La pregunta número uno a cualquier autor de renombre es “¿de dónde salen tus ideas?”
Pero la respuesta a esta interrogante tan sencilla es complicada. Observar la vida misma forma parte de ella, pero el describir el mundo a través de las palabras puede ser tan complejo como uno puede imaginarse. La alternativa más directa y amplia a la vez es a través de la lectura, de empaparte de las perspectivas de otros para encontrar a esa voz interior que quiere describir y relatar tantas sensaciones, cosas, anécdotas, confesiones e historias. Así, vamos encontrando influencias útiles que nos lleven a encontrar el mejor método y estilo para transmitir todo lo que llevamos dentro de nuestra cabeza y plasmarlo sobre la página.
A continuación compartimos un fragmento de un amplio texto en donde el autor de comics Warren Ellis expande sobre este proceso de búsqueda de la inspiración.
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“COME IN ALONE”
ISSUE #13
02/25/2000
Warren Ellis
Publicado originalmente en ComicBookResources dot com
The single most frequently asked question I get is “what advice can you give me about writing for comics?” The details vary, sometimes, there’s a specific follow-up question. But it’s the same opener.
But what I’ll do here, just to be a Nice Guy and help out, is give you the Bluffer’s Guide To Hacking Out Stories With Few Words And Big Pictures. Which is the technical term for comics that Scott McCloud left out of UNDERSTANDING COMICS. No, really.
PREPARATION
Lock your comics away for a while. You’re going to the library. You can’t learn to write by reading comics. You’re going to read some real books for a while. That’s how every writer I know learned how to write; by studying great writers and applying the lessons learned to their own interests and aims. You didn’t get Alan Moore without Thomas Pynchon, you didn’t get Eddie Campbell without Henry Miller, no Grant Morrison without William Burroughs. Look at the way the serious writers structure their stories. Look at the way they present dialogue. Look at the effects they conjure, and break down how they do it. Drag out Dickens. Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up. He has special application to comics, because comics are still a serial form, and Dickens is the most effective serial writer in English that ever lived. The point is; understand how the big boys and girls put words together in the real world. Find what you like. Find out what works for you. And bring it back.
Now you can drag your comics out again. Because you are going to destroy the chances of ever deriving simple enjoyment from them again. You are going to sit down with the ones that you think are really good and you’re going to tear them apart to find out what’s inside them. Frank Miller didn’t get to be Frank Miller until he’d ripped open Will Eisner and Johnny Craig and Bernie Krigstein and every other damn thing he could lay his hands on—and find out how they worked. You are going to read and pick at and annotate and stare at these things until you never want to see then again. (It wears off in about ten years.)
You currently have four extra tools available to you. And you can count yourself bloody lucky you have them, because they weren’t around when I were a lad, living in a ditch by the side of t’road. They’re books.
COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART and GRAPHIC STORYTELLING by Will Eisner. Will Eisner is pretty much the Western form’s greatest living innovator, and I would say that he’s forgotten more about comics than most of the rest of us actually know—but he hasn’t, because he put it in these books. These books will provide you with many theories to consider, and advice for you to take or leave as you construct your own approach, and they will also help you start to learn how to write visually. UNDERSTANDING COMICS by Scott McCloud is a good long look at the entire medium, global scale, crawling around inside it to show you the good stuff. Eisner and McCloud are both writer/artists, so their experience of the medium may not be yours, but they’re all fascinating and educational books. WRITERS ON COMICS SCRIPTWRITING is a compendium of original interviews with comics writers, each of which is appendixed by a sample of their writing, shot from the original script pages. It was published by Titan Books in 1999. The interviewees included Garth Ennis, Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman and me.
Understand, these are not bibles. These are considered and informed overviews of the medium by people who have been doing it longer than you.
