Communication is key for survival. Take Romero’s Day of the Dead for example, there, a group of survivors can never truly communicate how best to survive the zombie horde. Even, better is the recent zombie masterpiece The Battery, you’ve got the two protagonists divided by a rift of communication. See, it’s the key to collaboration. Even zombies groan when they see fresh meat.

So when I say communication is key to survival, I mean it on almost every level. Take for example the story I’m writing at Double take. It began with a quick email exchange. Which I’ll post here for your convenience. The initial pitch went as such:

Write a comic the Double Take way. We create comic books in a unique style, and we want you to experience it, report on it, and benefit from the process. While we are open to hearing any ideas, what we believe will work best is our editorial team will provide a setting and a cast, you will provide the story.

I’ve long considered myself a creative writer. More so than a journalist or blogger. So since I knew Double Take was crafting a universe of only zombie stories – aka The Ultimate Night of The Living Dead I spent the next few days soaking myself in as much zombie films, comics, and television as I could. I wanted to create an idea that was unique, easily pitchable, and channeled the social conscience of Romero’s world.

We had a call. Double Take head, Bill Jemas (of Marvel fame – seriously the man created the Ultimate Universe.) was awesome, welcoming, and exciting to talk to. Moreoever, they told me about the publisher’s future plans. This is still under wraps so we still can’t talk about that just yet. But, I was given a chance for my voice to be heard and more importantly supported. After the initial niceties, I was given time to do a loose pitch, and it took. We’re moving ahead on my story, which is a great blend of what’s coming from the Publisher and what they’re doing now.

Once that was set, I was given my contract and set upon the world of The Moth Story. (More about that here) The idea was to immerse myself in the ideas of the oral story in an effort to create a bridge for good dialogue in the actual comic script. Before I set off I was given another breakdown.

After a few more phone calls. We got started with oral story with these notes in hand:

It was good enough reasoning. After seeing the process in action, I couldn’t help but agree that it made for stronger scripts. I wrote my oral story about something pretty disgusting. A day after submitting I get this from Bill:

Have been listening to lots of Moth stories lately, and this storyteller stood out for how well he paints a vivid picture of the setting and people

http://themoth.org/posts/stories/pickpocket-school

IMO, your story is best when you include the rich details of your life and less so when you make generalizations.

Now, please don’t feel compelled to do a rewrite now – go ahead with your outline of the visuals and let’s revisit your oral story in the fullness of time.

I moved ahead on my outline. When the outline was done, I was involved in another feedback call. They can get quite entertaining because Double Take is a small publisher with a lot of really passionate people who all want to be part of the conversation. So my calls are usually me on one end and about 5 Double Takers on the other. I need to start getting my friends in on these calls.

Once my outline is submitted and we talk it out I start getting more concrete notes from my story editor Michael Coast. His feedback is pointed and more about the subtleties of the story. Double Take is about the details. So much so that they have the entire timeline of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead worked out. I had to ensure that my story fit into their world. And it’s awesome because at no point did the direction feel aimless. I’m able to be part of a larger vision and world.

The feedback on the outline leads to script pages. Which is a whole other beast, I like to call visualizing the story. Which we’ll get to on Monday.

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This Zomblog will run every Monday and Friday until I run out of things to say about zombies. Next time – we tackle social commentary and the power of the media in Zombie movies.

Until then check out Double Take’s blog – Double Take Universe to keep up to date on the incredible comics that will be coming your way in September. And head over to their Kickstarter to secure yourself the full ten launch issues.