Tag: Writer Notes

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 5 part 3

Title page

Another pretty simple chapter cover. One day I’ll be better at covers and make some that are more interesting.

page 278 – 279

I changed Danny’s answer but kept the reasoning the same. Then I found out Tom Cruise is taller than Danny. OH WELL!

I also cut down Ally’s don’t hook up with Trish talk.

page 280 – 283

And we introduce Ally’s friend Trish. She is super tall for variety and also it’s fun to have Danny’s main love interest for the story to tower over him. Trish and Danny immediately us Ally’s warning to tease her, because they are friends.

page 284 – 286

Cal continues the close eye on Pat. This scene was added to reinforced why Pat needs special attention from Cal. Originally, is was Rita giving Pat blood.

page 287 – 288

It’s very convenient that the demons are being up their deserter near Rita’s place. Pat’s ice spell is in French. Spells can be anything that’s not your native tongue. Anyway, both those demons are dead after this scene. Pat 100% didn’t let the other one go.

But enough murder, here’s a happy cooking scene.

page 289 – 292
Danny usually does the cooking for everyone in the house. You get it here and in a few other chapters. Danny and Trish catching up was cut down a bit. I kept the stuff that is letting you know she’s a blood bond and gives you a few facts about how the blood bond works. Stuff like Danny’s hair doesn’t grow unless he cuts it to shorter than it is now. And their fight about Seth is also important. I wanted to establish that Trish likes Seth and Danny likes Trish without flat out saying it.

page 293 – 302

Ally being the only one without super natural aid to her fitness and appearance does workout regularly.

Danny’s little rant about about Seth was fun to write. Ally clearly doesn’t know that Trish is brainwashed into liking Seth, so she is just assuming her friend is very shallow. Ally’s description of Danny’s hair is how a friend of mine explained it. She was a big support of the white guy fro.

Danny and Ally’s demon recon mission is pretty straight forward. Ally using the wind to lift her up was fun to draw.

page 303 – 305

Ally is the most experienced at fighting so she takes charge in the planning with Pat and Cal doing the most chiming in. And Rita really isn’t confident when it comes to fighting, but she asks the important questions about transportation.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 5 part 2

Title page

So this title page was originally not there. Much like the parts added to Wild Things, this chapter was longer than it should have been. During the redos I tried to make sure there was a stopping point every 30 pages or so. However, not much happens in these 30 pages other than Pat casting spells. So that’s what I focused on. This whole story arch as I said earlier is where stuff kinda got away from me and I started writing out scripts rather than just using my outline.

page 257 – 260

This scene is mostly the same between the two versions. I just tightened up the dialog. Stuff like saying the same thing with 1 sentence instead of two.

You get a little bit of Ally family back story to build up for later. She’s the only one that has dealt with Seth before Danny got blood bond to him.

I always like it when stuff goes on while characters are talking and they don’t notice in the background of stuff. That’s why I got the Danny unable to lift the chest of Pat’s stuff. Pat is much stronger than Danny, but actually not like crazy strong Ally could probably lift Pat’s box.

page 261- 265

I always like doing the strong light source with heavy blacks.

So you get more backstory on Ally’s family. I took out the info that Brad and Ally’s cousin used to date because it was clunky and ultimately didn’t matter.

Then when Ally and Brad go over what he’s doing while she’s gone, I changed the dialog to make it seem less like Ally was was treating Brad like a child.

Pat’s spell is in latin. Very ventus servitus.

page 266 – 273

And we meet Ally’s cousin, Rita, officially. In the redos I tried to give her a sorta pear-shaped body for variety sake.

Danny’s surprise that Pat’s spell worked should tell you how many times he has fucked up.

Cal’s whole 3rd degree of Pat in this scene got changed a bit. I wanted to make it clear that Pat knows something which isn’t common knowledge. It’s cluing Cal into the fact that Pat used to be a mage. And that will bite him in the ass later.

And Cal grabbing Pat’s coat like that is interfering, which is gonna bite Cal in the ass later.

Pat is so resigned to being treated like shit for being a vampire.

page 274 – 277

I had fun with the angles in this whole scene on the stairs.

Cal can be nice. He is super nice to Rita. But as stated in my notes earlier, Cal knew what he was doing ruining Danny’s date.

