Back in May, when I did a talk at the Bristol Comic Expo - namely, My Future Shock Hell: Breaking Into 2000 AD (And What I Learned While Doing It) - I concluded with a promise that I’d post some thoughts on twist endings. Not only those that occur in 2000 AD’s FUTURE SHOCKS, but in pretty much every form of storytelling there is, from short stories to screenplays. So here’s a quick bit of study on what twists are, how they work, and how to identify the five different types

A twist is a moment of revelation within a story that throws into question all that’s gone before. Often appearing at the conclusion of a story, it’s essentially a specific type of action or ‘beat’. Aristotle called it the ‘peripeteia’ (variously translated as ‘reversal’ or ‘sudden change’), referring both to the sudden downturn in the protagonist’s fortunes that occurs in tragedy (such as Oedipus’ realisation that he’s married his mum) and the sudden change for the good in comedy (such as the lovesick Duke Orsino in TWELFTH NIGHT realising that his favourite page-boy is actually a girl in disguise).

Whether for good or ill, the peripeteia means an abrupt reversal in the protagonist's circumstances. Aristotle pointed out that the reversal occurs in conjunction with ‘anagnorisis’ (variously translated as ‘discovery’ or ‘recognition’), the actual moment at which the protagonist uncovers a hitherto unknown piece of information. In other words, it’s that bit in the movie when the main character realises they’ve just murdered their dad, married their mum, or that they were a ghost the whole time. This is also the point at which the character might fall to their knees yelling, ‘Nooooooooo!’ – and it’ll probably be raining.

The peripeteia or reversal – let’s call it the ‘twist’ from now on – can take place at any point within a story – Robert Rodriguez’ vampire caper FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN is a great example of a twist that takes place halfway through a story – although these notes focus mainly on those twists that appear at the last minute and towards which the entire narrative has been building.

A twist focuses on an aspect of the story (a character’s identity, motive, perception, location, an achievement or a moment left to chance). The twist will then turn that aspect on its head and reveal some kind of opposite of the most dramatic, comedic, ironic or horrific kind. For example, wife becomes mother (OEDIPUS REX), boy becomes girl (TWELFTH NIGHT), the living become dead (THE SIXTH SENSE), bikers become vampires (FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN).

Now here’s where the writer’s skill really comes into play, and if you’re constructing a four-page FUTURE SHOCK for 2000 AD here’s where you really earn your keep…

The run-up to the twist itself must be in plain sight throughout and yet disguised so that the reader never suspects they are being duped!

In order to surprise the reader, a twist must be founded on a basic assumption (on the part of both the reader and the main character) that things are exactly what they appear to be throughout the story. The writer must casually confirm that assumption throughout while leaving enough room to reveal at the climax that that assumption is, in fact, entirely false. This is why the mere knowledge that a story is going to deliver a twist can kill that story before it even starts. This is because the reader or viewer will be alert to the slightest clue from the very beginning. (2000 AD’s FUTURE SHOCKS may as well be re-titled TWIST AHOY! – another reason why they’re so damn hard to write.) The most effective twists feel like they came out of nowhere, but will have been carefully foreshadowed throughout. Re-watch GAME OF THRONES and you’ll slap yourself for not noticing all that skilful foreshadowing as clear as day.

A twist must therefore be built on certainty not ambiguity. The reader must be led to assume that something is a fact (be it a character’s identity, their motive, their perception of the world, etc), before the twist kicks in and reveals the opposite. You need to establish this assumption/certainty within your story before you can undermine it. You must first carefully lay down your rug and invite the unsuspecting reader onto it before you can whip it out from under them. Rabbit-out-of-a-hat twists with no foreshadowing whatsoever are cheating.

Let the reader assume things they never had any reason to suspect and yet form the perfect solution to the question posed by the story’s premise. For example, in the micro-short story THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANN by Saki, a husband has no idea why his wife has suddenly stopped speaking to him. The question posed by the story becomes: what’s her problem? Is she deaf? What has her husband done to offend her? What is the reason for ‘the reticence of Lady Ann’? It turns out (spoiler!) that Lady Ann is sat in her chair stone dead! The reader never had any reason to question whether or not Lady Ann might be alive. Nevertheless, her being dead concludes the story’s premise both logically and believably. And that’s what you’re after: the unexpected yet perfectly logical.

An element of transgression in a reversal, taboo subjects such as incest, cannibalism or infanticide, can lend an extra level of horror to a twist story.

The five types of twist ending (spoilers, but from nothing later than 2009)

1.) Reversal of Identity
Someone turns out to be someone else (a parent, sibling, son, daughter, a murderer, a mistress) or something else (a ghost, a shapeshifting monster). The twist-character is revealed to be either related to another character (e.g. lover becomes mother - be mindful, though, that this 'I am your father/long-lost brother' stuff can be a bit of a soap opera cliché) or is revealed to have been their own physical opposite all along (e.g. a man is revealed to be a woman).

The character who discovers the reversal usually does so at the same time as the audience in order to achieve maximum shock. In OEDIPUS REX, the woman whom Oedipus assumed was his lover was in fact his mother. In OLD BOY, the woman whom the main character assumed was his lover was in fact his daughter. In THE CRYING GAME, the hero assumes that Jaye Davidson’s character is a woman, when in fact he is a man. In FIGHT CLUB, we assume Brad Pitt’s character exists, when in fact he is entirely imagined. In THE SIXTH SENSE, we assume that Bruce Willis’s character is alive, when in fact he is dead. In THE OTHERS, we assume that Nicole Kidman’s character is alive and haunted by ghosts, when in fact she is a ghost haunted by the living.

2.) Reversal of Motive
Gee, I thought he was after THIS, but he’s really after THAT. Another straightforward twist, this one often found in crime stories, where deceit abounds. A Reversal of Motive occurs when a character’s apparent line of action is finally revealed to be, in fact, a cunning deception; their motivation is the opposite of what was previously assumed. Although similar to a Reversal of Identity, a Reversal of Motive differs in its focus on a psychological rather than physical deception. In EASTERN PROMISES, Viggo Mortensen’s character appears to be a gangster who wants to help fulfil the goals of the Russian mob; he’s really an undercover cop who wants to bring the mob to justice. In SEVEN, a serial killer appears to be helping the police find his last two victims; he really wants to reveal that those victims are the cop’s wife and the killer himself. In LES DIABOLIQUES, a mistress appears to have murdered her lover, when in fact her lover is alive and the two of them are engaged in an elaborate scam.

