ISSUES #2 SCRIPT COMPLETE AND WEBSITE REFRESH
And how a secondary character can spark “protagonist drift.”
The eleventy-first draft of Renowned issue #2 is finished, which is to say, the highly revised-along-the-way official first draft of the script. I put the date at the bottom and everything. I also sent it off to Azrael, which means concept stuff will start showing up at my door soon.
I’ve also been refreshing the website. The old one was fine, but it was kinda uggo and I didn’t really understand how to make it look nicer. Lots of AI-assisted learning and some HTML YouTube videos later and it looks 👌🏻 pretty good. It’s mainly an SEO trap but I’ll eventually use it to sell stuff.
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Renowned is about legendary author and supernatural detective Abraham Bone. It’s what I write or say every time I describe the book. Except… is it? The more I write, the more I wonder if I’m doomed to put my “main character” in situations where he’s the second (or third) most interesting person in any scene. Even if that is the case… is it such a bad thing?
Abe is a legend whose legend is fading. His publisher doesn’t believe in him anymore. Everybody knows him but nobody knows him. He, by all accounts, has a long, rich personal and professional history and yet, he seems lonely, dissatisfied, and lost.
Celia Kirby is a young, married, fiercely motivated mother-to-a-wild-toddler who is also unwittingly at the center of what’s starting to look like serial murders. Her husband’s job keeps him hard-working but distant, her station keeps her right where she is with little hope for much more, and all of that keeps her life one taut line of stress and uncertainty. And yet she presses on.
Fame. Ego. Conviction. Self-doubt… all sorts of things swirling around when these two characters are together and that’s good. But it’s kind of interesting in the write/rewrite/re-rewrite process to look at who’s doing what and what may actually be driving them forward together. Who stands to change the most? To lose the most? The answer might be Celia.
So, is Renowned about Abraham Bone? Yes. And what do you do when your secondary character starts to eclipse the guy you built the book around? Embrace it, and let the engine pulling her forward also pull the story forward, challenge everyone else… and challenge me.
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New site -> renownedcomic.com. Thanks. More coming. Stick around.