On Grizzly Bear Soup
Posted August 18th, 2008 by Howard TaylerAt the end of the Episode 28 Writing Excuses podcast I mention a metaphor that deserves credit-where-credit-is-due.
Author James Van Pelt blogged about quitting his day-job to write full-time, and at WorldCon he echoed that blog post and described the process to me as being a lot like making grizzly bear soup. “First, kill a grizzly bear.” After that it’s just another soup recipe.
Being a full-time webtoonist is the same way. There’s a herculean task right in front, and it’s followed by a bunch of mundane business stuff anybody can do.
Jim says that “sell a story” is the grizzly-killing. For webtoonists I’m going to up the ante. My soup recipe requires a very large, very meaty bear. Create a comic strip that compels readers to return to your site regularly and tell their friends about how wonderful it is. Your strip must be the #1 or #2 favorite for at least a thousand people. It’s easier to make soup if there are more of them, though.
While I suppose there are techniques and procedures that make hunting grizzlies formulaic, I know there are a lot of hunters who come back empty-handed, maimed, or as bear-chow. The same holds true here. Lots of people (including me!) will have advice for how to create the comic I just described. It’s never as easy as it looks, and some of the bears have rabies.
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August 18th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll explain how you killed my grizzly, because your art wasn’t nearly as good now as it was when you started – which is when you hooked me – and, I’ll be honest, I think you’ve gotten better at writing stories, too.
You, unlike most other hunters, really didn’t seem to be half-assing it. You put out a strip every day, with no filler, guest strips, or other cop-outs. Slightly less impressively, but a big deal in my book, is that I can count on my fingers how many typoes you’ve had in about 8 years of strips. That’s amazing.
Plus, you did all this without ever holding your own strip for ransom. I only pay you money when I feel like it, I never feel compelled to.
I don’t want to knock your significant amount of talent, but making me (the reader) feel like you were earnestly doing your part was the biggest factor in hooking me on the strip and keeping me coming back.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I have to add a few more things Howard did for achieving this kill. First I discovered this thank’s to Doc Nickel’s recommendation. The first and second time Doc put a link I didn’t got caught immediately. But at the third time, somehow I had a huge laugh and started reading. Now it’s definitely my #1 site, every night. Since I’m in UTC -3, so I get e new Schlock at 00:01hs (i’ts 12:01pm for you?).
I also got caught before the blogs, when Howard started doing the comments on the physics of the comic, putting math games and doing some very funny comments.
In overall, I’ve loved when he did extremely funny lines (like the one where the Toughs had to kill the lawyers in Luna, or the destruction and escape for the Reality Network) and the epic ones (basically the whole Intergallactic war). Lastly it’s kind of picking up again, since I felt that the whole Lazarus Project story arc was kind of slow, wasn’t that epic, and not that funny. Please understand that I’m only comparing within my favorite comic. So it WAS well paced, epic and funny overall, but not as much as before.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
You seem to have a couple broken links there. However, it seems like all the links on thefix-online.com seem to be broken, so that probably falls under ‘not-your-fault’. Any idea what’s going on over there?
August 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
More soup please.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
This reminds me of a volvo manual that I once had.
The instructions on repairing the transmission started out:
1. Simply remove engine.