Get inside her head. Get inside any character's head and ask what they want in this scene. And if you work from the perspective of what they want, there's not going to be any wrong answer. There's going to be some boring answers, but none of them are going to be wrong. As long as she has agency, then you're on the right track.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

Categorized in : Long Character Agency

If you're not interested in your work, you're not doing it right.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

not-interested ifs

Comics are reflective of what's going on in larger culture. Wonder Woman came to be in her position when women were first entering the workplace in numbers during the war. Then Wonder Woman had another rise in the '70s when Gloria Steinem latched on to her as an icon for the [feminist] movement. I think we're seeing another wave of feminism today, a fourth wave characterized by intersectionality and the internet. And I think it falls right in line that we would see another wave of superheroines coming to the fore.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

war fall thinking

There's a thing that creeps into this conversation ... that if you complain about the depiction of women [in comics], it becomes, 'Well, but ladies - the dudes are idealized too.' And the thing is that the dudes are idealized for strength and the women are idealized for sexual availability. It's very, very different. The women's costumes are cut in such a way that I could give a cervical exam to 90% of our heroines. And I don't have a medical degree! So if I can find it, that's impressive.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

availability cutting giving

I just did an arc with Warren Ellis - and no one else on the planet could get away with this, because I think this is like harassment? - But Warren felt like there was a depiction of Spider-Woman where it looked like her waist perhaps didn't contain any internal organs. And he suggested very quietly ... 'You should fix that, or else I will come to your house and nail your feet to the floor and set your house on fire.' ... And it totally got fixed!

Kelly Sue DeConnick

fire feet thinking

Seriously, just buy the [expletive deleted] book. I promise you'll like it. Unless you're [expletive deleted].

Kelly Sue DeConnick

i-promise book promise

When I'm looking for a strong female character, or a strong character at all, I'm looking for a character that has a purpose in that story, that has an interior life of some sort. They don't have to be physically strong; they don't have to be morally strong or ethically strong, because men and women come in a huge variety of all of those things. Emotionally, ethically - I'm less concerned with that. I just don't want them to be props. That's the only thing that offends me.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

strong character men

There's a difference between feeling like I don't need to explain and deliberately confusing you. If the impression is that I'm deliberately confusing you, that is not what I am trying to do at all.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

confusing differences feelings

The dirty little secret about comics is that the wall to getting published is actually not that high. You can publish your own comic. You can have your comic printed by the same people that print Marvel and DC and Image's comics for, I think, it's about $2,000 for a print run. So you can Kickstart it and get your own comic made. It depends on what is considered success to you. So if you need to be published by the Big Two to feel that you've made it, well, you should start working very hard.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

wall running book

You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

writing trying people

I was asked in an interview once: You're writing another book with a female lead? Aren't you afraid you're going to be pigeonholed? And I thought, I write a team superhero book, an uplifting solo hero book, I write a horror-western, and I write a ghost story. What am I gonna be pigeonholed as? Has a man in the history of men ever been asked if he was going to be pigeonholed because he wrote two consecutive books with male leads?

Kelly Sue DeConnick

team uplifting hero

One of the things about comics is people can linger on images and words as long as they want.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

want long people

I guess I am conscious of my weaknesses, and I think pacing is probably my biggest. I don't know if I think the clarity thing is actually a weakness. It was a stylistic choice.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

weakness choices thinking

My husband makes fun of me, because I know I can use strong prose to jazz-hand my way through plot that isn't as interesting as I'd like it to be.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

husband strong fun

I think I'm very strong at dialogue, I think I'm very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

strong character thinking

I wish I could say confidently that pacing remains my weak point, if you could talk about your own stuff without sounding like you're self-obsessed. But I think you kind of have to be.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

self wish thinking

Having my brain doing different work is helping me a lot in terms of retro-feeding from the other experiences. It makes me feel inspired, looking forward to the projects and wanting to work harder.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

hard-work different brain

My creator owned books sell better than my mainstream books. And that makes no sense.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

mainstream creator book

I don't think we're supposed to say [expletive deleted] anymore.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

expletives thinking

What I worry about is working in this serial medium, where people are talking about your stories before they're done, we have this instant feedback loop now. I'm very active on Tumblr and I have a very active engagement with readers and I love it, but I don't want to start writing to try to please someone else. I don't want my meter to get skewed.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

writing talking people

The reader is not the customer. The retailer is the customer. So I try to have as much interaction with the retailers as possible because those are my customers.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

comic trying book