The Writer's thread (Authors, Screenwriters, playwrights, etc.)) - Part 1

[writer0327]

70%. Although I'm wondering if I made the right choice

 

[KevanG]

I've been working on my own series and I've read through everything for the differences between them.

As far as I can tell the only actual differences are that they can modify the pricing if they want on the 70% for sales and such and on the 35% it's static unless you change it. Your copyright and everything else remains yours. That and you need to pay the ten cents or whatever per copy to send it online per copy sold.

Is that your take on it?

 

[KevanG]

Finished the outline on my second book.

Aaaaaaand finished my first draft of my second book in the series.

The first one took me something like a year and a half to do.

 

[Lobo]

I'm looking to submit a Future Shocks script to 2000AD... can anybody, who has ever attempted to write comic book scripts with all the correct formatting, give me any instructions or links on how you do it? Because I can find nothing online that helps. I can't space/indent out the character and their dialogue from on the same line; I want the character's name to stay on the left and I want their dialogue to be in the middle, without having to tap the space button repeatedly that just ends up being wrong.

There's no formal way, but a layout that many companies use can be found in the dark horse website under their submission guidelines.

That being said, I've had some good discussions recently with Cosmic Times which is a decently sized comic book publisher here in south Florida. Nothing to announce yet, but hopefully very soon.

Also have an idea for a kids oriented book that I think would fit well with Papercutz, called The Monsterling.

 

[Victarion]

Here's a short little bit I wrote, Captain Boomerang vs Tattoo Man. I got a wild hare to rewrite some of the Suicide Squad character intros.

Spoiler

“People with reputations disappearin’ lef’ and righ’, Boomer.” Captain Boomerang’s favorite concubine, something something, said. Sheila Upforit is a better name for you, lovely, Boomerang thought, leering at her from a pockmarked face that bespoke of his heroin habit. “Watch yourself.” Sheila Upforit said, looking away from him with a smirk.

Boomerang laughed. “I ain’t nothin’ special – jus’ took out that tatt’d up abbo—”

As if summoned by his name – giving credence to the rumors that the Tattoo Man was lent supernatural strength by his tattoos – Monster T, the Tattoo Man, threw open the chamber’s doors with a scintillating green dragon tattoo. The serpentine bundle of energy reared back snakelike, hissing at Captain Boomerang as Monster T entered, a grin etched across his tatted and pierced face.

“Back of another shamming, ya filthy abbo?”

“Is that how you treat family, Digger?” Monster T said. With a flick of his arm, he sent a storm of chain tattoos through the chamber. Boomerang’s confidence fell away as he watched the associates fall to blood chunks at the touch of Monster T’s superpowered tattoo chains. “I take you in as a favor to our dear mother, and you come in, take over my heroin den –”

“Shut your ****ing mouth!” Boomerang said, springing aside, sending his newly acquired harem scattering at Monster T. “I ain’t related to you bloody savages.” Screaming, they drew the attention of the dragon tattoo while the chains dealt with the last of Boomerang’s co-conspirators.

Captain Boomerang, hands trained by years as an acquisitions specialist for Monster T’s heroin trade sent a hurricane of specialized boomerangs at the metahuman mobster. They hit home in a series of explosions and electrical bursts that drowned the chamber in a charnel house miasma.

Captain Boomerang, having consolidated his hold over Monster T’s operations, found his exuberance shortlived. A tide of shouts and gunfire rolled through the den’s entrance. Black-suited special forces operatives swarmed the room, half of them with their guns trained on Monster T’s blasted corpse, the others shouting orders at the panicked harem.

