{"id":508,"date":"2015-09-11T23:30:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T03:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2015-09-11T22:22:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T02:22:31","slug":"story-construction-10-peter-david-on-character-conflict-and-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"Story Construction 10\u2013 Peter David on Character, Conflict, and Theme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting with this installment, I\u2019ll be reviewing and summarizing Peter David\u2019s contribution to the canon of comic book story writing entitled Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Peter_David_Book\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter David<\/a> got his start in writing comics quite a bit later than most, beginning his career in the Marvel sales department before getting his break in writing some brief pieces for The Spectacular Spider-Man<\/em> book.\u00a0 His real break came when Marvel assigned him to take over the writing reins on The Incredible Hulk<\/em>, which had been a lack-luster title for decades (perhaps not always in sales but most always in content).<\/p>\n

David creatively re-imagined the whole incident that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk as a manifestation of a multiple personality disorder stemming from childhood abuse, thus turning Bruce Banner into a comic book version of Sybil<\/a>.\u00a0 This approach not only revitalized The Incredible Hulk<\/em> but it established Peter David as a writer of note and opened doors for him to write in other venues as well.<\/p>\n

His strengths are focusing on characters and the small details that make them seem real and believable.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, the first half of his work on comics writing is focused on character and theme.\u00a0 The second half deals with the more mechanical aspects of story structure, plot, and scripting.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be looking at the first half in this post, followed by part 2 next week.<\/p>\n

It is fairly easy to summarize David\u2019s point of view on the comics writer by simply looking at what he has to say on page 15<\/p>\n

\nConsider this simple fact:\u00a0 Writers are the only part of the creative team of a comic that begin with absolutely nothing.\u00a0 The penciler has the script with which to work, the inker has the pencils, the letterer has the dialogue, the colorist has the finished art, and the editor oversees it all. But the writer is the only one who must pull his contribution out of the ether, drag it kicking and screaming from the recesses of his mind and put it down on paper\u2026 so that everyone else can do his job.\u00a0 The writer can\u2019t be bypassed.<\/p>\n
– Peter David<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

David sees a lot of similarity between movies and comics since the writer must think visually when crafting both.\u00a0 He claims that the storytelling arcs and techniques he\u2019ll cover in this work are applicable to both.\u00a0 This claim may be true but I doubt the overlap is as broad as David asserts.\u00a0 As discussed in earlier columns on Alan Moore, the comic affords the reader with the same \u2018choose your own pacing\u2019 and \u2018wait, let me review that\u2019 features that written prose does and I think that makes a great deal of difference.\u00a0 Nonetheless, there\u2019s no denying the strong visual component that both mediums demand of their writers.<\/p>\n

In terms of characters, David believes that what readers want are characters to whom they can relate; characters that will cause them to make a personal investment of time and emotion.\u00a0 In his own words, a writer\u2019s story stands or falls on his characters.\u00a0 However, he recognizes that the reader will often force an unrealistic consistency on a character \u2013 a kind of consistency that they themselves can\u2019t live up to since they are human.\u00a0 He also recognizes that there are times when, either by design or inadvertently, the writer has the character acting contrary to established norms.\u00a0 During those times, the writer must keep the reader \u2018in the loop\u2019, as it were, and provide some mechanism to clue the reader that the creative team hasn\u2019t lost its collective mind, even if that mechanism is as obvious as having the offending character acknowledge, \u201cI just don\u2019t know what\u2019s come over me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter David also feels that a story is not real or meaningful unless the conflict is real and balanced.\u00a0 No straw man arguments \u2013 all sides need to be meaningfully represented (even if not endorsed).\u00a0 I suppose a reasonable way of interpreting his thoughts is that everyone has reasons for what they do and the better stories present the motivations found on all sides.\u00a0 He summarizes this approach with the maxim: \u2018Make Everybody Mad\u2019.<\/p>\n

One way that he presents for getting every side heard is to craft a villain who stands in opposition to the hero’s perspective and then to give a credible reason for that villain to hold that view.\u00a0 This approach often leads to the villain not really being a villain but rather a character in opposition to the hero.\u00a0 So, conflict between two heroes is a viable plot point and common occurrence.<\/p>\n

Another ingredient for realism is to express the small things in a character\u2019s life openly.\u00a0 The examples he cites are the Hulk\u2019s love of baked beans and the Martian Manhunter\u2019s fascination for Oreo cookies.<\/p>\n

These humanizing details are one of my favorite facets of David\u2019s work and easily his greatest strength.\u00a0 One of the best examples of this type of craft came while he was at the helm of X-Factor. In issue #87, he found a way to make Quicksilver truly memorable as a character.\u00a0 Up to that point, the Marvel speedster had always been either whiny and unsympathetic or sinister and unsympathetic.\u00a0 In one fell swoop, David managed to reinterpret Quicksilver\u2019s entire past in one easy to understand scene<\/p>\n

\"Quicksilver\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I recall this very scene as vividly today as when it hit the streets in 1993.\u00a0 In my opinion, it is the textbook example of what can really be accomplished in the comics medium; a method of storytelling that could only be done in a comic.<\/p>\n

The other key component of the first half of his book is David\u2019s universal analysis of stories and their relation, through conflict, to theme. At the most basic level, he views all stories as being able to be described in terms of what he calls three fundamental conflicts:<\/p>\n