Paper-Girl

I learned something about writing last Friday. For the last several weeks (maybe a month) I've been trying to divise a new opening for Paper Girl. To say that this has been no easy task is an understatement. I've gone through several different versions and false positives. I researched the experience of other writers -- all far more experienced than myself -- in crafting the perfect first line:

• The first line is your best advertisement next to the book's cover.
• The first line sets the mood and tone of the book.
• The first line should crystallize the plot but only so much as to make the reader interested.

How the hell, I thought, do I stuff all of that into one sentence? Most of the time the first line just comes to me, and I can build a story, chapter, or blog entry around it. The problem with Paper Girl is that it's far, far bigger and a more ambitious story than any I have attempted thus far. Crystallizing that down to one sentence seemed ludicrous. I tried meditation, interviewing the characters, even brute force, but the only thing I was successful at generating was frustration.

On someone's suggestion, I decided to take some time off from the project. I put it out of my mind, or as much out of my mind as is possible for someone with my personality. It helped somewhat that I was out-state on assignment last week. Being away from home tends to make me value my imagination more and I have less distractions available. After all, only so much fits in a carry-on. I put Paper Girl out of my mind primarily for the reason that I felt overworked and needed a break. After a week, my creativity gave suggestions of a return, but nothing solid.

It was on the first leg of my flight home Friday that inspiration struck. I was in a cramped DC-80 somewhere over Kentucky, making my way to O'Hare International. I was convinced that I wasn't going to make my connection since we were delayed taking off, and then there was a ground hold at Chicago. I sat in my seat and thumbed through my music collection on my BlackBerry.

A few songs in, the thought occurred to me that I hadn't been listening to my playlist of Paper Girl related music. I tend to assemble playlists for my writing projects to serve as both focusing and inspirational tools. Lately, however, this habit has fallen out of use in favor of less purposeful listening. On a whim, I decided to change that. The first song I naturally turned to was "Chop Suey" by System of a Down.

"Chop Suey" has been a strong member of the playlist for years. Since college, I've imagined it as the closing song to the fictitious Paper Girl anime. Always the same selection of images flickers in my mind to that song, a building in flames, a girl falling along a mirrored wall, and an assortment of others. Like many of the songs on my writing playlists, "Chop Suey" has a key lyric that is relevent to the story as a whole or a particular character. In this case, the majority of the song has both been parallel, and shaped the nature of the story.

Somewhere near the end of the song I found myself sitting bolt-upright. I'm sure that if anyone had seen my expression at that moment people might have thought I had just witnessed the fuselage being torn to pieces before my eyes. I didn't even voice if it were the right line or not, I simply knew at the gut level that what had come to me was it.

Lacking a pen and paper, I switched applications on my phone and began typing in what I had just written. It didn't take me long to realize that this wasn't the first line of the story. If I hadn't been so caught up in the moment I might have been disappointed at this point, instead I realized that this was the last line of the opening paragraph.

Drawing from some recently generated ideas, an image suggested from a friend, and two failed introductory paragraphs, I began formulating a new opener. It flowed surprisingly easily at 30,000 feet. A flight attendant passed by in the middle of this and asked, "You're not sending that, right?" She thought I was tapping out a text message or an email; I told her I wasn't and she was gone before I could explain further. Some minutes later, I stared at the completed introduction:

NOVELLA:
It's a lot like watching a television set. Everything you experience
has an off-white sense of distance, and a high frequency buzz barely
low enough to hear. Even touch feels rubbery like the buttons of a
remote control. Except, there's no remote, no channels, no off switch.
You're always watching yourself, a puppet made of flesh.

I hated it. I wanted to break my gaze, unplug the world and be free and floating. But then I met an angel who said she wanted to die.

What I had learned as a writer in that moment was that the first line, the very first line doesn't matter. The first line of the above section is actually quite banal, but it does hold your interest long enough for you to read the first paragraph. What is like watching a television set? you may ask. The line also does set the mood of the story as well as tell you something critical about how the main character perceives the world.

Instead of crystallizing the entire story in the first sentence, I decided to make a grabber. The first sentence keeps the reader interested long enough to finish the paragraph -- or the first few pages if they're particularly attentive. The paragraph alone, however, isn't enough for most readers to finish the book. You need more for that. Instead, the first paragraph serves to build up interest and set mood so as to prepare the reader for the really, really grabbing line in the second paragraph.

This line you can call a "nail", as in, "If I haven't nailed your interest by now, you might as well put the book back on the shelf." It's this line that serves to capture the readers interest, as well as act as a point of reference for the writer.

The majority of the analysis occurred over the next 40 minutes of my flight. I was so excited by this revelation that I wanted to randomly show it to anyone that would listen, asking "Would you read a book that starts with this?" I managed to restrain myself enough to compose an email, and set it for delayed send once I was back on the ground.

