An open letter to Jeph Jacques
I've decided that I am going to start writing my posts (or at least some of them) as open letters. So while this is currently the only one of these I have posted, that is because I am just now starting to do these, and the format is not specific to this particular content
To: Jeph Jacques, creator of Questionable Content
I realize that I don't know you, and that, consequently, we don't have the sort of relationship that would warrant me giving you unsolicited advice on the creative direction of your very successful webcomic. However, in spite of this fact, I feel compelled to give you some unsolicited advice on the creative direction of your webcomic.
I think it would be very good if things started happening in QC. Now, now, I know what you're thinking: Things do happen in your webcomic. Fair enough. But I am talking about the introduction of some substantive plot-arc type events.
I am far from an expert about storytelling generally or in the comic medium specifically, but I can report my own reactions and experiences regarding your webcomic, and overwhelming, it feels like nothing is going on. Ideally, I think, what needs to happen is something that shakes things up. Like the time when Marten started dating Dora and Faye started seeing a shrink. That was good. That was something happening. It was good because we had been in this holding pattern of Marten crushing on Faye for a long time, and suddenly finally, something was happening.
I have forgotten where I heard this analogy originally: imagine the characters as standing on a platform that is precariously balanced on a single point (like a see-saw, but where it can rock in any direction). What makes for compelling narrative is for something to shake that platform, so that everyone has to scramble around trying to restore balance. With compelling characters, it is interesting not just to see how they scramble, but also how things have changed when the balance is restored. But the key is that they can't just chill out on the platform the whole time. We want to watch them react to something upsetting their balance.
This has probably gone on a bit too long, and I don't mean to be overharsh, but it's just, I really want something big to happen soon, because I like Questionable Content, and am starting to lose interest in following the story.
Sincerely,
Lewis Powell
two comments:
While events do occur, I think part of the problem is that Jacques will leave one plot-thread off to the side and deal with two, three, or four other short events before returning to it.
For example: Around sixty strips back, we see Hannelore deciding to join Marten’s rock band. We have half a dozen strips dealing with that – then we see “Sven and Faye’s Night Out,” which runs less than a dozen strips, then we get to see Steve following up on his encounter with morgue girl, which runs only four strips, then a half-dozen strips which mainly just feature the characters discussing the recent events, or simply random comedy.
Then back to the Steve and Meena show for another seven strips, three strips of Faye bantering with her stalker, a couple one-shot strips, then we are finally back to four strips with the band before we get derailed by the current storyline with Hannelore’s mom.
So. It isn’t that nothing happens – it is just that the strip has a mild case of Robert Jordan syndrome, with plot threads running for every character resulting in the story as a whole proceeding very, very slowly.
Now, to be fair, the strip set people’s standards pretty high when it had the guts to have Marten and Dora get together. So part of the reason all the little storylines feel so uneventful is that we’ve seen some big changes before, and come to expect that – but not every storyline is supposed to fundamentally alter the underlying nature of a strip.
So I don’t think it is entirely accurate to say that nothing is happening – it is just that a lot of the events don’t have any real long term effects, and the ones that do are primarily happening to side characters (such as Hannelore joining the band or Steve finding a new girl) or are very, very subtle (such as Faye’s interaction with Sven.)
It also unfortunately means that it is much slower waiting for the interesting storylines to come around. I know the latest arc has been frustrating for myself, largely because I hate the randomly stereotypical stupidity of Hannelore’s mom, and dealing with nothing but that for several weeks drops my interest in the comic as a whole.
I don’t think there is any easy answer – with a cast as large as QC’s, and devoted fans of each of them, you aren’t going to please all the fans all the time. But it does feel like things have started to grow a bit too cumbersome, and that the more new characters are introduced – and the more they demand their own screentime – the worse that sensation will get.
Myth (Email) (URL) - 06 07 07 - 15:45
Yeah, this Hannelore’s mom thing is really bothering me, both because it is distracting from more interesting plotlines and because she (Hannelore’s mom) has no depth.
I agree that not every storyline has to fundamentally alter the nature of the strip or what have you, but at the same time, by about the second time Faye’s stalker guy came by the store, I got the point. It’s a routine, he likes it, he’s wearing her down, or at least, her reactions are shifting somehow. But some of that could be conveyed by having one character mention to Faye as one line in one strip, that she seems to be warming up to him, or what have you.
And while I’m on Faye: I really liked the strips that were showing us her relationship with her shrink. It may well have been months ago that we last heard about that, but it was really one of the more interesting things to see, and I don’t know why we haven’t been seeing any more of it.
I don’t think it is necessarily a cast size issue, as much as it is that, currently, Jeph gives us a spotlight focusing on each individual storyline when he writes a strip, and for the most part, an individual strip is only about the story line of one or maybe two characters. If the plots were all progressing simultaneously, it would, I think, feel like a faster paced comic.
The plot pacing issue reminds me a lot of what Veronica Mars (the tv show) did well, especially in its first season: There were one or two season long plot arcs, a handful of medium sized arcs (spanning a handful or more of episodes), and then every episode had at least one episode-length plot arc. This meant that every episode was progressing several plot lines, rather than a setup where nothing is happening in such-and-such an arc for five episodes, and then, all the sudden, major progress on that plot.
Anyway, I’ll have to think more about your take on why there are pacing concerns.
Lewis Powell (Email) (URL) - 06 07 07 - 20:15
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