3.) Reversal of Perception
This is the classic case of the scales falling from a character’s eyes as he or she beholds the world and all its schemes as they truly are. This is a common twist in sci-fi stories where it employs what critic Peter Nicholls calls the ‘conceptual breakthrough’, a perceptual shift that occurs when the hero realises the world is actually bigger/smaller/crazier/more prosaic than was previously thought. “The structure of such stories is often that of a quest in which an intellectual nonconformist questions apparent certainties,” – and discovering either the world’s true identity or that their knowledge of the world is not so much wrong as incomplete. In this way, Nichols argues, all sci-fi is essentially Faustian.

Reversals of Perception are often achieved by the writer pulling back to get the whole picture. The inner workings of the world and its schemes are thus revealed and the enlightened character understands to either their dismay or delight (though usually to their dismay) just how and where they rank in the new order of things.

Reversals of Perception can be identified by location. In PLANET OF THE APES, Charlton Heston realises that he hasn’t crash-landed on an alien planet, but on earth in the far future.

In the stories UNIVERSE by Robert Heinlein, NON-STOP by Brian Aldiss and CAPTIVE UNIVERSE by Harry Harrison, the world turns out to be a generation starship. In OUTSIDE by Aldiss, a suburban house turns out to be an experimental laboratory in which shapeshifting aliens are incarcerated. (These are all Nicolls’ examples.)

In the short story AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE by Ambrose Bierce, a condemned man realises that the world of freedom into which he’s escaped is merely a consolatory fantasy he’s concocted as he chokes to death on the gallows. In the TWILIGHT ZONE episode WHERE IS EVERYBODY? an amnesiac wanders an empty town believing himself to be the last man in earth, before waking to find himself inside an isolation tank as part of a military experiment.

Watch out for that dreaded Reversal of Perception that concludes ‘It was all a dream!’ If you really must attempt one of these twists – many ‘virtual reality prison’ stories are themselves a tired variation – then at least ensure the ending serves as some kind of thematic punchline, that the protagonist has learned something of their own volition and that the journey to reach that ending was worth taking regardless. Or else you’re essentially throwing the reader’s investment in your story back in their face.

4.) Reversal of Fortune
These occur through no fault of the character’s own and often result from some kind of accident, an honest mistake or misunderstanding, or an ironic turn of luck. Either way, capricious Fate has the final say (sometimes for the better, but usually for the worse). This reversal can be tricky to pull off, as it requires a certain amount of deux ex machina, a sense of the author contriving events in order to make the story work. Therefore, such twists must take especial care to be believable, even to the point of being mundane. We’ve all returned the wrong DVD to the video store (back in the day), mistaken one person for someone else, left something valuable on the bus, etc. If you can’t imagine your reader making the same mistake or having the same amount of bad luck as your character, then it probably won’t work in your story. Pixar story artist Emma Coats offers wise words in this regard: “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”

In a Reversal of Fortune, the twist is located within the events of the plot itself rather than embodied by a person or place or dramatized by a motive. Instead of resolving a character’s objective in the third act, a Reversal of Fortune typically returns the character to the unhappy state of flux in which they set out in act one. The twist is the kicker that either prevents the hero from achieving their objective or else gives them an unexpected helping hand.

This twist is common in horror stories where it’s conducive to the Big Scary Idea that Fate is out to get you. Like poor Burgess Meredith in the TWILIGHT ZONE episode TIME ENOUGH AT LAST, characters on the receiving end of a Reversal of Fortune will often feel like whimpering, “That’s not fair… That’s not fair at all.” In DRAG ME TO HELL, the heroine unwittingly mistakes a useless coin for the magic button she needs to negate a deadly curse. In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the hero defiantly saves the life of a man ‘fated’ to die, only to be forced to have him executed later on. In TIME ENOUGH AT LAST, an unhappy bookworm survives a nuclear apocalypse and finally has all the books he ever wanted – then accidentally breaks his reading glasses.

5.) Reversal of Fulfilment
What one character achieves another character takes away at the very last minute! One character will finally get what they’ve been after throughout the story, only to have it snatched away by an opposing character (often their opposite – husband/wife, father/son, poor/rich). Unlike a Reversal of Fortune, in which Fate steps in to either impede or aid a character in achieving their objective, a Reversal of Fulfilment occurs as a result of BOTH characters fulfilling their opposite objectives relatively unhindered.

The twist cannot come about without one of the characters having previously achieved their objective. For example, Roald Dahl wrote a story about a greenhouse (I can’t find the title) in which a loving wife and an abusive husband both fulfil their opposing goals. The husband succeeds in murdering his wife and burying her body under the greenhouse. But the faithful wife has proved her love by previously arranging for his beloved garden to be renovated, thus uncovering his crime. One fulfilment is cancelled out by another.

Fulfilment-thwarted characters don't realise the depth of the other character’s cunning, stupidity, love, enmity, etc. In the short story MAMMON AND THE ARCHER by O Henry, a son wagers his father that love will always triumph over money. The son proves his point by winning the hand of the girl he loves, but it turns out the father used his wealth in order to contrive the circumstances of the engagement in the first place. In Henry’s THE GIFTS OF THE MAGI, two penniless lovers sell their own most valuable possession in order to buy each other a Christmas present. The girl sells her beautiful hair; the boy sells his pocket watch. The lovers open their presents on Christmas Day only to find he has bought her a comb and she has bought him a watch fob. In the TWILIGHT ZONE episode MR DENTON ON DOOMSDAY, a failed gunslinger takes a potion that will allow him to be the quickest on the draw, only to find that his opponent has bought the same potion.

What DIDN’T you know the whole time?

