Just shootin' spitballs at the chalk board

Alright, a lot of this is thinking out loud, so it may be a bit rambling. When buck and Chris first mentioned they were thinking of doing this, my thought was maybe I could do something, but also I must be crazy for thinking about doing something here with my schedule the way it is and things with the studio kicking into a higher gear after a pseudo-summer break. If I was going to do something here, it had to be something I could really sink my teeth into and something that challenged me to improve my craft and become a better writer.

I started to think about what I had done in previous fan fics, what I was doing with current writing projects and what I might want to do here. My first instinct was a solo series keep it small, keep it safe kind of thing, but when I was going through the mental checklist of characters I might want to do, nothing stood out. A few favorites I had done before and had nothing new to say, a few I had ideas for but not ones that played nice with others and would be appropriate for a shared sandbox that is the nature of this site.

The more I thought about things, the more I began to think about setting more than characters, really the interaction between character and setting and I decided I wanted to do something where the setting was a major player in the story. Gotham and Metropolis are the obvious choices in the DCU for that, but I had done Batman before and had nothing new there, and I really don't have a Superman idea that plays well with others, so those were both out. My next thoughts were St. Roche and Hub City. Chris however seemed to have an idea for St. Roche, so I set my sights on Hub City. The only hero associated with Hub City is the Question, and that could work, but there were other heroes traditionally nearby-Dr. Fate in Salem, and Ray Palmer at Ivy University. I didn't want to do a team book, but a series with the setting at the core and an ensemble cast struck the right chord. I grew up in New England, so I started thinking about what I wanted to do with it. Three things came to mind, big city corruption, cultural tensions and old word sensibilities and superstitions. Something dark, haunting and foreboding, but also gritty and street level. Thinking about that, I soon realized Ray Palmer didn't fit, and besides I had written him before briefly, and didn't really have something for him in this set up.

I began to think of who I could move to the Hub and make it work? What kind of locales did I want to play with? I decided I wanted a Chinatown to be a major factor, and Richard Dragon soon joined the list of characters I wanted to use. I turned to an old favorite in Madame Xanadu thinking I could easily relocate her shop from Greenwich Village to Chinatown in the hub, and it played well with some different ideas I had about her since the last time I wrote her. One of the set-ups and dynamics I absolutely loved was the 80's Spectre series where Jim Corrigan was a private eye with an office upstairs from Xanadu's shop, and Corrigan/Spectre was a character I have had an itch to try my hand at for a while, so Corrigan got added. I wanted a generational sense, kind of a Times Past in Opal City vibe form Robinson's Starman for the Hub, so I thought hey I've got Kent Nelson/Dr. Fate on hand, but I always thought the Jared Stevens character had a lot of untapped potential so let's bring him int he mix, and let's add an older mentor for Corrigan as a P.I. Slam Bradley is the character everyone looks at in that role, but I turned instead to Nathaniel Dusk, a PI DC featured in a pair of mini series in the 80s to fill that role.

So I had an ensemble cast coming together and I had a few notes I wanted to hit. New England haunted by cosmic horrors a la Lovecraft, noirish elements of the grizzled PI, corruption at all levels of the city that an investigative reporter like Vic Sage could sink his teeth into. I still needed something to tie it all together though, some kind of connective tissue that would make this ensemble work. I was also still missing the cultural tension angle, so when I started doing a little more digging into Boston history, a few things stood out, tensions with Chinese immigrants through the 60s and 70s, and the Irish mafia and figures like Whitey Bulger. I thought about reworking the Tong Wars form San Francisco into a modern Chinese setting and adding the Irish mods to it, to form a territorial gang war that is an undercurrent throughout the Hub. But then I also thought about the movie Big Trouble in Little China, with Chinese gangs having rival sorcerers, and thought there was an element there I could use-the gang war is escalating and various factions are turning to supernatural elements, almost a magical arms race and this is letting loose certain horrors in the city, tying my street level grit, noir detectives, and mystical guardians together, with Vic Sage int he middle trying to figure out what the hell is happening to his city.

