by Matthew Russell - Posted 3 years ago
Welcome my CryptoComics Compatriots. Do you have a few minutes to learn about the bible? No, not that one.
Today we are going to discuss the hows and whys of creating your very own bible. Let’s start with the basics; what is a bible?
To put it simply this is a structured roadmap for your comic. It will give great detail concerning everything about it from characters, situations, and settings. This will keep you firmly on the straight and narrow path (ok, enough bible puns).
The best way to study the bible is to Luke through it. Okay, now I’m done.
The reason that we create a bible is to have something to look back on so that we never deviate from our original vision. Yes, it can be a fluid living document, but keep the core whole.
Today I’m telling you about my experiences writing a bible for a television show, but it is the exact same for a comic book series. As a writer, I noticed that the writing formats are exceedingly similar. Check out my blog on writing format on the 3 part series Comic Script Writing 101
A while back, I stumbled into an opportunity to write a spin-off series of a very well-known space adventure that shall remain nameless. I was asked, along with a couple of dozen other authors, to come up with the future of this particular franchise.
I took it seriously so the first thing I requested was a complete bible that was created for the original series and successive spin-offs. I then asked for a list of any possible characters that I would be licensed to use* from the existing franchise.
*Some characters in this tv series were not created by the original creator of the show but by various writers along the way. This means that the assorted writers would have to be paid a royalty for every episode that their characters appeared in driving the cost of production up.
There were also actors that said that they would refuse to ever appear in the franchise again along with characters that have died in cannon (or sadly in real life). Some actors, due to budget restraints, could only appear in a guest spot, others in a cameo role.
Now that I had the original bible along with a list of characters I can use, it was time to act like King James and rewrite the bible. This is my show after all.
First thing first; go through your format. Go into great detail about how you want each episode of the issues to be laid out. For mine, I wrote about how each episode of the original tv show was a standalone episode. There was very little room for things such as character growth or extended plotlines.
This made sense for the time. During the ’60s, there was no DVR, no streaming, no binging, no Netflix & Chill. Episodes had to follow a very particular format of; run into a problem, solve the problem, learn the lesson.
All of this had to be completed within 1 hour of network television. This means a standard 42 minutes minus commercial breaks.
This also means that each script has to be around 42 pages on average (1 page per minute of screen time if written correctly in the standard format).
In my bible, I wrote that each episode would bleed over into the next. There wouldn’t be any major cliffhangers unless it is a 2 or 3 part episode, but smaller problems would spill over. I wanted characters to still feel loss over the death of a crewmate, I want them suffering from PTSD and sickness. I wanted them to experience life and to grow.
Next, I wrote about the themes that would appear. War, politics, current events, religion. All the things you’re not allowed to talk about at family get-togethers. I wanted to tackle them all. This directly went against the original mandate for the first series. No religion. No conflict amongst the crew.
I wanted to take a more accepting stance on religion and show how society doesn’t need to all have the same beliefs for civilization to work. After all, religion is a major factor in people’s core values, whether they believe in a deity or not.
To have a crew without inner conflict is just silly to me. To be fair, although the original creator said no on this, writers have been able to sneak it in on more than 1 occasion and since the original creator’s death, subsequent spin-offs have had free range with the inner conflict stance.
Here is where I added my main goal for the ship. They were to be part of an armada that would be fighting a war throughout the duration of the show. I planned on 11 seasons to complete this story. This didn’t mean that they are fighting the war throughout every single episode. This was mainly the backdrop.
I modeled the war after WW2 as far as the major strokes go; when we would advance, major strategies, major victories, major defeats. Very very loose roadmap here.
Since it was a military-style show (much more militaristic than the original series) I had 2 groups Navy & Marines. Marines were more or less along for the ride in space, although they were still main characters.
I listed the cast out in order of rank. To keep it fresh as well as allow the nostalgia factor, which pushed the story along, I only brought back 2 previous characters. 1 was the main focus, a captain. The other was a Chief Engineer (who was majorly different from when we saw them last and there was a building mystery surrounding why they were so different).
Now that I had their names and ranks, I began writing everything about them, character traits, skills, height, weight, sense of humor, interest, favorite foods, types of music they liked. I even added info such as what type of vacations they would like.
