Why My Flatmate Is Not A Sniper Assassin
It's the interior monologues: he hates them.
He was explaining in great detail to me just how much he loathed the (long) interior monologue in a comic book that he had just been reading, and somehow brooding assassin types came up. As I pointed out, when you're stuck on the chilly top of a building for a couple of days waiting for the perfect hit, there's not much to do but monologue. He agreed (which is always buoyant for my spirits).
Entertainment for assassins aside, the thing about interior monologuing in a comic book is that there is all this yummy visual detail available, along with the text of the story. We should be able to tell what the characters are feeling largely by what they say and do, and by the expressions on their faces. Getting a chance to read their thoughts is useful, occasionally very touching. Five pages of inner monologue in a comic book are possibly pushing it.
I am reminded, somehow, of a story I read recently by Harry Harrison ("Portrait of the Artist") of a dark future wherein the drawers of comics mainly used rubber-stamps and machinery: "Girls, of course, all had the same face in comic books; the HEROINE was just a note to the machine not to touch the hair. For a VILLAINESS it would be inked in black since all villainesses have black hair." The story was probably written in 1964; I think in many ways his prediction didn't work out: art styles in current day comics have a great exuberance about them and vary a great deal. Still, there are set conventions on how to draw superheroes and villains that keep coming back. Evil Ming eyebrows on the women. Huge muscles on the men. Skin-tight costumes or swaths of cloth that always drape right - that sort of thing.
I am reminded also of a not quite current trade paperback collecting the series V for Vendetta (v. good). One of the nice things about collecting it all in one book is that Alan Moore stuck in some notes on how he and David Lloyd (the artist) created it. And Mr Moore pointed out that there was not a single sound effect in that book. Neither was there interior monologue. Apparently Mr Lloyd had wanted it that way, very much, and Mr Moore had gritted his teeth and had a go at writing that way. It works well. The characters express themselves in gesture, in conversation, in grand speeches to the air, the empty air, and to statues of Blind Justice. Interesting creative technique.
(I've been thinking about how to use it in my own (very amateur writing), and I'll see how it goes.)
And I am glad that aesthetic qualms on David's part have turned him from a Life of Evil.
**
In other news, they're making a movie of Stardust. In the words of the author: "Brilliant day. Any day you get to walk the deck of a ship that fishes for lightning in the clouds with your family has to be a brilliant day."
:-D :-D :-D
He was explaining in great detail to me just how much he loathed the (long) interior monologue in a comic book that he had just been reading, and somehow brooding assassin types came up. As I pointed out, when you're stuck on the chilly top of a building for a couple of days waiting for the perfect hit, there's not much to do but monologue. He agreed (which is always buoyant for my spirits).
Entertainment for assassins aside, the thing about interior monologuing in a comic book is that there is all this yummy visual detail available, along with the text of the story. We should be able to tell what the characters are feeling largely by what they say and do, and by the expressions on their faces. Getting a chance to read their thoughts is useful, occasionally very touching. Five pages of inner monologue in a comic book are possibly pushing it.
I am reminded, somehow, of a story I read recently by Harry Harrison ("Portrait of the Artist") of a dark future wherein the drawers of comics mainly used rubber-stamps and machinery: "Girls, of course, all had the same face in comic books; the HEROINE was just a note to the machine not to touch the hair. For a VILLAINESS it would be inked in black since all villainesses have black hair." The story was probably written in 1964; I think in many ways his prediction didn't work out: art styles in current day comics have a great exuberance about them and vary a great deal. Still, there are set conventions on how to draw superheroes and villains that keep coming back. Evil Ming eyebrows on the women. Huge muscles on the men. Skin-tight costumes or swaths of cloth that always drape right - that sort of thing.
I am reminded also of a not quite current trade paperback collecting the series V for Vendetta (v. good). One of the nice things about collecting it all in one book is that Alan Moore stuck in some notes on how he and David Lloyd (the artist) created it. And Mr Moore pointed out that there was not a single sound effect in that book. Neither was there interior monologue. Apparently Mr Lloyd had wanted it that way, very much, and Mr Moore had gritted his teeth and had a go at writing that way. It works well. The characters express themselves in gesture, in conversation, in grand speeches to the air, the empty air, and to statues of Blind Justice. Interesting creative technique.
(I've been thinking about how to use it in my own (very amateur writing), and I'll see how it goes.)
And I am glad that aesthetic qualms on David's part have turned him from a Life of Evil.
**
In other news, they're making a movie of Stardust. In the words of the author: "Brilliant day. Any day you get to walk the deck of a ship that fishes for lightning in the clouds with your family has to be a brilliant day."
:-D :-D :-D
posted by theamazingcatherine | 10:22 pm
2 Comments:
You other flatmate isn't much for interior monologues either. I go for interior dialogs. Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Charles Dodgeson and Alan Turing are favourite conversational partners. Unfortunately, I only get my half of the conversation.
I have other reasons not to be a Sniper Assassin.
Sometimes characters that I've been writing about start to talk to me, or to each other. Sometimes the conversations will never see print, but they still like to talk.
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