I wanted to round out the cast a bit too. I wanted someone a bit more light hearted but also someone who could be a player in the city structure. I went with Ted Kord/Blue Beetle because of the scarab, and the Charlton ties between Beetle and the Question (ties that predate the hole Beetle/Booster thing form the 80s forward. I also started spitballing antagonists and how they would play out. A lot would be street level thugs, gang-members and unnamed things that go bump in the night, but a few villainous players came to mind as well. And then I began to flesh out just who all these characters would be under my pen and not who they have been.

Some characters will have deep dark secrets that will slowly get unraveled as the series progresses. The spotlight may shift from character to character as we move through stories, some may meet and become allies or at least partners of convenience for a time. Others may develop animosity or rivalries.

So that's kind of where I am at. I really want to sink my teeth into Hub City and develop it and the cast of characters that operate there. But I am still in the thinking/planning stage. Things are still fluid. I don't want to hoard characters, or upset the applecart if people have an idea of how the shared sandbox should look and this doesn't fit in a standard DCU. So if someone has a real specific idea they want to do for one of the cast members I am considering, I can be flexible, or I could move to something else if the whole premise is problematic.

an initial draft of my claims list looks something like this...

Title: Hub City
Subtitle: It’s a city of secrets, a city of mystery, filled with tales of the unexpected…

Heroes/Protagonists: Kent Nelson (Dr. Fate) (1); Madame Xanadu (2); Jim Corrigan (The Spectre) (3); Vic Sage (The Question) (4), Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) (5),

Support: Father Richard Craemer (6), Nathaniel Dusk (7), Lords of Order (8), Richard Dragon (9) Jared Stevens (if I get 17, he’d be 16)

Villains/Antagonists: Asmodeus (10), Icthultu (11), Cult of the Cold Flame (12), Lords of Chaos (13), The Eye of Horus (14), Lady Shiva (15)

Wallpaper: Dan Garett, Inza Nelson, Aristotle Rodor, Dr. Twain, Kim Liang, Nabu

and then I started brainstorming towards a series pitch/bible..

The Hub-pitch/series bible

The Hub is a DC fan fiction set in the New England city known as Hub City. It is a major port city and industrial center, but other than New England we will keep its exact whereabouts vague. It will be near Salem, Ivytown, the Cape, etc. but could be in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or southern Maine.

The city is rife with corruption and a center for magical/mystical activity for some reason. It is filled with the old world vibe unknown to most places in America outside New England and New Orleans. The city itself will be the focus of the series, and its story will play out among an ensemble cast…

Jim Corrigan: Corrigan was a young hero cop most people think went bad. He came under suspicion in a missing persons case that went bad in ’85, involving a young girl named Sabrina Spencer who disappeared during hurricane Gloria. As the target of an IA investigation, Corrigan left the force to become a P.I., apprenticed to Nathaniel Dusk. He is now a grizzled middle aged P. I. with an office in Hub’s Chinatown taking what cases he can and still haunted by the Spencer case. He has not become the Spectre, yet.

Kim Liang-Corrigan’s girl Friday, secretary and all around keeper. She grew up in Chinatown in a traditional Chinese household, and is first generation American as her mother emigrated from China. Her father was a student killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre, which her mother did not attend because he was very pregnant with Kim. She escaped to the U.S. shortly afterwards to escape repercussions of their protests and to provide a better life for their daughter. Kim just finished undergrad and is working her way through law school, she hopes. Kim has become good friends with the proprietor of the shop blow Corrigan’s office, a fortune teller known as Madame Xanadu, and is was Madame X who arranged for Kim to get the job with Corrigan.

Madame Xanadu-mysterious fortune teller whose shop is in Hub City’s Chinatown. No one remembers when the shop opened, it seems to have always been there, and so has she, but she does not seem to age. Many locals come to her for advice and aid, and she is well liked by the community, but some few speak in hushed whispers about her and wonder…

Richard Dragon-former army brat raised in Asia, who went missing when his parents mysteriously disappeared. When he was found in Tibet, he returned to the States, and enlisted in the military, becoming a special forces operative, who was then recruited by “The Company” because of his knowledge and connections in Asia. Dragon disliked the work, and retired, opening up a dojo is Hub City’s Chinatown, just down the street from Xanadu & Corrigans’s places.