I always think about the age difference between immortals and normal folks they are dating. I would like to address that in general. Danny being on the cusp of when he’s gonna have to start flat out lying about his age helps that. But Sorcery 101 ultimately doesn’t get super into it. That’s for other stories.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 5 part 1

Title page

Pretty simple cover again. Mary’s coloring really does most of the heavy lifting here.

In general for this chapter was the one that made me start sitting down and writing out a script. It ran much much longer than I expected. It was originally supposed to only be one part. But it sorta spun out of control.

page 230

And we introduce Cal and Rita. This was originally two pages but there wasn’t much dialog or even mood set by it being that long. So it was safely cut to 1. Cal isn’t being an angsty weirdo who stays up all night. He doesn’t/can’t sleep. So gonna pass the time some how and watching out the window is less creepy than watching Rita sleep.

page 231 – 234

Danny’s second doomed date with Mel. Later Mel says she thought Danny was joking when he talked about weird stuff in his life. You can kinda say why.

And Cal knows EXACTLY what he’s doing. As Ally said later, he used to do this to her A LOT in high school.

page 235 – 236

I always like having ground people react to what the main characters are doing. So poor toy store clerk.

And this is first chapter that have some family back story for a character. I wanted to give each character different levels of interaction with/getting along with their extended family. And Ally’s comes up first because she grew up in super natural stuff. She doesn’t really know anyone that isn’t.

This scene used to include Ally telling Brad they had to go and a joke about Brad not wanting Rebecca to buy a red lightsaber. Those both got cut cause bit too fillery.

page 237 – page 239

And Cal spills the beans on supernatural stuff cause he doesn’t give a shit about humans knowing supernatural stuff is real.

Danny gets a nice bonding moment about with Mel out of it though.

page 240

Rebecca treats King like a younger sibling rather than a dog. It does not always have the best results.

page 241 – 246

Ally ignores a lot of supposed Mage rules that she didn’t grow up with. Rita ignores them too but her’s just resulted in a lack of training rather than fights with Cal.

Cal asking Danny how he can help. I tried to have Cal tower over Danny in the whole scene. Cal is hundred percent correct in his assessment of Danny’s skills. But he just doesn’t want Danny to go cause it taints his mission.

Dialog here got cleaned up a lot. There was too much info dumping that didn’t matter.

page 247 – 250

This is a conversation Ally and Cal have had multiple times. Part of her 0 to snarling with Pat earlier is cause she’s used to this. Cal’s I don’t understand social ques is clearly a lie cause otherwise he wouldn’t know how to get under Ally’s skin so quick.

And that is pure magic in Cal. He doesn’t have any organs. He’s just a wrapper for magic. Making him nearly invincible but he doesn’t eat, feel, have sex, or anything. His presenting gender is determined by the mage he works with closest to. Angels are supposed to take the opposite gender of their mage. So Cal will only present as male while working with Rita and Ally. He worked with Rita and Ally’s fathers before that and presented as female then. In the last chapter with him in it you see him when he can’t construct clothing for himself, there is no belly button, nipples, or genitals.

Also getting blown up by Ally, is easier for him than arguing. Cause as Danny said he grows back, as does what he’s wearing.

page 251 – 253

Ally has quite the temper. It’s no wonder Rebecca hits people.

Those three panels are where Danny says hi to Pat and Pat slams the door are almost exactly the same in the redo and the original. Humor with a small beat in the middle is some of my favorite.

page 254 – 256

Poor Pat. Anyone can just walk into his house.

Also talking Pat into killing some demons is much easier than talking him into a rescue mission. It kinda a hint about his life pre-vampire.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 4 part 5

Title page

Fairly straight forward. This part is mostly the fight so it works as a cover.

page 197 – 199

Before the fight I wanted to establish two things that hint at the end of the fight. The first being Suryu’s heals which are gonna be used against Seth. And then Seth being sexually harassing Suryu.

page 200 – 202

I wanted the panels to be kinda off balance during the fight to make things more interesting.

