Bite-Size: A Creator Discussion and Advice Thread

[darkone4587]

What is the hardest thing about character creation for you?
Honestly character designs. When it comes to what a character should wear or finer details in their looks it's a bit more difficult for me. Honestly it's why my characters tend to wear simpler outfits compared to others unless I pull directly from a reference or someone else designs them.

What is the easiest thing about character creation for you?
Coming up with the concepts and their basic personalities is easy for me honestly. Mostly because I'm partially basing them off characters from other works or the ideas of various tropes.

How do you choose names when creating characters?
Their names or either based off of their personalities, an ability, something that sounds really cool, or just random.

Write one sentence of advice for a newbie thinking about creating their first character.
Do something you consider enjoyable for your first character. You don't have to hit it out of the park right away so experiment and play around for a bit.

[darkone4587]

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?
Honestly describing a setting vividly. For the most part I write the very basics of what you'll need to understand where the characters are and what their doing.

Do you spend as long developing your setting as you develop your characters? Why/Why not?
I do a lot of background setting when world building, but that's really there to help develop the characters and explaining their actions. Even if some of it will never be explained to the reader unless necessary.

Go through you current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in 'blank rooms' with no/few setting details?
Honestly not to many, but they do spend a lot of time in lightly described rooms.

[At12MN]

I've actually found that people are often more interested in character tropes and archetypes than they are the intracacies I've laid out for them. They'll come to love the intricacies as they go - but they click on the story for the trope.

Yes, that's true. Even as a reader, I tend to have good impressions on series that have my favorite tropes. I see tropes as a common ground between the reader and the series/author. It's easier to warm up if I already have something common with them.

---

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?
I try to find something in that place that catches my character's attention the most. I think there's this exercise I found before where you have to try to enter a room for 1 minute or something, taking in as many things as you can. Then go out and try to write about the room. I always try to do that with my characters. This can be quite challenging as I'm often focused on what's happening between and within the characters so the setting sort of turns into a background.

Do you spend as long developing your setting as developing your characters? Why/why not?
I don't, at least for contemporary stories. Unless it's a special place. But if it's just a school setting, it's simple. For historical, developing the setting is just as maddening as developing the characters. I have to establish the period, as well as the customs and social norms.

Go through your current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in blank rooms with no/few setting details.
They are pretty much established lately because the character is going to a new place.

[darthmongoose]

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?
I'm good at thinking small, but bad at thinking big. I create in a really granular way and tend not to think through how the places relate to each other geographically (my D&D players love how unique and well-developed my towns are... but they're always closer together than is geographically plausible, I don't pad out my world with enough distance), so like... where IS the Eye of Brilliance in relation to Aunt Sylvia's house? How far is city X from city Y? Uhhhh.... I dunno...

Do you spend as long developing your setting as developing your characters? Why/why not?
As much if not more. I usually have really detailed world-building with information about political systems, how magic works etc. For Errant, I had to write a lot of alternative history about "Brittania", which is Britain where magic is real, so King Arthur was a real guy, so the Angles and Saxons didn't become a dominant culture and it remained a Romano-Celtic culture. They still worship Brigantia and Sulis Minerva, they never say Christian-derived swears like "oh my god", "Jeez", "Cripes", "Bloody" etc., it's always "Sulis!" or "Jove!" which is really hard (more than once, I've written a character saying "oh my god" in the script and then realised, crap, these characters don't have A god, they're polytheistic!) They use latin-derived insults like "Podex" (butthole) etc. Familiar cities have different names based on their ancient ones with the assumption pronunciation tends to get lazy, like York is called Everac, Carlilse is called Caerliwald etc. OR there are cities named for places in Arthurian legend like Joysgard (based on Joyous Guard) and Camelot.

Go through your current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in blank rooms with no/few setting details.

Actually doing pretty well here. I tend to have a handle on where the characters are, like "Sylvia's house" which is a sprawling gothic mansion, or "The centre of Joysgard" Because a lot of my comic has fight scenes and over the top characters and the setting is Fantasy, I have to think a lot. Like there's a big fight next chapter that's in a residential street, there's a bar, there's a secret room... stuff like that. I'm a very visual person, so the place is important to me. Of course... as a comic artist, it can be quite different, because I'll have to draw these things. It's very visually obvious if you haven't thought at all about the setting in this medium!

[ivanskilling]

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?

Remembering to describe the setting! I tend to focus on the interaction between characters, their emotions and actions. But I give myself some time to go back and look at what I've written with a fresh eye. Then I ask myself whether important details about the setting or character appearance is missing.

