILL be a Dethkomic 3 - and here's the trailer: https://dethkomic.com/post/752759703412654080/a-wild-dethkomic-3-trailer-appears)

Happy reading! And remember: Dethkomic loves you!

[chordsykat]

I'm not defending the anonymous person, but maybe it would be easier to take the criticism that they didn't get their fanart done because your art is good and worth getting. The comics you draw are pretty close in feel to the show and it's alot like having an expanded universe, so people want to get art from you just like they'd want their character to show up in the cartoon. That's my two cents.

I almost didin't answer this one because I'm getting fucking tired of concerns about my character over my decision to draw some fucking free fan art every now and again, but two things up front:

I think it gives a good foundation to address a broader topic.

I appreciate your asking it with your account attached. Thank you for that, and I invite you to DM me if my response is something you feel you want further discussion on.

That said, and please don't take this as a personal attack: I disagree with your assessment on how I should take the wants and desires of my fellow fans (and again, I reiterate -- I am a fan like everyone else, here) with every fibre of my being. I've been an artist, writer, animator and developer with enough published and public work to my name to garner my fair share of fan interaction through the years, and "taking criticism" as you are writing about here, is different from being expected to cater to every request from every person every time without fail. Especially when I'm not the actual creator of the source-content and when it comes to the things I share on this blog and the Dethkomic blog, I am sincerely, honestly, truly, just some fucking guy at the end of the day.

I've said it before as a joke, for all the questions I get, but maybe I should also make it perfectly clear in a more serious tone:

I am not Brendon Small.

I'm really not. And if I was, in what universe would it be okay for folks to come on my blog and get mad that they didn't get a chance to have an idea heard because I simply didn't have time to take every request I got? How does the idea that I'm the one producing your favorite show somehow correlate to a built-in expectation that I should cater to the wants, desires, and wishes of everyone who enjoys the thing I'm making?

See how ridiculous that sounds? You can't stick a "well, you're practically making official content" label on me and then feel okay about holding me to a higher standard than you would the people making the actual show. Or, Jesus Christ, I hope you don't think holding the creators of your media (who are people, by the way) to such standards is okay.

For a while now, this has gone beyond the ask that went down, yesterday, which, in retrospect, I probably never should have even answered. I get a lot of troll messages on here, and I usually just trash them. But if you want to know what Dethkomic's greatest hits of troll commentary looks like, the breakdown is something like this:

"I think you should write (some character, some fan creation, some wholly different story) along with/instead of the thing you are writing about."

"I don't think you should have fan-characters at the center of the story like you do."

"I think (canon character) actually acts this way and I don't like it when you write them the way you do."

"(this character) is my baby and I hate (this character) for looking at them."

All of it, and I mean all of it, is usually presented in the same way. That Dethkomic is a work the troll enjoys reading, but... (insert grievance here). To anyone who has sent an ask like this, please consider the alternative: Write your own story. Because this is the one I'm choosing to tell. Dethkomic is fanfiction and won't be affecting the canon any more than anything you come up with will.

So, back to your original point, OP -- if I draw art of your character, or put them in my comics, or give a kudo on AO3, or nod in approval to a character you come up with, or reblog art you did, it does not canonize those things any more than me writing and sharing my own works does. It's fan content. It's all fan content. I'm glad you like my stuff and I'm flattered to hear you feel like it's semi-official, but it is you putting it in that space. I don't suddenly get a production team, thousands of artists, and a big payday from the networks because you think my stuff is good enough to warrant it, so please don't expect me to suddenly be okay with handing public relations the same way I would if I suddenly had all of that.

And this is the last statement I'm going to be making on yesterday's situation. I think too, I'll be taking a little hiatus from Tumblr until the next 'komic update on Tuesday.

Sorry for being quiet in the coming days, but I'm presently exhausted.

[chordsykat]

What's your contradictory fanon for Metalocalypse?

Oh boy, so much when you get down to it, I guess.

First, I think I make everyone significantly more bisexual than fanon. We lean pretty gay, and as an enjoyer of our gayness, I definitely didn't want to detract from that. I just expanded on it. Also, I think in general I tend to write the majority cast much, much braver than they are in the actual show. So that runs over established canon and hits most fanon renditions of the characters by default.

Individually, though:

I've seen a lot of people complain that as a fandom, we write Skwisgaar a little too pissy and mean. In the things I write, he's still kinda a primadonna, but is a pretty decent guy.

