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Wishing you all a very stabby Ides of March

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This week! It's the final update to CHAPTER TWO of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

…in which special arrangements are made for Alexandra's birthday and she hatches a clever plot.

Read all of this week's extra-large update right here!

Want to read Chapter Three as it's being completed? Join the Patreon! For less than the price of a monthly floppy comic, you get to see all the finished pages first, plus delightful updates every week (email you can look forward to!), and more, including the legitimately heart-warming feeling of helping to make this project possible.

Want to know when Chapter Three is posted publicly? Easy peasy! Pick an option that works best for you…

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If you've been enjoying this comic, please don't hesitate to share it around. Be shameless about it, jump in with both feet. Annoy your friends. If they're not saying, "shut up about that comic already," then you've still got room to push, or maybe you have more tolerant friends than I do.

Thank you to everyone who's been sending in kind messages, and thank you to the patron readers who help drive this work.

See you in a few months, when we'll discover… What Alexandra has in store for her mother! How Alexandra learns to dance! What is up with her dad's mysterious bejewelled dagger! And how effective, exactly, are the town's defences against pirates.

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This week, the penultimate update for CHAPTER TWO of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

Last week, the Provveditore returned and seemed upset about the British ship in this harbour. Will he find a reason to change his tune?

Read all four pages of this week's update right here!

Thank you as always to the patron readers who help make this comic happen.

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Park yourself in this week's update to PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

Alexandra follows the advice she's received and is in the process of consulting with a feathered wisdom-keeper when who should return but the island's foul-mouthed Provveditore. What does his return mean for Alexandra and her family?

Click through to read this week's instalment!

As always, thank you to the lovely patron readers who help make this comic happen.

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Attend weekly service with PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

Still adrift, isolated from her family and friends, Alexandra continues to seek advice from unfamiliar sources.

Read all of this week’s update at DelilahDirk.com!

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This week on PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY,

Having pushed away her family and her new friend, Alexandra becomes lonely.

Read all of this week's update at DelilahDirk.com!

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This week, the hills are alive with the sound of a massive EIGHT-PAGE update to PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

Due to a confluence of bad choices and simple miscalculation, Alexandra has grown up without, let's say, a complete understanding of what will be expected of her as an adult. Now that she's been told, it seems as though both her mother and her new best friend are at odds with her. Alexandra pushes back. She shows them what she wants.

👉 Make this comic Part of your World right here. 👈

Many thanks to the patron readers who help get this comic Out There, living in the sun.

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Settle in for this week’s special six-page update of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY, in which Alexandra seeks solace from her friend. Will she find it?

Click through to find out in this week’s update!

(Wondering who Kite and Owl are?)

Thank you to the patron readers who make this work possible.

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Dig up this week’s update of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY, in which Alexandra doesn't find her practice swords, but she does find some sort of… knife or dagger or short sword. Who can say.

Click through to read this week’s update!

Thank you to the patron readers who make this work possible.

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Break on through to this week's update of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY, in which Alexandra and her mother have a civilized meeting of minds to discuss their opposing viewpoints. Honestly, much better enjoyed as two-page spreads, which you can find right here.

Some people might argue, "uh, yeah," is not period-appropriate dialogue, to which I cordially reply, "yeah doyy."

Click through to read this week's update!

Thank you to the patron readers who make this work possible.

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Happy New Year!

This week in PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY,

Alexandra's expectations are dashed. Honestly, much better enjoyed as two-page spreads, which you can find right here.

Click through to read this six-page update!

Thank you to the patron readers who make this work possible.

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How to Write a Graphic Novel (*For Yourself, If You Must)

After I posted this video about my thumbnailing process, reader Laura DP commented, asking,

I’m interested to know a bit more about the point just before the translation of notes into thumbnail pages. … I assume you still plan an outline where you have the main beats locked down prior to thumbnail notes? Or are the notes you showed in the video basically the outline you give yourself (I also assume you do different drafts as you work out the story) and you leave just enough wiggle room to let certain things develop in a different way than you expected?

If we can rephrase the question like, "what sort of scaffolding do you build yourself before you start illustrating comic pages," I'll describe that below. The TL;DR is: these assumptions are correct, more or less, but read on for the full recipe.

CONTEXT INTERLUDE! When it comes to making comic books, I feel like I know what does and does not work for me in a lot of ways and I'm also still figuring stuff out. One of the few absolute beliefs I hold about creative pursuits and their industries is that everyone needs to figure out their own way to do things, and that, ironically, I do not trust anyone who claims to offer absolute solutions. This is all to say: glean what you will from what I can offer, but only through trial and error will you figure out what works best for you. <3

As a ten-year-old, sitting at the kitchen table, my comics-making process was: just draw each panel one-at-a-time, without the least bit of concern.

Over the years, I learned how to feel fear, worry, and self-doubt, just as most of us do. When I started the comic that became DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT, I made roughs and sketches to try to mitigate those feelings.