Do you spend as long developing your setting as you develop your characters? Why/Why not?

It kinda depends. If the setting is in a place or an era that I'm familiar with, it doesn't take as long. But if my story is a scifi, I'll try to use reference pictures online and my imagination to figure out how things should look.

Go through you current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in 'blank rooms' with no/few setting details?

Oh boy. So in the current chapter I'm writing, the first two scenes has minimalistic details about the setting. The third scene is heavy in detail because it is the most suspenseful and eerie part. And the final scene I'm writing only briefly sets up the room in the first two paragraphs since it's focused on the dinner conversation.

[CodeMonkeyArts]

...Both I think. Perhaps even mix the two

[LostSpirit]

Okay. Looks like I missed being on time for a section. Well, no matter. I'll try and cover it, then the next!

What is the hardest thing about character creation?
Before the current rewrite of the Curse of Immortals, I did have a version which I finished in August, 2019. One of my closest friends, someone I do trust with stories, noticed that barring a trio or so of characters, a ton of the important cast seemed or felt largely interchangeable. I'm not sure how often any of you may have stumbled onto a situation like that, where in your heart, you know they are different characters with their own set of personalities and intricacies, and yet, from an outsider's point of view, they blanket into being the same. I'm trying to listen to my mind and heart with greater detail, as I build new characters now.

What is the easiest thing about character creation for you?
Not sure. Given everything I've stated above, I've begun to explore the concept of realism while also trying to stick to the lore of my world. They're all difficult, complicated characters, at least in my head. I think what makes it easy for me is how much fun I have exploring their depth. When I uncover a piece that really works, it keeps me motivated and happy towards the whole process. I can't really point to a set of things that works for me though.

How do you choose names when creating characters?
I love playing off mythology and history, fragments, portions, sometimes the same, sometimes a variant. Though, I also have fun running different things in my head to see what sticks. This works well with anything omniscient, races, species, the kind. For example, CoI works on the principle of two gods - Ehedus and Baha. It just popped into my head one day, and it felt right. Godvildian, Noxun, Relictan - they all have an underlying principle to it that just stuck with me. Races here, by the way. But otherwise, just anything with meaning, symbolic to the character's core personality trait. I kind of build from that. Simple example, I worked with multiple languages to hone in on Daiden. In Sanskrit, the name translates to transmission. His given name is Daiden Lost. Overall, it equates to a lost transmission. Won't tell much more, or perhaps even why I went with that meaning, but it's easy when you think from a human level, from an emotional level.

One sentence advice for a newbie character creator:
If you manage to find the heart to love even your worst character, personality-wise, perhaps villainy-wise, you're definitely doing something right.

Phew! Now, to take a break and come back with what's next.

[CodeMonkeyArts]

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?

Remembering details. I often to go back to how I describe a room in order to make sure I don't just conjure up items out of thin air as the plot depends. It's a pet peeve in movies, it's a pet peeve in writings, it's a pet peeve in comics. I really don't want to commit the same pet peeve, thus REMEMBERING the minutiae of the scene setting causes the most stress.

Do you spend as long developing your setting as you develop your characters? Why/Why not?

It depends on the story.

In Birth of a Sin, it's a comic-book typish setting. So taking place in a modern/contemporary setting with a few other details that include the outlandish (Evil Scientist Lair, Training Military grounds on a private Island, etc). Thus I don't really put much effort in the setting since it takes place in a setting that I'm already familiar with with only a few unusual details sprinkled here and there for that Superhero/SuperVillain feel.

For another story, I am planning a Isekai aka another world. Thus I will have different settings that have a more Fantasy slant (at most a Diesel Punk for Desert city, Steampunk for Coastal/River town, etc). I also plan on having an dimensional, Lovecraftian horror slant so will be looking at how to describe...errr...incomprehensible to the human mind things. This is will require A LOT of research and I'll be taking a TON of notes when I plan out this other story.

Go through you current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in 'blank rooms' with no/few setting details?

...Crap I have to read back my own chapters?! PHOOEY! PHOOEY I SAY!
...
Honestly, I think I'm pretty good with adding SOME details of the setting. Usually when it comes to the characters themselves. Though I write in Third-Person Omniscient, during my POV switches, I tend to describe the setting as it appears to the character. If they are leaning against something, I describe what that is. If they are looking around, I describe what they see. If I don't describe it as much it's because, well...the setting is not super important because a character is not in focus. Typically.