When identifying a twist, consider the vessel of the twist itself. What is the thing that is reversed?
·       A character’s BODY? (‘I thought you were a woman, but really you’re a man!’)
·        A character’s OBJECTIVE? (‘I thought you loved me, but really you’re out to kill me!’)
·        A character’s LOCATION? (‘I thought this was Heaven, but really it’s Hell!’)
·        A glitch in a sequence of EVENTS? (‘Back off. I’ve had a gun in my pocket this whole time. Oh no, it’s really the banana I forgot to eat for lunch!’)
·        The OBJECTIVES OF TWO OPPOSING CHARACTERS. (‘And so I’ve proved that age will always triumph over youth.’ ‘That’s what you think, gramps!’)

In stories containing the first three reversals (Identity, Motive and Perception) the main character (and the reader) is ignorant of the fact that their knowledge is incomplete, that a deception is taking place or that an event has already occurred. Bruce Willis was a ghost ALL ALONG; Viggo Mortensen was working for the cops ALL ALONG; Charlton Heston was on Earth ALL ALONG. Here, the twist occurs in the form of a psychological revelation; the truth is finally revealed. This might require a little backstory in order to explain how it came about, so beware: backstory is exposition and always requires a decent burial.

The opposite is true of Reversals of Fortune and Fulfilment. Here, the main character’s knowledge is complete; no deception is taking place and no event has yet occurred. When the twist does occur, it takes the form of a physical (not psychological) event. Of course, such events require foreshadowing, some suggestion that this sort of accident or mistake is actually possible within the story and therefore believable. The twist at the end of DRAG ME TO HELL avoids pulling a rabbit out of a hat by having the heroine’s boyfriend collect coins; an early scene involves talk of a particular rarity that she will end up mistaking for her magic button. In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the hero’s arrogant assertion that ‘nothing is written’ is seemingly refuted later on by Fate itself.

Short stories are a natural fit for twists as the build-up doesn’t have to be sustained for too long. Go read Saki, O Henry or Roald Dahl and you’ll find plenty of examples of exquisite narrative mousetraps in which the twist is usually delivered swiftly, understatedly and at the last possible moment.

A disclaimer

These findings are based on what I’ve read, what I’ve studied and what I’ve written. They’ve certainly helped me, but they may not help you. The point is, I’m not selling a formula for writing twist stories here. As with any theory about writing, if it doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. Go make it something that does.

I believe there are two sides of us at work when we’re writing: Writer-you and Editor-you. Writer-you is great at seizing cool ideas and blazing through drafts. Editor-you is the intellectual who coolly regards what Writer-you has created and imposes order upon the chaos so the material can actually function as a story. The balancing act of writing is knowing when to let one take over from the other. It’s kinda like a dance or a Tai Chi routine. Instinct and thought, chaos and order, writer and editor. You’re constantly switching between the two; sometimes for a stretch, sometimes for a second.

The theory on twists I’m suggesting here is for Editor-you only. Writer-you is a simple beast that shouldn’t be distracted when in the throes of creating a first draft or coming up with wild ideas. However, Editor-you can sometimes use a little help in identifying what they’re trying to do and how they might do it better. So, if Writer-you has lost their way mid-draft and can’t see the woods for all those stupid trees, let Editor-you take the wheel for a while. Let them check their map, suggest a new direction, and get Writer-you back on the road as soon as possible. The two can’t steer at once, in the same way you can’t drive with a roadmap pasted to the windshield.

Artwork by Ben Willsher

I recently gave a talk at the Bristol Comic Expo 2014 about how I started writing for 2000 AD by pitching Future Shocks scripts. I’ve written up my notes as the following blog, covering everything from submission tactics to coping with rejection and why there’s really no such thing as ‘breaking in’

This blog positions me as some kind of veteran - albeit of a teeny-tiny patch of comicdom - so I'd better show off a couple of medals before I start dishing out advice. I’ve had two original series published in 2000 AD, that’s Age Of The Wolf and Dandridge. I’ve also written Tales From The Black Museum, Robo-Hunter, and Judge Dredd. So there.

But before I got to write all that, I ‘broke in’ by submitting Tharg’s Future Shocks (read on to find out why I just dropped the inverted-comma bomb). What the heck is a Future Shock? Well, according to the 2000 AD submission guidelines they’re “self-contained, four-page science-fiction short stories with a twist ending”. These things appear several times a year in 2000 AD and there are several genre variants that employ the same format. These include horror stories called Terror Tales, time-travel stories called Time Twisters and alternate-history stories called Past Imperfect. But do bear in mind, if you’re submitting, that Tharg is asking for Future Shocks!
 
Now, 2000 AD has an open-door submissions policy, which means anyone can take a crack at writing a Future Shock and have a fair shot at getting it published. As such, this is the route through which the majority of new writers come to 2000 AD. This was how Simon Spurrier and Al Ewing arrived, both of whom now write for Marvel. Arthur Wyatt, writer of the bestselling Dredd movie sequel comic Underbelly, also fought his way through the slush pile, as did, most recently, writer and artist David Baillie (whose excellent blog contains a wealth of behind-the-magic info) and novelist T.C. Eglington (author of popular children’s books The Spellbound Hotel and its sequel The Stolen City).

Having gone through this apprenticeship myself, from submitting my first Future Shock to graduating to my first series, I’ve learned a great deal. But before I go into any of that, first let me tell you what I’m not going to tell you.

I’m not going to tell you how to get your Future Shock submission accepted. Why? Because I don't know. I’m not the editor; I’m the freelancer. I’m the guy on the outside looking in and as such have no idea what the editor does or doesn’t do, what processes he may or may not go through, what he may favour or can't stand. (Here’s a good time for me to add a little disclaimer along the lines of ‘all opinions expressed herein are my own and do not represent those of Rebellion, yadda, yadda, yadda…’)

All I can tell you is what worked for me; and the truth is all anyone can tell you is what worked for them. Telling people how to break into comics (and Craig Mazin of the wonderful Scriptnotes podcast said exactly this of screenwriting in the US) is like telling them how to lose their virginity. I can tell you how I lost mine (and I usually will after six pints of Stella), but that’s it. Everyone’s circumstances are different. It’s therefore pretty much impossible to dish out one-size-fits-all advice.