Ted Kord-multimillionaire inventor and industrialist, Kord is the President, founder and CEO of Kord Industries, whose home office is in Hub City. Kord is the godson of the archaeologist and adventurer known as Dan Garrett. Garrett gave several gifts to his godson, including the start-up capital he used to form Kord industries, and a mysterious blue scarab he recovered in Egypt (one that enabled Garrett to have a secret life as the costumed adventurer the Blue Beetle in the 70’s and 80’s).

Vic Sage-investigative reporter for Hub City’s major newspaper, but with print dying he has been turning to other avenues to pursue his quest for the truth. Sage is sure there is more than meets the eye going on in the world, he just hasn’t been able to prove it. His face it too well known and when he shows up, people clam up. He is close to being paranoid, and a conspiracy freak, and he was recently contacted by a pair of fringe scientists who have something he might be interested in….

Kent Nelson-archaeologist, professor at Ivytown, and resident of a strange tower with no windows and door outside Salem. He is also the host for Nabu, Lord of Order, and together they are Doctor Fate. Kent however is tired, and wants to spend his golden years with Inza, so has withdrawn a bit, and is looking for a successor to the mantle of Fate.


Opening Arc- The opening arc is going to focus on elements from that missing person's case in Corrigan's past, the Spenser case, her father was a federal prosecutor and people think the mob took the daughter as a warning and that Corrigan took a bribe to cover it up but what really happened is…ah ah ah that would be telling.

So still developing it, but that's what I am considering.

-M

Batman may or may not be the only Big 7 character claimed in the first go around.

Anyways, the character I'm looking at is Hawkman... I have a Murder Mystery Party to plan with a friend in a bit and then Game of Thrones season 4 watch party to attend, so I can't get into depth, but I will later!

Your list of historical items to find sounds like a title list from Steve Berry's Cotton Malone novels

Be interesting to see how it all plays out. Lost treasures and historical mysteries in fiction have gotten a lot of play and gotten a bit stale since Dan Brown hit it big with the DaVinci Code making millions by taking a lot of fringe speculative history that had been floating around and adding an accessible tour guide as a protagonist to walk you through other's research and calling it a novel.

It'll be interesting to see how you add a super-hero twist to this and keep it fresh.

-M

That's good because the thing with historical mysteries is that you will basically have half the audience against you whichever way you go right from the get go. If you stray too far from the lore of the mystery, you will be dismissed as someone who doesn't care about it or didn't do their research, if you stick too close you will be dismissed as unoriginal and derivative, who is borrowing things to beef up their own limited supply of ideas. The only thing you have going for you is in the execution of the characters, the character dynamics and the narrative draw of those characters because your set up/context has alienated a chunk of your audience on side of the divide or the other. If you don't deliver the goods with the characters, you'll have lost the rest of your audience, and even if you do deliver, some won't see past their personal distaste of how you handled the historical mystery material anyways. 

You've picked a tough road to travel my friend, there are so many tropes, cliches and formulaic straight jackets in that genre that it is tough to break new ground and have a semblance of an original voice in it, and managing to break new ground and having that original voice is the thing that will alienate the hardcore fans of the genre. I look forward to seeing what you come up with, but I don't envy you the task. 

-M

Can I just take a moment to say that all of these stories look great? Buck did a great Batman initially, and to be free of previous connections to other Gotham related stories might actually be beneficial for the character to build it's own Mythos.

Anything involving Dr Fate and the Question has my complete support, and who knew that Dr Fate was such a popular character between us all (Jared Stevens included. That guy was awesome.) Perhaps a Dr Fate in every series could be our Pandora? Hector Hell, Kent Nelson, Khalid Ben Hassan...

Also, Hawkman? Always a bonus. The character has long been a favourite of mine, not just because of the whole Hawk element, but I was always a fan of the idea of there being a Hawk Avatar, a Bear Avatar etc...Obviously, we're not doing that, but...you know, just telling you of my love. So, an old school treasure hunting series would be great fun.

All in all, I notice it's a lot of more obscure ideas, which is unusual when ALL of the big properties, save Batman, are up for grabs. Says a lot about us as fans and as writers, I think.

Ok since three people have expressed an interest in Doctor Fate, I am going to spitball a little more detail how I see him for my series/want to use him.

