Writing 101

TV drama must stop relying on irony and costumes, says Jimmy McGovern

McGovern, whose gritty new series Accused runs on BBC1 from Monday next week, argues that there is no point in cautious storytelling. “Why have a BBC complaints unit in the first place? They tell me, ‘Jimmy, it is in case you offend anybody,’ and I say, ‘I am a writer. That is my job.’

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Jimmy McGovern created Cracker.

Math Is Not Everything

What I Learned in Comics: Rethinking Conventions

But as I stood in NYCC crunching the numbers in my head I thought, “What if I DIDN’T blow $500 to $1000 doing a convention and selling books? What if I put that money into my website?”

Let’s face it factory fans, if you’re going to build a webcomic, you have to promote and a comic book convention is a place to do that. But before you blow your wad on a fun-filled weekend of meeting fans, imagine what you can do with that money if you just spent it on Banner ads.

Hell, Project Wonderful ads are usually so cheap, I could buy an ad on the most popular webcomic out there, Questionable Content, for $150 a day for the top banner. That’s three to six days at the top. If I buy the side ad on the right, currently at $3, I could buy it for the year! QC gets hits in the 150K to 350K range. I’d only need 1/100th of the fans to get FIVE TIMES the amount of exposure I’d get a convention.

This is very, very interesting.

Math is very compelling. But math doesn’t take into account human variables.

What if you’re at a convention and some TV producer sashays by, sees your stuff, listens to you talk, gets inspired, buys some of it, and then later wants to do a deal?

How do you figure any of that serendipity and unpredictability into inflexible math?

He has a webomic, so yes, pimping it on the Net makes a lot of sense. But we’re In Here. All those people who do things Out There are, well, out there.