However, one thing we can all agree on is that Future Shocks are super-hard to write well. And here’s four reasons why:

1.) You’re trying to surprise the reader with a final-page twist that they know is coming the second they see the words ‘Future Shocks’ on the contents page. Regular readers know these things contain twists and will have rounded up a list of possible punchlines by the time they've reached the bottom of the first page. 'I'll bet it was Earth all along, or the main character's really a ghost, or he's the killer he's been searching for all along, or maybe...'

2.) You’ve got only four pages in which to build a sense of character or consequence, so the reader actually cares about what you’re writing.

3.) It’s hard to avoid what’s been done before. Never mind what Future Shocks have been coming up with since they first appeared in 2000 AD in 1977, short-form sting-in-the-tail sci-fi stories have been doing their thing since at least the 1890s, when H.G. Wells was writing War Of The Worlds. Over a century later, even the most seemingly original ideas have likely been done to death already. (It’s interesting how at least two recent Future Shocks reflected this sense of a creative bottleneck by offering very postmodern spins on the Future Shock story: Simon Spurrier and Jon Davis-Hunt’s Hacked (Prog 1754, Oct 2011) and David Baillie and Graeme Neil Reid’s Time Is The Only Enemy (Prog 1837, June 2013). The first was a witty deconstruction of classic Future Shock tropes, while the second featured a Future Shock writer who essentially found himself in the middle of one of his own stories.)

4.) Competition is fierce. I asked Tharg himself, 2000 AD’s almighty alien editor, how many Future Shock submissions does the Nerve Centre receive? I was told approximately two a day. That’s 10 a week, around 40 a month and almost 500 a year. And how many Future Shocks actually got published in 2013? Seven.
 
What’s your best chance of getting a script accepted amid that scrum? Like I said, I don’t know, but here’s what happened with me. I started submitting in January 2007. At the time I’d had a lot of film journalism published, but had no creative credits. I’d written plenty of short stories and wotnot but had nothing published outside the small press. Once I had decided to target 2000 AD, I submitted relentlessly and got rejected half as much again. So the first thing I learned about writing Future Shocks was…

WRITE PLENTY OF SCRIPTS!

Submitting Future Shocks is a war of attrition in which scripts are your ammunition. We’re talking World War Z tactics here, whereby you get over the wall by clambering up a pile of rejected scripts, each one better than the last. Now here’s the next thing I learned…

REJECTION IS A CERTAINTY!

After getting hit by several of these horrible little form letters, you’re going to feel as though you’re feeding all your hard work into a shredder. I coped by telling myself…

WRITE LIKE YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN REJECTED!

Here’s some good news: All you need to care about is writing your script. You can’t control what happens once you’ve posted it. You can’t control whether it gets accepted or rejected. You can’t control what artist might work on it. You can’t control whether the readers will love it, hate it or dismiss it as ‘filler’. Hell, you can’t even guarantee Royal Mail can get your submission as far as Oxford! So don’t distract yourself by worrying about the possibilities. Focus on the script you’re writing. Don’t worry about failing or succeeding. Keep a clear head. This allows you to bring all your experience and ability to bear, and this will help you write as well as you possibly can.

While attempting to maintain this Zen-state (not always successfully), I knuckled down until I had a stack of scripts on file; around six or seven. So, as soon as that rejection arrived I could fire off a replacement straight away. Of course, if the editor had included any feedback with that rejection (e.g. ‘too many panels per page’, ‘you need to dramatize the story rather than just narrate it’) then I’d review the script I was about to send out, just to make sure I wasn’t making that same mistake twice.

IMPLEMENT ANY EDITORIAL FEEDBACK!

This went on for about three years, in between other writing jobs, including film journalism and subediting, until I got to a stage where Tharg let me pitch ideas instead of having to write the entire script. By now I’d been regularly writing film and comic-related reviews, articles and interviews for the Judge Dredd Megazine. It's perhaps safe to assume that the fact my copy always met the brief, the word count, and the deadline, went some way towards convincing Tharg that I was a safe pair of hands.

Soon after, I ventured an idea for my first series (Age Of The Wolf), which got accepted, after which I was ‘in’, although ‘in’ means whatever you want it to mean. No one gives you a certificate. Tharg doesn’t invite you to the Nerve Centre and say ‘I dub thee a script-droid’ (and if he did he’d probably only anoint you with a clip round the ear and threats of further violence unless you returned to your cubicle straight away).

Having gone through all that (the submitting Future Shocks not the Betelgeusian beatdown), I can probably distil everything I’ve learned about submitting Future Shocks into two broad categories of wisdom…

1.) ASK YOURSELF WHY YOU’RE DOING THIS

2.) GET IN BY GETTING GOOD.

Let me break these two down, starting with the first one.

Having spoken to many writers over the years, I reckon there’s three types of people who submit Future Shocks: fans, aspiring professionals and established professionals. The fans aren’t in it for long haul; they’re just taking a punt on a cool idea, which is still a perfectly valid reason for submitting. These guys and girls are in the game on a casual basis. The aspiring pros, however, are in it to win it. They want to write comics professionally one day. The established professionals
are already making a living out of writing and for them this is just another outlet. These folks may be seasoned journalists, or fiction writers with several novels under their belt.

In terms of who stands the best chance of writing the sort of script most likely to get accepted, the established professionals probably have the edge, if only because they can write well enough to get paid to do it. The aspiring professionals probably have the advantage over the fans because they’re more likely to have studied the techniques that make a good script. Notice my emphasis here not on getting accepted, but on writing a good script. Because the surest route towards acceptance is to…

WRITE A GOOD SCRIPT!

I’m reminded here of an anecdote I once heard about an agent who telephones a publisher and says, ‘My client’s written a 10,000-word novel. Would you be interested in publishing it?’ To which the publisher replies, ‘Depends which words and in which order.’

To write a good script you’ll need to know how to build up an idea, how to tell a story visually, and understand drama, character and plot (and how those last three are all the same thing). So the advice to the underdogs out there has to be…

THINK LIKE A PRO EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT!

Don’t think like an amateur. Think like the writer you want to become. Get good at what you’re doing.

