Interview Week: The Writing Craft with Chuck Dixon

Since we've done many interviews (all of which were very generous of you to do), I am going to focus here upon what experiences create a writer, what interests you, and how you create.

What is your first memory as student of writing when you knew what you wanted to do?  What about becoming writer would you say is a universal formative moment or event for all future writers?

In elementary school we were given an assignment to pick a picture from a box and make up a story about it. They were photos the teacher clipped out of magazines. I asked if I could have more than one picture. The teacher said okay and I rooted through the box until I found five or so pictures then made up a story that linked them in a story with a beginning, middle and end. Each kid had to stand up in front of the class and tell the story of his picture. My story was the only one that got laughs and applause.

             That’s when I thought, “Hey, this is what I want to do.”

What is it about writing that drew you in?  Were you a hopeless revisionist with a desire to fix the world's history?  Were you a lover of the written word?

I just liked stories and I liked relating them to others. And I liked hearing other people tell stories and admired anyone who could tell a story well. I’d listen to my dad talk to his friends about their experiences in Europe and the Pacific during WWII. It was better than TV. We had a priest at our parish who was really good at telling stories. I met a lot of really interesting people when I went to work after school and heard unforgettable stories from them.

The most educational part for me was whenever I got into a conversation with someone about movies. I learned a wealth of knowledge about storytelling listening to a former prize fighter relate the plot of the movies he’d watched on the TV the night before. This guy was a high school drop-out and zero education in film making or literature. But the guy could get all worked up relating the plot to Vera Cruz or Forty Guns. He’d not only get across the story but the character nuances and the important snippets of dialogue. He was a movie consumer not a critic but intuited everything about what he was seeing. Listening to him taught me a lot more about what we all expect from a story and what entertains us, move us or makes us laugh than a film degree ever would.

But to make a living telling stories I had to get over the hurdle of writing. I taught myself to write by reading other writers and, very important, reading criticism. I’ve never been a wordsmith and admire those who are. In comics you need to be terse and work broad but there’s not a lot of call for eloquence or artful writing. The pictures do all that.

Now that I’m writing more prose I had to work on that muscle. It was intimidating, still is. But one thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t come easy to anyone. In prose you do more re-writing than writing. In comics you have to get it right the first time. In prose you go back and tweak and polish and tuck.

When you write dialogue, do you hear the character voices speaking in the sound of their voice, and if not, do you have a way to write dialogue so it becomes more, for want of a better term, ethnic?  Or a product from their universe?

I often base a character’s voice on someone I know. If I can’t do that I think about where they came from and what I know about the rhythm or patois of that region. I generally avoid ethnic. If you listen to actual people talk rather than listen to TV or movie dialogue, you discover that people have their own way of communicating as individual as they are. I always listen for phrases I’ve never heard before.

But then again, there are folks who learn to converse from TV. You know, the kind of people who speak in aphorisms or sound bites. I hear conversations all the time that are so loaded with pat phrasing and platitudes they could be from a Disney Channel sitcom.

That’s why it’s more fun to write characters from the past. In the past you were only exposed to those around you. If you didn’t know how to say something or describe something, you had to find the language or make it up. These days, we’re drawing closer to a national patois that, while rich, is kind of homogenized by exposure to social media and television.

As we've discussed privately, you are scholar of military history. What area of the human violent past is the one of most interest to you, and which area is the one that you know the most about?  Do those two streams of thought enter a confluence and influence each other?

I have a very toy soldier approach to history. By that I mean, not terribly scholarly. I read about or look into a period until my curiosity is satisfied. Basically, until I understand the gist of things and have some understanding of it.

For example, I know next to nothing about the War of the Roses. I wouldn’t know where to begin. But ask me to write a story about the Russian Civil War or the Boxer Rebellion and I’m all over it.

So much of the history I know is through osmosis, just being exposed to lots of material from a young age. I grew up in the Civil War Centennial and every kid I know lived that period through books and toys and trading cards. That kind of exposure early on creates an enthusiasm or, at least, an awareness. I know my own kids aced history every time and they credit all those hours of setting up battles on the living room floor.