Also, some chapters coming up have 'blank rooms' because the room itself is suppose to be sparse...being a prison cell setting.

[KRWright]

If anything, I'll at least include props/pieces of furniture or make mention of them if I can't fit in a whole background/description of the room.

This is the part I find easiest, but the rest is all stuff I have to work on a lot. I have a lot of blank rooms and half-filled spaces in my fiction.

I don't want to brag, but...

That is absolutely fantastically detailed. I love that - the fairylights are a lovely touch as well.

Hell yes, I spend more time on my worldbuilding than anything else. My characters evolve from the world I've built, so I start there first usually.

I've tried this approach in the past, but I often find it hard to keep momentum. Once I have the world, I'm more likely to turn it into a tabletop RPG than I am to write a book set in it. Sometimes I feel if I develop the world too much, I end up putting in too many details that people don't need or get. Do you have any tips for preventing that from happening?

architecture

This is singlehandedly one of the msot difficult things to get right without real world examples because designing architecture that works is so hard.

You don't have to hit it out of the park right away so experiment and play around for a bit.

Fun is the best way to stave off writers block.

Honestly not to many, but they do spend a lot of time in lightly described rooms.

Same.

I think there's this exercise I found before where you have to try to enter a room for 1 minute or something, taking in as many things as you can. Then go out and try to write about the room.

This is a really good exercise. I also have a friend who challenged me to write for 10 solid minutes describing the room I was in, and that really made me rethink the line between setting and character.

They use latin-derived insults like "Podex" (butthole)

I love swearing like this in books, it's a clear signifier that this isn't exactly OUR world.

One of my closest friends, someone I do trust with stories, noticed that barring a trio or so of characters, a ton of the important cast seemed or felt largely interchangeable. I'm not sure how often any of you may have stumbled onto a situation like that, where in your heart, you know they are different characters with their own set of personalities and intricacies, and yet, from an outsider's point of view, they blanket into being the same. I'm trying to listen to my mind and heart with greater detail, as I build new characters now.

I often thing of this as a case of 'kill your darlings'. Often writers include more characters than they need for the plot, where combining some would make a more intricate single character. But yeah, all your characters should have distinct roles in the plot.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

@KRWilliams
I think it may have to do with the way I think xD I like to go through tiny details, and then see what each detail brings to the table. Like, if I make this country do something, then what happens to the others? Maybe the readers will never see it, but I want to know xD.

Plus my story is a big one with no set ending so I find it's better to have a full world planned out, and in the grand scheme of things the time I spent worldbuilding is small compared to the time spent writing and drawing.

I guess I wouldn't recommend that approach for everyone. But people that enjoy RPG's and all the little details behind them may find that way of creating a world fun.
I do get that it can burn out the passion though. And I've seen other creators fizzle out during the worldbuilding part, and I'm not sure why exactly, because I really enjoy that part.

[KRWright]

@Everyone ! Today is something that has come up recently in the forums, but it's all about 'show don't tell'. It builds on yesterdays topic in a way, because settings are a way that you can really do the show don't tell well, though there's some debate on the merits of doing this.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

[CodeMonkeyArts]

Show Don't Tell

What do you think this advice means?

Usually I think this advice is a way to get your characters more engaged into the story by bringing them into the POV characters view. I may look at someone and go "They are tired", which is the result, but how did I know that?

Maybe cause they have bags under their eyes.

They are holding a large take-out cup of coffee.

They are out of breath.

They yawn.

Etc.

Humans observe the world around them and take those details to reach a conclusion. Not only can 'showing' this reveal the world in a natural way but it can also tell A LOT of the POV character too.

'His eyes kept fluttering open and close. He raised his hands high above his head, long fingers reaching towards the ceiling. His lips parted slowly and he released a low groan from his throat.'

VS

'His eyes seemed to drawl down his face and red veins pulsed against the whites of those swollen orbs. His jaw lowered and he released a groaning bellow while stretching his arms above his head, cracks popping from his fingers."

The first one, the POV is describing the tired person rather sensually while in the second, the image is not nearly as attractive. They both described someone being tired, but the mood is decidedly different.

How do you approach 'showing' things

I will fully admit that I don't read a lot of long novels. Instead, I watch a lot of movies, a lot of anime, and read a lot of graphic novels/manga. So I approach 'showing' the same way I watch movies; I imagine the motion as it comes into view. I want to describe what I experience as a viewer to my readers. Thus why I tend to put things like setting after I bring in a character. Only when the character interacts with the setting is when it becomes more important. So it's very...scene by scene I guess ^^;.