By the time I got to DELILAH DIRK AND THE KING'S SHILLING, I was more comfortable with long-form writing, so my process included writing a 25,000-word manuscript which I thought would let me isolate my story-related fears from my illustration-related fears. This assumption was partially correct.

As I began PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY, one of my big questions was: does the manuscript help or hinder me? I decided to skip it. For one thing, I knew this would be a multi-year project, and I wanted to leave room for liveliness and spontaneity; I didn't want to lock everything down and leave myself nothing to do except to execute the script. Maybe I could leverage the fear for my benefit. I also believed that if I did much of my "writing" in my thumbnails, the comics would feel more "natively" comicky. (I wrote much more about these choices at the start of the project).

As of this writing, I think that first notion turned out to be valuable. I'm glad I didn't try to freeze the story in carbonite two years ago (and "try" is an important, accurate word in that sentence). Whether it makes the work more or less purely comicky, I'm not sure. I think it's about the same.

OKAY SO HOW EXACTLY ARE YOU DOING IT RIGHT NOW?

The Outline. I poked through my folders to see when I started this project and the first material I have for DD4 is from the summer of 2018. I was going to say "the outline just sits in the back of my head and barely changes" but that can't be true: I forgot I originally included a whole separate frame story set in Finland.

But my key elements have stayed true. You got to have something to hold onto, right? The island, the conflict with mom, and a few other notes we haven't hit yet. If building a story is like baking a dessert, this is like saying, "I have buttermilk, two eggs, and a half a banana—what can I make?" rather than saying, "I am going to make an apple pie," and going out to buy apples. I've got a handful of images or ideas I want to include, and I'm going to include them, and the rest of the dessert better shape itself to suit.

Stocking the Pantry. Post-its! I started using them. Clever story movements, useful connections, and impactful images occur to me in the shower/during dinner/while watching Great British Bake-Off and I write 'em down on colourful sticky squares. I am a firm believer that writing down ideas does two things: it triggers my brain to start chewing on those ideas, and it makes room for new ideas. Jotting down ideas is the first step in moving a story down the mental digestive tract.

I am happy to be the first person in human history to praise the value of "making notes." Please ship my Nobel Prize to my house, I am too busy (being a genius) to collect it in person.

Some examples of these are…

"DD in the crow's nest—she wants to see real pirates."

"A suspicious ship is on the horizon. Dad insists they shelter at Istoria (mom's island?)," connected to another note, "they expect a warm welcome."

"Mayor (A) is mom's brother" — in the original outline, he was just any old mayor.

"Cold welcome from the locals… until they find out it's mom."

A note spitballing on a concept: "Generations / Family. -This being Mom's home. -Dad was here before as assistant to envoy, met mayor, Vignelli's father then. -Mom has: brothers? A sister? Parents? --last time they were here was for her parents' funeral?"

… and so on and so forth.

They are all roughly arranged along a timeline, slotted in where I think they'll fit. It's a very casual organizational method.

One thing I know about myself is that I come up with better connections when I give everything time to "simmer" (or give the dough a chance to rise, ha ha, Nobel Prize me!). This Post-it approach provides an easy way to lean into that tendency. While I draw Chapter Three, for example, I'm leaving new notes for later chapters.

This is very zoomed-out, "outliney" writing. It's a lot of logistics and problem-solving, like "how and why can we include this tomb imagery," and, "why didn't Alexandra's parents talk to her about English Lady Demands sooner?" It also feels like where the most muscular parts of the story take form. 

Rolling Out The Dough. First, I take all the Post-its for my current chapter and I re-write them longhand on new paper. Then I start writing the story out in order. If the previous step feels like building the forceful part of the story, this part feels like finding the passion and the humanity. I didn't intend to divide it that way, and I wouldn't recommend anyone intentionally do that, but that's how it goes. 

This "script" is actions, it's dialogue, it's this-then-that, it's pacing, it's "camera angles" or imagery I want to include. Sometimes I work out the dialogue during this process, sometimes I leave it for the thumbnail. I never write panel breakdowns (i.e., "this is what's in panel 1, this is what's in panel 2"). I rarely write page breakdowns except to say things like "end the page on this beat," or "make this its own 2-page spread." 

For example, my "outline" Post-its include the notion that the Cordelia runs aground on the mole outside of Archipoli. But they mention nothing about Alexandra warning the Captain, or that the Captain doesn't listen to Alexandra. The notion, "captain doesn't listen to little girl," didn't occur to me at the outline stage, it's just an idea that seemed A) believable and B) funny when I was sitting there, acting out the scene in my imagination like I assume all writing people do.

That element—an Authority Figure treating Alexandra dismissively—then returned  as a Post-it in Chapter Two, when Alexandra compares her parents' behaviour to the Captain's. I've really enjoyed having that flexibility, I think the book is benefiting from it, and I'm glad I'm trying it instead of having baked a manuscript at the start.

And that's how I get to the written document that you see me referencing in that thumbnail video. That's how I manage fear and uncertainty these days.

The answer to Laura's question is basically, "I do enough that I feel secure moving to the next step." Sometimes I do too much, sometimes I don't do enough. I improvise. And so it goes.

