Or at least my writing.
In the mid 1990s I worked for three years as an editor at Acclaim Comics. It was a fun job, and a frustrating job, and I loved it–I had been a comic book reader as a kid, my brother had been working as a letterer for over a decade, so I had some prior exposure to the world of comics. It all seemed to be fated… until Acclaim Comics’ parent company (which had, um, not been managed well) went under and took the comic company out as well. So I found myself unemployed, and took up La Vie Boheme Freelance. Since I had two young kids, this actually worked out pretty well.
One of the weekly routines I fell into was lunching with a bunch of friends who also worked in publishing/comics on Wednesdays at the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street (down the block from a good comic book shop, so that after lunch people could stroll down and pick up that week’s new comics). One of the Malibuvians (as we styled ourselves) was Keith DeCandido, who was then the editor for a line of Marvel Comics tie-in novels. And I was a freelancer, looking for work. When I said as much at lunch one day, Keith asked me who my favorite Marvel character was. “Daredevil,” I said without hesitation. Alas, he had a Daredevil novel in the pipes, but he promised to remember me for the next time Daredevil came up in the rotation. We finished our lunch. Life went on much as usual.
Until a couple of weeks later when he called me: the writer for his Daredevil novel had to drop out and how quickly could I get a detailed (like chapter-level, if not scene level) outline to him, and it had to be by the beginning of July (it was then mid-June). So I wrote a 30 page outline, detailed to the chapter and sometimes the scene level.
It was excruciating: I am, by nature, a semi-pantser: usually I write 20-40,000 words on a book and then I write an outline to tell me where I’m going to go from there. Sometimes the outline is as simple as four or five beats. Chapters? They’ll be in there somewhere. Scenes? Likewise. But Marvel wants what Marvel wants, and I wanted the gig. So I did it, turned it in. Keith called me back and said “Looks pretty good. I suspect they’re going to want this and this thrown in, but otherwise… start writing, and when the approval comes in I’ll tell you if there are any changes.
I started writing. I finished the book at the beginning of September, turned it in to Keith, and we got the approval of the outline two weeks later. Adjustments were made, Daredevil: The Cutting Edge was accepted, we all went along with our lives. That’s the cover featured above. (You will note there is neither a title for the book nor the author’s name… everyone was so in love with the art that they kind of forgot those essentials. Ah, well. My name made it to the spine.)
What did I learn from this? Well, I learned that I can write an 80,000 word book in two months. But what I really learned is something that still marks my writing.
Daredevil, if superhero comics or TV or movies are not your jam, is a character who is blind. Stan Lee took the old cliche about a blind person’s other senses improving to compensate for the deficit and put it on steroids. As a kid Matt Murdock was hit by a truck hauling chemical waste through Manhattan; the accident took his sight, but somehow the chemical muck with which he was spattered augmented his senses. So every time Matt (who becomes Daredevil) walks into a room he can hear and smell, and taste, and feel everything that is going on around him. He knows where an adversary is by listening for a heartbeat–but also for the disturbances of the air through which the adversary is moving. He can tell what someone had for breakfast by the scent of eggs and ketchup on the guy’s breath, or on his tie. He has learned to sift through all the input of his heightened senses to get information that he can use, not just to navigate the world as a blind man, but to kick ass as a superhero.
What this meant for me as a writer was that I had to put in the sensory cues when Matt walked into a room or Daredevil confronted a villain. So for the two months I was writing the book, every time I walked into a room, or went around a corner, if I smelled or heard something, I found myself trying to parse it. Not just “that’s a smelly alleyway” but “cat urine, damp earth, brick dust, ammonia cleaning products.” Not just “noisy room” but which voices were dominant, and what the other sounds–an elevator moving behind the walls, traffic noise wafting up from the street–were. Tastes. Textures. Proprioception (very important when you’re a blind superhero fighting with others in a variety of settings).
Writing this book required that I confront, in a sense, my privilege as a sighted, and sight-centered person. And I’ve carried the lessons I learned with me since then. Perhaps it’s particularly important to me because a lot of the writing I’ve done since Daredevil takes place in a different time and place from our own. There’s nothing like smell, for example, for creating a place that is then: every hired carriage Sarah Tolerance gets into has its own, usually unpleasant, galaxy of smells. So does every large group of people, particularly in a time and place when daily or weekly bathing was the exception rather than the rule. Working on the Daredevil book reminded me that everyone has, not only a unique look, but a unique smell. That a voice is not just a tone or a timbre, but is shaped by a variety of factors including the speaker’s health and upbringing. That the surface of skin is composed, not just of the skin itself, but of the substances–sweat, oil, cosmetics, medicines–that may be on the skin, and their scents.
As an exercise, try writing a scene where the descriptors are all about sound and touch and taste and smell (and proprioception, if that seems a useful tool). It will feel awkward at first, especially in terms of describing a character physically. If Daredevil confronts a guy who is unkempt, maybe getting over a hangover, and trying to avoid giving some information about something he’s witnessed, he won’t be able to say whether the guy is blond or brunette, but he can judge his height and weight, smell the sour taste of stale alcohol on his clothes and his breath, and hear the heightened heartbeat that suggests he’s lying.
Try it. It’s just one more useful tool in a writer’s box.