When I first started submitting I guess I was somewhere between aspiring and established (lots of work in niche publications and not much else, but I’d been around the block enough times to know what I was doing). When I started writing comics, I made all the usual rookie mistakes, which Tharg got me to wring out of the accepted scripts before they went to the artists. But once I’d made that first couple of sales and emerged blinking into the wonderful world of professional comics writing, I started to realise that a lot of the terminology I was used to hearing when I was still a Future Shock virgin didn’t really reflect the truth, certainly not as I was experiencing it.

For starters, ‘breaking in’, as I discovered, is really more like ‘seeping in’, like mould. I recall Simon Spurrier saying something to this effect elsewhere, but ‘breaking in’ implies there’s this one barrier, this single door that you have to get through, on the other side of which is this wonderful Wonkaland of comics in which you’ll never be rejected again, in which editors will queue up to give you work, and you’ll get paid to write whatever you want. That dream may come true way, way, waaaay down the line. If you’re super-lucky.

For now, the reality of submitting Future Shocks is this: You will exhaust yourself breaking down that door, getting that first script accepted, and once you’re through, guess what you’ll find on the other side…? Another door. And behind that, another door, and so on and so on. And each of those doors will be as hard to get through as the last. Submitting never gets any easier, even after you’ve scored a few sales, even when you get better at it. It’s like a video game where your character levels up, but the monsters just get stronger, and so the challenge remains the same.

So words like ‘breaking in’ don’t reflect the truth and yet do determine your view of the business you’re trying to get in to. So…

BEWARE ASSUMPTIONS!

Another term that can be deceptive: ‘comic writer’. If you want to become a professional comics writer you need to know what that means in reality and not what you think it means based on what you’ve read in interviews and other such promotions. I always used to assume, even when I had plenty of professional experience, that if someone was referred to as a ‘comic writer’ then they spent 100% of their time writing comics, when, of course, that’s very often not the case.

For many freelance writers, writing comics is just one gig among several. Chances are they’ll be toiling through two or more deeply unsexy writing gigs that they won’t want to mention during that interview with SFX magazine. They may be making the majority of their income proofreading recipe books or writing marketing copy for a high-street bank (I’ve done both). Lucky is the writer who can straight away launch a freelance career based on a creative niche like comics, which is why you need to be aware of the bigger picture at all times.

FUTURE SHOCKS ARE NOT THE BE-ALL AND END-ALL!

If you’re submitting Future Shocks with an eye on becoming a professional comics writer (that is, a freelance writer who works in comics), then submitting Future Shocks should be thought of as one fishing rod among many. Write other things for other outlets and see what bites. Do you know an artist? Have a firm idea about how you can self-publish something that will actually reach an audience? Then go for it.

Over the years, I’ve met a heartbreaking amount of people who’ve become fixated on writing or drawing for 2000 AD above all else, who’ve built the idea up in their head until it means more to them than is healthy.

ASK YOURSELF WHY YOU’RE DOING THIS!

The answer to that question shouldn’t be because you have to, because you’ll be a failure if you don’t, because getting a script accepted will validate who are. Stephen Pressfield’s awesome little book The War Of Art rightly warns of the dangers of staking your self-worth, your identity, your reason-for-being, on the response of others to your work.

Why was I doing it? Because I was a freelance writer who wanted to work for a paying creative outlet. I didn’t let it mean any more to me than that. Of course, emotionally it means way more to me than that. My inner fanboy is constantly bouncing up and down squealing ‘I write for 2000 AD! Woo-Hoo!’ But I keep him locked away when he needs to be and never let him get in the way of the work. Now, lesson two…

GET IN BY GETTING GOOD!

This came from an interview I read with former 2000 AD editor Andy Diggle, from Comic Heroes magazine. He said, "Everyone always asks how to break into the industry, but they never ask how to become a better writer. That's the answer - you break in by getting good at it."

So how do you get good at writing Future Shocks? You start by reading the two compilations Rebellion have published, that’s The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks and The Best Of Tharg’s Future Shocks. But you also examine the foundations upon which the series is built. Future Shocks are short twist stories, which – never mind those found in Will Eisner’s The Spirit or classic anthology comics like Tales From The Crypt – is a form probably as old as the short story itself. While submitting my Future Shock scripts I read plenty of twist stories by those whom I had decided were the masters of the form, particularly Saki and O Henry. I watched shows like vintage Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

You’re reading and watching these to examine how they work, but you’re also familiarising yourself with the types of stories that have since become cliché. You’re becoming literate in the form.

Now the classic advice about writing, which you’ve no doubt heard a zillion times, is to read as much as possible and write as much as possible. I’d argue these two disciplines alone are actually of limited benefit to a writer. You need to read a lot? Definitely. Write a lot? Certainly. But you also need to take time out and…

STUDY!

Let’s say you want to become a great comic writer, you’ll dutifully work your way through the classics: Eisner, Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns and everything else that finds its way onto every ‘100 best graphic novels list’ ever. But unless you know why you’re reading these books all you’re really doing is ticking titles off a list…

DON’T JUST READ IT, STUDY IT!

What’s so damn important about Watchmen anyway? Why does everyone say I have to read it? Don’t rely on the opinions of others, no matter how unimpeachably expert they may be. Challenge everything you’ve heard about this book. Approach it like you’ve never heard of it. Make up your own mind. Have the courage to disagree.

With a clear head, unclouded by hype and reverence, ask simple questions. What techniques is this story using? What effect does this create? What are the story’s antecedents? What’s the historical context, the circumstances in which this story was produced? What do you know about the person who wrote it?

Take nothing for granted. Develop an aggressive, even arrogant sense of what you think works or doesn’t work. Cultivate a sense of taste. Compile your own canon. Fuck ‘the classics’.

The same goes for writing. You can write a dozen scripts, but if you’re not learning more about what the medium can do, experimenting with new techniques, and being brave enough to fail, then you will never improve and every script you write will suck just as much as the last one.

There’s three strands to learning how to write anything (comics, novels, plays, anything)…

1.) UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE

2.) UNDERSTAND THE MEDIUM

3.) UNDERSTAND DRAMA.

The first is a given. If you want to write professionally, but can’t be bothered to learn how to string a sentence together, or how grammar and syntax work, then you’re the equivalent of a plumber who doesn’t know which way up to hold a monkey-wrench.

