ElectriCity : Update #3

It is perhaps somewhat misleading to refer to a process that takes five weeks to bang out a synopsis as “going great guns”, but given the workloads Fred and I are under (granted, most of mine’s self-imposed at this point, but nevermind that), I really think the storyline development for ElectriCity is going great guns.

I swear to God, Fred’s making my job easy. He’s roughed out at least three action scenes, one of which is a major part of the first chapter. And it’s *gorgeous*. It’s big picture stuff, and it needs work–my job, as he said, is to make his roughs pretty, and to rearrange them as necessary, and–well, he’s like my husband: “Storylines down in the details and relationships,” Fred said, and it coulda been Ted talking; “that’s hard stuff — I’m used to my players supplying the motive force for those in games I GM. You could’ve had me sit down with the details of the Team for a week and I still wouldn’t have come up with the natural evolution of their internal strife, etc.”

Whereas the detail work, well, that’s my cup of tea. I mean, really, that’s a *lot*, I think, of what makes the difference between someone who actually writes and someone who wants to write. I could see the evolution of The Team’s heartbreak and internal mess shaping itself before me without a problem, and I think a lot of wanting to write is having a big idea without wanting to get into the details that make it work.

*Anyway*, that’s beside the point. We’re up to the end of the fourth chapter–still hammering out details, but the shape of it has solidified–which means we’ve got one chapter left to synopsize and that’s a relatively easy one because hey, it all goes to hell. And we’re realizing things that will feed back into the earlier chapters as one-liners and throw-away bits of information and framework imagery that’ll end up paying off bigtime. It’s *strong*, in other words, and it’s strengthening even more as we continue.

Which all means that I think very realistically I should have the first chapter scripted out by the end of June. And if I get that done, well then. Then July is when I really get to start having fun, because that’s when I’m gonna start artist-hunting.

There’s somebody I have in mind. He’s much too busy. Furthermore, he’s much too expensive (remind me, if my next ElectriCity post doesn’t talk about the money that goes into a GN, to talk about it!), because he’s a pro. But he’s also perfect, and I believe strongly in letting the other guy say no, so I’m gonna run it up that flagpole first off when I’ve got the first chapter written and the rest of it nailed down in synopses and beatsheets. If he says yes, you will hear the squee all the way from Ireland straight to wherever you are. :) If he says no, then I get to do an artist hunt, and I’m *good* at that, so it’ll be a lot of fun either way.

I’m suddenly curious, lads and lasses: do you have an opinion on whether it’s bad to run a Kickstarter campaign over, say, Christmas? We’re full of debate about when we’ll put this baby up to chase funding (which of course will depend on how fast the artist hunt and many other things go, so it’s not imminent either way), and it strikes me that it certainly can’t hurt to ask what you all think is a good time frame.

While I’m at it: there are some pretty obvious incentives to offer when you’re running a Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel. Your Name In The GN, Your Face In The GN, those kinds of things are clear potential draws to set at a certain dollar funding amount. But what other stuff would *you* want to see come up as rewards/incentives toward upper eschelons of funding?

(And yes, like I said once when talking about a KS campaign, if somebody donates $10K I will go to wherever they live and sign “You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” in public. But not necessarily in a timely fashion. :))