Note from Janna: James Powell is a comics editor, writing coach, and the author of the House of Fear series from Dark Horse. He works with fiction writers across both prose and comics, and he’s run nine Kickstarter campaigns — which is part of why we’re talking now. He has a new one launching for a book you might want on your shelf: Self-Editing for Comic Book Writers.
In this conversation we talk about why it’s a problem when your hero gets what they want too easily, why kid characters so often lack agency, and a few concrete exercises James gives writers to find the heart of their story. We also talk about why a good editor is closer to a coach than a copyeditor. Click below to view our full conversation on YouTube, or read the (edited) transcript below.
I want to start by going way back. We know each other fairly well by now, but I’ve never heard you tell the story of how you got into writing stories in the first place. I assume you liked to read as a kid — but is that right? Tell me the rest.
So I pretty much read nonstop as a kid. I read comics, I read prose. One of my earliest memories is a Scholastic book fair in sixth grade. I had a couple of bucks, and I bought an Edgar Rice Burroughs book and a Stephen King. I devoured them in a weekend, and I was off to the races.
And then that same year, I wrote a story for class, and a teacher told me it read like a screenplay for a movie. There was just something about her praise in that moment — I was really into this story I’d written — and ever since, I’ve wanted to write all the time. Or read, obviously.
I’m amazed you were getting Stephen King at a Scholastic book fair. I don’t think they’d do that anymore.
Probably not. It was Carrie, the first Stephen King book, and there were some intense scenes in there. I remember my sister even telling me, “You shouldn’t be reading this.”
Which made me want to read it more, right? That’s how that works.
Times have really changed. So did you write continuously from then on, or did you go through a period where you stopped and then found that joy again?
In high school I was more of an artist; I focused on art more. In college I took some journalism classes and started shifting toward writing. My first job was actually in college: I wrote the obituaries for the city newspaper.
So I drifted in and out of fiction. I pitched agents and publishers like everybody did. I published a few short stories, back in the day when magazines were still a thing. But through it all, I found myself editing friends and peers a lot, which kept my foot in that world. Even when I was working in newspapers, or doing tech writing for HP, I always had my foot in the fiction realm too, even if that just meant writers’ groups and editing friends.
Then six or seven years ago I finally said, I’ve got to do this for a living. I don’t necessarily make money from writing anymore — instead I edit fiction and comics. So I finally broke through, just not in the way I pictured as a kid.
I’m curious how you started developing an understanding of story in an analytical way, as an editor. A lot of us who work in the book field are bookworms — that’s very true of me, I was a complete book nerd as a kid. So I loved stories, but it took me a long time to shift my brain from just being immersed and enjoying it, to asking, “How is this working on a practical level?”
When did that shift happen for you?
It happened early, but I don’t know if I noticed. I remember someone in a writer’s group in college told me my feedback was really helpful, and I started noticing that I recognize patterns. Not in a game sense — I’m actually terrible at pattern recognition when it comes to a game or a puzzle. But for some reason I can watch a movie and think, “This is going to pay off later, because this happened at the 20% mark.”
Or I can instantly start to tell why I’m disengaging from a movie — a lack of conflict, or not understanding the core goal for the character.
I’m not sure I ever really pinpointed what makes me good at editing until a couple of years ago. It’s funny, my wife sometimes gets frustrated with me because I’ll ruin a movie for her. Not by telling her how it ends, but because even if I’m trying to turn my brain off, the editor is always there. It’s hard for me not to vocalize something that’s off. I try to bite my tongue, but I can’t always do it.
So there’s something — I don’t know if it’s analytical or logic or pattern recognition — but from an early age I just started recognizing what makes a good story and what doesn’t. And don’t get me wrong, I understand that with art it’s opinion. But to some degree there are a lot of common elements that go into good storytelling, and some things are kind of obvious when they’re missing. For some reason I’m just good at picking those things up.
Let’s get into it. I’m excited to get into the nitty-gritty. What are the top three things you see repeatedly that are “off” in writers’ stories?
That’s a bit of a challenge, because a lot of the things I find are woven together, so it’s hard to pull out just a few.
But the heart of a story is a character. There’s a goal, and then you introduce obstacles. That’s just how a story develops — a character moves toward a goal, and there’s something in the way.