I tried to make it clear Seth is dodging Suryu during the fight but he’s not quite fast enough. Seth is however very good at making people mad at him.

page 203 – 205

Jeff now has all kinds of brain damage. He’ll get better. But he has to stay a werewolf. That last panel of Loki pulling the hair pin out was fun to draw.

page 206 – 210

And we have more of Seth being a sexist asshole to get Suryu mad. He gets a heal in the forehead for his trouble. Then he adds some sexual assault in the mix. So for the second time that night he gets thrown through a wall. Nothing is off limits for Seth.

page 211 – 213

And then we find out that’s his plan. But Suryu is furious so speedy retreat needs to happen. Also I used this to show just how fast werewolves recover.

page 214 – 216

And here is where I set up what is the longest running conflict in the comic, well other than Seth’s dickishness. For the record all the rules of The Order are mostly don’t bring too much attention to yourself rules. And as Aaron’s line implies Seth breaks/pushes these rules a lot.

page 217 – 221

Jeff gets some brief werewolf lessons. Brad’s expression when the cure gets brought up is something I’m proud of. He reaaaaaallly doesn’t want to break the news here. You can tell where Jeff’s priorities in life are (aka sports) when he is cheered up by finding out werewolf stuff will help him make the soccer team.
And while Brad tells him the werewolf stuff Danny was off getting cosmetic contacts and blood.

page 222 – 225

I generally try to show don’t tell. I don’t know how clear it ever was, but vampire powers in general is tied to how they eat. Maybe it’s more clear after Pat is tortured by Suryu and it takes him several chapters to recover compared to Seth’s page or so here.

And Seth continues his tread of doing stuff without giving a shit what others think.

page 226 – 229

So just wrapping things up. Mostly this is dedicated to the running joke about January which is werewolf mating season. This is another thing I would honestly take out if I was starting Sorcery 101 over. I thought it was a funny joke at 19 but it ended up opening a can of worms with a small section of readers that then wanted extremely detailed explanation about werewolf sex. That’s not a thing I ever wanted to focus on. In hind sight, I should have realize that’s where the Internet was gonna take things. Actually, no. You’re never ready for someone to ask you in person at a convention how a werewolf dick works because you didn’t approve their several comments asking about. Yes, that did happen. Just goes to show one of the valuable lessons I’ve learned about writing is to think more about each aspect of a story. Even a small joke. Most of the stuff I’d do differently now has to do with pacing and getting better as a writer. This is like the one thing where I want to change it sololy because of the reader reaction. It alone made me think harder about how I present my comics to people.

There we go. These were all originally drawn in 2006. I redid them in 2012.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 4 part 4

Title page

I just used the funnest part of this chapter. Cause Seth getting beat up is always fun.

page 170 – 172

Jeff’s rescue doesn’t go great. Loki and Seth clearly went to the same “How to make a plan” lesson In the original version one of the other wolves (the jerk one with a hat) was the one who shouted for the guard. I changed it to Loki because like Seth is he old/strong enough to just bash in the face of any vampire Suryu has as a lackey.

page 173 – 175

And you get the the panels to make you think Loki and Aaron are betraying our “heroes.”

page 176 – 183

Not much to say. Suryu is pretty quick tempered. Everyone at the party knows to get out of the way. Poor Aaron had the job of getting dealing with her while enraged. She can listen to reason though. She wouldn’t have lived so long if she couldn’t.

Also Mary is wonderful. But she made a mistake both her and I didn’t catch until after the book came out. That’s the vampires all got reflections in the floor.

page 184 – 187

Seth plans are not good plans unless you are Seth.

Seth’s little exchange with Aaron as he walks in is supposed to be one of those lines where it seems like nothing but has more meaning (aka Seth is even more of a dick) if you know their full history. I always like touches like that. Things that mean more on rereading. It’s like that cause I was writing an Aaron becoming a vampire story at the time of the redos. It ended up getting tossed because the second half wasn’t working. By the time I started to figure out ways to maybe fix it, I wanted to move on to other things rather than do more Sorcery 101 side stories. Basically, Aaron was a preacher before he was a vampire. Seth ruined the life Aaron had built for himself, cause that’s what Seth does.

Case in point, how he handles things like this rescue mission.

page 188 – 196

Someone has to check to make sure Jeff is okay. Early on I relied a bit too much on the person who doesn’t know stuff asks questions. I’m trying to not do that so much these days and just let info unfold naturally.

Also when I mentioned cutting back on/regretting the claim on werewolves thing, this scene in practically shows how clumsy it is as a concept.

There we go. These were all originally drawn in 2006. I redid them in 2012.