Writers on Writing: Greg Pak
Iām a comic book and childrenās book writer and filmmaker. Right now Iām working on āAction Comicsā and āBatman/Supermanā for DC Comics and a new childrenās book called āABC Disgustingā thatās in the middle of its Kickstarter campaign even as we speak. Itās an alphabet book about disgusting things drawn by the great Takeshi Miyazawa. Check it out at http://abcdisgusting.com! Iām also writing āKingsway West,ā a new creator-owned comic series about a Chinese gunslinger in an Old West overrun with magic. You can pre-order that at KingswayWest.com.
Okay, letās start with the basics. How often do you write?
Almost every day. Some days Iām working on outlines. Some days Iām hammering out actual script pages. Some days Iām revising scripts or tweaking dialogue. But when you work on monthly comics, you generally have to work nearly every day for the books to come out on time.
Do you try to write a certain number of words each day, for a certain number of hours, or does none of that matter?
I donāt track words or pages on a daily basis ā I just work towards making my overall deadlines. The need to make those deadlines and keep my jobs tends to be incentive enough. ;-)
Tell us about your writing tools. What do you do most of your writing with? And do you use different tools at different stages of the process?
I write on Macintosh computers ā a desktop and a laptop. I print out pretty frequently and edit by hand, because Iām old enough that my brain still works that way. And I carry around a small notebook for working on ideas when Iām out and about.
Any favorite tools you want to recommend to other writers?
I know itās a horrible, horrible cliche, but Iāve actually grown to really dig those Moleskine notebooks. I use the skinny ones that come in a three pack. Theyāre small enough to carry wherever but substantial enough that you can write in them comfortably without a table or backboard. And this is super goofy, but I love that they come in different colors. When I start new projects, itās fun to bust out a new notebook with a new color.
Letās talk about prep and what work you do on a project before you start writing. Do you take a lot of notes and develop a detailed outline, do you just dive right in, or is it somewhere in between?
Depends on the project. Sometimes the whole project takes form in my mind and I can start roughing out an outline almost immediately. Other times I just have a certain image or concept in my brain and I have to take notes and work through the ideas to find the story for a long, long time. This fall Iām coming out with a creator-owned comic book calledĀ Kingsway WestĀ that Iāve been working on in one form or another for literally two decades. Some projects just take a while.
On the other end of the spectrum is a project likeĀ ABC Disgusting,Ā which is a childrenās alphabet book about disgusting things. Once I had the initial idea, I spent a while taking notes about disgusting things for each letter of the alphabet. Then I spent a little time figuring out what the actual emotional storyline was (itās about a boy trying to gross out his sister, who ends up hitting him with the biggest gross out ever). Then I hammered out the script in a pretty short amount of time. Iām not saying any of those steps were easy or effortless (although it was all a blast); Iām just saying that it was easier to have that whole project in my head at once and see what it needed to be a bit quicker than some other kinds of projects.
Now itās possible to take a short cut and start writing before you really know what your story is. But for me, thatās never really worked well. I have three or four screenplays that are about two thirds done, but since I didnāt outline them from the beginning, I stumbled into cliched plots and lost the will to actually finish them. So I really try to outline enough ahead of time to know my story before I start writing full script.
What about the ending. Do you know what it is (or at least what it might be) before you start, or do you figure it out as you go along?Ā
Yeah, I always work better if I know the ending as early as possible. The ending might change. But in order to know whether this scene right here and now is working, I have to know what itās building towards. Later I can rework it all. But I need a plan.
Once you get started, how long does it usually take you to complete a first draft?
About 75 percent of the time I have before my deadline. ;-) That sounds glib, but itās true ā the work expands to fit the time available. So for a comic book script, for example, I tend to have my first draft roughed out a couple of days before I have to turn in the final script, which gives me time to clean up and refine.
How close is that first draft to being final? Is it basically there or will you do a lot of revising?
I do tons and tons of revisions. Nothing is final until itās actually printed. In comics in particular, first I have a page-by-page outline, which I send my editors. Then I revise that and hammer out a first draft of the actual script. Then I revise that and it goes to the artist. Then I look at the art and revise the dialogue to match. Then that goes to the letterer and we get the actual ballooned version. And I try to limit my revisions here, because anything extra here means extra work for the letterers. But sometimes you discover things donāt quite work right when ballooned, so hereās one last chance to tweak the dialogue a bit.
Back to logistics. Where do you do most of your writing? Do you ever change that up?
Mostly sitting at my desk. But I switch to a laptop on a couch. Or I print out and revise while eating lunch. Or sometimes I pull a Mark Twain and write in bed. A little change-up can help. Probably itās just moving from place to place that gets the blood flowing and resets the brain in a beneficial way.
How do you avoid distractions like the Internet or getting sidetracked by new ideas?
During the course of the day, Iām generally working at different times on three to five different stories. Thatās the nature of monthly comics. So I have to be able to switch from one story to another without a lot of warning or prep. That being said, you donāt want to be in a position where youāre having to make those switches every thirty seconds. So concentrating on one task at a time for discrete chunks of time is key. Sure, there are always distractions available, including the internet and other projects and redesigning your website headers. And sometimes itās a great idea to indulge in those distractions in order to reset your brain. But generally, the need to make my deadlines creates remarkable focus. If I donāt focus, I donāt get paid. ;-)
If you find yourself stuck on project, what do you do?
One of the great things about monthly comics is that I have editors I can call up. Sometimes Iāll bang my head against a certain story problem for a few hours, and Iāll suddenly remember, hey, I could call my editor! And I do, and we talk, and more often than not, we work out a solution in minutes. Very often what feels like a āproblemā in storytelling is really just a failure to decide between equally viable options. Having a creative partner like an editor or co-writer can help nudge you to decide one way or another very quickly so you end up actually working again rather than agonizing over a simple choice.
Any rituals, gimmicks or cheesy self-help techniques that help you write?
For years, Iāve wanted to do more creator-owned projects. But it can be very hard to make time for creator-owned work when youāre doing work-for-hire books. Those hard deadlines always take precedent ā as they should, frankly, if you want to be a pro. Eventually I realized the way to force myself to make the time for creator-owed work was to make the creator-owned work into a job. Developing theĀ Code Monkey Save WorldĀ book and running the Kickstarter with Jonathan Coulton, for example, created huge obligations and hard deadlines. Basically, I took a job with myself and had to make the deadlines, which was great.
Finally, whatās the one thing you wish someone had told you about the realities of writing before you started out?
How about this: No one is a genius. Itās all just having a story to tell plus hours and hours of hard work, year after year and project after project. Thatās sobering because it means that first thing you write is probably terrible. But itās incredibly freeing and inspiring because it means that yes, with hard work, we all can get better.
You know, maybe someone did tell me that, though. In some ways, thatās the message of that great Ray Bradbury essay, āDrunk and in Charge of a Bicycle,ā which describes his early years as a writer when he gave himself the task of writing a short story every single week. I read that essay as a kid and it made a big impression on me about the joy of creation ā and the need to work really, really hard to get better. Sobering and hugely inspiring all at once.
