What’s Ground Floor, you ask?
Starting right here, right now, I will be developing a brand new comic from scratch before your very eyes. A 32-page 1-shot. Every Tuesday. I’ll share e-mails exchanged with the artist, I’ll share rough drafts, middle drafts, final drafts, I’ll share my rather random brainstorming/idea-coalescing process. Everything. From today straight on until the book finds a publisher. And maybe this is hubris on my part, but I guarantee to find a publisher. I’ll take this all the way to completion and you’ll get to see the entire process as it happens.
This is your chance to get in on the ground floor.
What’s the first step, you ask? Well this is the fun part, because at this stage I’m looking for input. You get to vote for what genre the story will be:
- Crime
- Comedy
- Drama
- Fantasy
- Historical
- Horror
- Magic Realism
- Romance
- Science Fiction
- Superhero
To vote, simply name your choice in a comment below. Write-ins will be accepted. Voting will be open until midnight PST this coming Friday September 26th. After that I will need to start brainstorming over the results in order to have next Tuesday’s Ground Floor ready on time.
There are some genres I’m more comfortable with than others, but I won’t say which is which and will develop a comic in whatever genre wins the vote. If there’s a tie, I will develop a comic that fits both genres.
Regular reader, first time reader…everyone gets a vote. Weigh in and see to it that there are more comics out there of the type you like!
Personally, I want you to do Historical Crime Fiction
I’ve gotta go with Magic Realism.
Do a historical genre piece.
Can I vote for more than one genre? I’d go for Crime or Horror. Though, both have been done, it’d still be a great writing exercise to see if you can do them differently. Good luck!
Hmmm, nice project. And a difficult question. Fantasy involves world-building more than any of the others except maybe Magic Realism. (Yes, even more than Historical Fiction.) And Drama is a good choice because it’s hard to do well in a 32-page book, but it has all the REAL important stuff, from an author’s point of view.
Fantasy Drama?
Magic Realism Drama?
Fantsy Drama with a touch of Magic Realism!
Romance! Or Drama. Or, you know, a good old-fashioned love story…
Romance.
-Steven
Historical Romance — for example, the story of the building of New York’s Chrysler Building.
…is voting drama.
Comedy all the way…
I gotta go with SciFi. Everything happening right now on Mars is pretty exciting.
I’m gonna want historical crime fiction also
Here’s the rough tally so far. Voting still continues through midnight PST Friday September 26th.
Everyone only gets one vote, so if you voted for “historical crime”, for instance, I’ve counted that as 0.5 vote toward “historical” and 0.5 vote toward “crime”.
1. Historical (2.5 votes)
2. Romance (2 votes)
3. Drama (1.83 votes)
4. Crime (1.5 votes)
5. Magic Realism (1.33 votes)
6. Comedy & Science Fiction (1 vote each)
7. Horror (0.5 votes)
8. Fantasy (0.33 votes)
Interestingly enough, “historical” was the winner of the poll the first time I tried this as a column-within-a-column, back in 2006 (before I realized more than one column at a time was more than I was ready for).
In case you’re trying to do the math and it doesn’t seem to add up right, there was one vote in the comments of my MySpace bulletin. I wanted all votes to be here, but realized belatedly I had forgotten to specify that in the bulletin, so I counted that vote to be fair. It was for “magic realism/noir”. I marked the “noir” as “crime” for simplicity’s sake.
COMEDY!!!!
comedy!! I’d love to see that… and feel free to mix it with any of the others
That’s my vote.
Comedy
Historidramedy!!!
Not that, actually. My vote is for Drama.
Superhero. I have been very eager to see you write a Superhero story.
Magic Realism!
Crime
Historical / Romance / Comedy sounds great!
But Historical gets my vote.
Here’s the latest talley, out of 20 total votes:
1. Comedy (4 votes)
2. Historical (3.5 votes)
3. Drama (2.83 votes)
4. Crime (2.5 votes)
5. Magic Realism (2.33 votes)
6. Romance (2 votes)
7. Superhero & Science Fiction (1 vote each)
8. Horror (0.5 votes)
9. Fantasy (0.33 votes)
“Comedy” has jumped to the lead, but “historical” is still very close! “Superhero” has made it’s first appearance.
Voting continues through midnight PST Friday September 26th.
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I never wish a comedy on anyone in a democratic vote; I think you’ve got to be in the right time and right place to pull that off well, but maybe that’s just my version of Parkinson’s Law?
I’d like to waste my vote bumping FANTASY ahead of superheros but not above romance.
I’m going for drama!
I’m going with fantasy.
I vote for romance. As your wife I think my reasons should be fairly obvious
Erin
Voting is now closed. Comments are still open.
You can see the results here >>