Ok so I have to talk about how excited I am about this book. It’s an upcoming children’s novel called George, written by genderqueer author Alex Gino. It’s about a little trans girl who wants the world to see her for who she is.
I’ve poked around the author’s website and was really pleased by what I found and this looks like it could be a terrific read.
You can pre order it at alexgino.com (which I am about to do right now) but if you can’t afford an expensive hardback bother your rich friends to get a copy or something idk in any case this looks exciting and I want people to know about it
Also ask your local public library to order a copy!
It’s art I did for Patreon supporters, beginning with a recent livestream. Patrons get extra stuff, and so most of what came of it will remain exclusive to them…but here are some snippets:
We’ve all been there: basking in the glow of a finished manuscript, only to read it over and realize something is wrong with the plot. Finding ourselves unable to identify the problem only makes matters worse. But take heart! Here are some common plot gaffes and sensible ways to revise without starting over.
1. THE PLOT ISN’T ORIGINAL ENOUGH. Go through your pages and highlight anything that you’ve read in another book or seen in a movie. In the margin, write where you’ve seen it. Then list these sections and make a note for each one about how it could differ from its lookalike. A mental patient escapes by throwing something heavy through a window. Too much like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Instead, the patient walks out with a visiting grandma after convincing her he’s an old friend. Quick notes like these can help you detach from unintentional imitation.
2. READERS ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. This may be because you’ve chosen a plot point that’s overused, or because you keep giving away the answer in advance. Readers know the villain is going to whip out a picture of the hero’s son and blackmail her by pretending to have kidnapped the little boy because you showed the villain taking pictures of the child and driving away from the schoolyard. You could be less obvious by only showing the antagonist sitting in the car watching the boy on the playground, and no more.
3. THE PLOT IS BORING. Take each page and imagine what different writers might do with the same plot. Choose extreme examples. Would a comedy writer have the cab driver and the villain coincidentally be childhood friends with unfinished business? Would the mystery writer have the taxi pass a clue on a street corner that makes a new connection for the hero? Would the horror writer have the cab driver channel a ghost? Or, imagine the most surprising thing that could happen in a given scene. It doesn’t matter if these ideas don’t fit your story. You’re not going to use them. But often, after thinking of wild ideas to make the story more interesting, you begin to come up with workable ones that are just as stimulating, but better suited to your book.
4. THE PLOT IS ALL ACTION AND THE FRENZIED PACE NUMBS READERS. Let them breathe. Give the readers a little downtime now and then in your action story. Look back at your favorite action novels. Notice the conversations, summarized passages, meals, introspection and releases of emotions that are set in between the car chases, shootouts and confrontations. List them. Then give the readers a chance to breathe in your own manuscript. Find the dramatic respites that come from your characters’ needs, flaws and strengths.
5. THE PLOT IS TOO COMPLEX. Often, a complex plot can be trimmed into a sleek one by cutting out some steps. Does your protagonist have to visit her father in the hospital twice—once to bring him flowers and talk about Mom, and then again to find he has taken a turn for the worse? Couldn’t he take a turn for the worse while she’s still there the first time? Does your villain need to have three motives for revenge? Would one or two be interesting enough? To find the messiness in your overly complex story, summarize it out loud to yourself. When a section takes too long to explain, make a note. When you find yourself saying, “Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that …” you’re probably in need of a plot trim. When deciding whether or not to simplify the plot, ask yourself over and over again,
“Why does she do that? Why didn’t she just do this?” Making a plot less complicated doesn’t have to make it less clever.
6. THE PLOT IS TOO SHALLOW. Sometimes as writers we get caught up in the action. The symbolism. The metaphors. The witty dialogue. The great character names. The slick descriptions. Sometimes we ride these skills over the surface of the story and forget what’s really important. If you or your first readers (friends, family, agent) complain that the novel feels insubstantial, step back and ask yourself these questions: Why am I bothering to write this story? Why does the outcome matter to the characters? How do the characters change? How did my favorite book affect me the first time I read it?
7. SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS DESTROYED. Readers need to buy into the reality put forward by what they’re reading. You may go too far with a plot point or not far enough with preparing your audience for that plot point. If something that sounded right when you outlined it is coming off as farfetched even to you, look back at the stepping-stones that led to the event. If your murderer turns over a new leaf at the end of act two, make sure you’ve given her reason to.