I don't see Toki as bratty. Here again, this seems to be going out of style in our little clique (while simultaneously being hinted at in the later eps of the canon (see Bookklok)). I'll grant you naive and excitable, but obnoxious versions of Toki aren't my thing and I don't think I could write him that way. Also, my take on Toki is that of an adult who has adult relationships, but is kinda-sorta oblivious about how they come about. He's the last guy to realize he's got feelings for someone, I guess.

My Nathan is far and away more intelligent and thoughtful than even the show lets on. He's also a big pile of feelings, which I think most of the fandom agrees that he is -- I just leave him to ruminate on his innermost thoughts more than is typical, I guess.

Pickles too, I think is pretty wise and on the ball when he's not dulling his senses with substances. I like wisdomy Pickles playing off smarter-than-he-lets-on Nathan. Too, I think my version of Pickles is probably cis-male, but if you see him as trans, that's fine, too. I never "out" him.

As for Murderface, I think he might be my least-fanon characterization. My Murderface is not a total screw-up and has come through in a pinch more than a few times. That said, my Murderface is all about scheming and plotting stupid and terrible ideas, but he does so because he's thinking of others as much as he is personal gain (see Dethkomic's current "Managerface" arc). And if you spend enough time reading my comics, you might honestly get the impression that my Murderface bathes... regularly! But! Probably the least-fanon or canon thing I do surrounding him is not even his doing at all -- it's other characters giving him the recognition he deserves when he does a good job with something. :D

I mean, I'm sure there's a lot more to this list than I'm remembering right now. Feel free to send me them if you think of more that I do or do not do. Always happy to discuss my reasoning when it comes to the ways I write stuff. :) Good question, pal!

[chordsykat]

Thinking about Doomstar and the critiques of the guy's reluctance to rescue them.

Why don't we change that to just the guys being terrified and back on what Nathan said about the prophecy "We're not fu🎸g heroes".

So one of the main reasons they don't go is just learned helplessness and fear. Hence the Toki hologram, "I'm afraid the answer is no", and "Partying Around the World".

Well, the premise is given that Charles basically does everything in his power to right the situation, and despite having the best technology, an expert tracker, and a literal effing army, it still fails -- and I think more interestingly -- he is forced to realize he always knew it would.

Charles goes into the prophecy reluctantly, even when we get to Doomstar. Some piece of him doesn't quite believe it, or believes that what must be done could be done by him, better than Dethklok, despite Ishnifus telling him otherwise. When they throw their best guy in the garbage and recover the USB stick from his body, he has to come to grips with that.

So it's for that reason too, that Dethklok denies any responsibility to act in the situation. And who can blame them? They've been living very pampered lives up until that point. Why would they be the ones to save the world? Get someone else to go. Which, I think is exactly the point you are making. :)

This is one of my favorite things to write -- a character's reckoning. I'm a few pages ahead of you guys on @dethkomic and the stuff I'm working on now leads to my own characters' realizations that they might be in the shit a little deeper than they bargained for, when teaming up with these would-be hero dumb-dumbs. And not all of them are excited for it. :D

Will Dethklok "get over it" for the movie? Synopses and Galaktikon lyrics point to... eventually, maybe.

[chordsykat]

I just finished Dethkomic and can't say enough about how cool it was! Do you have pointers for how to write like that, so things feel like they're really epic from the start? Really I can't wait for the second comic for that reason.

That word "epic" gets thrown around a lot, does it not? I appreciate it, though. It's definitely one of the adjectives I'm going for when I write. :)

As I've said in previous answers, I do fully intend to go into more detail about how I write and keep everything together for longer stories. But since you asked specifically about high-stakes fiction, I will give you a few things I've picked up over the years:

#1 - Kill your tank.

Well, maybe don't kill him/her. But take them out in a capacity that lets your audience know the looming threat, whatever it is, is not only very real, but probably going to be made all the tougher to disarm without the heavy.

I do this right out of the gates in Dethkomic II, because we're in that in-between of seasons 2 and 3 where Charles is dead -- but that won't be all I'll be doing in order to tip the scales in the bad guys' favor. You'll have to wait and see what I mean, but suffice to say, I kill a lot of tanks pretty early on.

Uh. Again... probably best you don't take that too literally. I know I'm kinda getting a reputation ever since I killed my own character but I'm not a monster...

Probably.

#2 - Mind your pacing. Mind your direction. Don't give your audience a chance to brace for impact.