I am not interested in Fate alone, but the whole mythos that comes with him-the Lord of Order and Chaos, the mantle of Fate, Nabu as an embodiment of a Lord of Order, Kent and Inza as stewards of that legacy, the couple aging and wanting to spend their golden years together perhaps freed form some of the responsibilities of the mantle, The Kali Yuga, potential Agents of Fate (Jared Stevens? Eric & Linda Strauss?) etc. 

I hope to establish Kent as still being a professor at a major university in Hub City and Inza owning an antiquarian shop in the city while still operating out of the Tower in Salem. I hope to tie the Icthulhu elements and other Lovecraftian nods within the DCU into the mythos of the Lords of Chaos, but also look at some Moorcockian elements of Chaos and Order since DC also tied the Moorcock Multiverse into things a bit when they had Moorcock doing stuff for DC. With the noir stylings I want to implement, I am not so much looking to have battles between a shoggoth and Dr. Fate and Spectre rocking the heavens every arc, but Corrigan investigating a dark cult devoted to the Cthonic entities consulting Dr. Kent Nelson and maybe, just maybe in a final climatic scene having a major mystical throwdown. 

I want to juxtapose the idea of human host sot spiritual entities in the Nabu/Kent Nelson/Dr. Fate and Jim Corrigan/Spectre relationships, see where they differ and where they are the same. 

I have a long term plan and some of these are going to be very slow burns, building as B, C or D plots as the series moves along. I am looking at this as a long term longform story to tell, not trying to cram 75 years of character and property development into a 4-6 issue arc where each issue is only 2-3K words just so everyone can see the things they like about the characters. 

I am breaking down the stories I want to tell now (it is an ensemble cast so there are several character arcs as well as the plots that drive the series/serve as connective tissue). Defining who each of these characters are and what makes them tick is the bulk of that, but again I want to show not tell, so you will see the characters defined through the actions they take and the choices they make when faced with the conflicts within the narrative-there's no secret files planned or cheat sheets Cliff Notes. What you need will be on the pages of the series. 

I have a very definite structure for the storytelling I am playing with. These are characters whose origins are in comics, but these are not comic book issues. Prose is very different than comic scripts, something I have learned and had my ass handed to me by over the last year as I took story ideas I had developed for prose and tried to adapt them into scripts to use for the Studio and taken ideas that were not working as comic scripts or ones I did not have an artist available to pursue and tried to convert it to prose stories. It's a Herculean effort. Everything is different. When writing a comic script, you need to have a page turn moment every 2 pages-something that makes the reader want to turn the page, and you really need to think in terms of visuals telling the story-which I think most comic readers get. What a lot of people forget when they then try to write comics as prose is that those visuals are no longer there and all that stuff that was established visually-scene setting, mood, character positions in relationship to one another, etc. all have to be accounted for. People who are used to television and try to emulate that have it worse because every thing is done visually and a lot is not even crossing the mind of that style writer that it needs to be on the page because the reader can't see it. They get the picture in their head of what is happening and expect everyone to be able to see what is on their mind screen without making it work on the page. 

What exacerbates this is thinking in terms of issues for the site. What needs to be in an issue. When I started writing for the old UDC, I broke down the first 3 issues of Books of Magic in terms of a 22 page comic book. When I did my plot for #1 I broke it down into chunks by page-this is what happens on page 1, page 2 etc. almost a Marvel Style plot, and then I wrote/scripted the issue based on those pages-I hit the 5K word mark on what was abut page 10 of the comic book plot breakdown. By the time I was adding in the texture needed to replace all the visual information I was hitting anywhere from 500-1K words per comic book page, and that was initial draft, not revised where I would go through and add what was missing from the first pass where needed or cut what didn't need to be there, etc. etc. When I tried to trim issues down to 1500-2K words I found at most I was getting a sequence or two at most per "issue" and that those 6 issue arcs were really just about the same content as a single comic book issue in terms of amount of content/scenes included. And that was in the age of decompression where not much happened in a single issue

This is something I have struggled with since Books of Magic. What should be in an issue. When I attempted Planetary, I thought a lot about the film equivalent of a comic book-the old movie serials. I tried to structure each issue like one episode of the serial rather than as individual arcs/comic book issues. In some ways this worked better, but the Planetary series had its own issues that tore it down, the least of which was it was built on a premise that was supposed to have been established in the Crisis event series that was to have ended the initial iteration of the old DCU and set up the second attempt, but then got submarined in development by a host of things. Without that foundation established, the series didn't fit into what that second iteration developed into and had some internal structure issues on top of it. 

