🥸Be the Audience

Write for You First

Every episode of Into the Storymaze = writing insights or a work-in-progress; something creative I’m digging; a highlight from my comics-writing credits; plus a quote that’s worth thinking about. (At least that’s my current thinking.)

A NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: If we circle around each other on the social media centers of anarchy, algorithms and alchemy you may see I'm running a contest: *NEW* subscribers to Into the Storymaze — those signing up between subscriber #205 and #250 — will be entered into a random drawing for an autographed copy of the Batman/Daredevil comic I wrote.

But never fear current subscribers — you are not forgotten! You've gotten me this far, which I dearly appreciate — and so I will run a separate random drawing for subscribers #2 - #204 at the same time. More on this when the numbers get up there…

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Another blast from the past, my Street Writers podcast with filmmaker and fellow keyboard creative Mark Bellusci. A couple of years worth of wordsmiths talking 10 minutes at a time, transformed to transcripts for your reading (and maybe even writing) pleasure.

Zoom does strange things to Mark in its screen caps.

Dan: There’s something you always hear: “Write for your audience, write for your audience.” But I think that there might be a stronger way in if you don't ask who your audience is and don't worry about them. But you go instead with the whole idea that you are the audience.

And if you're writing to please yourself, and if you're really having a ball with it, you're completely into it. You're going to entertain the readers who are really worth writing for. That's who your audience is.

It’s true we all have to manufacture things at different times. “I'm writing this for an assignment…” But even then if you’re truly writing for yourself, and you got some skills or you're working on those skills, they're going to come through better because you're having such a great time with the words. And at the same time you’ll be pushing back against all the other shit we talk about here, the self-challenges, like “I'm a fraud…” and any other negative impulse.

Ultimately, we do what we do because we enjoy writing. Don't worry about that audience. Make you the audience and see if you're digging it as you go.

Mark: That biggest filter is me criticizing before I even write. But you bring up a great point, which is another big filter: fixating on this audience you're writing for. And that becomes the critiquing of you saying, “Maybe he wouldn't know, they don't like this type of humor, or I don't know if they're going to be insulted by this…”

You're restricting yourself before you need to.

Dan: You're editing yourself right off the bat.

Mark: Trying to figure out who your audience is…if you're free to write and you're having fun with it, why would you worry about that? It's a balance because if you're doing a professional thing and you're writing to 12-year olds who like video games…that's a different thing. But there's truth in that as well.

Dan: You have a goal in mind for the writing. You're writing for that group of video gamers, you need understand certain things about them. But you're still doing it on your terms.

Mark: Maybe you're having a better time doing it. It could very much feel forced for you to say, “Hey, now I’ve got to write it for this 12-year-old. I’ve got to make sure I'm using the right hip terms…” It loses its authenticity. That's a danger as well: you could be pandering, or trying too hard to sound hip.

Dan: As long as you drop the word “fresh” in everything, I think that's good. 😜

I’m always up for more of an audience here — so please share with your inner and outer circle!

There’s an awesome — as in awe-inspiring — quality of light to visiting the Southwest. The red rock glows just so and spreads out across the open spaces. It’s one of my very favorite places to have visited — and I look forward to the next trip.

Color me surprised — a red rock glow color, I suppose — to find a sense of that environment beautifully captured in the video game Firewatch. This falls under the genre of “walking simulator” — it’s almost pure exploration, moving through valleys, caves, lakes, and mountains, encountering trees, plants and wildlife as you go.

If you've got a gaming background in Doom or Resident Evil or even a Call of Duty, you've got an ingrained sense of paranoia when it comes to play: "What's going to come for me next?" Nothing's on the hunt for you here — but that doesn't mean you're exactly alone, either.

You play as Henry, and you carry with you the lonely, broken memories of your wife, your loving partnership — and her last days being dragged under by Alzheimer's. Henry's taken a job in a fire tower in Shoshone National Forest (which means you've taken a job in a fire tower) — and he's struck up a radio friendship with Delilah.