How do your disguise exposition in your work?

Ughhh...hmm...Usually within the thoughts of the POV person. Or describing how things are through the lens of the POV person. If they see a bird drinking from a fountain, I find that to be a good opportunity to bring up some memory that describes the person's past, instead of just spelling it out. I hope that's clear ^^;

[joannekwan]

What's it mean: At the very basest level, don't just tell the reader that " Milly felt angry". Show the reader that she's angry: "Milly's mouth drew into a tight line as her nostrils flared. Her brows drew down, casting a dark shadow over her narrowing eyes. Her fisted knuckles turned white."
Sure it takes a little longer to express, but it's so much more descriptive and immersive. And you want it that way particularly if it's an important moment and you want your readers to focus on it.

Similarly, (and this applies to novels and comics) you don't always want to have a character explain what happens in their dialogue, especially if the thing that happens is important. Cut to the event, and show it play out! If it's inconsequential and just for flavor, like the character saying they went to the dentist yesterday, yeah, a quick pass in dialogue works fine. But if the audience needs to remember something, it's best to show it.

My approach: Like Coda, nowadays I watch more film and tv than I read, so all my stories play out like a movie in my head. I pay special attention to facial expressions and body language and mainly employ those to show how a character is feeling. But with prose, I also have the added benefit of word choice.

For example, in a conversation where one character is annoyed and frustrated, instead of blatantly saying they're annoyed and frustrated, the descriptions can carry over to how they interact with the world around them at the moment. They stab at their food. Their teeth grind into the pork loin. It's more descriptive and telling of how the character's feeling rather than saying "They eat their meal petulantly."

When to tell: It's best to tell things when the subject you're telling about is not crucial to the current plotline the reader is experiencing. So it's fine to explain a bit of someone's background, their thought process concerning things, or have them explain something to reveal information to the audience, or to bolster information presented before. There are just some things that cannot be shown through a series of events and dialogue or narration is needed. Also feel free to quickly tell of things that happen to speed the pace a little to get to the actual important part of a story.

Disguise: I usually start by stating some action happening in the present storyline. Then I transition to a bit of background/tell-y bit. But I keep the tell-y part to a maximum of three paragraphs. There needs to be a good flow of active in-the-moment action (the show parts) and passive action (the tell parts), with active action being the majority of your story. If it's mostly passive action, then the story comes off like a friend telling you what happened to this character they knew way back when.

[IndigoShirtProd]

Show Don't Tell; What do you think this advice means?
I think show don't tell is important when you want the reader to believe something and when you want to engage the reader in the story. If you want the reader to believe a character trait (that could lead into a character arc later), the be way to inform the reader is to show the character trait by describing actions. You can say all you want about how your main lead is an unbeatable badass with a body count in the thousands but if all they do in your story is sit on the side lines while other characters fight, not only will that take readers out of the story, that will make them question your storytelling skills.

How do you approach 'showing' things
How do you show things, how do you show things? Uh. . . hmm. Hard to say. When it comes to the manuscript I'm working on now, I have a character I want to the reader to hate, so instead of repeating ad nauseam them being a disagreeable and spiteful, I show it in how they talk to others, how they think, and how they treat others. At no point in the story does the narrator say the character is mean, other characters do, but hey, they have to live with them.

When do you think it's better to just tell the readers information
I think it's better to tell the readers some when it's surface level knowledge they need to know or if showing the reader the information would be impractical for the story. For example, getting across names, of people, of regions, etc. Instead of writing a full paragraph describing a partially relevant side character, you just tell the audience briefly what they look like. Generally, I think the tell rule is for things the reader needs to be aware of but doesn't need a clearly defined understanding of what it is.

How do your disguise exposition in your work?
Disguises can include flashbacks, describing the scenery, relating it to other moments in the story. My manuscript's focus is a police investigation, so a lot it is exposition via talking and reading through documents. Police investigation aren't as glamorous as they seem and can often involve going through a lot of documents, footage, testimonies depending. So I hope my future readers aren't too bogged down with the dialogue.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

What do you think this advice means?
Exactly what it says, finding ways to show, rather than explain. Though my first thought is usually "yet another crushingly restricting guideline."

How do you approach showing things?
By...drawing...them? Being an artist, I have that advantage xP but seriously if I can't fit it in a speech bubble, and it's not dialogue or narration, then I need to draw it.

