::mslexia author method::

The Simmonds Method
From Interview no. 37

• Drawing gives you an extra voice to work with: watch the choices that you make regarding where you let the drawing tell the story.

• Let the drawing do what the narrative would do: draw the weather. emotions, etc. In a novel you’d write, ‘X was a tall man with a moustache and a large overcoat.’ You don’t even have to say that; you just draw it and there he is, a tall man with a moustache and a large overcoat.

• Get the details right. Keep asking yourself questions: Do they live in a house that has a coffee pot like that? Are the cushions just so? Is there a cat? Does this person go to the hairdresser a lot? Then it should show. Do they not? Then that should show. Do they take their earrings off when they answer the phone? You can build up the character without having to say anything about them, just by showing details, like their handbag or how they talk on the phone or whatever.

• Get the details right by visualising. Keep a casting couch in mind, draw the person over and over again and think as you draw: ‘Lose the spectacles, but keep the jumper...Change the shoes, keep the watch.’

• Work at it until there’s a moment of recognition where you think ‘I know who you are! I know what’s on your bedside table!’

• Draw the bedside table: Is there an alarm clock? Is there a glass of water? Do they take sleeping pills?

• Sometimes your characters may react against some characteristic you’ve given them; let them direct you to a better change.

• Walk everywhere; you see an awful lot. Play observational games with yourself.

• Do storyboards even if they are minimal ones. Sketch out scenes – what does this episode have to say? Where do we have to end up? In a novel you can take three pages to explain or show something; drawing, everything gets condensed.

'What is underneath it that's driving your desire to write it down?'