8. TOO MANY SUBPLOTS MAKE THE PLOT OVERLY COMPLEX. If you start to feel weighed down by your numerous storylines, start cutting them. List the subplots (shopkeeper with a crush, neighbor’s dog that tears up the garden, accountant who threatens to quit every day), and then list under each title all the ways it’s necessary.
Only subplots that are so vital that you could not remove them without destroying your novel get to stick around. Be bold.
9. THE SEQUENCE IS ILLOGICAL. Sometimes the sequence set down in an outline starts to show its true colors when you’re writing the chapters. If you feel the order of scenes or events in your story is off, list each scene on a separate index card and, in red ink, write a question mark on every card that doesn’t feel right where it is in the story. Shuffle the cards. I’m not kidding. Mix them up completely. Lay them out again in the order you think they might work best, giving special attention to those with red question marks.
Something about these scenes tricked you the first time. This time, really look closely at the proper place for those tricky bits.
10. THE PREMISE ISN’T COMPELLING. If you fear that a mediocre premise is your holdup, take out a sheet of paper. Make a list on the left-hand side of everything that’s dodgy in your present premise. Then write a list down the right-hand side about all the things that work great in the premise of a similar favorite book, play or movie.
See where you might make the stakes higher, the characters more emotional, the setting more a part of the overall plot. Remember: The premise should make your readers curious.
11. THE CONCLUSION IS UNSATISFYING. Once again, write a list of what bothers you about your conclusion, and next to it, a list of what worked great about the end of your favorite novel. Do you have to create more suspense before you give the readers what they’ve been craving? Do you need to make the answer to the mystery clearer? Does the villain need to be angrier, or perhaps show remorse? Unsatisfying conclusions are usually lacking something. Whatever that is, make your story’s ending have more of it.
Memory Stories for my Specialization class. My classmates and I got to choose a specialization course to get into for our final semester, I chose Independent Comics, mainly because I was really intrigued after doing that zine assignment for my Concept Development/Creativity II class last semester. So far, it’s been a blast!
For this assignment, I had to create a 4 panel comic of certain memories of my life that were associated with words given to me and had to do this for 7 days. I enjoyed this process, though I made a few mistakes on some panels here and there. I need to get better at inking… :/
Anonymous: For email submissions, what kind of format do you suggest the pages be sent? Jpg, pdf, does it matter? Should It be sent in a zip file with everything organized in folders? Is it better to send them the stuff in traditional mail?Also, We have the first two issue completed, do you suggest sending both books? Does it matter?
There’s no answer that works for every situation, but in my experience
digital is preferred at this point compared to physically mailing a
pitch package. If you’re going to a convention and going to meet someone
in person a physical leave behind might be useful, but even then the
digital submission afterward is probably what they’ll dig into. As far
as sending that digital submission, if the publisher doesn’t already
have a specific format they request then here’s what I recommend:
Attach a low rez jpeg (ideally 500kb or less) to an email, a key
visual/cover piece to grab attention and convince the person you’re
sending it to that you’ve got something of quality. It’s big enough that
it can look good without being so large a file that it would gum up an
email inbox or take up too much mobile data.
Include a download link for the pitch rather than an attachment. In that
attachment you’ll probably want a PDF so you can control the order of pages/information and how it all looks. Here’s
why a download link is better than an email attachment:
• It won’t weigh down an email with a bulky file.
• The person you’re sending it to can download it at their convenience.
• You can update/improve the pitch package by replacing the zip file
without having to resend the attachment or send a brand new download
link. Never underestimate your ability to find a typo after you’ve sent something in. This gives you chance to fix it.
• If your pitch gets picked up by different publisher you can even
remove the file and take the pitch ‘off the market’ just by deleting it
from the web directory where it’s stored.
Have separate download links for the pitch and the first issue so the
editor can grab the pitch and, if they like what they see there, they
can decide to snag issue 1. Let them know in your initial communication
that you have issue 2 done as well. If they liked the pitch and issue 1,
they know how to reach out to you for issue 2 and hopefully start
talking about what comes next.
I’ve been brainwashed by tumblr for far too long, and now that I’m not I’m realizing a lot of things.
- Not everything is fucking offensive
-People have different opinions from you. Fucking deal with it.
