{"id":1920,"date":"2019-04-16T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=1920"},"modified":"2023-12-21T09:49:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T17:49:01","slug":"devourer-of-words-061-gearing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/devourer-of-words-061-gearing-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Devourer of Words 061: Gearing Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MARC BERNARDIN’S DEVOURER OF WORDS<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devourer of Words 061: Gearing Up<\/h1>\n\n\n
Marc Bernardin<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Toucan<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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With the hotel lottery behind us \u2014 I hope the odds were in your favor \u2014 it\u2019s time to focus on what\u2019s really important for writers at SDCC. No, it\u2019s not the parties you\u2019re gonna try and get into, or the fancy lounges you want to crash, or the exclusives you wanna snag, or the selfies you wanna grab. To be clear, all of those things are cool, but they\u2019re bonuses\u2014dessert to the main course of getting some face time with an editor and pitching something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re anything like me, you\u2019ve got a barn full of ideas chomping at the bit to get out there. Dozens of stories that you\u2019ve been noodling at for years. It\u2019s simply not practical, or advisable, to prepare yourself to bring all of them to a convention hoping to sell every one. You need to choose. Pretend you can only bring three ideas with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1. The ones you\u2019re hoping to pitch need to be more than mere ideas.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWouldn\u2019t it be awesome if dragons invented time travel?\u201d isn\u2019t enough. You need to have primary characters, the main conflict, how it begins, a ballpark of how long the story will go, and a vague sense of how it ends. (Every editor worth their salt\u2014and even most worth far less\u2014understand that how you imagine a story will end at commencement of telling the story will change as you tell it. Especially serial stories. No one will hold you to it. They just want to know that you\u2019ve thought about it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A prospective buyer wants to feel like you know the story you want to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Choose the ones you\u2019re most excited about.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you\u2019ve spent the weekend watching movies and roll into work jazzed to tell your coworkers about the best thing you saw. You are, in essence, trying to convince them that they should watch the movie, too. That\u2019s the kind of enthusiasm you need to be able to summon in a pitch. Make it so that the editor similarly can\u2019t wait to read this comic\u2014and the only way they can do so is to pay you money to make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this stage, excitement is the coin of the realm. If you can make someone else excited, you\u2019re halfway there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. Start picking your targets.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Now is also the time to do research. Walking around the convention floor pitching everything to everyone is neither advisable nor possible. Which publishers make the kinds of books you want to make? Which editors names are on those books? Those are the people you\u2019re going to want to try and sit down with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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4. Refine. Rewrite. Rehearse.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Those three ideas you picked? Time to make them great. Go through them over and over again. Pitch them to someone you trust to give you real feedback. Do they make sense? Does the emotional story pack a wallop? (Remember, for as much as comics can be all puncho-explodo, the reason people return to serial stories is because they care about the characters and what they\u2019re going through.) And when you think you\u2019ve got the story and the characters down, write the 50-word version of your pitch. The elevator pitch. You\u2019ve got 30 seconds: Dazzle them. \u201cA farm boy from a nowhere planet gets pulled into an intergalactic war by a beautiful space princess, a jaded old warrior monk, and a swashbuckling pilot\u2014to discover he\u2019s the hero the galaxy\u2019s been waiting for.\u201d Or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the editor says, \u201cOooo, I like that one,\u201d be prepared to go more into depth. How do those characters relate to each other, what are the opposing sides of the main conflict, and how does the hero of your story grow and evolve with every victory and defeat? Instead of 50 words, now you\u2019ve got three paragraphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rinse and repeat for each of your three ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pretend like this is your training montage. You\u2019re gonna start weak, unsure. But you\u2019ve got three months to get yourself in shape for the Big Game. Time to start working out. Worry about the selfies later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marc Bernardin\u2019s Devourer of Words appears the third Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Marc Bernardin<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n