Needless to say, a lot of my thought for this version of the UDC has not only been on what story to tell, but howto tell it. How to structure each monthly piece of the story so that it can stand up as a solid piece of the puzzle and feel fulfilling, but also how it can fit into the overall needs of the story and the telling of it. I don't want to be the writer who sits down and hammers out 1500 words and calls it good for an issue without much else going onto the process. It does nothing for me as a writer. Look at my posts, I can hammer out 1500 words without blinking on most days. Hammering out words is not writing, or at least not fiction writing. It's about storytelling not word counts for me. How can I become a better storyteller? How can challenge myself? How can I improve my craft? 

I have not settled on a final format for this yet but I have an inkling of an idea of how I want to do it. Since it is long form, and prose, these need to be considered. But it is not a novel that the reader can control the pace of the reading reading as much or as little of the story as they want in each sitting. It is episodic, so each piece needs to be complete in and of itself, yet build part of something bigger and give the reader a reason to come back each month for the next piece. It is also not a novel or a movie because it does not tell 1 single story but is a vehicle for many. So I need to move away from thinking in those terms. The serial model has some merit, but ultimately isn't going to work for this. While episodic and with digestible chunks, it is again a vehicle for a single story, not multiple stories. 

In terms of fiction, each issue could be structured as a short story, the word counts fit (1K-7500 words for a short story), but the structure and needs of a short story don't work well for the needs of this kind of storytelling. Serializing a longer piece (novelette, novella) etc. also runs into the problems of telling a single story, not many. 

Comic books and television episodes are really the only established format structures that lend itself well to the needs here, but neither one really works all that well. I've talked about the issues of comics etc. already. The television model has some intriguing possibilities though, as long as you avoid the pitfalls of writing like people are watching TV and not reading prose. However, there is no way you can fit what would be a television episode's worth of content into a single issue of the length required for this site. The issues are jsut plain too short to accommodate that much story content and fill in all the missing pieces the lack of a visual element to the story create. What each issue can do though is emulate an "Act" of a TV episode, i.e. (if watching network TV as broadcast) what fits between the commercial breaks of an episode-tv on DVD, Hulu, Netflix, DVR's, shows on pay TV channels like HBO, Showtime etc.) have blunted viewers awareness of this, but the shows are still written with those break points in mind. Half-hour shows usually have 3 distinct pieces, hour long shows 4-5 usually (the breaks blur a little in the hour long shows as sometimes the networks break a piece into 2 to add extra commercial time to sell and make the shows more profitable. When you watch an HBO show, watch for those distinct breaks even when there are no commercials (I just watched True Detective form HBO on DVD form the library and those breaks were masterfully done, with the director adding brilliant visual transitions to cover the lack of commercial breaks where those end and start points merged). 

This has given me the inkling of how I may end up structuring the issues. Each issue will be one of those pieces-so each story will be an episode, but it may take 3-5  "issues" to tell that episode's story-with a storyline being a "season" and being (like an HBO series rather than broadcast network one) 8-10 episodes, which the way I write would be about a years worth of posted material (the math says it would take more than 12 issues to tell a season, and it would, but when have you known me to average only 1 issue per month?) 

if I do this series, and do it the way I want to, I will have little interest in a second title, it will take me some time to fully introduce and develop all the characters in my ensemble, and it will be a slow burn building towards something as we go with each little story building towards something more. However, it's a little different from the way things are usually done on past iterations of the site, and I want to make sure it will fly with folks before I spend more time developing it on this model. I have beat breakdowns done for part of this and notes fleshing out the course of the first season and into a second...but I haven't started actually scripting anything yet, just character sketches, beat breakdowns, and developing spines for the narrative flow. I am pretty close to being ready to dive into the first script, but I am avoiding doing so until my cast is set in stone and I make sure the format will fly with everyone else. I know once I do start scripting, it will take a few drafts to get the voices down for the characters in the dialogue and to find my own voice for the series overall, so I want to make sure I have time to do all that properly before we even sniff the first deadline, which is why I am rambling here now. 

