#5: Research Part II
TGIM everybody! After all, Monday means another Creating Comics! The Art + Craft article from yours truly. Today I'm going to continue the discussion started last week on the importance of research. If you read last week's piece and I did my job correctly, you're convinced that time and effort spent in research prior to writing will pay dividends later. I gave a number of tips for how to start researching and hopefully convinced you that a library card is worth adding to your wallet. Today, I want to illustrate the research process a bit more by discussing the formulation of a research plan for Interrogation Control Element, a political thriller comic I've been working on with artist Damian Couceiro for the past year. Before I do that, though, I'd like to like to provide two warnings when it comes to research.
1.) Set a limit. The amount of information out there on most topics is limitless. Even the most obscure topics could be researched from now until the end of your days. While doing so will certainly make you an expert on that subject, it won't make you a writer. Eventually, you need to stop taking notes and start writing your story. So set a limit for yourself. Give yourself three weeks or so to research your topic. Determine to read two books on your subject, and subscribe to two relevant blogs and a message board. This will not be the end of your research for the duration of the project. The more you know, the more you'll want to know. The goal of this first research phase is not to become a PhD in your subject, but to familiarize yourself with it. At the end of the day, your goal is not to become an expert, but to write a damn good story that an actual expert could pick up and think, "Nice. This guy got that right."
2.) Research can't replace creativity. I can't stress this enough. Sometimes when you start researching things, you'll be tempted to turn your story into a series of facts and figures, just to prove you did your homework. You'll fill your dialogue with incredibly accurate scientific explanations for the processes you've laboriously researched, or fill up caption box after caption box with interesting anecdotes fleshing out your setting. Sure, it'll be accurate. It'll also put your reader to sleep. That's not the goal of research. That's just annoying and bad storytelling. Research is not a substitute for creativity, rather it is fuel for it. Most of your research will never make it onto the page. However, a good writer will use research to inform his or her creative process, so that the exciting stuff that does make the page also happens to be plausible.
Crafting a Research Plan
Alright, with those words of warning out of the way, let's talk about crafting a research plan. The first task for most researchers, regardless of field, is to identify the key research questions that their study intends to answer. Now, the writing process for an ongoing comic book series is one that requires ongoing research, but when doing your pre-writing research, I suggest focusing on two essential questions- Who is the main character? And what is the story world? Sure, there will be many other important questions to answer along the way, but for an entry point into research for your story, putting work into these two questions will give you the most return on your investment.
Who is the Main Character?
This was the first question I tackled when starting research for Interrogation Control Element. It made sense, as ICE was inspired by reading a New York Times article about Deuce Martinez, the CIA interrogator who broke Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Like many Americans, I was ill at ease with the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and the allegations of the use of waterboarding, rendition, and the Iraq war in general. But this article about a soft-spoken, unimposing interrogator who built a rapport with the vile terrorist and got him to talk really struck me as interesting stuff. Here's a guy who was offered training in waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation techniques" and said no thanks. AND he was effective. Can you say compelling protagonist?
Assessing first the research assets around me, I decided to talk to a friend of mine who works as a federal agent for the Department of Defense, and has conducted many interrogations of his own, albeit not on terrorist suspects. He validated the New York Times story, saying the best guy in the interrogation booth he has ever watched was a soft-spoken and gentle soul who could build such a rapport with his suspects that they genuinely thought he was their best friend by the time they copped to every charge. From him I got some examples of interviewing and interrogation tactics that they used. Good stuff.
Next, I pumped the key words "Interrogation" in my local library's catalog, and got plenty of hits. I requested five of the books that looked most interesting. A novel about an interrogator, a couple books written by interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq as first person accounts, and a few books on the torture debate written by reporters. Because my main character would have to use his brain more than brute force, I also took out a few audio books on reading body language and spotting liars. A few days later, my books all arrived, I swung by the local library and picked them up, and I was off to the races.
