It is coming together finally, after nearly 8 months of writing treatments and notes and revising. ADAMSVILLE Book 2 (still untitled) is really cooking with gas now. The script is coming together in a hot hurry. I felt like it finally had it’s breakthrough about a month ago and the book finally felt like a narrative that worked and hit on everything I was after.
I am about 1/3 through writing the first draft and so far it’s a big book. Which has me a bit terrified. I am over 20 pages of written text so far and that’s roughly 60 pages of comics story. The issue is I am still a good clip away from the middle. I won’t be surprised if I end up with a 250 page book this next go around. I don’t know. Some serious trimming is in order. Not so much because it’s getting big, but it is because an economy in your storytelling is important. I feel there’s a lot of extra stuff in here that can be reworked.
The key with all first drafts though is to just get the thing out of your system. So I’m throwing the kitchen sink at it and more. Anything that tickles my fancy or seems like it works, I am just putting it in there. The biggest things that will shape up out of this will be theme, I believe. Just understanding what is going on and what they all want. That often, for me at least, feels like the most elusive thing in a script. But it becomes clearer the more I live in the story.
Another thing I am doing is sketching the characters. A lot. I really want to get a handle on them through repetition so that hopefully by the time I get to drawing the book, they are all looking pretty on model. It’s fun filling up a sketchbook with sketches of them all and seeing the whole cast of characters coming together.
I’m really excited for what this book will bring to the story and to readers. It’s very daunting writing a script for a book I know will take up the next 1 to 2 years of my life in production. The promise of what book 3 will bring though is spurring me on fast as ever.
On pitching news with book 1 and the series. Nothing new to report at this point. I haven’t heard any negative news, so for now that’s a positive.