Comics and Story Structure: How to Keep Your Plot in Focus

Spider-Man debuts: Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962). Cover art by Jack Kirby (penciler) and Steve Ditko (inker). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What Marvel Comics used to call "the dreaded deadline doom" is upon me.  It's Saturday, and I don't have a new topic to write about.  Here's a favorite from 2009.  This article originally appeared on Suite 101.

Use dramatic structure to keep your readers hanging—not yourself!

Losing control of the story is one of the worst things that can happen to a writer in any genre, but it is especially perilous for comic book writers who depend on exciting and often super-heroic tales to keep readers coming back month after month, year after year. 

But sooner or later, readers tire of stories that never end. Developments meant to hold readers’ interest can often backfire if they seem too far-fetched or appear “out of the blue.” One reason why writers resort to such tricks is because they haven’t thought out the story’s structure.

Freytag's Pyramid

Dramatic structure is a fairly simple device to keep the writer on track, regardless of story length. Structure requires the writer to know the beginning, middle, and end of her story, and to recoognize when she has reached each point.

Freytag's pyramid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While there are many ways of looking at story structure, one of the most useful patterns is Freytag’s Pyramid. Named after Gustav Freytag, the 19th century novelist and dramatist who devised it, Freytag’s Pyramid divides the elements of a story into five (sometimes seven) categories and identifies the function of each element.

Many graphic representations and explanations of the pyramid can be found online, but to illustrate its usefulness in writing comic books, let’s look at one of the most popular comic book stories of all time.

Spinning Webs and Analyzing Stories

Spoiler Warning: This section analyzes the origin of Spider-Man. If you are not familiar with the origin and don’t want to know how it ends, proceed at your own risk.

Originally published in Amazing Fantasy # 15, August 1962, the origin of Spider-Man has been told and retold countless times. Some details have been embellished, added, and altered in subsequent comics and even films, but notice how the underlying structure developed by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko remains intact:

• Exposition (What information does the reader need to know in order to understand the story?)

Peter Parker, science nerd, is shy around girls, picked on by jocks, and doted on by Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

• Inciting Incident (What happens to disrupt the character's normal life?)
  

Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider.

• Rising Action (Things either start going well for the hero or poorly, depending on the type of story you are telling.)

Peter discovers that he has powers and creates his Spider-Man costume. He tries to cash in on his abilities by wrestling.

• Climax (This is often a moment of truth, a moment when our hero’s fortunes change.)

Peter refuses to stop a burglar.

• Falling Action (The reversal of Rising Action; if things were going well before, they go poorly now, or vice versa.)

Returning home, Peter learns that Uncle Ben has been killed by an intruder. As Spider-Man, Peter tracks the killer to a warehouse and fights him.

• Resolution (How does the story end?)

Peter discovers to his horror that the killer is the same burglar he allowed to get away.

• Denouement (What is the outcome of the story?)

Peter learns that “with great power comes great responsibility” and vows to use his powers to help others.

Not every story will fit into the pattern as neatly as Spider-Man’s origin, and there is room for some interpretation. (Does the true climax occur when Spidey confronts the burglar?) But the pattern itself gives the story power and meaning. It tells us when the story ends and why it is significant.

Without a solid structure, Spidey could be chasing the burglar through a 12-issue maxi-series with numerous crossovers by way of the Avengers and never get a resolution. Or if the resolution does come, it might be delayed for so long that the readers who have stuck with you have forgotten its significance.

Try plotting your own story on Freytag’s Pyramid. Use one or two sentence descriptions to identify the most important actions that take place in each category. Look for a strong climax and resolution. Then add subplots, cross-overs, and other frills as needed.

Source:

Lee, Stan, writer, and Steve Ditko, artist. “Spider-Man!” Amazing Fantasy 15 (Aug. 1962).

5 Tips to Make Readers Care about Your Character

A member of my writers group recently complimented me on a short story I’m writing. One of her comments stood out: she was pleased that my protagonist is female.

She reminded me that all readers, to one degree or another, like to identify with protagonists. We see ourselves in the characters of a story. When they experience trials, we experience them, too. The hero's victory becomes ours. The insight which changes her life changes ours. 

While reading a story (and perhaps even for a long time after), we become the character.

That isn’t to say readers cannot identify with a character of a different gender (or race, age, faith, time period, etc.). In fact, the best stories transcend boundaries and connect us to the deeper reality of being human.

Still, it's easier to identify with a character who is somehow “like” us.

And this is why the writer should create characters the reader can care about.

Giving readers a character to care about, to root for, to identify with is one of the most basic ingredients of writing fiction. Yet writers sometimes forget this. They become immersed in the Great Idea, the Clever Plot, or the Exotic Setting and neglect to develop their characters.

But flat characters=flat story.

Flat characters often come off as stereotypes. They never grow because they don't come off as real people to begin with.

  

(This is why, in a previous post, I recommended writing a character biography. If your character becomes real to you, he should become real to the reader.)

So, how do you make readers care about your character?  Here are five tips:

•  Show the character doing something good for someone else.  In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Aibilene dotes on the baby daughter of her employer, even though her employer treats Aibilene badly. Aibilene constantly tells the girl, “You is special” so she doesn’t grow up hating herself like her mother did.
• Give your character traits the reader would like to see in herself.  At the beginning of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen comes off as a very independent young woman. She hunts, she’s good with a bow and arrow, she sneaks past the border of her district to provide food for her family.
• Give your character adverse circumstances.  Peter Parker—the future Spider-Man—is the quintessential science nerd: smart, but unpopular with girls and picked on by jocks. Harry Potter is an unloved orphan, abused and neglected by his horrible aunt, uncle, and cousin.
•  Give your character other people who love and care about them.  Peter Parker has his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Katniss has her sister, Primrose, and best friend, Gale Hawthorne. Aibilene has her friend and fellow maid, Minnie.
• Most importantly: Do one or more of the above in the first few pages of your story.  Readers are impatient. If you don’t give them a reason to care immediately, they may put the book down and never pick it back up.