One of the things I see most often is how easy it is for the protagonist to get what they want. A lot of writers — especially in comics, but honestly in prose too — throw obstacles at the hero. There’s action, there are fights, there’s mystery. But the hero gets what they want every time. They may have to work for it, but at the end of the scene: I got the information, I won the thing, I got the gem, now I can add it to this other relic and open the temple.
A lot of writers have the plot points, they just miss the fact that it has to get more and more challenging for the hero. There have to be setbacks, there have to be mistakes.
I know you work with a lot of kids’ authors and kids’ comic writers, and for them, the most common issue I’ve noticed is a lack of agency in the kids.
One thing I noticed when my son was in elementary school was just how little power he had. His teachers told him what to do, the librarians, mom and dad, coaches — to some degree he had no authority over anything. And I think kids gravitate — adults too, but especially kids — to characters who are bigger than them, bigger than life, whose actions and decisions directly impact their daily life.
With a lot of the first drafts I edit, sometimes the teachers step in and solve something too easily, or the parents do. Or the action simply isn’t big enough that the kids are directly responsible for what happens next.
Ultimately, if I could share one thing with kids’ authors, it would be this: give your characters more agency.
I actually see that as well, so I’d corroborate what you’ve just said.
Yeah, because especially with kids’ books, they’re more fantastical. They’re bigger. These characters are solving some crime — it’s an eight-year-old solving a mystery in the neighborhood. In reality that’s completely unlikely, but for kids, that’s what they want to read. They want to see kids solving something that directly impacts their school or their neighbors.
And in a lot of drafts, that’s there, but it’s kind of hidden — suddenly a mom or dad steps in and solves something at the halfway point, and that removes the agency from the character.
Another problem I see sometimes, which is maybe interwoven with what we’ve just been talking about, is where the plot seems like it’s there, but I don’t emotionally connect with the character. How do you help authors with that?
I try to get writers to put themselves in their character’s shoes — figure out what the character wants, what’s motivating them. Ultimately you want your readers to relate to the character.
Like in the Bone series: I’ve never been cast out because my cousin ruined the election, I’ve never been on a quest to save a village. But I can still relate, because I understand what it’s like to have a loved one do something underhanded, or who’s always getting us in trouble. I can relate to that.
So ultimately you look beyond the plot and start trying to figure out who this character is. And this might sound counterintuitive, but I see a lot of writers trying too hard. They sit with these characters and think and jot down notes, and it’s really simpler than that. It’s just figuring out how you, as the writer, can relate to their situation — and then signaling that to readers, so the character draws them in.
Everybody’s dealt with parents who don’t understand, or too-strict teachers. If you can draw that out and have that relatability, the readers will connect with that character a little bit more.
There’s a paradox I find sometimes in really good stories, where the more specific the story is, the more universal it feels. I’m thinking of a specific story right now that I’ve been working on with a client that I really love. It’s set in a different country, in a very different environment — something I know nothing about. And yet the emotional undercurrent is so powerful that it completely feels true to me. Even though it’s so different, it feels like it’s speaking directly to me and my personal experience.
I love that. To some degree that’s lightning in a bottle, because even some of my favorite movies and books don’t quite hit you on that emotional level. And that’s probably why you’re lighting up when you talk about it — because it’s like, this does something for me, this was written just for me. When in reality, the millions of people who read that book are feeling the exact same way.
Are there certain frameworks or exercises you give authors to help them improve?
There are two things I do, and I’ll be honest — some writers push back. They’re like, “You’re crazy, I’m not going to do that, that’s dumb.”
The first one: when you’re trying to get to know your character, instead of writing those character sheets — how tall are they, what do they eat, all of that — which is fine, but that’s the logical brain talking — give yourself thirty minutes. Get into an almost meditative state. It sounds a little weird, but imagine yourself interviewing that character. Figure out where the character goes — maybe it’s a kid at a park, or a bench where she likes to read. Go sit with your character and start asking questions like you’re a reporter.
It sounds silly, but within a couple of minutes, this person starts to talk to you, and you start to get insight you hadn’t planned with your logical brain. That character might share something that happened to them before the story started that you weren’t even ready to recognize. Just go with it and see where the character takes you.
What happens is you start to see the character as a real person, and you start to see how you relate to them, and then you can write those scenes with more clarity. Hopefully it gets to the point you were just talking about — where you see yourself in the character, even though it’s set in another world.
