Greg Gildersleeve

This past Saturday was the inaugural meeting of the Northland Comics Writers Group, a new project I'm spearheading -- or rather, it would have been the inaugural meeting. Due to a message board snafu, the wrong meeting date was posted, and, as a result, only two of us showed up. So, the meeting will be rescheduled as soon as I can take a breather from grading freshman composition papers.

The non-meeting did afford me a chance to run through the topic I wanted to discuss, dramatic structure. An often overlooked aspect of story telling -- particularly in comics these days -- dramatic structure is nevertheless essential. Without structure, how does the writer really know when the story ends? (If you said, "When I run out of things to write," you just failed the course.) How do you know where the climax is, or how to begin the story? And if you don't know these things, your reader sure won't. This will leave the reader unsatisfied with the story and prone to blast you on message boards. (OK, they may blast you anyway, but at least they'll have fewer reasons to do so.)

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The most common form of dramatic structure, known as the Freytag Pyramid (named after Gustav Freytag, the 19th century German novelist and dramatist who invented it), originally applied to playwrighting; a modified form of it is used for screenwriting. But the basic principles apply to all forms of story telling. The pyramid begins with a horizontal line labeled "Exposition." The line then moves upward in what's called "Rising Action," reaches a sharp point labelled "Climax," then descends into "Falling Action." Finally, the line becomes horizontal again and is labelled either "Denouement" for comedies or "Catastrophe" for tragedies. In graphic representations, this structure appears as an even-sided pyramid or a pointed hat. (Such a representation can be viewed under the entry "Dramatic Structure" at www.wikipedia.com).

I plan to go into more detail about each aspect of Freytag's Pyramid at the eventual meeting, and particularly how it applies to comics story telling (which has its own unique features, just as playwrighting and screenwriting do). But for now, I want to talk about the importance of having dramatic structure, or some kind of structure in comics writing.

One writing source I frequently rely on is a book with the unwieldy title Good Scripts, Bad Scripts: Learning the Craft of Screenwriting Through 25 of the Best and Worst Films in History by Thomas Pope (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998). Though written for would-be screenwriters, Pope's book is essential for comics writers, as well. Pope incisively analyzes movies from "Inherit the Wind" to "Bonfire of the Vanities" for strengths and flaws in both structure and character. On the importance of structure, Pope reflects, "... [real] life is just one damned thing after another, without apparent structure or meaning. ... Art doesn't try to imitate life, but rather distills its essence to find and reveal the truth behind the lies, the meaning behind the meaningless, the structure within the randomness." Even when films are meant for escapism, Pope continues, dramatic structure "can at least let people see ... a better world, where heroes triumph and life has structure and meaning" (xix).

This second quote holds particularly true for comics, where the predominant genre, at least in the U.S., is super-heroes. But most comics feature some protagonist attempting to triumph against the forces of chaos and make sense of his or her world. "Sense" can mean something as simple as the good guys should defeat the bad guys, or something more complex such as two women who love each other should be together even though one is a lesbian and the other is not (or doesn't think she is) (e.g., Strangers In Paradise). Sometimes, the heroes of these stories don't always get what they want (it would be predictable and boring if they did), but they triumph in making the attempt.

Real life, on the other hand, is messy and unpredictable. At least that's what we are told. There is a school of thought (particularly in religious circles) that our actions and thoughts determine the pattern of our lives. That may be true to an extent, but it doesn't account for random accidents, drunk drivers, or gun-toting nutjobs. Besides, the pattern of a real person's life can often be discerned only in hindsight, after the mistakes have already been made and too late to do anything about them.

Many forms of drama -- including certain comics -- attempt to reflect this randomness by showing heroes who are "darker" (meaning they kill, cuss, and have the moral compass of a Jerry Springer guest). The authors of such stories claim they are merely reflecting what they see outside their windows (which prompts me to suggest that maybe they should move). Yet there is something unsatisfying about reading comics stories that purport to reflect the real world. For one thing, such stories tend to read like news reports: not attempting to make sense of events, but just reporting them "as is." For another, they reflect a cynical world view -- a view that has lost all hope in the betterment of this world, or belief in an existence beyond this world.

And, worse, many of these stories never truly end. This, it could be said, is true of most serialized comics. But even ongoing series have (or should have) story arcs with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Sure, you may have subplots carry over from one arc to the next, but the main arc should come to a climax at some point, and then reach a graceful conclusion (which does not necessarily mean a happy ending). And, when all is said and done, how has the hero changed? What was the point of the story?

Many times, the hero merely defeats the bad guy, and that's enough. After all, murder mysteries end with the detective revealing the murderer and not undergoing a change him- or herself. But at least something has been settled. The villain has been caught, order has been restored, the hero is free to go about his business -- until next issue.

But without a solid structure, the story can ramble on, never reaching a climax and never showing anything change. Instead, it merely presents an endless series of battles, one after the other. Perhaps this explains why so many serialized comics start out strong and then peter out after a year or two. Somewhere along the way, the writer (or writers, if the original one has been replaced) lost focus. Perhaps bowing to the pressures of producing a monthly comic, he or she delays the climax interminably, or, worse, has multiple climaxes, which may sound wonderful but it's deadly for stories. Multiple climaxes is a schizophrenic way of story telling. It means the writer has forgotten which story to tell.

All of this sounds kind of high-falutin' and theoretical, and it is. Perhaps later I'll think of some examples, or perhaps you can come up with your own.