She's another fire watcher in a tower of her own, far across the treetops. Spoiler alert: you'll never see Delilah, but through her shared talks with Henry — and how you affect the course of that by selecting choices in a dialogue tree — she'll seem very real and very present.

The dialogue and audio performances spark with natural conversation, wit, flirting, empathy, need — a relationship that takes form and scope over episodes and activities. Delilah sends you out to check on lost campers, pick up supplies, or help get power back to a downed radio tower. If you were to step outside the game to analyze the choices you make, they may seem very limited. But immersed in the forest and the world of Henry — I found myself immersed, and that my decisions had meaning.

The incidents are ways to mark progress. But you may very well find more to gain taking your time to look off a cliff's edge, take in the grand vistas and just wander. Against the backdrop of your job and burgeoning friendship it seems a perfectly natural way to spend a summer in a gorgeously simulated Wyoming — or a few hours working the gamepad.

Funny, anxious, a bit of mystery, a touch of bittersweet — if that's not your idea of a video game, maybe it's time you play more video games.

What kind of fires are burning in your Storymaze? 

What with the good Dr. Stephen Strange grabbing the pop culture spotlight with his trailer for the upcoming Multiverse of Madness movie, I was reminded of my own time — too brief — writing for the one-time surgeon, long time sorcerer supreme. Chiefly that would be here, in the pages of Nightstalkers, and the advent of The Midnight Sons — Marvel Comics' foray into "supernatural heroes."

With my own interest in horror, occult fiction and "the fantastic" it surprises me now I didn't find more chances to bring Strange into play — whether with Terror, Inc. or even Daredevil. (Hell's Kitchen is just a short subway ride up from Greenwich Village.) I was finally about to correct that with Mark Nelson, with the Dr. Strange/Nick Fury Hexpionage crossover — but with Marvel's editorial implosion in the mid-nineties that project went back into the land of pure make-believe.

But this little exchange is notable in that I got to create what I believe is Strange's first on page dialogue with Lilith — Queen of the Lilin, and the primary "big bad" for the Midnight Sons. Lilith is said to figure prominently in the in-development Midnight Suns video game, from the makers of X-Com. (You'll note that "Sons" has become "Suns" for…I doubt there's actually a good reason.)

I haven't thought much about her in years, but as one of Lilith’s co-creators (along with Chris Cooper, Howard Mackie and Len Kaminski — the other points of the original Midnight Sons pentagram) — I profess to wondering how she turned out. (And yeah, whether I get a proper credit on the game!) I get 1 extra experience point for having named her all  those years ago at the original Midnight Sons story conference, as recounted in this Marvel Age interview from back when.

Bobbie Chase (editor): I just remember Dan at that meeting… "Well let me pull out my horror dictionary and look up Lilith."

Howard: He had notes. He has this black binder that he carries with him — he was our horror expert at the meeting.

Dan (Young Me): Well…the demonic expert.

Chris: You named Lilith.

Marvel Age: What did you name her after?

Dan (Still Young Me): Lilith is the mythological name of Adam's first wife. Whereas Eve became the mother of mankind, Lilith became the mother of the demons, the fiends and the imps and that kind of thing.

And yes, I still have that black binder…

“It is not down in any map. True places never are.” — Herman Melville

Amazing Times

Thanks for taking a break from the dark web to check out this share-out of projects I’m working on, plus things that have me jazzed. I’m D.G. Chichester. If that looks pretentious, feel free to just call me “Dan.”

I earned my word-cred writing comic book titles like Daredevil, Terror Inc., Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, along with digital widgets in the world wide web of advertising. I keep my storytelling cred by trying new things —  this is one, with more on the way. I like weird tales, so if things here bend that way — now you know why!

Folks seem to like the comic book adventures I’ve written, so if you haven’t checked one out — please do. Many are now available in fab collected editions.

For the lonely moments between these emails…

@dgchichester — 280 characters from the Twitterverse

@dgchichester — images + context via Instagramland