- It’s not okay to discriminate against gender, race, or sexuality. THIS INCLUDES STRAIGHT WHITE CIS MALES
- It’s NOT okay to tell people to go kill themselves, this includes telling republicans, cis people, white people, or anyone who differs from your ways to “go die”.
- 4chan is NOT the spawn of the devil and is actually really funny.
- Not everything is a trigger
- Not everything is ableist, transphobic, homophobic, or racist
- There is nothing wrong with being cis, straight or white
- Most of the world is straight and cis
- Double standards are stupid
- Dark humor can be funny
- Feminism is a good thing. But most of tumblr aren’t feminists. They’re extremists.
- It’s okay that you are not politically correct 100% of the time
-Treating people like shit and giving them hate because their opinion differs from you IS FUCKING WRONG!!!!!!
- Tumblr is sometimes really stupid and the only reason why I’m still on here is because of memes and artsy shit
IF ANY OF THIS MAKES YOU HATE ME IDC UNFOLLOW ME <3
Here’s an infograph breaking down all the lightsabers used in the Star Wars films, The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Props to HalloweenCostumes and David Rosencrance for putting this together. Here’s a link if you want read more about it.
someone on twitter tweeted mark hamill like “can you dm me and tell me if luke is bisexual” and he actually messaged them and told them that since luke’s sexuality is never addressed in canon, any reading of his sexuality makes sense
then someone made a tweet about how cool it’d be if luke was trans, he liked it, and sent them a message about how a True Jedi TM respects all life, even if the films don’t touch on issues like that
what a sweetheart. he’s liking all these really happy tweets from lgbtq kids saying how much it means to them to be able to see luke as gay, trans etc. it’s just… i’ve been there feeling worried the people you so admire would find you laughable or weird, and i’m super happy about this.
beeftony: The thing about Hush is that anything he can do, Two Face has done better. The whole thing is a series of callbacks to iconic moments from far better stories. It's only a good batman comic if you have never read another batman comic in your life.
George Lucas would periodically check in on the status of the games his company was making, lending creative input and advice. The developer I talked to sighs, and agitatedly says, “In one viewing of Fracture, [Lucas] said it looked really good, but he didn’t like [Mason Briggs’] name. We’re like, ‘What do you mean, George?’ He responded to the effect of, ‘It doesn’t really fit. When he jumps on stuff, he moves pretty fast. I like B.J. Dart.’
“So everybody’s like, ‘No, he’s gotta be f—ing with us.’ He’s absolutely not. So when something like that happened – in the middle of the campaign, mind you – we have to go back through that entire naming convention again… from scratch.” From that second session, Jet Brody was born. Coincidentally, Jett is the name of Lucas’ son.
A similar situation arose with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’s protagonist, Starkiller. “[That name] was only supposed to be a nickname or call sign, not a proper name from the beginning,” a former LucasArts employee says. The development team hoped that Lucas would give Vader’s apprentice a Darth moniker, which at the time, was something that didn’t happen often.
“The team threw a Hail Mary to George, saying the game would have more credibility if the apprentice had a ‘Darth’ title,” a Force Unleashed team member says. Lucas agreed that this situation made sense for Sith royalty, and offered up two Darth titles for the team to choose from. “He threw out ‘Darth Icky’ and ‘Darth Insanius.’ There was a pregnant pause in the room after that. People waiting for George to say ‘just kidding,’ but it never comes, and he just moved on to another point.”
Team members involved in the decision to not use these ridiculous Darth titles could not be reached for comment, but three LucasArts employees believe an excuse was made to push the Darth title to the sequel. By the time development on that title commenced, the names were long forgotten by Lucas and weren’t muttered by the development team again. Starkiller remained Starkiller in the games, but was also named Galen Marek in the greater Expanded Universe fiction.
From this Game Informer article. George Lucas might be some kind of madman? (via monzo12782)
Hi, I'm Tim Lai! I'm a cartoonist living in Ontario, Canada. I like drawing cute and colourful things. This blog is a hub where you can find all of my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Flickr, Blogspot, and other posts in one place.
About My Work
I write and draw Lemon Inc., a comic about a seven-year-old who wants to be a business tycoon when he grows up. Until then, he runs a lemonade stand. You can read it at www.lemon-inc.com.
I have done some professional web and graphic design work, including designing the website for the webcomic, Just Joel. I'm also a member of the webcomic collective, Ink Bomb Comics.
February 1, 2016 00:58
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