I was thinking this morning about the various hats we wear in life… In this case, though, the various hats happened to be all of the different projects we find ourselves involved in and actually switching between them. Depending on the given day, I play the role of husband, employee, project manager, writer, web developer, graphic designer, marketer, etc…
In the realm of writing, depending on how I’m feeling, I could be working on any number of projects, juggling to keep the various storylines separated, characters voices set, narration style and, most importantly, who am I working with on them. The easiest is actually the last… I’ve only made the mistake once that I started writing a mail (probably eight months ago), forgetting which artist was working on a certain project (wrote the wrong name and wrote a healthy chunk of mail before realizing I was screwed up).
It’s actually not a bad idea to write up little cheat sheets when you’re working on projects. When I letter something, for example, I’ve gotten in the habit if making a little document pointing out which fonts I’m using, what size, spacing, etc, depending on the situation. When you write, your narrative may be from the perspective of a war veteran, like Acker in Faction, a common thug like Capetown, or a group of friends, like the Evil Tree. Some use first, second, or third person narration and others leave out captions all together, letting the art and dialog speak for it. Unless there is a storytelling mechanism behind it intentionally, it is not a good idea to change the “voice” mid-stream in a story. If a character dies who is the narrator, that’s a different story, but otherwise, whether it’s the second page or five hundredth page, stick with the voice you set in the beginning… as much as possible.
If you ever want to become a publisher… make sure you can master these little things like the juggling hats game… If you can’t juggle your own tasks in life, how can you hope to manage other people? Perfect mastering one thing, then start stacking more and more… Eventually you’ve got a stack of platters which look precarious, but you know exactly how to swing your arms to keep them steady.
