As novelists, we glory in the long story. Our bag of tricks includes lots of plot devices, characters with motivations and emotional back-stories, setting with culture, place and time, and deep vocabulary. We rarely travel light.
To begin with…
Cartooning is quite different. I’m not referring to animation but print cartoons, as in political, magazine and newspaper cartoons and comics. This kind of cartooning involves synthesizing your ideas into a few frames. The limited space creates a control mechanism that shifts the story-telling terrain so radically that it can seem impossible for novelists. It may feel unrelated to our skill sets and needs. But there are lessons to be learned from cartooning that can help novelists. You may have seen these in practice; some of them may already be in your arsenal. There are other ways of learning these, but I encourage you to try cartooning, drawing comics, to see how far this practice can take you to developing some novel talents.
1. The detail that identifies your character quickly.
In cartooning, you have a character who is readily recognizable. If you’re drawing political cartoons, you might a candidate with big hair like Donald Trump or a toothy grin like Joe Biden. In children’s cartoons, you might have an adorable puppy like Snoopy. In a cartoon series, you may have a cast of characters, each identified by some consistent look, like Calvin with a big head and distinct spiky hair, or Hobbes as a tiger with a big white belly. Or recall the hair styles in Dilbert that automatically take you into the office maze.
In noveling, having a character trait that instantly reveals identity can be handy. Read greasy hair and bat-like appearance in any of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and you instantly know it’s Snape.
Practice cartooning to find those visual clues. In novel writing, you can add other senses (smell and sound being the other two most accessible identifiers). These can come across in cartoons, too—like Pepe Le Pew’s aroma and bouncy Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.
2. The moment in time.
You have one frame, two frames, three frames or four in a typical cartoon. Each represents a different second. Succinct, specific, point in time that is unique for the comic. There is no flow between them. The flow is created by the specific moments in time sequenced together. And the lesson for writers is how to capture that one moment. What does that one moment tell? Where is it? How do we feel being in that one moment of time? Are we sitting on Snoopy’s dog house, waiting? We know something is going to happen!
The lesson is to keep it simple and be specific. Think of the exact moment. Bring it to life.
3. Ancillary action.
In some political cartoons, you’ll see little guys at the bottom commenting. Or there will be a sidebar with some different action or opinion. This is critically important practice for point of view. Whatever is happening in the main cel can prompt any number of spin-offs in thought, action, debate, opinion, dialogue. Who are the main characters? Who are the ancillary characters whose job is to comment, or point out some other aspect.
When crafting this, it’s important to figure out if you need these ancillary characters. Maybe a better, cleaner main story could help make such comment unnecessary or irrelevant. But maybe, the ancillary characters push the narratives around into a more comprehensible mix or a clearer direction.
Practicing this within the cartoon / comic genre helps novelists think through the big picture. We need to do that!
4. Landscape.
In comics, this can be elaborate or virtually non-existent. You do always need a line somewhere to ground your characters. They don’t float in space (unless they are in space, and then you have some moon or asteroid or planet or star to help fix that orientation). How simple the landscape is may be a function of the quality of your art. If you’re not good at drawing you may limit this to the barest necessity. If you’re great at it, you may add detailed buildings and perspective and depth that enhances and reveals the full scope of the world.
This is a good lesson for novelists! How much landscape do we really need for the comic? There has to be some grounding. The reader needs something that puts her in a place, like Snoopy’s proverbial dog house, or staring into his dish! If we’re on a tumble down mission with Calvin and Hobbes, we need a hill and trees and a sled or snow or mud or something that moves us along.
And this is what we as novelists develop by cartooning. A better sense of what is needed to make the picture clear; to enable the action; to set up the next frame. This much is enough; and we can add more only if we’re really good at it.
5. Color!
As adults, we don’t color enough. Crayons, colored pencils, colored chalk, pastels, markers, water paints, other paints…When you draw comics and cartoons, you get the opportunity to color. Of course you can create digitally and then color digitally! This is also exciting! Are you going to a bright, living Technicolor look? Do you want a monochrome world? Shades of gray? Stark contrasts in black and white? Tone on tone? Clashing chaos? It’s all there in the paint box (crayon box, etc.).
In writing our novels, we sometimes forget the color. The shifting light from day to night. The variability between unending bright (almost harsh) tropical landscapes and the muted first blush of spring in a temperate world. The color of cold. The shades of shadows and waves and birds overhead. These are evident in comics! And practicing their use will sharpen your memory and help develop your skill for including color in your novels.
6. Concise dialogue.
Oh, if there is one difficulty I face more than any other when I do cartoons and comics, it is trying to stuff all my ideas and conversation into the little balloon space I have. And this constraint of space helps develop our dialogue scripting skills. How does the character sound? What can they say in the fewest words that moves your comic forward?
Wordplay can be fun in a novel. In a comic, it is more fun! The focus is on that moment in time (see above!), in that place (see above!), with that very identifiable character (see above!) and you have a few words that bring it all together and make it sing. This is what we want for our novels—to sing. Practice, practice, practice with comics. It will help.
7. A clear concept.
The best cartoons and comics have a clear concept. You get it! The humor or entertainment may be from a juxtaposition of incongruous elements. It may be a double entendre, a pun, a payback, a tragedy in time, or any other going out of bounds that amuses. But there is a clarity. It is usually one idea. The clarity may be simply the amusement of ambiguity! But then that is the concept.
Novelists tell stories. We write long stories with plots and events and all of the glop that goes into any novel. But the benefit of a clear concept guiding the entire work is sometimes lost. Sometimes never existing. Sometimes clouded or overcrowded. Practice drawing a comic or cartoon and find the joy of a clear concept. Then try to bring that to your novel-writing experience.
In summary.
Push your novelist skills with practice at creating cartoons and comics. Expand that writer trick bag. Your readers will thank you!