There's a reason drama seems amped up ten-fold in a comedy, and it's the complimentary nature of both genres to build up a sense of security in what starts as a lighthearted romp, and ends with the floor falling out and everyone clinging on to what they can grab as shit suddenly gets serious out of nowhere.

This is why I like to write Dethkomic so much, and if I had to guess, why so many of us like MTL in the first place. If you're always surprised by what happens next, then you're going to be compelled to keep watching.

#3 - Do a musical number.

Music/singing/dancing is an immediate cue that some serious emotional turmoil is about to go down. If you can manage it, and if you're musically inclined, why not try to incorporate an original song with some foreboding lyrics into your story?

But wait, in a comic? Who would be crazy enough to...

#4 - Have compelling characters in the first place

This is easier in fanfiction than it is in original fiction, for sure. People are already following you because they find the canon material and its cast compelling. OCs too, get a pass I feel. Even if people don't love them immediately, they'll tolerate them so long as you're giving the main characters hell and putting them through crazy scenarios.

But don't neglect giving your OCs interesting backgrounds or fail to put them in equally frightening situations because you're worried about distracting from the canon. That's the stuff that'll get people on their side faster than anything. I guess, don't be afraid to write your own babies with all your heart.

So! I'll have more on this at a later time, I'm sure. It's a great question and one worth several journal entries, I think.

And now, if you're still reading, I'd like to take the time to respond to another anon query I got but cannot answer, publicly due to the question itself:

Jesus. I am forever damn impressed by you guys and how hardcore you all are about picking up these little breadcrumbs I've left behind in the things I post about Dethkomic.

To that end, I'm sorry I can't post your question in full here, OP. It's too spoilery.

But the answer is yes.

[chordsykat]

I see the "Herald" descriptions for Baen-she and I was wondering how you came up with that?

It's uh... aliens. No, it's not. And it's not substance abuse or secret access to unreleased Metalocalypse lore or secretly being Brendon Small or even having a space helicopter that can fly to the future (all are excellent and very popular guesses, however).

If I told you the secret is having a lot of time to think about it all, that'd probably be the real answer. But I realize it's a huge cop-out, too. So what if I told you that character development that goes beyond the surface-level and ascends into metaphorical and symbolic territory is something you can learn to do? Or maybe, better yet, it's something you can train yourself to do? Like flexing a muscle you didn't know you had..?

But to give this question its proper due, I'm going to have to delve into both Dethkomic and (very speculative) Metalocalypse fan-theory. Therefore, spoiler alert if you follow me below the cut :)

One of the nice things about working with an entire cast of OCs, as opposed to just one, is the built-in ability to play each one off the other, and build intricate thematic relationships that seem a lot harder to pull off than they actually are. The other nice thing Dethkomic specifically has going for it, is that I get to borrow off of themes already found in the canon.

Finding good ways to connect your characters to the world you put them in on an abstract level takes one thing above all else, and that's listening to who they really are. So, whether I'm writing fanfic or my own fic, I ask myself "Why are we writing these people in the first place?"

Sometimes this will lead you to answers like "They're just here to hang out with X," and I think the majority of fanfiction has that component to it. Mine sure does. But that's not always the totality of any character's purpose in the story by a long shot. If you're looking to throw symbolism, metaphor, and themes into your work, you're probably not writing one-shot hookup fics where that actually is the final answer (and if you do want to put that stuff into one-shot hookup fics, you should send me your WIPs because that sounds amazing).

It should be said -- None of the stuff I'm talking about here is necessary to tell a good story. Working with layers of metaphor is tricky, but if you successfully pull it off, even a little bit, it can add to the "wow, cool!" factor. That's not just something for the audience, either. As a writer, your overall satisfaction will see an uptick as well.

Symbols and character themes come about in two ways -- one is intentional, and one is incidental. You look at a character's personality and you might say, "This is Bob. Bob's spirit animal is a naked mole rat and his guardian celestial body is a black hole and his guiding natural element is ragweed." These themes are intentional and you can and should have fun putting little tidbits of them into your writing, straight out of the gate. Bob goes to a zoo and he gravitates to the naked mole rats? That's so Bob!

Incidental themes are a bit trickier. They appear as side-quests in your writing journey, and it's up to you to notice them. Here's a pointer -- if you get good at spotting symbolism in others' writing, you are "training your writing muscle" to be better at spotting it in your own. The bad guys escaped into a cave and the good guys are all afraid of the dark? Well holy shit! What about using Bob to go in and get them? Maybe Bob's not afraid of the dark? Maybe Bob is a natural spelunker? Bob's spirit animal is a naked mole rat, after all! This is so Bob!

