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Comics artist and writer Scott A. Ford is my guest this week, whose work, in his own words, “emphasize[s] atmosphere and rich visuals, drawing inspiration from video games, film, and animation.” His experimental fantasy horror comic, Giants’ Well, received a 2017 Manitoba Book Award for book design and illustration. His work has been featured in galleries and on book covers and beer cans! Visit him online at www.scottafordart.com.
We talk about many things, but one thing that struck me in this conversation is the importance of structure in storytelling. Something that, more and more, becomes clear to me is how significant the overall structure of the story can be.
In many ways, the decisions you make around the story’s core structure — where it is set, the narrative voice, and broad formal issues like the length of chapters — are the most important decisions. They set the rules for everything that will follow. A lot of “writing the wrong way” is figuring out how to break “the rules” but as you do so you really just start creating new rules for yourself. A writer needs to be very conscious, I believe, about what they are doing, especially if they are trying to do something new.
Scott discusses the process of creating Giants’ Well in some detail, and it is worth reading that comic online: https://scottafordart.com/giants-well-2— the whole comic is available for free, but you should also consider buying the physical copy, for the reasons discussed in the podcast. Scott’s online store is here: https://scottaford.storenvy.com/
Scott also discusses the process of building the story for Ark Land, and that book is a gorgeous object also, and available through this affiliate link if you want to support both Scott and myself: https://amzn.to/2IsSzh2
Scott has more free online comics. His most recent one is Boreal: https://www.themanitoban.com/?s=boreal and an older but excellent one is Ocosomoso: https://scottafordart.com/comics/#Ocosomoso
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