NEWS
Hi friends! It’s been a big and crazy couple of weeks over in my neck of the woods, but I wanted to make sure to share some upcoming events, the release of Superboy, and some writing advice with you.
I spent much of the past few weeks doing press for Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow #1. Each and every interview or guest spot I’ve done has been awesome, and the interviewers have had such kind words about the book that Jahnoy Lindsay, Lucas Gattoni, Andrew Marino, and I put together for DC Comics. I’m so happy to see people resonating with Conner Kent’s new adventure, and I can’t wait for people to see where we take the series!
One bit of fun news is that I’m going to be at some upcoming events this month. Here’s where and when you can catch me in person:
EVENTS
Free Comic Book Day 2023
Come by The Vault of Midnight in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on May 6th for Free Comic Book Day! I’ll be outside selling copies of Superboy and more as we celebrate new and old readers getting into comics.
Cherry City Capital Con
I’ll be a guest at Cherry City Capital Con in Traverse City, Michigan, from May 26th-28th! If you live in Northern Michigan and love comics, stop by and I’ll sign copies of The Flash, Superboy, DC: Mech, and more!
NEW RELEASES
Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow #1
Conner Kent takes center stage! After the events of Dark Crisis, Conner feels out of place with the rest of the hero community. He doesn’t fit in with the rest of the Superman Family, and the rest of the world doesn’t really need him with so many Supers in Metropolis. He doesn’t want to rely on Tim, Cassie, and Bart, so Conner looks to the stars as a place he might be able to call his own and carve out his own path. But what lurks in the great unknown? Are bravado and swagger enough to help Superboy find his new calling? This is the 2022 Round Robin winner-picked by you, the fans!
WRITING ADVICE
I’ve been seeing a lot of people on TikTok spreading writing advice that I think can do more harm than good. It’s not really their fault, it’s the same advice that was thrown my way a hundred times about set story structure and the “keys to a successful story.” They talk about how all you need to do is plug and play certain beats or story points from books in order to sell a novel, screenplay, comic, etc.
I think a lot of people love to put the “science of storytelling” over the actual emotional aspect of storytelling. You’re going to remember a story that resonated with you a lot more than a story that was just plotted well. That makes sense. It creates a sort of diet culture and salesmanship with creativity that makes it sound like it’s just a set of scientific steps to get a great story.
That’s not true.
You can make an adequate story, but it can never be anything more than a clone of those kinds of plug-and-play tactics that create forgettable narratives.
So what’s my big writing advice?
Use the emotional core of your story to dictate the structure.
The first thing I do when creating a new story now is to make sure I know what the emotional core of the story is before I finish outlining. I try to work my way backward from that point and figure out how to get the characters and stories to achieve that big emotional moment I want to pay off.
Now, one thing I’ll admit, I often come up with the cool concept before the emotional core. I’ll think of a big science fiction concept or character that I think is awesome and let it stew in my brain. But that’s the thing, I don’t put it into a story until I know what the emotional journey of that character is going to be. Because if you don’t have the emotional journey of Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, you don’t get the reaction you have when you find out that Darth Vader is Luke’s father (sorry for the spoiler, but the movie is over 40 years old).
So if you find that you’re struggling to create an outline or get started on your story, always ask what the emotional core of your story is and what you’re working towards. From there, you can figure out the structure that best fits your story to get there. It can be three acts, five acts, or even twenty-five acts if you need it to be. An act is just a unit of story measurement.
Hope that helps, friends!
Best,
Kenny