The graphic novel is credited with getting reluctant readers (aka boys) to enjoy reading. Michael Dahl is a graphic novelist and shares his approach to writing and the appeal of the genre…
I started out writing a mystery series for young readers. It was a five novel series and two of the books were nominated for the Agatha Christie awards. I did a lot of freelance writing – fiction and nonfiction. I’ve written books for preschoolers all the way up to non-fiction for teenagers. I’ve probably written over 200 books! I studied English Literature when I was at the University of Minnesota and it was always a passion of mine. I admired Samuel Johnson and his dictionary and if I could have lived on Fleet Street, I would have loved to have been one of those writers – ‘you tell me what you want and I’ll write it for you’ types!
The main thing you need to remember when writing for young people is never to label them, never to condescend, never to think you know everything about them. The author should treat them like other human beings but a human being that has not had the experience you have had as an adult. I have also done a lot of theatre, acting and directing, and this helped me to learn what it is like to be someone else, and to remember what it was like to be young.
One of the advantages I have in writing for young people is that I was once an eleven-year-old boy! I have very strong memories of that time and, hopefully, I can tap into those experiences.
Books seem to have got scarier these days but young people, like everyone, have been attracted to the same types of stories – scary stories, family stories or adventure stories. Maybe when we were growing up, people were not publishing horror books but there were movies and comic books and we were getting those stories somehow. With the graphic novel, the words and pictures work together, you start with the story and then work from there. With most graphic novels, there is an illustrator and an author – there are some talented individuals who do both but the majority of graphic novels are written by two people.
If you’re a good writer, or you have a great idea for a story and you think you can’t draw very well, that’s fine – you write the story and find someone who will illustrate the story for you. Likewise, if you’re an excellent artist and you love to draw, design or paint but if you’re not very good with the story, find someone who is.
The graphic novel is one of the neatest types of art forms. It’s a very 21st century art form in that it completely encourages collaboration. I always emphasise that it’s the story that comes first. It makes sense because if you don’t have the story, how do you know what it’s going to look like, what will the characters look like? What’s the mood of the story? The mood will dictate the kind of colours you use. The story is core.
The graphic novel is not ‘dumbing down’. I can think of two stories to give as an example. Firstly, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman won awards for its cartoon book style that is based on his father’s memoirs from the Holocaust. In the story, the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats. It’s an incredibly powerful and beautiful book. The other book is Persepolis written by Marjane Satrapi about her coming of age in the Middle East. Again, it’s an adult and difficult story but she wrote it in very simple black and white illustrations, comic book style, and it is exceptionally powerful. These two books show the amazing power and depth that can come from a literary story shown through words and images.
I understand why people think graphic novels could dumb down. But I think of my experience as a child. I remember one in particular – A Midsummer Night’s Dream in comic book form and I was totally enthralled, I ate it with a spoon. It was an abridged version but I was hooked. The language was beautiful and hypnotic to me and while I didn’t understand all the words, when I saw the play, I could then go back to it and understand. But what the graphic novel gave was the anchor points – I knew who the main characters were, I knew the plot, I even knew some of the words.
The graphic novels of Shakespeare or other classics are versions, adaptations, just like a movie adaptation. Hopefully it will make you excited about the story and the characters and then lead you to the book itself.
I always think of the graphic novel as a stepping stone, a pathway to the world of literacy. Whenever I go into a bookstore with a graphic novels section, I’ll see young boys sitting on the floor reading a book and how often do you see that? It’s getting children reading. When it comes to literacy our goal is to help children equate pleasure with reading, that it’s not a boring task, and you can never take that away from the child and hopefully it will spur them onwards.
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and is published by Penguin. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, published by Vintage, was made into a film, and was nominated for an Oscar in 1998.