: Re: Should I defend my character's appearance? I'm in talks with a publisher about my comic book. In it, the main character is a hunter who hunts monsters, but in a way inspired by how real hunters

@Annie587

Vote Up Vote Down

As I understand it, then: The editor has said that if you don't have your character wear a hoodie, he will not publish your comic book. You have tried to talk him out of this and he won't budge.

So you have three choices:

Give in to the editor's wishes despite your opinion that this hurts the story.
Find another publisher. This is not easy, and I'm guessing that if you had another publisher in the wings you wouildn't be asking this question.
Don't get published.

If you're a new writer, I'd think this is a no-brainer: Swallow your pride and give in. You want to get published, right? When you're a rich and famous writer, you can dictate to publishers, tell them that they will respect your artistic vision or you will take your work elsewhere. But you're not a rich and famous writer; you're a newbie trying to break into the market.

You could, of course, piously declare that you refuse to compromise your artistic vision and storm out of the office. Then you can sit home with your unpublished comics. No one but you and maybe a few friends will ever read them, and you'll never make any money from it, but you can proudly hold your head up and say that you were true to your art. Is that worth it?

I've had editors make changes to my stuff many times, or require me to make changes. I'm hard pressed to think of a time when I thought they improved my work. Sometimes I thought it was understandable, like insisting I shorten an article to fit a magazine's space requirements. Sometimes I found it annoying, like an editor who added a paragraph that I considered vague and worthless. I sucked it up. The work was still 90% mine, I got paid, and I got my words and ideas out there. I had one time that editorial changes butchered my work so badly that I said no, print the original or nothing, and the editor said forget it then and didn't print it.

And let's face it, the editor may be right and you may be wrong. Maybe it really will improve your work. In this case the change sounds goofy. Maybe your description is biased or maybe it really is goofy. Whatever.

(0)

Login to post a comment!