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Ring Psychology

by Aaron Hall

Volume Fourteen: Why Spell Checker Hates Me Writing, like any other artistic or creative undertaking, is far from an exact science. I in no way believe myself to be a master of the game or a voice of authority on the dos and don’ts of writing. This column is simply me sharing with all of you some of the things that I’ve picked up along the way that seem to help me out. Use them, abuse them, make fun of them, or sell them on eBay. Now, on to the article! “Why Spell Checker Hates Me” A while ago in this column (I’m too lazy to go see when, sorry) I talked about the tools of a writer. To this day, I stay just a bit envious when I see an artist friend’s set up. Big drafting table, pens, pencils, comic art boards, paint, markers, white out, brushes. It’s just such a cool set up. My lap top is old and really doesn’t do much more than word process, so it’s much less impressive looking. The fact is, and I mentioned this in the other article, writer’s tools are much more abstract. One such abstract tool I’ve found myself using more and more lately is structure. When writing, it’s easy to think of it as “just words”. Even when I’m scripting a comic book, which will eventually become a piece of drawn art, I’m still just writing words. It will be someone else that turns those words into an actual picture. For a while, I was only working with comic book scripts. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I began spending time working with prose style writing on a regular basis again. It’s been very enjoyable, and if any of you have had a chance to read my Whispers In The Dark stories featured here on Stumblebum, you can tell that at the very least I’m having a good time. The thing is, I’ve made a pretty shocking discovery. Writing a prose story allows me to be more artistic than writing a comic book script does. When scripting, I may be visualizing and describing great pictures, but like I said above, it will be someone else creating those pictures. When writing a prose story, I used to think that it was “just words”. But now, through use of differing types of structure, I’ve been able to be a bit more visual and give my stories a little more impact. Let me show you an example. Bomb squad captain Terry Grinder wiped the sweat from his brow as he tried to decide which wire on the bomb to cut. Red, blue, or white? His extensive training had taken him this far, but it was down to guesswork now. Hundreds of lives, including his own, depended on him guessing correctly. He looked at the timer as it continued counting down. 5, 4, 3. He selected a wire and moved his wire cutters over it. 2, 1. He snipped the wire in half. 0. The building blew up, killing hundreds. Bomb squad captain Terry Grinder guessed wrong. Okay so, there’s a little story I just made up for you. It’s laid out standardly, just like any other story would be. Now, I’m going to re-write it for you. This time I’m going to apply some of my structure tricks to it. Bomb squad captain Terry Grinder wiped the sweat from his brow as he tried to decide which wire on the bomb to cut. Red, blue, or white? His extensive training had taken him this far, but it was down to guesswork now. Hundreds of lives, including his own, depended on him guessing correctly. He looked at the timer as it continued counting down. 5. 4. 3. He selected a wire and moved his wire cutters over it. 2. 1. He snipped the wire in half. 0. The building blew up, killing hundreds. Bomb squad captain Terry Grinder guessed wrong. By separating out the countdown I (hopefully) created a greater sense of tension within the story. It was a simplistic thing to do, but it made the story much better than it was before. And of course, this worked for a bomb countdown, but it wouldn’t work for everything. The fact is, you’ll have to play around with this a technique a bit. There are times when the standard set up works much better. And then there are times that you can do something simple, like separating out a countdown, and greatly improve your story. Your English professor may cringe and your word processor may highlight every other sentence you write because it’s a fragment but it really is something that can make a difference in your writing. It may not be proper technique when writing a business letter or an essay, but when it comes to creative writing, that’s exactly what you should be. Creative. Until next time, this is bachelor #3 and the heir to the Teflon empire, Aaron "Teflon" Hall, signing off. If you have any questions or comments about creating comics feel free to email them to freejenkins@gmail.com and I’ll answer them right here in this very column because yes, I care about you that much.