Okay here we go, right? Let's give this a shot!
So, my name is Scott Snyder and I am recording in my studio, and this is going to be the format that we try out for this newsletter, where you can read it or you can listen to it almost podcast-style. I’m gonna do this at least a couple times a week. I’ll answer your questions probably one of those two times, the other time I’ll do teaching tips, talk about books I've been reading, things that have caught my eye, my own work, whatever it is that you guys seem to respond to and want more of. But for the format, I figure this is the kind of way that I love to consume information from people that I look to all across the cultural landscape. I love newsletters, I love podcasts, so hopefully this will be the best of both worlds!
Okay, so the question I got asked more than almost any other when I said, “what do you guys want to know for me?” is: how do you come up with your ideas? And it's sort of the question that I think all writers dread, myself included, mostly because the process can be mysterious, I think, even to us. But I've given it a lot of thought over the years and I at least feel like I've wrapped my head around the process that works for me. Now, everything that I suggest, or not even suggest, but walk you through in terms of how I build a story, how I do a certain technique… everything I’m gonna talk about over the next year plus, like, through this format, please just take as a reflection of how I do it. It doesn't mean that's the right way, it doesn't mean there's a right and wrong, doesn't mean you should do it the way I do it. If your natural inclination is to try different methodology, whatever method works for you, you stick to that. Like I have a friend who if he knows the ending of the story—can't write it. I need to know the ending. So, same thing here when it comes to, kind of, how you come up with your idea.
So, for me, something will catch my eye or stick in my mind. And then what I do is I trying to figure out why that thing has kinda struck a nerve with me. So the first big step is unpacking why I keep thinking about this thing. So, for example, with something like Wytches, it was this car buried out in the woods by my parents—my parents had this cabin in Pennsylvania, and me and my friend when we were kids would wander out into the woods. I can’t believe our parents let us do this, but this was the ‘80s, y’know what I mean?
Back in the woods that, like, stretched for miles, and there was, like, hunting and all this stuff back there… but anyway, there was this car from the 1940s that was just burned and abandoned out in the middle of nowhere, and it turns out that there was this story behind it about how there was a bootlegging facility not far away and that there was a small runway, all this cool shit. But, at the time, it was just this car that was out in the middle of nowhere, and my friends and I would go there and hang out and, you know, it was this mystery about what had happened there. And so, over the years, it just stuck with me that nobody ever moved this car. Nobody ever, kind of, you know, got rid of it. Nothing happened to it. It was there for… 30 years later, it's still there. And so, I couldn't get it out of my head as to why these woods were just so untouched, and this thing was so untouched. And so, Wytches came from this belief, or this kind of haunting feeling, that some things are left alone and don't change out there, because they wait for you to come back to them.
And I remember the weird feeling as I was sort of coming up with Wytches of going back there with my own kid and finding the car really kind of untouched, same as it had been. So, the idea was, what if there are things out there that wait for you to come back—monsters that don't come to get you, but know, deep down, that the real monster is inside you, and that you’re gonna come to them out in the woods and return to the things that are totemic out there. To kinda offer up whatever it is that you are willing to sacrifice to get what you want.
And so, it kinda spun out of that. Again, like, I couldn't write it until I understood Wytches is about these things that hide in the woods, and don't come get you, but instead wait for you to come to them and never change. And they are deep, buried literally and figuratively out in the woods. And that's where everything else came from. Well, okay, so that's who they are, how does the physicality of them manifest itself? Well, they should be like twisted, kind of primordial versions of us, you know? Almost like these ugly, primitive kinds of much larger versions of humans, with two eyes on the same side of their heads so they can peek around trees, like all that stuff. But everything comes from that same understanding of what the whole story is about. That's where everything grows out of—that's the tree, okay?
Similarly, like, y’know, I get the question a lot, how do you write something for Batman, or one of these massive characters that has, like, seventy years of legacy. It's similar, honestly, over there. It’s the exact same process. So, it's almost like you have to be— you have to sort of forget the legacy of the character, and all the great stories you've read. Y’know, know them, honor them, respect them, but almost put them out of your head and say, “this is my character,” and I have to inhabit this character and build a story that's about the things that matter to me, and that I'm afraid of for my kids, or that I hope for my kids or for myself, or the things that terrify me in the middle the night and this character can make me be braver about.
So, all the same priorities from creator-owned are brought over to superheroes. And I'll tell you, like, that's really the only way to make an original story with a character that has such a library behind him or her. So, for example with Court of Owls, or even further than that back— I mean, Black Mirror is one I don't talk about as much, but when I got when I got the chance to write Black Mirror, I mean, I was terrified. Because Batman had always been my favorite character and I was brand-new. But that was what I approached it with. I thought to myself, okay, well, Dick Grayson is Batman. What if you're given your dream job? You’re Batman, just like he is for the first time. You feel totally ill-equipped, and yet you're excited because you really want to do good. But the second you step up to this challenge, everything starts to change around you and adapt itself to become the twisted mirror of your own fears. So, all the things you're worried are true about yourself or true about your inabilities to do a great job… all that stuff becomes manifested, physical. And it gave me this idea for Gotham being this black mirror, this twisted reflection. This kind of great antihero—or, more a villain than an antihero, but not just a terrible villain thing, but the best kind of villain that makes you stronger, because it represents or is an extension of your own worst fears about yourself or the world. A monster, y’know? The best kind of monster. So that's where Black Mirror came from, same thing.
So, the key, really—for me at least, especially approaching these, y’know, characters that are so intimidating you can’t even go near them without, I dunno, shaking, is you have to make it personal. You have to—you have to write from the heart. You have to write with your heart on your sleeve, and some kind of vulnerability, and write about things that matter to you. Because plots... I have tons of those, y’know what I mean? Like, that stick in my head, like, what if all the villains got Batman's money and it was called Level Up and it's like big video game thing where all of them were—had the resources and Bruce suddenly didn't have anything? I mean, that's fun, but until I unpack that and understand why that matters to me, and maybe it doesn't, maybe it’s just a cool thing—it won't have any life. It will just be one more story on the shelf that could be replicated, really, by anybody else in a better way.
So, the originality—the thing that makes it special and the thing that all the cool, nuanced, different, fun, original ideas will come out of, in my opinion, at least for me when I do it, when I write, is from the emotionality. From the truth at the heart of the thing, the thing that you're exploring that matters to you. So that's where The Court of Owls comes from. That's where their design comes from. That’s where The Batman Who Laughs comes from. It's always from writing from a place where you want this character to be brave in the face of something that terrifies you. Or, y’know, a story like Wytches where it has nothing to do necessarily with being brave so much as just exploring this thing in a dark and twisted way that sits with you, and you can't figure out why until you kind of really write through it.
So, I hope that makes sense. Really, it's… I think that the simplest way to put it was, like, when I bumped into Grant Morrison, when I was just starting on Batman, they gave me great advice and they said, “look, to write these characters right, anything really, you have to be Batman. You have to make up a birth and death for him, and it’s your version. And just understand this is your take. It's built out of the tissue and the fiber and the muscle of your imaginary world, y’know? It's the things that you wrestle with.” That's what this Batman is built out of. And it’s the same thing with creator-owned. So, be Batman. Go out there, make your best work. And again, let me know if this works for you. If it doesn't, we’ll figure something else out, ‘cuz I’m in this for the long haul. But I really appreciate you listening. I hope you'll subscribe, tell your friends to subscribe, and let’s have a lot of fun together!
S
Newsletter #3: Be Batman