Since then I've shown the intro to several different people who's sense of writing I trust. The response has been overall positive and I see little reason to change that. Now the problem is crafting the remainder of the first chapter. I have some dialog already, but it's no where near long enough to make a chapter. Now that the imfamous first line is behind me, hopefully it'll be easier to pen the remaining.

Just a little drawing. I'm surprised I still can turn out half-way decent pieces like this given how little I use my drawing skills any longer.

This image started out as a pencil drawing. While the simplicity can be enjoyable, I spent some time cleaning up the static read during the scanning process. I had forgotten how annoying that is. I also had forgotten to draw the side-strip and pocket cover on Novella's jacket. After reconfiguring my tablet on Linux (I had lost it in a reformat a few weeks ago), I added the missing details digitally. I'm rather surprised how that turned out.

It was late at night and I was rifling through my library. I would take a book from the shelf, and open it to the first page. The book remained open only a moment as I scanned the page before returning it to the self and moving on to the next book. The process did not take long due to the size of my library. The two stout, white painted bookshelves could only hold so many books and manga. I was searching for something.

To be more accurate, I was conducting an analysis. I was looking for archetypes, patterns, and ultimately, guidence. I read only a short selection from each book:

"My name is Kathy H."
"All of this happened, more or less."
"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories."

...came the first three. The next were personal favorites and rather striking:

"It was a pleasure to burn."
"The sky above port was the color of a television, turned to a dead channel."
"Two hours before dawn I sat in the peeling kitchen and smoked one of Sarah's cigarettes, listening to the maelstrom and waiting."

As I'm sure some of you have recognized by now, I'm looking at the first line in each novel. Crafting the first line of a story is a kind of art form. It has to grab the reader, while giving you a hint of what to expect. They have to envoke atmosphere and scene in one fell swoop. And of course, it has to sell the damn book.

This is not to say that a bland opening line means a great novel. My first example came from Never Let Me Go, a surprising and heartbreaking fictional biography set in an all to possible futrue. Of all my examples, it's the plainest and least grabbing. It does, however, offer an odd clue and hint of personality in the fact the narrator's last name is abbreviated. Little details like that can make or break an initial line.

Crafting the perfect first line was foremost on my mind that evening. I had been beating my head against the wall attempting to come up with the first line for Paper Girl. When I set about to write something, be it a journal entry, a blog post, or even a story, I often find myself unable to start without having that first line. It's not exactly fear that's holding me back. The first line is a kind of parent that each following sentence descends. I've often started over or abandoned entire bodies of work due to a bad first line.

Thankfully, I have yet to abandon the few pages of script I have written. Unfortunately I haven't settled on a first line either. Some months ago I thought for sure that I had nailed it. I was so excited by the line I spent my morning throwing together a new comic just to introduce it to others.

At the time, it summed up exactly what I had in mind for the story. It was also provocative, and grabbed my attention straightaway. Unfortunately, I began to rethink this the last few weeks.

The problem is that since I had come up with that line, I've been heavily reworking the main character, Novella. Novella has always come across as a weak character, too pliant to the wishes of other's in the story. For quite a number of outlines she didn't seem to have any concept of free will at all. The other characters of Akisa and Miki seemed far more clear in my mind, and I was able write them with much more focus and easy. Novella, by contrast, came across to one of my friends as "someone afraid of her own shadow."

The last few outlines I have been trying to improve her, especially the current Draft 5 plotline. Even so she seemed missing some critical component that made her more dynamic. Oddly enough, a workout session while watching the anime series Ghost Hound provided some inspiration. Since then, the character has been turned around in such a way that breaks the mold of a Transgender character in a webcomic. In fact, it's questionable if Novella is really Trans at all.

Since then I've been trying to get to know this character in a way I couldn't before. This Novella spoke more clearly, although I felt as if I wasn't getting to her directly. It's an odd thing to explain; directed image techniques and modified meditation doesn't always yeild results that make sense. Earlier this week, however, Novella seemed to overcome any communication difficulties and spoke to me in a way that was rather alarming at first. (Didn't I say directed image techniques were weird?)

All of this, however, didn't seem to deal with the problem I was facing. The line I came up with before didn't actually make sense for chapter I had written. The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that line needs to be conserved until later in the story where it will be far more relevant. It was also the wrong character speaking. By all rights, Novella should be the one granted the first line. I've done my best to come up with that line, but nothing seems quite be it:

"I can't remember when it first happened," or "When I was young, I remembered what the world felt like," aren't terrible. Yet they are lacking a quality that makes me stand up and say, "Yes! This is the first line of Paper Girl!" Some have suggested that I move on and write other parts of the story and get back to the initial line later. This is where I run into a problem. Paper Girl will take literally years for me to complete. The story I have in mind is complicated enough to warrent several volumes. Considering I plan to draw this story as a webcomic, I don't want to wait until the script is perfect to begin drawing. On the contrary, I want to keep the script only a bit ahead of the drawing so as to keep me interested. And of course there's my problem of how the first line is the progenitor of all the following.

