It’s been a long time coming, but the conclusion to Elk’s Run is finally in print. Scryptic Studios chats with writer Joshua Hale Fialkov not only about the book, but also about his overall approach to the creative process:
Can you describe your creative process, from first idea to completed pages?
I have a lot of ideas. Most of them are absurd and awful. But I do my best to get everything “down” somewhere. I’ve actually started using Google Documents to sort of build a portfolio of stuff I can pull from and store ideas. That way no matter where I am, there’s always a place to put my ideas that’s only a few clicks away. But generally, if I like an idea enough, and it feels like something I can do well, I’ll try and write 22-30 pages worth of it. If I still like it, I start looking for an artist.
I like to really shape what I do to the artist I’m working with—before I get too deep—for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is pacing. If you have an artist who just can’t do more than 5 panels a page, you need to account for that in your pacing, especially if you write beat to beat as much as I do. But even beyond that stuff, you want to make the story and the visuals really fit inside your artist’s wheelhouse. i.e. If you have a guy who draws kick-ass cars, you might want to do something with cars.
So generally, after the first few pages get drawn, and the artist and I are in sync, we start the pitch process, and depending on the artist’s availability, will even sometimes continue working on the book. My process, in case you can’t tell, is very “business minded,” because, as the writer, I’ve always felt it was my responsibility to handle the business stuff. And aside from rare cases, like with Kody on Punks, artists are too busy drawing to worry about chasing editors and making phone calls.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
I have a review of Elk’s Run published on Grovel, in case anyone is interested. You can find it at:
http://www.grovel.org.uk/elks-run/