When do you think it's better to just tell your readers information?
Probably on things like in the comic world's history. Also if it's a narrative part, like a character telling a story and I don't want to show everything all at once. In these cases it's usually to move flashback scenes a little faster. (I did it in my one shot: Dino Orphan, where Rip's adopted father tells the story of how Rip's parents met and eventually gave him up.)

How do you disguise exposition?
I try to keep it as subtext, or hidden in the background. Like in my main comic Dragon Sparking...in the past Vykir waged a war on his own race, so I hid little destroyed ruins in the background, and hinted at it via the villain who challenges Rip and the nation by waging his own revenge Ragnarok. (I did this so I could show that the past often comes back to haunt the unaware. Vykir never told Rip or his other child, Freya, the full extent of this past war, and swept it under the rug.)

So I try not to drop exposition all at once, I try to divulge it slowly both through small dialogue and information hidden in the world.

[Iris-Grimoire]

@KRWilliams thank you! Even stuff like lighting is interesting to see as a prop - in a fantasy world where you can just make things glow because a wizard said so, there's a lot of room to just do weird things that work on whole rooms or just bright enough to make the scene have a certain mood.

• Show don't tell is about integrating information into the story, and not just its text; as well as avoiding making the characters repeat things they know for no discernible reason or even to break out in monologue for the reader and no one else.
• I usually have notes down on the time the characters or the reader should know something and work towards a scene where that can come up; dialogue or actions. Then, after I made too many walls of text or extra exchanges that just dragged on, I go around and go cutting anything that is actually unecessary for that "main information" to be absorbed and discovered, until it's still natural, but not detailing someone's entire lunch discussion.
• Through idle chat(people reading Splitting Image may notice the crowd chatter isn't scribbles when I want it to be readable, as long as it's within the lead characters' earshot), through environmental storytelling (pamphlets, papers, books, damage to structures if a strong opponent is about to be faced), and by blending important things or odd behavior from characters in scenes even if it won't be obvious for a while. In prose, that last one is the most important, since it's going to be too obvious if a character reads the coincidentally important paper on the table. Gotta play the long game!

[MakaylaSophia]

I love talking about show and don't tell!

What do you think this advice means?
Showing and not telling is allowing the reader to interpret things within the story without directly telling them what is going on.

How do you approach "showing" things?
One of the best examples I can think of when it comes to this is when a character realizes something. There's a big difference between writing, "She realized there was no where to go" and "There was no where to go."

When do you think it's better to just tell the readers information?
Showing and telling has a very fine line, and it's completely okay to tell readers things. A lot of environmental information is told, while a lot of emotional and cognitive information is showed.

How do you disguise exposition in your work?
This goes back into my answer for the second question. Disguising exposition can be really simple. Such as changing "I was tired" to "I yawned". Of course, the "realized" example I answered above is a really great one. Dropping small hints at things can sometimes leave a bigger impact at the end. It's all about finding the healthy balance between showing and telling, because both can be necessary to having an impactful voice.

[UrMom]

This is singlehandedly one of the msot difficult things to get right without real world examples because designing architecture that works is so hard.

Ffff right?? I used to do life sketches of the city I lived in when I was a teen, but it is still the worst thing, I have no patience for all those straight lines. I have the deepest of respect for architects and artists who make a living off painting/drawing urban landscapes.

---

What do you think this advice means?

I believe it means conveying information using as little dialogue/monologue as possible.

How do you approach 'showing' things? Describe your process.

Well, whenever I start going though the layout of pages I think about how I can show what is happening or what a character is feeling using as little words as possible, then draw out the panels around setting/body language/facial expressions/etc. If the dialogue isn't necessary, I won't use any.

When do you think it's better to just tell the readers information?

When you absolutely have to, or when the visual option is a worse choice. Like when an explanation for something is necessary for the plot, or when a character has to clear up issues with another character who can't see the problem.

Something kind of similar (and spoilery for the possibly 2 people on this forum who read my comic.)

Spoilers

There are a few pages I finished where my character Julian is asking Apollo what he's doing in California (they were both originally from Ohio), which led to Apollo asking Julian if they knew about his parents being homophobic. They said 'yes', then ending the conversation with the readers now knowing that Apollo moved to California after his parents kicked him out for being gay.