“I can pay!” Captain Boomerang dropped his namesake weapons, shed his filthy overcoat and began stepping forward, arms raised. “I’ve got all the money, all the names of all the syndicates you could—”

“****ing cowardly piece of ****.” Boomerang heard Sheila Upforit hiss. Then he felt the cold metal of one of his boomerangs slamming home against the base of his skull. He swooned, spinning as he fell. The last thing he saw was his favorite used toilet, Sheila Upforit, sneering down at him. In her hand she gripped a bloody boomerang. The last thing he felt wasn’t the warm body of a woman on top of him – his preferred way to go, with a nice and quiet heart attack, thank you very much – but the phlegm Sheila hawked on him as unconsciousness took him.

*

"You sure Waller wants...this?" one of the Argus operatives nudged Captain Boomerang's unconscious body.

"You just saw him go toe-to-toe with one of the most notorious metahuman gangsters in the States." An operative shrugged. "She'll find a use for him in some capacity."

 

[KevanG]

I've always liked Boomy and this is good.

 

[Victarion]

Deadshot: Chained Ghosts

My intro for Deadshot.

Spoiler

We’re living in a world of ghosts, Deadshot thought as he made his way through the rotting remains of a shrine to the nearby village’s local gods. Satisfied that the shrine was empty, he took his time to tease out the details of the story depicted in the old wall scrolls. It appeared to be a tale of redemption that ended with the redeemed prostate before a humanoid dragon-thing and three-eyed ghosts chained to it. Figures that Deadshot took to be the fat cats – their ornate armor and robust builds reminded him of the mobsters he’d worked for in Gotham, Midway, Metropolis and hundreds of other cities across the globes – were being butchered and fed as tribute to the dragon-thing.

Deadshot shook his head and moved on. You’re really making a name for yourself around these parts, Waylon. In his mind Deadshot went over the details of the contract: a salacious priest of some Shinto sect had come on the scene; he’d began turning the locals against Waylon, claiming that the self-styled Dragon King was a charlatan agent come from America to corrupt the folk with his black magic hoodoo.

Magic. Spirit worship. Hoodoo. World of ghosts, Deadshot thought wearily, taking up his post in the shadows of a busted out window. Hungry ghosts, he added. Between Waylon’s hoodoo cannibalism and the priest’s disgusting appetites, it seemed that so long as the ghosts held sway, the future was forever bleak.

The priest arrived to much fanfare and celebration from the villagers. In the back of his mind, Deadshot wondered if it wouldn’t be better to leave this all be – last time someone from the States decided to intervene here, it touched off the war that got Waylon stranded in this humid, jungle-laden corner of the Earth.

I’m not being paid for my skills in armchair philosophy, Deadshot thought as he loaded up his sniper rifle. He took aim, the priest in his crosshairs. His finger wavered over the trigger. A little girl was gripping the priest by the hem of his kimono. Shoot now and he’d paint her up red, white, and gray with pulped brain.

Harsh lessons, kid. Deadshot pulled the trigger. Horror rang out through the village on the tail of his sniper’s fire. The girl stumbled back into her parents’ arms. He lowered his rifle, slipped back from the window. I wish I’d taught Zoe the same lessons.

In the dark place of lingering ghosts, where he had forged another link, chaining another restless soul to Waylon Jones, the Killer Croc and Dragon-King of the Vietnamese Black Market Trades, Deadshot consoled himself with the vision of Zoe’s new stepfather lying dead in the humid street of Bum****, Vietnam. Beneath his death’s head mask, it brought a smile to the hardened killer.

“Hey – Croc,” Deadshot answered the buzzing phone. “Got your goat. That headful of schemes is spread across the market place of Bum****, ‘Nam.”

“Good deal. Collect the body before the soul flees the flesh.”

“Alright, that’ll be double the original bill.”

“Done. You know where to bring it.”

Deadshot hung up, went into the shadows of the shrine’s ground floor, and shed his black and reds. He exchanged them for a peasant’s garb and exited, mind scheming to snatch the corpse without arousing the ire of the grieving village.


They've been given a valuable lesson, here - the bullet is the way, the truth, and the light: death's inevitable, and its the ultimate escape from this world of ghosts.