So how do you "train" to spot symbolism? As I said above, the best way is to look at the media you enjoy, and see if you can spot any themes the authors have snuck in. Don't be afraid to "cheat" by interacting with your fandom and looking up some connections other people have made. Metalocalypse is full of this stuff, and we get into what I think are some of our liveliest discussions when we go back and forth about the prophecy. Go look at the wikis. Go peruse fan-theories (even "debunked" ones) on message boards, Discords and... *sigh*... Reddit (no offense to all my Klokateers on Reddit out there -- ilu but not the platform). Join in on the discussions right here on hellsite when they come about. Prophecy-speculating one of my favorite things about this fandom, personally.

So that brings us back to me and why my characters are here in the first place. Most of you know this, but Baen-Shee is in the Dethkomic story to explore the supernatural side of things. Not every MTL OC out there (or every character in the show for that matter) is going to be involved in the Prophecy, but I enjoy torturing myself with difficult and incomplete lore puzzles, so mine are players in it. All that said, here's probably what you came for in the first place -- a breakdown of some of the things I'm thinking about with my own characters as I examine the canon and my own stories, and little tidbits about how some of it came about:

Nita: We know she's head of the group, muscially, but I liked the idea of her being the last one anybody expected to be the most powerful character, supernaturally. I saw a lot of opportunities to play up her kind and unthreatening nature while simultaneously giving her character arcs that emphasize personal growth and strength of character. Nathan's a character who is giving off every indication that he's in charge and capable of managing his band and becoming a leader when the end of the world goes down -- but we all know he's incredibly insecure about all of it. I wanted Nita's purpose to not only be the usual finding herself stuff, but also helping others to find themselves. She's the Holy Unifier, and her "great appointed eternal task" is to keep everyone together. Too, I feel Nathan as the Chosen One is representative of the power of an individual, whereas Nita's on the flip side of that coin as the power one gets from others around them (she's totally Twilight Sparkle is what I'm trying to say, here).

Caj: She's a study in duality and surprises. Guardian of life, but also an assassin. The Holy Mother and (wo)man-at-arms. She's a girl who presets as a boy. Her eyes are two different colors. Her totem is a chameleon. And lest we forget, it's funny as hell that her Chosen One is also her greatest rival on the planet... etc, etc... Some of you guys already picked up on this, but watch closely, every mention of angels and devils in our current Dethkomic arc. This is a good example of a theme that sticks around for one story, only -- which is a thing that happens often in fictional serials and something you can totally employ if you only have one story to tell.

Cherry: The Holy Messenger -- and the Metalocalypse's first sacrificial player. Unlike Charles who follows her into the great hereafter a few weeks later, she doesn't get to escape death and become the Dead Man. I am so utterly stoked to show you her part in the continued Dethkomic stories, and that starts happening in just over a week from now, so I am going to try containing my excitement and keep from spoiling too much, but... Cherry's spirit animal is a phoenix for a reason. Also, I've said before the reason Cherry dies is not just a matter of emotionally torturing my readers, nor is it angst-porn: She dies because you need to get comfortable with the idea of major characters dying in my stories. ...and now I've probably said too much.

Sparkles: I've said before how Sparkles is my favorite character to write for, and how it's not just because I don't have to think up any dialogue for her beyond the occasional grunt and growl. Sparkles is a spirit of purity, nature, and all that's good and right in the world. It's definitely more an abstract concept than it is an "element" and I get to really stretch my imagination when coming up with the kind of things she's capable of. One symbol, one idea, one theme can mean several different things, and you might find as a writer (and especially if you're only just beginning to dip your toe into this stuff), it's easiest to loosely define your connections so as not to write yourself into a corner. You'll see Sparkles' powers finally come to the fore in Issue #7 of Dethkomic, and they suit her on several different fronts. I really surprised myself when I came up with it, in fact.

Eden: Her element is "the void" -- whatever that is -- and it's more than just a connection to her position as herald of death. Here again, keeping things kinda vague and loose, but the mirror-effect of a character whose history is (currently) a big question mark, having powers that come from something as obscure as a "concept" of an element is a connection one might make. Too, we throw that extra element of the moon in there, as a sort of guardian celestial force (calling to mind other visions too -- like space in general, the stars, the afterlife, the heavens...) and you can make further connections with Toki's association with rabbits on a mythological level. It's kind of all over the place, but tight enough to work, I think. Oh -- and speaking of mythology and bunnies in the moon... brush up on your world mythologies every chance you get. They'll do nothing but serve you in this endeavor, because at the end of the day, it's all about connecting the dots... or the stars in the sky, as it were!

