Walt Simonson on Misleading Readers

Walt Simonson is a brilliant comics writer, and easily one of my favorites.

I've spoken to him before about writing (you can read that here). And I saw this clip pop up on Bleeding Cool with Walt Simonson discussing the origin of Beta Rey Bill, one of my favorite characters in the Marvel Universe.

During the video, he drops this nugget of wisdom:

"You want to play fair with the reader but you want to mislead them in stories. You'd like them not to get the end and go, 'Oh yeah, this is going to go there,' and then you go there."

You can watch it in this video, the whole thing is worth watching, but this tidbit comes in at about 2:16:

And it seems obvious, but it's a brilliant piece of advice and it's something we tend to forget.

We all need to be reminded of this now and again.

We need to work to be two steps ahead of the readers, play fair with them, but keep them surprised.

Obligatory reminder of my Kickstarter, A Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. Please consider contributing.

Comments

The Way It Is

The whistle signaling quitting time was always his favorite time. It was the high water mark for the rest of the day, representing that first moment of freedom matched with the highest level of energy he’d have for the rest of the night. He turned his dirty earth-moving machine off, ceasing the rumble in his seat and in the engine. Quietly, he pulled the earplugs from his ears, and collected his gloves and cooler. The cooler held remnants of his lunch which had consisted of two ham and cheese sandwiches, a dill pickle, a bag of chips, and an apple. Each step back to his truck, parked four blocks away, ached down into his core. Shifting his weight right, he could feel the burn on his ankle and knee. Shifting his weight left provided the same effect on the other side. ...

The Scoop

So, I've decided to save the below "About Me" in amber, trapped in time, as it were and sort of start over from scratch since the mission of the site is a little different now. I'm making a go of earning money for all of my writing. I'm working to convert my body of work here into something that will provide me some means of income that will justify how much time I spend writing in a day. I would really appreciate if you'd consider buying some of my stories and spreading the word. So, enjoy the slightly outdated bio about myself below, I'll start a new one up in its entirety soon. 03/2010 Me, circa February 2009. I'm posting short stories up on this blog. At least once a month I'll do so. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I used to write short stories quite often, but my prose petered out after I became a screenwriter. This is my way of relearning prose. If I didn't publish it here I probably wouldn't publish it anywhere. If I didn't p...

The Hope of Humanity

This is but a sample of this story. The complete version is available in my print collection Man Against the Future. From there, you can order signed copies, or buy it for the Kindle or the Nook. The year was 2081 and so many of the social problems humans had faced over the last hundred years were still a pretty big problem. Most people were still poor, corporations still ran the government, and politicians were constantly caught with prostitutes of both sexes, living and dead. When politicians weren't blowing each other's personal lives completely out of proportion for political gain, they were starting wars with other countries. Sometimes, they would even start wars with people inside their own country, but those were usually ideological. Perhaps the biggest and worst change was that the polar ice caps had melted and much of the Mojave Desert was now prime beachfront property, and the air across the globe tasted like you were sucking on a tailpipe. As pressi...

The stories of Bryan Young

Search This Blog