Today’s post is a bit about process and bit about my own learning curve with 2816. I recently requested a critique from a reader who has was generous enough to return something a SUPER helpful and dense.
Among the many things she pointed out in the interest of helping me improve was dialogue. While I have put a great bit of effort into figuring out who these characters are, as you may have seen from last weeks process post, it’s been more organic than intentional. By organic I mean that I have a loose idea of who these characters are and have just been throwing them into situations to see how they react. While this works for many things in character development it won’t do for authentic dialogue. How can I write a half man half cat sea captain if I know nothing about fishing? How can I write a washed up lounge singer if I know nothing of the lounge?
As a remedy I am jamming all my free time with documentaries on Billie Holiday and streaming the backlog of Deadliest Catch on Netflix. Huzzah for research!
2816 was intended to be an exercise. As lame as that sounds it’s true. I started it to prove to myself I could stick with a project for the long haul as well as write interesting characters and dialogue. You rarely find success on the first go so hopefully in the next chapters you’ll find that the gang sounds as interesting as they are dressed.
So thanks for the critique (you know who you are). Your drawing is in progress and will be in transit very soon.
Couldn’t resist, might this be the Captain long before we met?