Floyd Lawton repeated it to himself as he entered the village. Yet in the village's simplicity - where the drive to survive outweighed all his silly philosophizing - he found something that had eluded him. Here there were no former employers scheming against their best killers, no cutthroats plotting without concern to the collateral damage. Here, Lawton saw people with their backs against the wall - same as he had been before he took up the assassin's trade - that would rather face their reality.


Instead, I'm hiding behind death's head and delivering judgment. Lawton sighed, followed the procession trailing the priest's corpse. One day, I'll have time to figure it all out.

 

[Hellion]

Loving your work Victorian.

I've been working on a script, still probably a month of working to go, and then I'll reformat that into a novel format. I'm more familiar with scripting format, I'm a bit worried on a where to start here...

 

[Brother Jack]

A Batman piece I did recently:

http://thisblogistotallyworthyourtime.blogspot.com/2017/04/lone-wolf-and-cub.html

 

[Victarion]

Another Suicide Squad entry, with Colonel Flag and Amanda Waller

Spoiler

“Do you realize what you’re suggesting?”

Colonel Rick Flag dropped the dossier on Amanda Waller’s desk. It landed amid dog-eared anthropology journals about Amazonians, Atlanteans, and splinter cults that all had emerged around the same time.

Waller looked back it him, face as unreadable as a brick wall. “I do, Colonel. Do you?”

Colonel Flag shrugged, dropped into one of the chairs before Waller’s desk. “I know we’ve got reports of Russian agents hunting metahumans, the Qurac president allegedly running an underground metahuman manufacturing plant.” He shook his head. “But this—” he gestured at the dossier.

“Its tough times all over, Colonel. We had planned to acquire the Atlantean, the Amazonian, the kid in red. Now –” Waller drummed her fingers on the dossier rapidly as she spoke, “Now we’re forced to work with what we have.”

“Fighting fire with fire. Never works in the long run, Amanda.” Flag leaned forward in his chair. “I saw it tried, first hand. Things got ugly—”

“And you tried to do something about it, got thrown in Gitmo, and are sitting here by my good graces.” Waller let a smug grin pass her face. “I believe in second chances, Colonel.”

“Second chances, yeah, but for those –” Flag nodded at the dossier. “A witch turned goddess and a…metahuman…”

“Say it, Rick. A demon lord. A conduit of energy inimical to Kryptonians; a nuke that would’ve put an end to General Zod and the Doomsday that Luthor created from Zod’s corpse.” Waller sighed. “But, we had no idea where to find this Incubus. No idea it was even secreted away on this world.”

“Dr. Moon wouldn’t want her research used like this.” Flag said. “You’re taking her work and using it to create a nuke. Perhaps something more dangerous –”

“I’m one of the only reasons Dr. Moon’s work is getting published. I’m sure you’ve talked about the her reception in academic circles?” Waller watched Flag lean back, defeated, and let a tight-lipped smile escape. It was gone quickly as it came. “And, above all, you’re a good soldier, Rick. You’ll be taking Task Force X on suicide missions. In the goodness of my heart, I couldn’t ask you to lead a team of U.S. soldiers on missions with a high chance of failure. Or missions that might compromise their ethics.”

Colonel Flag glared up at Waller. She patted him on the shoulder. “Now, you and your lady friend have a plane to catch.”

 

[Victarion]

Here's another Suicide Squad intro - this time with Harley and the Joker. I'm not used to writing Joker, so let me know if he seems consistent with his characterization throughout DC's comics.

Baptism in Chaos

Spoiler

“My gift to you, doctor,” the Joker said, gesturing to the red-and-green armored figure tied to the chair. The adolescent looked up, the white lenses of his half-face mask reflecting the uncertainty in Harleen Quinzel as she took the mallet proffered by a goat-headed thug in a priest’s cassock. A blood-red grin snaked across his death’s head of a face. “The culmination of your work.”

“Mister J – are you sure…?”