I could have figured out a way to just show this a flashback, or some other way that would convey as much info for readers without using dialogue. Although it is much more impactful to allow the characters to have this conversation, neither of them knew the answers to their own questions so not only did it help readers but it helped the characters better understand the situation. As much as I try to get away with as few words as possible, I realize that sometimes characters just need to talk, and sometimes a scene that shows less can gather stronger emotions than if it were to show more.

Plus, unless the character is blind, deaf and mute, having people never talk about or explain anything is really unnatural.

How do you disguise exposition in your work?

That is a good question! I actually have never thought about it.
I guess I try to sprinkle bits into the conversation, like I'll have the characters talk about something that involves the current topic, or ask a question which sparks talk about whatever is happening. Other than situational stuff I don't really use exposition, particularly world exposition since it's slice-of-life sort of thing, and pretty much everyone knows how real life works. Although I do add in little cultural/regional bits in dialogue from time to time.

[rajillustration]

Yo is it too late to talk about Setting for a bit because I didn't scroll down far enough and didn't realize there was a new topic before I finished this.

What do you struggle with personally most when creating settings?

Eh perspective and doing repetitive details. It's kind of boring, although satisfying at the end.

As for writing, I struggle with knowing where to put the setting in context of all the dialogue. I like to really dive into words when I have the chance, and so I'll start talking about the history of the windows and the different architects that built each extension of the building the characters are standing in and it's like "Rach no. This doesn't go here. We're talking about something serious right now in the dialogue we cannot segway into windows right now." But I guess that's what rough drafts are for--to get out all that extra nonsense and only keep what matters.

Do you spend as long developing your setting as developing your characters? Why/why not?

Yes and no. It kind of depends. I like to think of settings as a character unto themselves. I love it when settings have a personality to them, a sort of energy that affects the characters as if it were alive--like the Mines of Moria, like Hogwarts, like Ankh-Morpark. And even settings that aren't fantasy should still have a living energy to them.

My favorite book is the Hunchback of Notre Dame because I'm a sucker for wordy old books, and while Victor Hugo goes waay to long about the history of Paris, the best chapter in that book is just about Notre Dame. It's so freakin beatiful, and is sometimes abridged out, which is a shame because while it's just a setting description--it's sooo well written. (it's here ps, such a good chapter https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2610/2610-h/2610-h.htm#link2HCH0014 )

Now I would never write as wordy as Victor Hugo and expect that to fly unless I was as eloquent as he is, but I think there's a lot to be learned in just giving your settings a connection to the people in it in a lot of the same ways you would a living character. He's not just talking about a building and what it's made out of and the dimensions of it, he's giving it life. Not only that, but he's making bold statements about art history and religion and politics of that time period that blend seamlessly into the history of this building. It becomes so much more than a building description.

And that last line if that chapter? "The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious." Holy crap. What a perfect way to describe an 857 year old building. What a summary. He clearly spent a really long time learning everything there was about this building, and it really came through in the final draft.

Go through your current WIP. How many of your scenes take place in blank rooms with no/few setting details.

I probably did too many descriptions tbh. My current comic was a book, so I have the opposite problem of too many words and too many details, so I'm currently trying to double back. With comics you really have to know when to edit, and most of the history of Pendleson's Academy and it's many rooms goes to the cutting room floor.

[rajillustration]

As for Show don't Tell (because maybe I should just drop in today's subject while I'm still here) I think the meaning of the phrase is sometimes taken too literally. It's not that you can never tell things--and often you should, especially in comics where a few lines of dialogue can save you 20 pages of comics to draw. But, I think it's more about being succinct. If you have shown something--you don't have to describe it. Don't be redundant.

I think the hardest part about it is learning how to recognize it in the first place. Having a second pair of eyes really helps in pointing out areas that may be happening that have slipped past your notice. Hell I know I still do it all the time.

As far as exposition, I like to disguise it by just not revealing things that don't need to be revealed yet. Start as broad as possible for an exposition, and only dive deeper when it's required.

I heard an author say "don't spoil everything at once" and that's how I like to think about exposition. You invented it in order to make it as entertaining to reveal as possible. Sometimes the slow reveal of exposition is half the fun. There's a mystery to it.

Like I think a great example of exposition is Cowboy Bebop. You don't realize what's happened to Earth until kind of a ways into the anime. They slowly start revealing bits and pieces of lore about life in space and how bad things have gotten, so when you find out about Earth's history it's more of a satisfying "woah!" moment than "ya ok lets get through this prologue already, Earth had an incident, people moved to other parts of the solar system, yada yada" You don't want to spoil your exposition by just revealing it all at once.