So comments? Feedback? Hell no you're insane you egotistical bastard wiscracks? I want to hear them?

-M

Hell no you're insane you egotistical bastard.

But yeah, as for Doctor Fate, my interest was more in Nabu playing a counterpoint to the evil sorcerer Hath-Set back in Ancient Egypt. Nelson would have been a recurring character in my series proper. I would still like to have Nabu be a factor in the whole Egypt storyline, but I'm currently shopping around for a mystical character to fill the role of the modern ally to Hawkman & Hawkgirl. I'm thining Ibis due to his link to Egypt already. It could be very cool to have a reanimated person to act as an ally to a reincarnated person with Ibis being the only person alive who knew the original form of the Hawks.

As for your plan, I don't see why it wouldn't work. Sure, it's not traditional, but I like the idea of how it establishes a bunch of characters that are somewhat related, but having it not be a team. I know you're not a fan of using other properties to describe a series, but it reminds me somewhat of Heroes in the sense that you have all these A B C D E F plots that loosely converge. And I definitely get what you're saying with the episodic nature. Frankly, I think that's how I write in general. Perhaps not in the truly issue to issue sense, but I'd say that television writing is my main inspiration when it comes to anything I do. It'll be bad when I get around to writing a novel, but I think for this site, it works.

I, however, do have plans for a second title. While my first goal is to work on my own writing, my second goal is to work towards establishing something here. That won't necessarily work unless we either expand or some write more than one title. I certainly won't hold it against you if you choose not to write a second or third title though. I can't force that on you and your writing will suffer in the long run.

So, just to totally derail all forms of communication - are we planning on trying to build a world here between the...four...five of us? I (may) have a friend who might be interested in this - could I direct him to this forum to see if he was interested in writing here as well?

'Cause if we're going to be building stuff up, then I could feasibly (Yeah, I know...) build up the other side of the coin in the form of the old Elementals, but...yeah. I don't want to run before I can walk. Or at least crawl at a steady pace.

Seems like a good idea to me - Doorway to Nightmare. Excellent. I'll catch up with you in PM, but I'd be interested to know what you think of this new wave of "Dark" titles from DC, particularly the Gotham After Midnight.

Ok either Chris or Buck-I need a minor clarification/ruling before we officially open claims etc. You've seen the pitch/premise of the series-would I claim as a team title or a solo title? I'm refining revising the claim list, looking at antagonists and such, and need to know how many spots I would actually have to use initially.

-M

Just finished laying out the actual city map for Hub City and started putting together the plot beat sheet for all the characters...

I wanted the Hub to feel like a major player in the story so I decided to grit my teeth and actually spitball the city out with all it's major neighborhoods/districts/areas, figuring out where the working class neighborhoods were, the upper crust blue blood sections, the slums, Chinatown, etc. etc.

Figured out a couple of major scenes as well, just not sure where in the scheme of the season they go just yet, a couple are first episode, but that's not necessarily first issue as I laid out before, moved a couple of story ideas I just wasn't going to have room for in season 1 to season 2 (they were actually some of the earliest things I came up with, and started spitballing some visuals for the characters so I can get a handle on who they are visually, how they move, etc. and I find I actually do that better with the sketchbook now than the keyboard, so been playing with that as I also do some designs for the character pages I have to do for the Beauties, Bullies and Beasties coloring book we are doing for the studio.

Also figured out a couple of characters won't take center stage until mid-season (Ted Kord in particular, Richard Dragon to a lesser extent). Dragon was already support, might move Kord there for now, but when he does finally take center stage he will play a big part of it all, and a couple of early key characters have strong ties to Kord Industries, so even though Teddy may not be on stage his presence will have an impact on the book from the early stages.

Looking at the scenes and beats I have planned out, my educated guess is that I have at least 40K words of material in the hopper already and I am still fleshing bits out. Haven't actually written word one yet, but knowing my beat to word count proclivities, that seems to be the neighborhood I am looking at right now. Of course, some of that may wind up on the cutting room floor or be seriously altered as I actually get down to the nitty gritty of writing, editing and revising, but we'll see.

-M