Development Flashback - Issue 5

Issue 5 and Issue 3 were two of the more challenging issues to write for me as both have very little action in them.

It was exciting to be able to be delving a little more in to the characters and the background but at the same time for someone who has not done a lot of writing in their life it was going to be a challenge.
I still needed some decent pacing, some key story points and most of all the dialogue really needed to be engaging. Its one thing I've said before and is always important to me. Dialogue is important as it either brings me in or loses me completely. I go back to the opening scene in Inglorious Bastards - superb! Two guys sitting at a table but the tension is immense! Another standoud for me (Tarantino again) is the Jules and Vince foot massage dialogue (in fact lets just say all of Pulp Fiction).

There were a couple of things I was really excited about with #5 though. I got to utilise Gracie as the narrative driver to connect the different scenes. I also got to give Buster some air time which is always great, and then there was the added bonus of giving the reader and introduction to Skye and some of the liberated hostages from the truck.

There was one scene I added after a couple of passes on the story and that was the action scene in the training room. I didn't want the issue to be a continuous stream of talking heads and felt i wanted some action even if it was just a training room sequence. I think a better writer would have pulled this issue off without that scene but I felt I needed it. On the plus side, it also enabled me to introduce the training of Gabe's new protege if you will.

To be honest, I usually view each approaching issue with a state of mild panic, thinking this is the issue I'll lose all my readers. I guess this is probably a good thing too as it mean you're never resting on your laurels; you don't want to get complacent.

So I guess for Issue 5 I was pretty happy with the result. I kicked a few goals, found a few things i could improve on going forward and felt like I grew a little bit more with the writing and art. Its a long journey ahead but this felt like a small, yet positive step to where I'd like to be.