11/14/2023 0 Comments Just roll with it a graphic novel![]() Could it exist as a film or TV series? Yes, but the high production budget required is a bar to probable success. My first attempt at a graphic novel, COLONUS, was a sci-fi political thriller about colonies on Mars and Venus. Thus Glove Story became a play, with an immediacy and intimacy no novel, comic book, or even screenplay could match.Ĭonversely, a bigger world requires a bigger canvas. That last part-that it could happen in front of a live audience-made it feel more nakedly real. As a period piece with older protagonists, it’s a hard sell as a film, and I didn’t think it would work best as a novel-I wanted to hear these guys bicker and quarrel and lash out at each other as their past lives trickled out and their true selves were revealed to an audience. I had an urge to explore the early days of the civil rights movement through the eyes of two former boxing champions, one white and one African American, who fought against that backdrop and are reunited in old age. Recognize that what you have here is a stage play. ![]() And it certainly isn’t a feature film, the single historical exception being My Dinner With Andre. What if your idea basically entails two people doing nothing but sitting in a room and talking? That isn’t a comic book, which requires more visual stimulation than alternating talking heads, and no network executive would ever put it on television unless it was punctuated with frequent explosions. For example, I’m probably not a very good essay writer or I wouldn’t have used the word “best” three times in that sentence. By developing different writing muscles, I feel I can best tell the best story in the best medium, but only if I understand how those mediums work. But many won’t translate as well some stories are innately suited to a specific medium. Some ideas will work across multiple mediums-witness how many books and comic books, stage plays and documentaries, are made into film, television, and even video games. While each medium offers different storytelling opportunities, each also poses unique challenges. That’s not to say such writer-brain-multitasking is easy. And much like the story of Frankenstein, it all starts with selecting the correct brain. ![]() I use a different skill set to write a novel than I do for a screenplay, and call on still another part of my brain for a comic book the single setting and limited characters of a play require yet another avenue of thinking, while a documentary demands not so much writing as harvesting a story from its parts and assembling it, like Dr. Sweating and grunting notwithstanding, the decathlete analogy is also apt because writing across mediums requires different muscles. (I know what you’re thinking: “Ken needs to learn how to focus.”) Writing across mediums is similar to being a decathlete, working across a variety of disciplines, but without the sweaty grunting. A film and TV writer by profession, I also write stage plays, documentaries, comic books, novels, and even stand-up comedy.
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