{"id":134,"date":"2010-03-18T20:57:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T03:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/?p=134"},"modified":"2010-03-18T20:57:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T03:57:45","slug":"what-graphic-novels-have-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/what-graphic-novels-have-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What Graphic Novels Have Taught Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"During my self imposed break from writing I\u2019ve been reading graphic novels. My brother recommended Y the Last Man<\/em> by Bryan K. Vaughn which follows the trials and tribulations of the last man on Earth. I also picked up volume one of the Ultimate Annuals<\/em> and Green Lantern<\/em>. You may ask what do graphic novels have to do with romance novels? Well, it\u2019s all about telling the tale.<\/p>\n

Graphic novels are the epitome of slash the fat storytelling. The author does not get the luxury of 80+ thousand words to tell their story. They get\u00a0a hundred\u00a0odd pages to convey a compelling tale with two-dimensional pictures, dialogue and little to no narrative. And I thought condensing a single title into a three page synopsis was hard.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually fantastic. I love the getting to the point and moving on pace. No repetitive retelling of information. If you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, tough, you should have paid attention when you read it the first time. Ah, there are some authors out there that really need to learn this concept. One thing I promised myself is that I would not fall into the repetative trap.<\/p>\n

The dialogue is also very straight forward. Short conversations with simple phrases. Before people were consumed with television, comic books was the media that taught the masses to read, which is why they are so appealing, anyone can read them. I\u2019m not saying dumb down your book, but don\u2019t alienate readers either. As Thoreau said \u201csimplify, simplify, simplify.\u201d Just because you can insert half of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in your book doesn\u2019t mean you should.<\/p>\n

On a side note- Ultimate Annuals<\/em> vol. one, chapter two (I am being vague in case you haven\u2019t read it and I don\u2019t want to spoil anything). WTF?? Seriously? My favorite character since I was a kid and that\u2019s how you do him?<\/p>\n

*head hits desk and I observe a moment of silence. With a deep sigh\u00a0I sit up and brush a lock of hair out of my teary eyes.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just going to pretend that I never read that. Even though it might turn out that everything is all right, I don\u2019t want to risk it. In my mind he is whole and healthy with that wicked smile and killer accent. \u00a0Right, mon cheri<\/em>?<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Graphic Novels Have Taught Me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39eCR-2a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}