#jenniewood

Writer Kelly Ford may have gotten me drunk for this interview - 

Grubbie Goes Graphic: Flutter Creator Jennie Wood on Comics, Shape-Shifters and Getting the Girl

Jeff McComsey discusses Flutter & more in this interview with Greg Davies. Here's an excerpt: 

Geeks of Doom: Jeff, I recently had the pleasure of experiencing the preview issue of Flutter, your collaboration with Jennie Wood, and it sincerely stuck a major chord with me. We’ve had some major publications bring on board homosexual characters before, but the contextual framework of Flutter brings a deeper and different tone to exploring gender identity and sexual orientation – it feels like a new cornerstone in comics to me. Was this an important aspect to you when deciding to jump into this project?

Lately I've been asked a lot about writing comics. Maybe it's because I’m still relatively new at it and my background is in writing other things. 

Even though I’d been a fan of comics my entire life, I’d never thought about writing a comic until I got the idea for Flutter, a girl so uncomfortable in her own skin that she feels like she has to become someone else to be worthy of love. My first attempt at the story was as a screenplay because it was the format I worked in at the time. Like Goldilocks and the first porridge she tasted, it wasn’t right. My second attempt was as prose, as a novel, but that didn’t feel right either.

Around that time I came across Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man and fell in love with the scope of the series. That's when it dawned on me - the story I was chipping away at, the one that wouldn’t leave me alone would best be told through a comic format. Because for me as a reader, as a fan, comics had always been a place where anything was possible. All I had to do was ground the story in a believable world. And learn how to write in comic format. And find an artist because I couldn’t draw for shit. And get it published. 

But first things first – format. Because you gotta know the rules so you can bend, break, and mold them to your story. You don’t have to take a class for this, but if you are lucky enough to live near a place like Grub Street, taking a graphic novel writing class might be worth your time and money if for no other reason than the feedback and support you’ll get from your instructor and fellow students. But if you don’t live near a Grub Street or don’t have money for a class, it’s okay. The comic script format isn’t that difficult and the comics community is filled with extremely helpful writers and artists who will answer questions that come up or point you in the right direction.

Also, once you master the format it’s a breeze. It’s not that different from the screenplay format so if you’ve ever written or seen a movie script this won’t look completely foreign to you. 

Below is an example of a basic comic script format, a page from my graphic novel, Flutter, Volume One: Hell Can Wait. Below that is the same page as drawn by Flutter artist Jeff McComsey so you can see how it goes from script to actual comic. Notes for the page of the script below: SFX is a notation for sound effects. And (op) means off panel, the person speaking is not seen in the panel, which is similar to (os) off screen in screenplays.

In most cases the only person who is going to see your comic script is the artist so when I worked on this script I wrote it always with Jeff in mind, even writing parenthetical notes directly to him like you'll see below in panel 4. Since the script was my way of communicating the story to Jeff, I tried to keep it as clean and precise as possible.   

PAGE TEN (6 PANELS)

Panel 1 – FLUTTER GIRL on her bike to avoid SAFFRON heads into the parking meter. Saffron jumps out of the way, dropping her backpack. Everything in her backpack spills out.

Panel 2 – FLUTTER GIRL slams her bike into the parking meter.

                                                SFX-BIKE

                        WHAM!

  Panel 3 – This is from Flutter Girl’s point of view. She is lying on the sidewalk, on her back, looking up at SAFFRON, who seems angelic, concerned, looking down at Flutter Girl on the cement.  

                                                SAFFRON

                        Are you okay?

  Panel 4 – FLUTTER GIRL on the ground, looking up at Saffron with stars and hearts in her eyes. (That doesn’t mean there literally has to be stars and hearts in the panel, of course. That’s just the kind of LOOK on Flutter Girl’s face.)  

                                                 FLUTTER GIRL

                                    (mumbling)

                        Yeah, that’s the problem.

  Panel 5 – FLUTTER GIRL is now sitting up, totally fine from the crash. Her bike, next to her, is messed up.  

                                                SAFFRON

                                    (op)

                        You shouldn’t be riding your bike so fast.  

  Panel 6 – Close up on SAFFRON from Flutter Girl’s point of view. We see Saffron as FG sees her – a vision of beauty. Flutter Girl has fallen, instantly smitten with Saffron.  

                                                SAFFRON

                        Are you trying to kill yourself?