Do you write something creative daily?  What kind of routine do you get into, or, do try to not have a routine, and work out of purely wild  fire, not labor?

Even if I don’t write daily I’m thinking of stuff to write.

And I try to set a goal each day. Two to three thousand [CD1] words of prose or five pages of comic script. If I reach the goal early I watch a movie. But a lot of days I’m still sitting there through supper.

Then some days it is a wild fire. Last week I was averaging eight or more pages a day and finished the equivalent of two comic books.

And no weekends.

Do you work well with a deadline, or, are you better by any means going at your own pace and creating as it happens?  Is that typical, do you think?  I know I've been as much as two years ahead of my own mentally kept schedule, and when I am particularly moved by the concept, I can do it in very little time.  But, having a deadline slows me down, actually... I guess I have a mental block there.

I need a deadline. Even if it’s one I assign myself. And I generally beat the deadlines given to me by publishers. I have my own schedule to meet if I’m going to balance all the work, And my schedule supersedes the publisher’s every time. I know I want to stay well ahead of the demands so that I have built-in downtime in case something special comes along.

I recently wrote a 100-page graphic novel that was thrown my way out of the blue. Because I was ahead of my deadlines I could take the two weeks needed to get that job done. I was adapting a screen treatment and I can fly through those.

Sometimes the tighter the deadline the better. What I call mini-deadlines. Like when I’m sitting and staring at the screen and my wife pops in to remind me of an appointment I have that afternoon. Suddenly I have NO time to meet my quota for the day. The mist falls away and my fingers are flying on the keys. It’s giddy-up time.

Many writers I know in the world of comics love the work artists do, but find themselves so different than the artist individually that they clash.  Do most people clash over money, or work load, or, simply put, different minds not communicating?

I don’t clash with anyone. I respect the time and effort the artist puts into the work. He’s selling it. He’s the first thing the reader sees. And, while I write full script, my scripts are flexible. I always make it clear that I’m open to collaboration. 99% of the time it works. And the 1% when it doesn’t the reader never knows.

What creative work did you most enjoy?  What work of yours would you most like to return to?  Why is that?

It sounds corny, but as long as I can invest myself in the characters I enjoy it all. If it’s Batman or Raggedy Ann, if I can get into the character it’s all fun. And when it’s not fun it’s a challenge and that’s kind of fun too. My main concern is meeting the reader’s expectations and trying to exceed them. The most daunting thing I think I ever worked on was two Transformers projects. I wasn’t that conversant with the franchise, but I knew the fans were dedicated. I sweated that one so as not to let anyone down.

On the other hand, adapting P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves to comic book form felt so right. I was so conversant with the novel after countless re-readings that I knew just what was needed (and not needed) to make it work in the medium.

Most of the stuff I’ve written in comics is in the rear-view mirror for me. While it would be fun to go back and re-visit some of those characters, I have a lot of new stuff being thrown at me all the time and all of it with fresh challenges to be overcome.

How much of writing is how to understand and find serenity, becoming free of ego, and what amount of writing is grabbing the subject by the horns and going for the wild ride?

As far as ego goes, I know I have one. We all do. But honestly, it’s more about the story than about me. I want to be the invisible hand. If the writing gets noticed I’ve failed. I really want to make the story I’m writing belong to the reader. Probably the most pretentious thing I’ve ever said right there. But it’s true. I’d rather have someone tell me they enjoyed the story rather than tell me I’m a great writer.

Nothing pleases me more than a comic fan telling me that that they cataloged or re-bagged their comics and were surprised at how many of their comics were written by me. That tells me that they liked the story without remembering who wrote it.

You've written great alternative history, and straight forward history subjects, is writing the alternative history easier because you now control the path?  What categorized alt history work by others is a favorite of yours?

I loved The Iron Dream because it’s just so nuts. There’s also a Richard  C. Meredith’s Timeline trilogy. I was fascinated by that. But I don’t follow a lot of alternative fiction. I’d rather read actual historical fiction or non-fiction.

That said, I’m on the down slope of the next book in my Bad Times series and half of the action is set in a parallel world where the Mughals and Normans are in a war over the North American continent.