At this point, I just jumped in and started reading, keeping a notepad handy. As I was reading, I made a list of important decisions I'd have to make about my character. In what branch of the military does he serve? Army? Air Force? CIA? Private Contractor? From my research, I found out that all of the above could be found interrogating prisoners in Iraq. What's his background? Where did he get educated? What kind of specialized training does he have? What kind of strain did the job place on his family? By reading about the lives of people doing this job, I was able to get a strong sense of it, and gradually flesh out a character who seemed authentic. And so Thomas "Trip" Higgins was born. (Character sketch by Damian Couceiro.)
What is the Story World?
As I was reading to develop my main protagonist, I started to think about my story world. The direction I was heading was to tell a story set in the real world. But that still provoked a lot of questions. When exactly should this take place? America immediately following 9/11 was a different place than America today. When is important. So is where. I was finding out in my reading that there were great differences between the experiences of those serving in Afghanistan and those serving in Iraq. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are not the same enemy, despite the broad brush our media paints them with. Did I want the story to take place in the past, when some of these abuses were happening? Did I want it to take place in the present, after public opinion had begun to turn against both the interrogation tactics and the war? Or did I want it to take place in the future, perhaps with the next administration trying to clean up the mess of the last one?
One thing was certain, for this story to work, I needed to make sure I got my history correct. To do so, one thing I did was tape together a few pieces of paper and construct a timeline. I started it around the year 2000 and ran it through 2010, understanding that should I do a story extending into the future, I would be making up some things. On the timeline, I plotted key events in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United States. I also plotted on this same timeline some key events in Trip's life, fictional though they may be. For doing a story with strong roots in the real world or one that is impacted by historical events, I highly recommend giving a timeline a try.
Another thing I started doing was keeping a list of jargon. One of the surest ways to make your characters seem authentic is to make sure they speak the language of their profession. So if you're doing a story about teachers, you should know about IEPs and rubrics and Title I funding, or if you're protagonist is a chef, you better know a little something about the jargon of the kitchen. The story I wanted to tell was going to take place in the world inhabited by interrogators, and that world has its own specialized language as well. To do the story justice, I needed to speak that language. I needed to know that transporting "a crate of oranges" meant moving prisoners (due to their orange prison suits.) The world of the military is full of acronyms. It was worth knowing the meaning of CFLCC and GTMO and the like. In fact, I ended up using an acronym from this jargon list, ICE- Interrogation Control Element, the name for a compound where prisoners were interrogated and housed, as the title for this series. Reading the accounts of interrogators, I paid attention to the words they used and how they spoke to one another.
(A panel from Interrogation Control Element. Words- Tyler James, Art- Damian Couceiro, Color- Paul Little)
What was the result of this research? Fundamentally, it gave me a wealth of rich material to work with. I think going into the story, I knew I wanted to open it with a waterboarding scene. However, it was through research that I learned that when interrogators wanted to up the ante in waterboarding, they would stuff a rag in a prisoners mouth, and if they really wanted to make it painful, they'd toss salt in the water. (The rag made it into my first batch of pages. Perhaps I'll save the salt water for later.) I always knew I needed a badass terrorist villain as a strong counterpoint for my protagonist. It was through research that I was able to flesh out who that villain was exactly, and what his motivations might be. Research also spawned the idea for the scene introducing this antangonist, an Afghanistan prison break that actually happened in June 2008.
The more I read about the fascinating world of interrogators in the war on terror, the more questions I had and the more interested I became. But luckily, I took my own advice. After my designated three weeks of fact finding and research, I took a break from the books and put some work into turning all these ideas into the skeleton of a coherent story. Again, research will only take you so far. But without it, good luck getting very far.
Next: The Killer Pitch Part I- The High Concept
Tyler James is the writer and artist of Over, a romantic comedy online graphic novel updating every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. His comic Super Seed, the story of the world's first super powered fertility clinic, was featured at Zuda Comics. Tyler will also debut two new comics in July, Tears of the Dragon, an epic fantasy tale, and Interrogation Control Element, a political thriller. He also teaches a series of workshops on creating comics for adults and children. He works as a game designer and content producer for a game company, and currently resides in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Contact Tyler directly at tylerjamescomics@gmail.com, keep up with him at his blog, or follow him on Twitter.
Previous Columns
1: Big Goals
2: Resolutions
3: The Great Idea
4: Research Part I
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