For more on the topic of writing (or to double-check whether or not I'm being a hypocrite), check under the "writing" post tag, or take a look at these…

From early 2021, at the start of this project. Lots of Post-its.

From Fall 2021, I get a better sense of this writing process as I start Chapter Two.

A celebration of leaving room for things to develop.

Two posts marking writing progress for Chapter Three—the steps above, in action!

As I suggested in the Context Interlude above, when it comes to writing and comics-making, everyone needs to discover the process methods that work best for them. Part of that discovery is practice and testing, but of course there's also just asking people what works for them. After all, no one expects you to bake an apple pie by first inventing fire.

Here are some books that taught me many useful principles.

Most recently, George Saunders' A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN. I read this in 2021 and posted about it so much that I created a tag just for him. I am a big fan of Saunders' approach, which emphasizes intuition, iteration, and honesty.

Lagos Egri's THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING. Long my favourite. Prior to this book, I had read Robert McKee's STORY and disliked it intensely. In contrast, this felt like a much better fit. I found myself nodding and agreeing a lot, even though all of Egri's example excerpts are from plays from 1930. It all felt "true." I should revisit it.

Stephen King's ON WRITING. Say what you will about Stephen King, I found this book to be relatable, practical, and humane. His advice to use fewer adverbs will stick with me until the end.

Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD. This came highly recommended, and though I remember it fondly I can't mark any specific takeaways except for the one in the title. I am including it because I generally liked it and hey maybe you don't want to read Stephen King.

Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant's WRITING MOVIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT. An excellent contrast/complement to Egri's DRAMATIC WRITING, because it's important to understand the extremes. Shorter than McKee's STORY—if you're going to read that, you might as well read this.

Austin Kleon's STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST as well as KEEP GOING and SHOW YOUR WORK. I like Kleon's broad-based point of view on creativity. I think we agree that principles from one discipline can be mapped to many others.

Lynda Barry's WHAT IT IS. I made the mistake of dismissing Barry because her artwork was not to my taste. Oh, what a mistake. In this book, Barry emphasizes the value of images in writing. Not illustrations, but conjuring imagery with words and deploying their strengths. I love the principles she lays out.

I've revealed my feelings about McKee's STORY, but it would be irresponsible for me to not acknowledge that I've found value there, too. For example, his advice to not write any dialogue until the later parts of the process is really useful advice. 

Perhaps you're thinking of pursuing more creative practices in this, a New Year. If so, I recommend Barry's WHAT IT IS and Kleon's STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST as starting places. The rest are all for writing nerds. :)

- - - - -

Thank you as always to all the Patron Readers who make it possible to keep working on Practical Defence Against Piracy.

For less than the price of a single floppy comic, get access—I mean, get access to the comic itself, as soon as the pages are done—but also tons of process posts (few as wordy as this one), lots of behind-the-scenes images, a great community of fellow tea-drinking adventure-likers, and not only are you supporting your work, but your name goes everywhere the book goes. At higher tiers, you can even see yourself drawn into the book!

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Chapter Two of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY continues…

wherein Alexandra meets a horse, and her dad makes a bad joke.

These are only two of this week’s four pages… 👉 Read all of this week’s pages over at DelilahDirk.com or subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Thank you to the patron readers who make this comic possible!

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Chapter Two of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY continues…

as Alexandra endures the excruciating torment of hearing about her mother in love.

These are only two of this week’s four pages… Read all of this week’s pages over at DelilahDirk.com or subscribe to the RSS feed here.

This post goes up right around Christmas Eve. However (and whenever) you observe winter festivities and the changing of the year, I hope they bring you joy and comfort. Whether your family is biological or found, I hope you're able to spend exactly as much time with them as you want.

Thank you to the patron readers who make it possible to work on this comic! Join them over here—it’s a fun Patreon! Weekly updates, stupid goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, pages show up there first, and more… all for less than the price of a single floppy comic per month.

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Chapter Two of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY continues…

and since Alexandra clearly doesn't know how to behave like a lady, her mother promises / threatens to begin her lessons early.

These are only two of this week's four pages… Read all of this week's pages over at DelilahDirk.com or subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Thank you to the patron readers who make it possible to work on this comic! Join them over here—it's a fun Patreon! Weekly updates, stupid goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, pages show up there first, and more… all for less than the price of a single floppy comic per month.

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PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY Chapter Two continues this week as Archipoli's policy of nighttime light discipline allows Alexandra and Katerina to take a look deep into the night sky.

To read all of this week’s pages, please click through to DelilahDirk.com.

(FYI, I am now sharing the complete comic only on delilahdirk.com, my blog, and with patrons.)

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Tomorrow's Patreon post features an very in-depth look at the pencilled pages that resulted from the thumbnails I drew during this video.

Join us and find out more than you could possibly want to know about how compositional choices get made; what gets obsessed-over; what makes a good, solid callback; and find out which unlikely movie taught me one of my favourite "cinematography" lessons ever.

It's a fun Patreon, y'all. Just saying.