Some writer friends have stated that I might have gone a little overboard on the details here but I tend to disagree. You can never know too much about your characters. Let them come to life. Have a conversation with them. Hang out with them. Let them become real to you.
Here we have in my case, the ship. After all, this is the main setting. I did something that I normally don’t do, I outsourced this step, mostly.
I had tried and tried to design a ship that worked differently than what was previously seen. It needed to have the style as the show’s predecessors but still be distinctly unique. It needed to be an advancement, but not so advanced that it ends up being a type of Deux ex Machina.
I knew what the ship needed to do, I had various little things that I wanted, most importantly, it needed to be modular. I just couldn’t get it to look right on paper. After so many sleepless nights stuck on this problem, I finally got the bright idea of going to the official fan club of said franchise.
I sat down with them and explained my problem as well as showed them my scrapped designs. Luckily there were plenty of actual engineers in this group. They were able to point out certain flaws in my logic and made quick work of correcting them.
3 of the engineers decided to have a crack at it took the project home. This freed me up to begin working on other aspects.
A week later they called me up and asked what the name of the ship is and I proudly stated the Valkyrie. Mostly I wanted a slowed-down melodic Ride of the Valkyrie for the main theme. Almost like the one I found on YouTube.
All they had left to do was put the name of the ship on it and they presented to me the blueprints and technical schematics. I met up with the fan club at their next meeting and showed them the plans along with the origin of the ship and they gave their approval.
If you look hard enough during one of our next videos, on my wall of art, in the top left, you can see the blueprints proudly posted on full display. Let me know if you know the franchise based on the designs.
Now I had my ship, what about other planets? I hit every science website that wasn’t made by some crackpot. I wanted to know what scientists speculate about what is really out there.
I took pictures of various locations here in Idaho. Luckily we have a place called Craters Of The Moon that has some phenomenal landscapes. I took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. I looked around cities and farm towns. I documented everything.
I then added this to the bible so that I could create stories where the scenery is just as important of a character to the stories as the main cast.
I had planned on 11 seasons with a standard 15 episodes per season. I know that this is ambitious and a little presumptuous. The reason for this is that there were only 7 seasons in the previous shows so I knew that I had to one-up them somehow.
I was told that typical contracts would be for 5 seasons with options for renewal. I wanted to wow the Executive Producers so I went with 11 seasons. In hindsight, I could have easily done it in far less.
I broke down the main theme of each season. I gave some highlights and added some story ideas (synapsis for an episode here and there). On my favorite story ideas, I even wrote out the full scripts.
I added notes on subplots and side stories. I showed where new characters would come on and old ones would leave. Within this bible, I played out the highlights of 11 years with this crew.
I wrote out the overall plotlines of each character and showed their growth. I wrote it all down.
As I have said, this bible cannot be concrete. If an idea struck me and I needed to tell a certain story, I was still free to do so. I needed to have some wiggle room.
Now that the bible was complete, this doesn’t mean that I would toss it out. I wrote 19 different scripts that I would include with the submission to the network.
I opened the bible up and studied it for each of the episodes that I would write. This gave me a world to play around in as well as rules and guidelines to keep it from becoming strange and unrecognizable.
If you plan out your comic series like this and refer to your bible whenever you pull out your paper and pencil, you will find yourself in a good place. It also helps with writer’s block.
I hope that you use my suggestion for your own bible. It could speed up the process when coming up with your own comic series. I would love to see it in the marketplace as soon as you’re done. Hit me up and let me know it’s in there, I want to give it a read.
Also, leave a comment to let me know if you already use a bible with your creations. Let me know if this makes writing easier for you, or do you feel constrained to work within the boundaries that you set?
Since you’ve made it this far, I think you deserve something a little extra. How about a badge. Head over to your dashboard and scroll down until you see the “My Badges” section. Input the code “ComicBible” into the text field and hit enter. Enjoy.
My blind friend recently lost her copy of the bible and went on a long journey to find it. She is on a journey for the Holy braille. Sorry, I had to throw that last one in there. I’m done now. See you in the funny pages.
P.S. In the end, the show did not get picked up, not for lack of trying. Still, you learn from failure and I regret nothing. It was a wonderful experience. My hope is that someday I can turn this into an official in-cannon comic series. Wish me luck.