Giving your readers a character to care about is one of the most important things you will ever do in your story. Your hero is our guide through the Great Idea, the Clever Plot, and the Exotic Setting. By all means, be wildly creative in these aspects of your story. But your character is the one we’re going to root for and remember the most.

3 Comic Book Stories that “Work”

In previous posts, I discussed comic book stories some deem silly or heinous, and a lot of comments, both here and elsewhere, agreed with those assessments.  

However, I don’t want to give the impression that comic book writing is necessarily bad.

In fact, comic book writing requires a special set of skills similar to movie making.  The comic book writer serves as scriptwriter, cinematographer, dialogue and scene editor, and researcher, and has to convey ideas from all of these disciplines to an artist who will draw the story (unless, of course, the writer and artist are the same person, in which case he or she wears even more hats – penciller, inker, and often colorist.)

The comic book writer must also be a team player who is willing to modify her original vision of the story to accommodate contributions from the artist and, often, dicates from an editor.

Having written both comic book and prose stories, I can tell you that, for me at least, the former were  much more difficult to write.

So, here’s an attempt to even the score by highlighting “good” comic book stories.   I confess up front that these stories are very old and are biased toward Marvel and DC.  Since we’re talking about super-heroes, the latter seems appropriate, and, as for the former, a good story should be memorable – which means neither you nor I should have to think very hard to recall it.

1. The Avengers/Defenders War

Avengers # 115-118 and Defenders # 8-10, September-December 1973

Source: GCD.  © and TM Marvel

Writer: Steve Englehart (with principle art by Bob Brown)

The skinny: Two teams of heroes are tricked into fighting each other over a powerful weapon that can alter the world.

What works:  Hero teams battling hero teams is nothing new, but I’ve rarely seen it done so well as here.  Every development of the story flows organically from who the characters are and from what they want.

For example, when the Avengers are tipped off that the Defenders might be up to something, they disperse to the far corners of the world to investigate.  The Silver Surfer (a Defender) accidentally triggers a volcano, demolishing an Avengers quinjet and injuring the Scarlet Witch.  Her beau, the Vision, is so overcome with rage that he attacks the bewildered Surfer – and their fight “confirms” the lie the Avengers have been told about the Defenders’ motives.

My favorite chapter, though, is from Avengers # 117, when two apparently mismatched heroes – Captain America and the Sub-Mariner – decide to trust one another and come to realize they’ve been had.  Only Cap – because of who he is and his past association with Namor – is able to see beyond the latter's imperious threats and put aside his own ego, which turns the tide of battle.

2. “The War Between Krypton and Earth”

Adventure Comics # 333, June 1965

Writer: Edmond Hamilton (with art by John Forte)

Source: GCD. © and TM DC Comics

Inc.

The skinny:  The Legionnaires travel back in time and take sides in a war between two alien races which seek to colonize prehistoric earth.

What works: Both sides – the Kryptonians and the Vruunians – establish a legitimate claim to earth.  Both have traveled great distances to give their people a new home, and neither wants to abandon their dreams and search for a new world to colonize.

Neither side is portrayed as villains, yet their war escalates due to factors beyond their control (when weapons intended by the Vruunians only to stun prove lethal to Kryptonians).

The story serves – in the best science fiction tradition – as a metaphor for how wars get started among people of “good will” and how they can escalate – and why they should be avoided.

The story also ends on a tragic note (rare for the Silver Age) when Superboy returns to the future and unearths Kryptonian records that reveal why their colony did not survive.

3. “Flashback”

Amazing Spider-Man # 181, June 1978

Source: GCD.  © and TM Marvel

Writer: Bill Mantlo (with art by Sal Buscema and Mike Esposito)

The skinny:  While visiting the grave of his Uncle Ben, Spidey recalls his own origin and history.

What works:  The ending, plain and simple.  Spidey’s origin has been recounted numerous times, but this tear-jerker leaves the reader with a little something extra.

Spidey leaves a gift at the grave – the microscope Uncle Ben gave him years ago which inspired young Peter Parker’s interest in science (and which indirectly led to him becoming Spider-Man).

After Spidey departs, a gravekeeper finds the microscope and takes it home to his young son.

When I first read this story, I wondered if the gravekeeper had done the right thing by stealing a gift from a grave.  But the microscope would have been ruined by the weather or stolen by someone else.  Instead, the story ends on a positive note, with Peter unknowingly passing on Uncle Ben's gift to another child – a gift of science and love.

Significantly, the gift is a microscope – not a web-shooter or some other token of Spidey’s long career as a hero.  Just a simple microscope.  The story affirms that “ordinary” objects can fuel the imaginations of kids, and who knows where that will lead?

Furthermore, it drives home  –  in a wonderfully subtle way  –  how important science is to all of us.

Are these stories perfect?  No.  But they don’t have to be.  All they have to do is do what stories everywhere and since the dawn of time have sought to do: entertain the reader and leave him with something extra: a thought, a feeling, a reaction.

What about you?  What comic book stories “work” for you?