The Joker’s grin turned into a feral sneer. He snapped his black-gloved fingers at lackey dressed like a flayed man. “Mr. Zsazs, I think Dr. Quinzel needs more juice—” At his command, Mr. Zsasz disappeared into the grimey shadows of ACE Chemicals. Harleen watched the psychopath – anything to distract her from the kid tied to the chair. From the darkness came the squeak of the electroshock therapy apparatus, making its shrieking way toward Harleen.

“My Prince,” the goat-headed priest said. “Stop. Do not force your servant to accept the gift of Chaos.” The beady-eyed goat head turned, locking Harleen in its dead gaze. “She, alone, must accept the necessity of Kali-Yuga’s gift – that Chaos –”

The Joker whipped out a revolver, fired it into the air to silence the goat-headed priest. “I appreciate your gift,” he waved the custom revolver, “my Quraci friend. But this is business.”

The goat-headed priest bowed and stepped back, resting a large, venous hand on Robin’s shoulder.

The Joker turned to Harleen, gripped her by her shoulders. He looked down into her eyes. “Doctor, remember the heart of your work – that there is none whose mind is to far gone to be saved…by the appropriate therapeutic intervention.”

“It didn’t work.” Harleen whispered. In her mind’s eye she saw the events leading up to this moment: falling for the Joker, giving favors to Arkham’s security team to get the Joker’s henchmen into the Asylum; then, the bloody night when thugs in eye-ball masks, the goat-headed priest, the panda-suited psychopath, and the coked-up freak in the Batman costume tore through Arkham on a mission to free their boss.

“No. It will work. This adolescent – he’s really a child, his psychological development stunted by the Bat’s brainwashing – can be fixed. I’m giving you the tools and the chance to fix him.” Joker patted the comically oversized mallet in Harleen’s hands. “Now, go and do your work.”

A grin spread across the Joker’s face as Harleen stumbled past him. It grew with the thump and scrape of Robin thrashing against his bindings. And them it was silenced as Harleen slammed the mallet’s head home.

 

[JewishHobbit]

I've not been writing much of late in the way of novels after a few years of battling depression and just having little motivation. I've written a movie script for a local company and am working on a graphic novel (and I've bitten off way more than I can chew). Anyway, I'm eager to get back to writing novels and hope to do so soon. With that in mind, I decided to go check out my previously self-published novels to see if any of them have gotten any new reviews of late. I was pleasantly surprised to find the following review for my novel CICADA SONG on Goodreads:

"I found this book to be very intricate and engrossing. A visitor comes to a small town and little by little something horrific that happened years earlier is revealed, as well as the aftermath. The characters were all heartfelt and real, and the emotions described in-depth and honestly. It's a very emotional story, but not at all cheesy. Quite creative, the way the small town surrounds and protects it's own is realistic and truthful. A haunting, yet beautiful story which I highly recommend. Kudos, Bradford Combs. Kudos!!!"

That's encouraging. I also had no idea that I was up to 240 ratings/reviews on Goodreads and over 100 on Amazon. I have two books partially started, so I figure I'll finish one of those first now that I am back in the writing mood (one of which is the 3rd book in the town I created in CICADA SONG... the other a Horror Novel). But first I have to get this Graphic Novel knocked out. I planned it at about 100 pages but it's going to end up closer to 200, and my artist is a first time graphic novel artist and she's overwhelmed as well.

 

[KevanG]

Congrats on the good reviews and good luck on the graphic novel. Maybe try to break it into a few volumes if it's too big?

 

[JewishHobbit]

I've thought of that but don't think it'll really work that way. It's about a house and the different people who live there from the time it's constructed until the time it's tore down. The residents cover walks of life starting with birth and ending with death as well as American history from 1915 (give or take) through around the 1980s. I feel that cutting it up into volumes would nullify the affect I'm trying to create with the natural progression of time/age.

