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Pacing and continuity drive me crazy. As I slowly revise my novel, I'll get frustrated trying to decide how much time I should spend with Minor Character #703 lost in Subplot #262.

I realized that long-form script writers--the people who block out soap operas or dramatic comic strips--might have some valuable advice about pacing. Today I called on Woody Wilson for help. He's the man who has written comic strip dramas, Rex Morgan, M.D. and Judge Parker, for the last 15 years.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 

How do you create a newspaper comic script? How do you take a story idea and pace it into a story-line that stretches for month at a time? Any advice for writers looking to extend a story idea into a longer, serialized format?.

Woody Wilson:

A "continuity" newspaper feature is written the same way you would write a television show. Continue reading...

 

You sit down every week and write a script for six dailies and a Sunday. I write very specific art directions and try to get the artist to see what I'm seeing. You then move the story along by making the characters talk. From that, things happen, characters evolve, stories take shape. 

 You are constantly seeing the scenes from different angles and perspectives, so, like a TV show you're working camera angles and blocking characters in the scene. Art direction is key.

Certainly, we are limited by the newspaper format, but if you have great artists (like I do), your narrative will come across. Pacing is hard, but over the years, I've developed a knack for it.

Our biggest criticism is that our strips move too slowly. Sometimes, they do, but it takes time to unfold a story when you only have three panels to do it in. We are constantly trying to make our strips better and I'm mindful that the pace can't be glacial.

On the other hand, we don't want to move it too quickly, either. A story generally will last six months, or roughly 180 days, which includes 26 Sundays. I generally don't sit down and sketch out a plot when I get a story idea.

When I start, I have a basic concept of where I want the story to go, but it's free flow after that. The ending is never what it starts out to be six months later. Good story ideas about things happening all around you are the best.

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