Guest Speaker at AP English Class

Last week I mentioned I was going in to speak at a private school’s AP English class with no prep— I’m sorry to report there was no disaster— that would certainly have made for a more interesting post. But if you’re drawn to interesting posts— what are you doing here in the first place?

On to the event- I do miss teaching— for the past three years I’ve been knee deep in Freelance- launching the Makimono Universe with a very talented team including an amazing Publisher (more publishers should put this much faith into their creative teams)— check out me-graphicnovels.com to see the results. The heavy workload of writing or drawing six titles as well as overseeing operations of the creative teams meant I didn’t have time to teach.

It just so happens that one of my very closest friends teaches an AP English Class at a prestigious private school— he’s the Department Head so I imagine this is a top notch English program. One of the titles he covers is DRACULA and after they’ve read the classic by Bram Stoker they read my graphic novel version (McFarland Press 2013) for comparison— one of the angles is to see how a story is adapted. He’d mentioned to me before the pandemic that he’d like to have me come in and talk to the class, I happily agreed but things being as they are it didn’t happen for a number of years- so when it was that he reached out to me last week I happily accepted again and agreed to come in a few days later to go over the book and the process I used to create it.

Only trouble was the last time I even looked at this book, which I actually worked on in 2011-2012 was 2013 when it was published. I didn’t think I had any copies of it— so I reached out to the publisher and they quickly sent me a PDF.

My first thought was relief— the book was better than I remembered it. At the time it was a struggle working on it. Initially I’d pitched the idea of a sequel to DRACULA which involved the politics of early 20th Century Europe— and they liked the idea but they suggested I do an adaption of the original novel first.

Initially I wasn’t interested, adapting classic literature to graphic novels has a long history dating back to the comic book title CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED and most of the time they are poorly done where the words overload the illustrations and it’s more a visual companion to the written word.
Graphic novels are not this— yes there are some comic books that are frankly for simpletons. Gomer Pyle was always reading an early 1960s copy of JUGHEAD in his show—but graphic novels when they are done right are a well oiled combination of words and pictures. Rather than the words supporting the pictures and vice versa they should COMPLIMENT each other— neither should be able to stand without the other.

EXAMPLE 1

In Example 1 (above) this is an example of words supporting the image and vice versa— we read that Johnny was a Burglar and then we see an illustration of a Burglar. There is a redundancy to this which will quickly bore your reader. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that’s what a successful adaption does— it takes a 1000 word description and puts it into an illustration— while Dialogue moves the story forward, but without care that too can be redundant— more on that in a minute.

Example 2

In the Second Example— the words Compliment or enhance the image and vice versa. We wouldn’t get that Johnny is a burglar without the illustration and vice versa— we wouldn’t know that this is Johnny without the narration. When you’re working in graphic novels you have to consider the value of both the words and the pictures.

Example 3

Example 3 gives us redundant narration.

Dialogue is an important component of your story, narration should be kept to a minimum, because the images are our descriptions of what would be narration in a “regular” book.

Example 4

Eliminating the narration and tightening up the dialogue benefits the storytelling here. From the image the character does indeed appear shocked.

Example 5

It’s worth noting that the pose of your character should convey the emotion they’re feeling. In Example 5 we see the character with the same dialogue but obviously a different emotion— in this case less shock and more disbelief as if the person telling this is pulling their leg.

With DRACULA I finally did some experimental art styles that I was excited to use at the time. In the earliest scene when Jonathan Harker first encounters Eastern European culture after living solely in London I wanted to convey a sense of being a stranger, of feeling like you’ve had a nightmare.

Page from DRACULA (McFarland Books 2013) available on Amazon and McFarlandBooks.com

Talking to the class forced me to re-evaluate the book and I was happy with it. Happier than I remembered. There was a lot I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to— but we were working under editorial constrictions that at times became so difficult that when they asked me if I was ready to do the Sequel I declined. Time heals and I have no hard feelings towards them so you might see more from me there.

The class was 9am second period class, I arrived and was lead to one of the most creative exciting AP English classrooms I’d ever seen. After a few minutes of catching up with my old friend the kids piled in and asked some great questions— they were a great group and I really enjoyed my time there.

Looking forward to going back, and maybe just maybe I need to get back into teaching.