SO. That was more of a tutorial than it was an answer. I hope you got to read through this and are still interested in this question, Claudia. It was a lot of fun to ponder and equally enjoyable to throw in some pointers for all my writers out there.

Also, I haven't gotten into it yet, but this is a good time to remind anyone reading this far that I'm doing a how-to-make-comics thing over on @dethkomic, and I release a tutorial every update over there. I totally will be covering more about metaphors and the like, very soon.

Great question! Thanks for reading!

[chordsykat]

if you want, I'd love to hear the answers to 1, 3 and 6 for Baen-Shee. :)

Ah, the old root, third, and the minor 6th, eh? Certainly!

#1, What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)

Nita: Likes wines of all kinds, but especially reds. Having a manager telling you "no red wine - you have a photoshoot to think of" is a pain she knows well. She also really likes Smirnoff drinks for some reason.

Caj: Vodka. This is canonized next Dethkomic update, in fact. :D

Cherry: Everything, but I see Cherry as a whiskey girl. She gives off the same vibes as a very dear friend of mine while drinking. Whiskey and a smoke.

Sparkles: I don't see Sparkles as picky with her drinks, either. Probably the keenest to crack a regular old beer with you as any of them.

Eden: She's not 21 yet and the world of alcohol is a big mystery to her. Hell, the world of things that are not water is probably a mystery. I think it'd be funny if she got hooked on Mountain Dew or something, though. XD Maybe I'll have to write an Eden discovers caffeine arc.

#3, What was their most expensive purchase/where does their disposable income go? (Gets you thinking about socio-economic class, values, and how they spend their leisure time)

Nita: A very expensive painting she bought when she purchased her first loft in her pop star days, and one she didn't realize had been hanging upside-down for two years.

Caj: Buying the rights to one of her own songs which had come up for auction. The song was "Mit lands primære eksport er Lars Ulrich" and Michael Jackson was rumored to be the one bidding against her. It got heated.

Cherry: Aside from that Picasso she famously rolled into a blunt and smoked, Cherry doesn't go in for extravagant things. Her old microbus got a rather pricey overhaul, though. Worth every penny.

Sparkles: Is even thriftier than Cherry. Her old Grabber bass is probably the most she's ever spent on anything.

Eden: I am having a hard time figuring out if this poor girl has ever bought a damn thing in her life. I honestly do not know. She's pretty much been "government issued" all of her possessions or they've been handed to her by her sponsor(s).

#6, Are they an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? (This one might be a me thing, because I LOVE writing/reading about family dynamics, but knowing what kinds of things were ‘normal’ for them growing up is important.)

Nita: Only

Caj: Only

Cherry: Middle

Sparkles: ?????

Eden: Answer unclear. As an orphan, her solitude marks her as an only child in a way, but will we ever find out if she had other family? Perhaps... :D

Good ones! Making me think again, I see. Thanks, Anon! Original list is here.

[chordsykat]

💞🎈 for the fic questions?

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

Oooooo! I like this one, too.

For me, you can't have a plot without believable characters, so I tend to work more character-centric than plot-centric. If someone has to play the role of "I also am in this scene" then I'm ten times more likely to make their dialogue or their actions center around some aspect of their character than I am the plot. It's easier for me, for one thing, and I love throwing the audience those little headcanon breadcrumbs. :3

See "Murderface "ties a tie"" from our most recent Dethkomic update, for example:

As for this one...

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

It's comics!

Hahaa, okay -- it's uh... "trying to emulate the canon but with more emphasis on the serious bits?" Basically, I try to write in the same spirit as the IP I'm working with, but I tend to not slow down for comedy as often when things inevitably go to shit.

I feel one part of my style is to shine a light on things that are oft-implied but never canonized and solidify them to their canonical form (canonical in my universe, anyway). Another part is playing with significantly stricter rules when it comes to character relationships (who cares about whom, how much, and why) than the canon. The other big element for Dethkomic specifically that will surely be the end of me and require countless retcons when the Metalocalypse movie comes out -- is refusing to leave speculation about the prophecy out of my work. Because that's another big reason I lke writing MTL fancomics in general. :)

These are amazing! Thank you!

Original ask list is here!