No editor worth writing for is going to accept poorly written English. If your Future Shock synopsis contains more than one typo or grammatical error, then I’m pretty sure that’s all the excuse Tharg needs to reach for another rejection slip. He’s got a filing cabinet full of these submissions, which he needs to get through before lunch.

Having worked for several years as a subeditor, I know how lazy writers can be when they think they can get away with it. But there’s no subeditor at 2000 AD to check your spelling for you or sharpen up your syntax before Tharg takes a look at it.

As I was rightly reminded by a member of the audience during my talk at Bristol, learning difficulties such as dyslexia need not be a barrier to writing professionally (it didn’t stop F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie or Quentin Tarantino). Seek information and support from organisations like The British Dyslexia Association or charities like Dyslexia Action.

As for the rest of you, there are plenty of books on grammar and style out there (I’d recommend Constance Hale’s firecracker of a style-guide Sin And Syntax for starters, as well as several of the Chambers and Oxford guides on style and plain English). There’s no excuse, people.

The same goes for strand number two, understand how your medium works. We’re talking comics here, so the bible has to be Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (a must!) and his third book, Making Comics. I’d also recommend Eisner’s venerable but still relevant books Graphic Storytelling And Visual Narrative and Comics And Sequential Art. Sorted.

Now, strand three, understand drama. This is particularly relevant when it comes to writing Future Shocks because you don’t have room to get away with spouting reams of exposition; it has to be this tight little six-pack of a story.

Here’s how drama works: your main character is trying to achieve something, but something or someone is standing in their way, and something awful will happen to that main character unless they achieve their goal.

That right there is the nucleus of storytelling and it goes back to the days of togas and inventing democracy. The key to understanding how it applies is to see how it exists within stories on both a macro level and a micro level, that is, to the overall story and within the smallest component of the story: the scene.

What does Indiana Jones want to achieve in Raiders Of The Lost Ark? The recovery of the Ark of the Covenant. What’s standing in his way? The Nazis. What will happen if Indy doesn’t achieve what he’s set out to do? The Nazis will take over the world.

Now let’s zoom in on that scene when Indy visits Marion at the bar in Nepal. What does Indy want to achieve at the start of this scene? He wants to convince Marion to tell him where to find the headpiece to the Staff of Ra. What’s standing in his way? Marion doesn’t want to tell him because she’s still mad at him about the way he treated her in the past. What will happen if Indy doesn’t find the headpiece? The Nazis will get it, discover the Ark’s resting place and eventually use the artefact to take over the world.

What you’re developing here is the writer’s x-ray vision, which will enable you to see through an overall premise or a single scene and identify what’s driving it. It’s the equivalent of an artist spending countless hours studying anatomy until they know instinctively how to structure a pose.

Let’s come up with a generic Future Shock premise right now. Let’s say there’s a guy in space-prison. What does he want to do? Escape. What’s stopping him? Bars, security guards, perimeter guns. What will happen to this guy if he doesn’t escape? We could settle for saying he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars, but let’s ramp it up a bit. Your stakes need to be as dramatic as possible. So let’s say he’s offended fellow inmate Big Xertlik, Anvil-Headed Nutter of Worlds, who will Scotch-kiss our hero into oblivion unless he escapes within the next hour. Ooh, a time limit. Now we’re cooking.

Now let’s zero-in on a scene. Let’s say our hero is on work detail, breaking rocks with a laser-hammer, and an alien guard is about to discover the hole he’s digging and through which he was about to escape. Oh crap. The guard is striding towards him right now! What does our hero need to do? Prevent the guard from discovering the tunnel and alerting the other guards. What’s preventing the hero from doing this? This bruiser’s heavily armed and so are his buddies. What’s at stake? Horrible tortures await those who try and escape, so our hero’s going to wish he was staring up at Big Xertlik, Anvil-Headed Nutter of Worlds, if that tunnel gets discovered.

LINE OF ACTION. COUNTER-ACTION. STAKES. THE ONLY FORMULA YOU’LL EVER NEED.

Obviously, you’d need to put a fresh spin on that space-prison premise and ask a whole bunch of other questions, like what’s going to make my space-prison story different from everyone else’s? How can I make the reader care what happens to this guy? What’s the twist at the end? Notice how working up a story is about asking the right questions. Learning about drama will help you understand which questions to ask and how you can give the best answers for the story that you have in mind.

Writers, being writers, like to romanticise, especially about writing. But don’t be fooled. The hard work involved in writing a story isn’t magic; it’s mechanics. It’s craft. It’s learnable. Yes, there’s instinct involved, but instinct is built upon knowledge and experience. As the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix once said, “First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.” (By the way, I found that quote in John Yorke’s Into The Woods, a comprehensive breakdown of the mysteries and function of drama, and another must-read).

And it’s the same with ideas. You shouldn’t worry about being unable to generate enough ideas to keep writing scripts. Learning about drama can help you build a Future Shock idea out of anything. Check out New Scientist, Wired, or a Sunday magazine. Find an article that tickles your interest and ask how can I turn this into a Future Shock? Who might be the main character? What might they want? Have fun…

MAKE A GAME OF IT!

Remember that freedom you felt as a kid when you were writing or drawing? Back before it all came to mean something? That lack of self-consciousness is what you’re trying to get back to, because that’s how you’ll stand the best chance of doing your best work. If you’ve received a dozen rejections, then clearly you may have to ask yourself whether your best is ever going to be good enough for this publication. But the only way to find out for sure is to give it your best shot.

And that's all I had to say on the subject of Future Shocks. I was going to include a section on twists, different types, how they work and so on, but I didn’t have room to include it. Plus, it’s a bit advanced, so I’ll probably end up doing this as another blog at some point…

In the meantime, have a listen to this podcast recording of a 2000 AD writers panel I also did at Bristol with the mighty Al Ewing (Judge Dredd, Loki: Agent Of Asgard), hosted by the good folks at Everything Comes Back To 2000 AD...

