Ask the Author

How did you go about writing the script? Is it different from writing prose fiction? And how did you know how to structure it?

They are indeed. You have a few hours to fill before midnight though.

I think we are doing an official Q&A with me on the main site, after Suze next week and Sarah the following week, so I should save something for that, but basically...

I structure MSCSI from very large from very small, from the biggest unit (trilogy of volumes) to the smallest (a specific element within the frame).

So with volume 3, I only have a general synopsis. With volume 2, which is obviously going to happen sooner, I have it broken down into chapters, and some of those chapters broken down into pages, and some of those pages broken down into frames (and stuff within frames).

Volume 2, episode 1, for instance, has about 6 full and detailed pages written, and then sections where it's like 'pages 11-15' and a rough outline of what happens.

So I start with the structure of what will happen to Cat across 15 episodes, then break it down into how that story is told in smaller and smaller units.

With each page, basically I see it visually and try to describe it in the script. Suze usually draws it slightly differently from the way I imagined it, but her version quickly becomes the only way I can actually see it.

Is quoted text always that tiny, or can I modify it?

The way I approach it, yes, in that only a couple of people are going to read it (the artists) so you only have to convey the images in your head to them. It doesn't have to be perfect writing - it can include links, pictures, vague suggestions, notes like 'ignore this if you want' or 'could be this way, could be another way', references to other art (comics, films for instance) and a general sense of mood and tone.

It is not quite functional, because it is trying to conjure up something, but it's not the sort of thing you would publish in its own right (except as a novelty supplement to a comic book).

Looking at the issue 1 script, I've found I included a lot of descriptions of how Cat and the other characters were feeling and what their motivation was, so it's been really great to have Suze capture body language and nuances of expression so well.

It was always going to be important to me that we used social media in building a world and community.

Having said that, there's an inherent contradiction because Cat Abigail Daniels doesn't even have a mobile phone. She lives in Gloria City, in 1993.

So I see the Cat of Twitter and Facebook as an avatar of the fictional Cat - not the actual character exactly.

The Cat of Twitter is perkier, more playful than the Cat we tend to see in MSCSI itself. But then, we all have different voices and personalities for different times, and write to different people in different ways.

Bear in mind that if Cat's about 23 in 1993, we don't even know if she's definitely alive by 2013... or even by 1994.

You tell me what motifs or scenes you recognised, and I will say whether they were deliberate!

A lot of it has been quite conscious, but no doubt there are also echoes I didn't quite recognise.

Someone pointed out to me that the first three pages are very much like Mrs Dalloway. It wasn't deliberate, but I could see it once I looked.