I hope I come up with something soon, the wait is annoying.

"How do you do it?" I asked offhandedly in the chat window. It was late evening, and I was experiencing a rare moment of lucidity in the seeming perpetual fatigue I now exist.

Bing! rang the computer speakers. In my memory, her reply came back as a kind of "Eugh?" in a Japanese accent, plucked from some forgotten anime series. I explained that I agonized over every little detail in my creative pursuits, accepting nothing less than perfection from myself to the point of being unable to do anything at all. Meanwhile she manages to turn two webcomics and a writing project in her limited free time. "How can you keep that up without succumbing to the pressure?"

"Mostly," she replied, "I don't think about it." I balked. By nature, I'm a thinking-type personality. I tend to analyze every possibility to the point of excess. Not thinking seemed...well, unthinkable. She continued typing, "If I start to get that way, then I know I'm in too far and I need to back off".

I've never been able to maintain that sort of distance with my projects. Instead, I become overly involved and place too much value on their success or failure. This is a horrible thing to do to any sort of project. You lose your objectivity, and begin to obsess over each perceived deficiency. Most importantly, you lose sight of the fact the main goal is always completion.

Paper Girl has been in existence now for almost 8 years now. The furtherest the project came was late 2002 and 2003 when 24 pages of comics were produced. Shortly thereafter, I put the project on hiatus while I worked on “script issues”. What I had hoped to be 6 months became 3 years.

In 2006, I found myself in a much more stable life situation. I had a good job and a home of my own. I decided it was time to write down all the ideas I had in that three year interval into a cohesive outline. Outlines were all I managed to produce until sometime late last year. I threw out all the outlines and came up with a simple 9 page document (the previous ones were 40). I avoided details and focused on the major plot points. And then, quite unannounced, I turned my back on outlines all together.

Since late last year I've been working on the Paper Girl script. So far, the work has been pretty slow. I've managed to put together two chapters, with a developing idea for a third. This sort of thing seems to come in fits and starts for me. Some evenings I find myself staring at Open Office Writer blankly, unable to write anything at all. Other nights the words come quickly, spilling over the brim of my mind and splashing on my fingers faster than I can type them out. Most nights, however, I'm simply too tired and exhausted to think about the thing at all.

My life has become busy again this year. There are a lot of projects and clients at work making my days draining, but ultimately rewarding. I started a new exercise regimen that is requiring a great deal of my free time, not to mention free energy. Starting this week, I'm at the gym 6 nights out of 7 – tonight is my night off.

Recently I've began to think, This isn't working. Maybe I should just give up and cancel Paper Girl altogether. I hated that thought. I hated the fact that I couldn't see why this had happened to me. For the last year I haven't been able to draw or write unless I forced myself. Occasionally I manage to produce a new piece of artwork or some lines of dialog, but the effort was strenuous.

Fear, of course, was weighing me down. Overcoming that fear requires a great deal of energy in addition to what is required in order to work on a project in the first place. With my exercise regimen, energy is at a premium. I can't afford to force myself to draw or write, and instead I do nothing.

Doing nothing is certainly not helping. The few times I manage to draw or write are a great stress reliever for me. It's an opportunity to leave the stresses and concerns I face in daily life and enter into another mental realm where all that's important is what's in front of me. Doing nothing, however, has allowed me to examine the history of this and other projects and realize how maintaining a degree of distance is important. Didn't a Zen master once say, "Act without doing; work without effort"?

This is usually the point in the entry where I make some sort of promise to produce something. I certainly would like to produce something soon. The script as it stands today has some issues, but has been received overall very well by my “editors” and I have ideas to improve it. I would like the script to be at least three chapters ahead of any drawing I produce.

I almost made a promise there, didn't I? I have two chapters already, with thoughts on a third. If I manage to produce the third, what exactly is holding me back from drawing comics? Nothing really. How then, shall I publish these things?

It's basically impossible for me to maintain the three or two-day-a-week schedule that pervades the webcomic world. I can imagine I'd barely be able to produce a page a week as I intend to post each in full color with airbrushing. Instead, I will probably follow the pattern of Faith Hicks of Demonology 101 fame. I'll release a series of pages at a time, with no hint of a schedule. In a world of RSS feed-readers, do we really have need for scheduled posts anymore?

As much as I want to avoid making promises in this post, I shall make one: I promise I will try.