Check out this podcast recording of the 2000 AD writers panel featuring Al Ewing (Judge Dredd, Zombo, Loki: Agent Of Asgard) and my good self. This took place at the awesome Bristol Comic Expo 2014 and was recorded by Iz McAuliffe and Stacey Whittle on behalf of the good folks at Everything Comes Back To 2000 AD. You can also download the episode via iTunes or the ECBT2000AD Libsyn webpage. (Contains a few swears.)

I recently changed the way I lay out my comic scripts for 2000 AD. Wanna see…?

Here’s how I used to do them…

And here’s how I do them now…

Why the change? What’s the difference? Well here’s why and what, and prepare for some subatomic levels of pernicketiness…
 
I’m a real process nerd. I’m forever making notes on exactly how I came up with a pitch, put together an episode breakdown, wrote a script, or edited the finished piece. It often feels like I’m spending as much time writing notes as I am writing the scripts themselves, but it helps me figure out how to refine the entire process and avoid making the same time-consuming mistakes twice. I used to think I was wasting precious work-hours, but I’ve since learned it saves bags of time in the long run. So this change in formatting came about as part of an ongoing overhaul, a result of not only putting in place what works best for me, but also what works best for the artists and letterers, or so they tell me.

A comic script is ultimately a very hands-off way of writing a story – certainly when you’re writing ‘full script’ as you do for 2000 AD. I don’t get to tinker with the dialogue or sound effects down the line. Once the script is written, I invoice the thing and start writing something else. By the time the script sees print as the finished comic, I’m usually so immersed in another story that I’ve forgotten how the one that’s just been published actually ends!

Writing a comic in this way is a bit like directing a movie without ever being on set. Instead, you write a detailed memo to guide the cinematographer, actors and editor in your absence. For obvious reasons, I like to smooth the transition from person-to-person as much as possible, making sure everyone has everything they need from me in order to do a great job.
 
How I learned to stop worrying and despise writers

Taking care with formatting also stems from me not wanting artists and letterers to hate my guts. Maybe this has something to do with personal insecurity or maybe the fact that I’ve worked for a long time as a subeditor. Having subbed various publications for various clients over the years, I know what it’s like to be last in line, racing against an insane deadline while struggling to make sense of copy that appears to have been written by someone suffering a concussion.

Seriously, kids, if you want to become a professional writer, you could do a lot worse than find a freelance gig as a subeditor for a magazine or newspaper. It helps sharpen your grammar and syntax, and your ability to condense (a vital skill when it comes to writing comics). It also erodes any fears you may have about committing words to the page. “500-word news piece by lunchtime? No worries, chief.”

Most importantly, working as a subeditor will trample out of you every ridiculous romantic notion you ever had about writing. After several weeks of wrestling with copy that you’re pretty sure the writer came up with by pressing their face into the keyboard for several seconds before clicking ‘send’ with an invoice attached, you’ll have developed a healthy loathing for lazy writers.

Comics are a collaborative medium, and if the writer can’t be arsed to do their job that means everyone else in the collaborative chain has to pick up the slack (and do so for the same paycheck). I don’t ever want artists or letterers to feel like jumping out of a window the minute they learn they’ve been saddled with me on a project. I know where my responsibilities lie, and within those boundaries I will take care to be approachable, adaptable and do my best to resolve any issues that might trouble the pencil monkeys and letter wranglers later down the line.
 
Last in line

Formatting the script is actually the last thing I do before a final printout and proofread. Once I’ve broken down the action into pages and panels, I’ll open a new Word doc. and write placeholder panel descriptions, e.g. ‘3.) Estab shot interrogation room’, ‘4.) Cop shows photo to Ang’, ‘5.) Cop angry; we see dagger’. Then I’ll bullet the exposition (that is, exposition that I’ve been unable to communicate visually) beneath the panel in which it’s most likely to appear, e.g. ‘DD unlicensed; against law’, ‘Explain dagger’, ‘Faeries want it back’. Then I’ll turn all that exposition into nice juicy character-revealing dialogue. I won’t add the attributions just yet; I read somewhere that good dialogue is so rooted in character that you should be able to tell who’s saying what without the attributions. With the dialogue written, I’ll go back and rewrite the placeholder panel descriptions. This bit’s easy, like writing a bunch of emails. I usually do it during a commute to another job, which saves me an hour or two at the desk. Then – after a lot of rewriting, shuffling stuff about, and reading stuff aloud in funny voices – I’ll format the  script.
 
By the way, please don’t get the impression from reading this that I actually know what I’m talking about. Don’t take anything that I say here as comics-writing gospel. Notice the title of this blog does NOT read ‘How to format your comic script’. This is just how I do it, based on what I’ve learned in the short time I’ve been writing comics professionally. I actually have a horrible feeling that a more seasoned pro will read this blog and laugh themselves into a coma.

Anyway, with all this in mind, and all the usual provisos that must accompany this sort of article now in place, I’ll go through each component of my script and explain why I’ve done what I’ve done for the benefit of anyone out there who may be interested in sexy stuff like font size and underlining, or who may be stuck for ideas about how to lay out their own scripts and/or present them professionally when submitting, say, a Future Shock to 2000 AD. Here goes…

Software

It’s Microsoft Word for me. You can keep your £300-a-pop scriptwriting software. I know many writers use programs like Final Draft and Movie Magic, but I don’t know a whole lot about these and having to tap the indent key a few times really isn’t a big deal for me.
 
Font, spacing, and language settings
 
I’ve taken a fancy to ‘Courier New’ at point size 11. I used to use ‘Verdana’ at point size 10 because it looked nice and readable, but it ended up looking weird in this new format. Plus, Courier is like what proper screenwriting types use and I like the way it makes me feel a bit like Robert Towne clattering out a draft of Chinatown.
 
I set the spacing at 1.5, so anyone (including me) has space to scribble down any notes or corrections on a hard copy. Oh, and I set the spelling on UK English, of course, because 2000 AD is a publication as British as petty crime, doomed optimism, and eating chips in the rain.
 
Header and page numbers
 
A publishing standard, this, a traditional safeguard against the possibility of a butter-fingered editor clutching several printed manuscripts tripping over a subeditor who has finally assumed a foetal position, thus scattering your precious pages all over the office. This way, someone will at least be able to identify which submission is which, so the editor will know to whom they have to send the rejection letter.

