My Future Shock Hell! (Chapter 4 of 4)
Why your best shot is all that will ever matter
Art by Liam Sharp
READ: My Future Shock Hell! (Chapter 1 of 4) How I broke into comics and why there's no such thing
READ: My Future Shock Hell! (Chapter 2 of 4) How surviving submissions means rejection-proofing your soul
READ: My Future Shock Hell! (Chapter 3 of 4) Why on Earth would you want to write comic books?
Everything I’ve gone over in these previous three chapters about surviving the submissions process - regardless of whether you’re submitting a short story or pitching a series - can be distilled into a single dictum…
GET IN BY GETTING GOOD!
This came from an interview I read with former 2000 AD editor - and outstanding comic-book writer - Andy Diggle, from Comic Heroes magazine. He said, "Everyone always asks how to break into the industry, but they never ask how to become a better writer. That's the answer - you break in by getting good at it."
I got good enough at writing Future Shocks by reading the two compilations that Rebellion had published at the time: The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks and The Best Of Tharg’s Future Shocks.
I also examined the foundations upon which the series is built. Future Shocks are short twist stories, which – never mind those found in Will Eisner’s The Spirit or classic anthology comics like Tales From The Crypt – is a form probably as old as the short story itself. While submitting my Future Shock scripts, I read plenty of twist stories by those whom I had decided were the masters of the form, particularly Saki and O Henry. I watched shows like vintage Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
I was not only reading and watching these to examine how they worked, but also to familiarise myself with the types of stories that have since become cliché. I was becoming literate in the form.
The classic advice about writing, which you’ve no doubt heard a zillion times, is to read as much as possible and write as much as possible. I’d argue these two disciplines alone are actually of limited benefit to a writer. You need to read a lot? Definitely. Write a lot? Certainly. But you also need to take time out and…
