From May 16-19 2019, New York City's School of Visual Arts hosted the Queers & Comics Conference, a biennial LGBTQ cartoonist conference. The event was organized by Jennifer Camper and Justin Hall and provided a space for artists, writers and fans to discuss everything from publishing to story structure to social justice to different kinds of pens. Bay Area artist Elizabeth Beier attended the event and created visual notes of some of the panels.
In today's installment, Robert Kirby (mod), Nicole Georges, Steve MacIsaac, Lee Marrs, Hazel Newlevant, and Eric Orner discuss how they create a long-form story. Lee Marrs stressed the importance of knowing how long it takes one to do something. Robert Kirby shared: "I have to work in chapters, or nothing will get done." Eric Orner stresses picking the moments to build the book around, and the complexities about writing about a character who is aging. Hazel Newlevant says she started her project as single-story issues and it is now growing into something much larger. Steve MacIsaac says that rather than a script he works with story beats, to enable him to make up specifics based on what he's interested in at the time. Nicole Georges says to work on a long term project one must have faith that the book will be good in the end, and abstain from calculating one's hourly compensation.
