Writers on Writing: Scott Allie
I’m Scott Allie, Editor in Chief at Dark Horse Comics, and long time editor for Mike Mignola’s books. I’m currently writing Mike’s Abe Sapien series.
Okay, let’s start with the basics. How often do you write?
I do not write every day. Full time job, family, two kids, I don’t find the time to do it as often as I like. I tend to write in bursts—once or twice a month I’ll grab a series of nights, mornings, and weekend days, and "catch up" on my writing.
Do you try to write a certain number of words each day, for a certain number of hours, or does none of that matter?
The goal would be a number of hours. I aspire to doing two hours every day, Any less and I can’t get into what I’m doing deeply enough to get anywhere.
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 work on a MacBook Pro, in Word. I write, I print it out, mark it up in red, write notes on fronts and backs of the printouts, and then save a fresh draft with those changes. I love legal pads, and sometimes put my energy into those. I’m going on vacation, and am not bringing my laptop, so I printed out the notes for the story I’m doing next, and have a legal pad to write long hand. I love doing that, but generally find the laptop faster.
Any favorite tools you want to recommend to other writers?
Pilot G-2 07 red pens, but that might be the editor in me talking …
Let’s 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?
I used to change up my process every time, but in the last few years I’ve fallen into something that works for me. I have scattered notes. I pull them together, get them into one Word document, and add to it, not worrying too much about order or shape, until there’s a decent amount of material—ideas, scenes, bits of dialogue—to work from. None of it is in script for at this point. There comes a moment when I have enough of the raw material, and then I get it into order—sequence. This is the start of the outline, but there’s not a moment when I’m done with the outline and move to the script. I think of it as cellular division … I have a paragraph, and that’s the first cell. Then I add detail, add detail, and it breaks into multiple paragraphs. Usually that’ll get to the point where it’s five or more paragraphs, and then it starts morphing into the script.
With a comic script, you break it down into pages. The script tells the artist what to put on page one, then page two, etc.—it’s not a like a screenplay, where you have a rough target number of pages, or a prose book, where you have a target word count. With a comic, you usually know that you have 22 pages, or 20 pages—it’s a set number, and it’s precise. So at the point where I have my handful of paragraphs, I break them into scenes, and then I figure out that the first scene will be a certain number of pages, the next scene, and it has to add up to 22. So if I’ve decide the first scene is say 4 pages, I start adding detail to that scene—that paragraph—and again breaking it into pieces, until it becomes individual panels, individual lines of dialogue, and then I try to trim it into that 4-page scene that I determined … So from going through the initial notes through the rough “outline” to the final script, it’s a very organic process, where no stage is ever done, so much as it starts evolving into the next stage. And this whole process applies to a five-issue story as much as a one-issue story, and even, to a degree, to a whole series.
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?
The ending is usually nailed down pretty early in that process. Sometimes it changes completely, but I usually have something well before I’ve broken the paragraphs down into individual scenes. The end is the hardest part, nothing else works with out the end, and the way I like to structure things, I can’t really nail down the details of the beginning without a pretty clear view of the end. Sometimes I throw out the end and put something new in there, which is fun to be able to do. But if I love an ending that I come up with early in the process, then I’m doing everything I can to set it up properly.
Once you get started, how long does it usually take you to complete a first draft?
I don’t have that meaningful an answer for this, because of how I stop and start around life and my day job. The real work is getting to that point where I have the handful of good paragraphs that set up an issue, or an arc. That’s probably like twenty hours of work writing, but endless hours of time kicking it around in my head, talking to the right people, walking around with it. And then when I have those good paragraphs, the outline, as it were, from there it might only be twelve hours of writing to get to something ready to really share.
How close is that first draft to being final? Is it basically there or will you do a lot of revising?
I do a lot of fine tuning, with feedback from a few people, and more time spent with it, but usually the structure is there. Sometimes I’ll get to the end, and decide to throw out some big part of it—maybe the last third, or some big chunk of the middle. Ideally the revision is just going back over it and setting up the ending better, fleshing out the themes or the character arcs. Punching those things up. But sometimes I realize at the end that I didn’t get a certain character where she needed to be earlier, and I have to shred a couple scenes and replace them with something new.
Back to logistics. Where do you do most of your writing? Do you ever change that up?
Either a coffee shop in the neighborhood, or the couch in the front room with the shades open. Sometimes other places, but those have proven the two most reliable spots to get anything good.
How do you avoid distractions like the Internet or getting sidetracked by new ideas?
I don’t … if I’m into it, I don’t get distracted. If it’s really working, I don’t go astray. And if I’m getting distracted, I’ll let myself, because sometimes the distractions kick something into the mix that was needed. The goal is to get to that place where it’s working, and have enough time that I can stay there long enough to get the most of it.
If you find yourself stuck on project, what do you do?
Talk to a friend. Talk it through. I was at this art school a couple years ago, Illustrators Masters Class, on the faculty. I was writing Abe #9-11, this three issue arc that I had worked out pretty well, and I just needed to do the script while I was there. I knew the story. But I was having trouble. I grabbed this one artist, Dave Palumbo, who does a lot of cover work for us. We went to an all night diner and I talked it through with him. He asked me questions, he threw some ideas my way, he responded to what I was telling him. Some of it he seemed to like, so I emphasized that stuff, and the stuff that got a blank stare, I moved away from. He spent like two hours there with me. The next night I was still in turmoil over it … self-doubt. I grabbed another artist there, Iain McCaig, who has a great take on story. I was reluctant to talk to Iain at first, because he’s sort of exploding with ideas, and I was worried if I pitched him something soft, he’d say, No, do this! and run with it, and in my indecision I’d just get swept along. But we sat down, I told him the story, and as I was telling it, I started feeling like it was working. And I got more excited about it. And when I got to the end, he just laughed, and said, Well go ahead and write it!
Any rituals, gimmicks or cheesy self-help techniques that help you write?
That’s the part that continues to change all the time. Sometimes my gimmick is just to read something. Like two pages of Poe, or some old true ghost story,or find something on the internet about the place where I want to set the story. There’s a pioneer cemetery by my house that’s been helpful lately … I usually just need something small to shake the dust off.
Finally, what’s the one thing you wish someone had told you about the realities of writing before you started out?
You’ll never get to the point where you’ve figured it out, so give it all you’ve got today. It’ll be different and probably better next time. The truth is, the thing I think is most important changes from year to year. That actually just keeps it fun and fresh for me. What I’m going for evolves enough that I can’t tell you the thing that would’ve been most important in 1994 … Hopefully I’ll learn something this year that trumps all previous lessons. My favorite little writing koan comes from Joss Whedon, something he said in the middle of our work on Season 8, which was, "Fall in love with moments, not moves.” But if someone had told me that in 1994 I would’ve just spent the next ten years trying to figure it out anyway …
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