The Exceptionals - On-Going
It all started about a year ago. I was hanging out with some friends at the comic shop. Chris was talking about something he saw on the Discovery Channel about a man who lived with bears and was later killed by...
The Exceptionals - On-Going
It all started about a year ago. I was hanging out with some friends at the comic shop. Chris was talking about something he saw on the Discovery Channel about a man who lived with bears and was later killed by them. Here's the conversation that followed.
"Ironic," Gavin said, only to have me let him no that it wasn't really irony. We then took turns throwing out words that related to what the story was. "Poetic justice" I offered, where as someone else mentioned "Serendipitous".
Finally, from across the room, we heard Scott say, "Divine intervention?" to which, Gavin responded "GodBear?"
We spent some time laughing when I offered up the fact that it sounded like a heavy metal band. We pictured the image, a furry bear paw making the metal fist.
Sometime, somehow, later in the conversation, GodBear transformed into the bear version of Thor. And, that's how I came up with The Exceptionals--writing a world for an inside joke. Probably not the best way of creating a superhero franchise, but it seemed to work.
Anyway, I've spent every moment of my day since 10:50 am until I write this at 8:20 pm editing, rewriting, uploading, and just generally fighting with myself over this script. My brain is a little fried, so forgive me if I ramble or repeat myself.
I took out 300+ words with this one. I took out an entire issue or two worth of what I wanted to do. And, I took out one of my favorite scenes. All because there were some beats I needed to hit. The reason I'm telling you this is because I think it's an important lesson to learn, just because you love something in your story, doesn't mean it belongs there.
The scene I mentioned was with my probably obvious favorite character in the book, Doppler. Doppler is my favorite because he gives me an excuse to use dialogue, which is my specialty, without needed set-up for why the characters are together. Plus, being able to play with the diverse personalities in one body really gives me an easy out for comedy.
But, back to my point, the scene was with Doppler. The origin story of Doppler was originally told three times. First, Michael tells it completely flowery and peaceful, claiming he was in control. Then, upset by how much of a sissy Pete feels that Michael makes him seem like, Pete tells the story about how tough they were, claiming he was in control. Annoyed that they were bending the truth, Tom steps in and tells the story how you see it in the final script, only with different words since they have different mind sets.
The decision to take that out had its good and bad points. It was good to be able to expand on Michael and make him seem like less of a pretentious douchebag, but it also seems to take away from Tom. Tom is the level-headed one. Expect to see a lot more of him as the issues keep going.
I feel there was more I wanted to touch on, but I can't remember what it was. Also, I don't want to pass out from exhaustion and hunger.
I need chinese food.