 

[KevanG]

So I'm maaaybe halfway done my complete rewrite of my first book and despite removing quite a bit of what I didn't like, I still have five pages more material than I did at the same spot in my original draft.

So far I've added a good amount to expand the world with specifics due to international politics and technology than before but not enough to make it go off course.

Edit: JewHob, I checked the links in your sig and the first one is broken. The second one brings up a threat warning on my anti-virus. Just a heads up.

 

[JewishHobbit]

Thanks. I'll get rid of the links. After going through some personal stuff over the past few years, I've completely let my site and blog fall by the wayside. To be honest I kinda forgot that I even had a blog.

 

[Victarion]

I got an ethics question:

Let's say you have an army commander whose daughter was kidnapped four years ago by some fanatics that think she is their deity reborn.

You've finally got an army of soldiers to march against your enemy.

Your march attracts camp followers from the people that hired you to help take out the fanatics.

Would it be unethical if the commander were to have his soldiers prodding and pushing the camp followers to throw themselves against the enemy's lines to break them up before sending in your trained soldiers?

 

[KevanG]

I'm pretty sure forcing/'encouraging' civilians to attack an armed force is some sort of war crime. I'd also assume it's unethical as well.

 

[KevanG]

So I finished my rewrite of my book and it's finalized at 102 pages in my writing format with a total word count at 73787. So I have an extra ten pages and about 5000 words more than my original version.

I need to do some small edits like placements of flashbacks as they're crammed in more in the last half of the book but beyond that and it getting edited by someone who knows what they're doing, it's complete.

I hope to have it on Amazon in the next few months.

 

[Hellion]

Any words of encouragement as I get close to where I think my story should be before I reformat that from script to novel?

I am my own worst enemy when it comes to cutting... changing... etc., I'm already playing games with myself over the content and such...

 

[KevanG]

Do the entire thing start to finish before you start making changes. That way you have a finished product to go from instead of something where you'd be second guessing yourself about how it might end up.

The problem I had was when I did my original outline, I kept wanting to add more or change the big things but once I got it all down on paper, I could take an overall view of it and work at chopping things up from there to fix it.

 

[KevanG]

So I just got the final edit for my book cover

Here's the original 'design'

I had a big description detailing what I wanted in a text file I sent him and he got everything.

 

[Rodrigo90]

What are the possibilities of this scenario for a script I'm writing actually working, instead of being legally shut down?
It involves the character taking his original creation of a comic book character to a Comic-Con in New York, which obviously will feature people dressed as copyrighted characters. Soon enough, somebody comes in and starts shooting up the place, which our main character puts a stop to. Is any of that possible to get away with?

I'd be interested in reading your book when it comes out, Kev!

 

[KevanG]

Using an occasional name is fine. Look at the Dresden Files books, Harry mentions Spider-Man or Star Wars at least once a book and I imagine since it's not the focus of the book then it's alright as it just references a property that is in the world.

Having constant use of registered trademarks is more iffy. If the story isn't being sold for profit then it should be fine.

Personally, I was thinking of having a reference of Iron Man, Hulk and Thor in my books at one point but they get described as a giant green guy, a blonde guy with a hammer and a guy in a robot suit with no actual names. Hulk shows up out of nowhere and starts wrecking things, Iron Man and Thor pop in and try to stop him, they fight, Thor opens a portal, Iron Man shoves Hulk through then the two of them go through as well. The main character is just glad they're gone because they've already wrecked the street and traffic is going to be a nightmare.

I've seen other series get away with indirect references. The Marvel novels had it happen all the time. There was one book trilogy that had The Doctor from Doctor Who show up through out and he was called the head 'doctor'. It even ended the series with killing him and him showing up as the Fourth Doctor and asking a character if they'd like a Jelly Baby. They had a decent if vague description which was enough to get the physical idea across and used one line that was well known by the character to cement the reference without using anything specific beyond that.

 

[ComicChick]

could you make the costumes/characters similar enough to where people know who it's supposed to be, without straight up making them so?