Same goes for page numbers, guys. Writers who don’t number their pages are in league with Lucifer. Ask any subeditor - whose eyelid will probably start twitching, at which point you need to back away slowly.

I write ‘Series title: episode X of X’ in the header just to keep everyone on point (including me) as to how much more of this crap they’re expected to read.

Name, email and phone number

The editor needs to know who wrote the script they are reading, if only so he or she knows who to yell at once they've finished. I always add basic contact details, so everyone else I’m working with knows where to find me. With this series of Dandridge, I knew I’d be working with artist Warren Pleece, but if the script is a new project or a done-in-one like a Tharg’s 3riller or a Tale From The Black Museum, chances are I won’t know who’ll be doing the artwork. In these cases, I always include a single-sentence to-whom-it-may-concern-type note to the lucky artist just below the contact details, telling them they are welcome to get in touch. And they usually do. If you’re submitting a script on spec (‘on speculation’, meaning material submitted at your own expense and which an editor is under no obligation to purchase) as you’d do with a Future Shock submission, adding anything more than your name, email and contact phone number is going to look a bit presumptuous, cowboy. So no links to your website, blog or anything else that has nothing to do with the script you’re sending.

Title, episode number and page numbers
 
All capitalised and bold so they immediately stand out. (No need, of course, to add ‘EPISODE ONE’ if it’s a done-in-one story like a Future Shock.) These (and the panel numbers) are the only things in the script that are bold, so the artist and letterer can get their bearings at a glance.

Panel numbers

As you can see from example one (above), I used to have a separate line and actually write ‘Panel 1.’ I like the new way (below) much better – 1.) – if only because it’s bloody obvious you’re referring to a panel! It also cuts down on a line and provides a nice sort of intro to the topic sentence of your panel description.

Panel descriptions

Ooooh, tricky. This probably needs a separate blog, which I may write some other time. For now, here’s a few rules I currently tell myself to stick to:

* Keep panel descriptions as short as possible; aim for a line or two. A panel description should sit in your head after a single read.
* Watch out for the word ‘and’ in panel descriptions; it's often a telltale sign that you’re trying to communicate more than one beat of action.
* Ambiguity has NO place in panel descriptions. Avoid metaphors and unusual similes. Give concrete details! If that means giving the exact height or width of something, do it!
* Describe a camera angle (close-up, establishing shot) only when the required impact or information would be lost without it. Otherwise, default to a standard (implied) full shot. Specific instructions constrict the artist.
* Where possible, describe each new element on a new line, so the information is presented to the artist clearly and in order of dominance.
 
I’ve seen some scripts where the writer capitalises the name of a character the first time they appear in the script; sometimes EVERY time the character appears. This practice originates from screenwriting, so crewmembers flipping through a copy of the shooting script can easily find the scene in which a character first appears. I tend not to do this when writing a comic script. I don’t like too many capitals in the panel descriptions as they can clash with the capped dialogue. Yes, I know in panel one of this sample I’ve written the magazine title ‘INTERVIEW’, but that’s only because that’s how I wanted it to appear in the panel.

Dialogue attributions and dialogue
 
My attributions are indented x4 and the dialogue x2 (see below), with the right-hand margin set at 11. I used to put tabs into the dialogue in order to make it all line up neatly (see above), but this can create problems for lettering droids, who may have to go through the entire script and take the tabs out before cutting and pasting.

Giving the attributions a line to themselves (as oppose to setting them before the dialogue – see above) also solves the problem I sometimes had of having to squeeze in bracketed dialogue directions – e.g. ‘(off)’ or ‘(shouts)’ – if the character had a long name. By the way, ‘off’ and ‘shouts’ are pretty much the only such directions I ever use.
 
A separate line for each speaker also means I can ditch the attribution ‘LINK’. One less attribution to get wrong, right? I put the dialogue in capitals ‘cos that’s how it appears on the finished comic. I’m also a lot more careful about my dialogue-to-panels ratio than I used to be, although ‘Good Cop’ seems to be waffling on a fair bit for a six-panel page. Ahem. A golden rule of dialogue (there are many): let your characters talk then edit the hell out of them.

I try and stick to five panels with two balloons per panel each containing 25 words (max!). I spell out numerals (‘twenty-three’ and not ‘23’), and underline any words that need vocal emphasis. I rely on my ear for this, and the less underlining the better. I would have bolded these emphasised words, as they would appear in the finished comic, but underlining looked better and created a clearer hierarchy among the script’s components.

I generally use an ellipsis (‘…’) for a pause in mid-speech (character takes breath, struggles for words, pauses for effect) and a double hyphen (‘--’) to denote an interruption, a longer pause or for establishing a connecting link when speech continues over several panels. (And I don’t leave a space between the hyphen and the last letter of the last word.) I also use double quotes when spoken dialogue either precedes or follows the panel in the form of a caption in a different scene.

[Contd…]
 
When I started submitting Future Shocks back in 2007, the submissions editor advised me not to break panels and dialogue over two pages, as the artist or letterer might think the page stops there and miss what else your characters have to say. I solve this problem by shuffling the entire panel down onto the next page (or chiselling at the panel description until the thing fits), then adding a ‘[Contd…]’ or ‘[Page continues…]’ note at the bottom.
 
SFX

It turns out letterers do not share a comprehensive grimoire of sound effects containing the correct spelling for every sound from ‘slapped face’ to ‘a bowling ball landing in a bucket of eggs’. So I come up with these for myself, and attribute them in exactly the same way as I do dialogue, e.g. ‘SFX: KERSPLAT!’
 
I’m of the opinion that, as a general rule, SFX shouldn’t stand out, that they should be absorbed subliminally by the reader. Therefore, I’m usually happy with the universal language of ‘blam’ and ‘kaboom’ with a few more unusual effects like ‘fwommph’ (bursting into flame) to add variety. Sometimes the letterer will – quite rightly – omit a sound effect that I’ve included when the image clearly speaks for itself.

And that’s that. The points I’ve described above are merely guidelines. I’ll often tweak them depending on what needs communicating. The aim is to present the information as clearly and neatly as possible. Common sense rules.

To finish off, here’s the first three pages of the script followed by the first page of the finished comic. Enjoy.