Tuesday 14^th April 2020

Easter has put my content schedule all out of whack. If anything, over this past extended weekend I’ve realised the need for some structure in my life while we’re in lockdown. I missed getting a few episodes of The Climb up over the weekend because I didn’t have graphics ready. But I also know not to beat myself up.

My aim is now to get back on course over the next week and be better prepared for those times when schedules could be disrupted. That means some simple things, like have a few spare thumbnail graphics ready in case I’m unable to create some.

One of the things I want to start this week is rewrites on the second Shade Knight book. I’ve done some further thinking over the weekend.

Again I’ve been looking at the Nolan movie: The Dark Knight. I like that the main antagonist in this book is very unlike The Joker as it means I’m not trying to copy but rather understand.

Specifically, I’ve been looking at the concept of character introduction and specifically how they demonstrate their power. As a result, I’ve found myself looking at one scene in The Dark Knight specifically.

It’s when The Joker first meets the mob, and there’s a bunch of Youtube analysis out there which I’ve been consuming. The Joker comes in, and has to establish himself as more powerful that all the mobsters there. Whilst I might be being a little unfair on myself, how I’d previously handle a scene like this is go a bit Game of Thrones and try and find the most extreme way to kill one of the mobsters. What interests me, is the use of pencil to do this. It’s not graphic, it’s simple, and it’s backed up with dialogue.

It’s interesting seeing this scene being pulled apart a bunch of ways. There’s foreshadowing that’s subtly placed. There are moments of doubt that help characterise The Joker. There’s some clever dialogue that helps establish the change in dominance hierarchy.

Again, I have nothing like this scene in my book, but I do have a number of antagonists, and this is really help develop those characters into better versions on the page. It’ll also help stop this book from being quite so dark as I’ll be able to tone down some graphic scenes.

I’m genuinely excited about this book. I feel I can really evolving it into something even better than the first.

A lot of the story arc I want to change is still milling around in my head. It currently feels like a load of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I have a strong idea that all the pieces are part of the same puzzle and now I can start to see which pieces below to one area or another. I just don’t know how they all connect.

What’s important for me at this stage, is that nothing with what I’m trying to do that doesn’t feel like it won’t fit. That gives me some confidence, even if I’ve yet to start pulling everything together in my head.

I feel like if I sort out the whole Bruce Wayne vs Batman question, everything will suddenly fit together. That’s my mental focus for the next few days, and I’m expecting another minor Eureka moment that will bring everything together.