The other thing I suggest is to figure out why you’re writing this book. For some reason, some writers just don’t want to think about why. But — I hate to say “the moral of the story” — if you can sit with yourself and figure out the themes that are really powerful to you as a writer, as a creator, just as a human, knowing that helps you go back and weave in certain elements of that theme, or develop certain scenes a certain way.
It’s hard to point to, but knowing why you’re doing this and what your ultimate goal is — and I’m not talking about selling a million copies, I’m talking about connecting with your audience, the themes you’re trying to convey, the relatability — if you know where your heart is, that somehow makes everything easier. Especially when you’re rewriting and editing yourself, you can find ways to bring that to the surface.
That totally makes sense to me.
It takes it from a surface-level story — where you have all the plot points, all the beats, and that stuff can all be there but not resonate — to something more. There’s something about understanding what you’re trying to say about the world through your story that’s absent until you recognize it and can weave it through. And that’s a hard question to sit with, which is probably why I get some pushback. But it is worth it.
Does that exercise help when you have a story with a little too much of “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened”? Do you know that problem, where it’s basically just a series of things happening?
Yes. That’s probably a third thing I suggest. Finding your why helps with — cringe-wordy again — “the moral of the story.” But for that specific problem, you might have all these plot points, but that doesn’t create an organic story. It almost feels episodic.
For that, I always go back to what I think was Pixar’s rules of storytelling. They have the “because of that” storyline. It’s basically: one day this happened, and because of that, this happened, and because of that, this happened. You can easily find it online. It’s a super simple exercise, but that “because of that” element ensures each scene is connected to the next one.
And whatever happens at the end of a scene — if it’s forgotten in the next one, then that first scene could just be cut. You don’t want a story where you could cut pages and pages of it.
Something from this scene has to lead into the next one. It’s simple, but that plot-point-after-plot-point really helps you see your story come to life.
Usually you do it as you’re developing your story — in the early stages of a synopsis, for example — but you can also do it after you’ve developed the story, to make sure these points are happening because of the previous one. If you ever spot a scene that doesn’t lead into the next one, you rewrite it or pull it all together.
Part of why I ask is that within the world of middle-grade graphic novels — which is probably where I spend seventy-five percent of my time as an agent — there’s a lot of slice-of-life and memoir-based stories. A lot of authors are taking their own childhood and shaping it into a story, and I find it can be very hard, when it’s really based on your own life, to see a discrete story arc, or to form it into a story arc.
That adds a couple of different wrinkles, right? Because you’re a little closer to the story. You’re trying not to fictionalize it too much, because you might feel like certain things have to be true, without enhancing them in any way.
But I think the same as what I talked about earlier could be true. It might not be quite as obvious as a mystery story, where there are clues that take you to the next plot point. It would be more that the impact of a certain scene flows into the next one on an emotional level, as opposed to the plot points of a set of mysteries.
The question you asked earlier — why are you writing this book — seems like it would be extremely important in this particular case.
Absolutely. Someone writing something autobiographical, or even a fictional account of something that was true, would want to weave that in and start planting the seed early, to show their own character growth.
You plant the seed here: this is where I learned this, this is the first time I tried to accept it. I’m making this up as I go, obviously, but if you can start to see those narrative links, you can enhance each of those scenes.
Now, that doesn’t mean each scene needs to connect to those themes — because then the next thing you know, you feel like you’re beating the reader over the head. “Hey, everybody, here’s the theme I’m trying to tell you.” You don’t want to do that either; it’s more subtle than that.
But understanding your why would help for anything more autobiographical, for sure.
Tell me a little about the Kickstarter you’re doing right now.
All right — let me back up. I was working in corporate America as a writer-slash-editor for years, and I finally quit my job to edit fiction and comics full time. Over time — like I mentioned, I recognize patterns — I started recognizing the same problems creeping up in these stories.
I started making notes. I did a seminar or two to share some of that knowledge. But then I decided it was time to just write it all down and share it with as many people as I can.
I got the proof copy of the book, Self-Editing for Comic Book Writers, a couple of days ago. It’s funny — I spent about 14 hours reading it word for word, making sure it was proofread. I’ve read it 40 times now, and I’m at the point where I kind of don’t want to read it ever again. I want everybody else to read it.
One of the things I’ve realized about myself is that I don’t want to teach people how to write. I want to teach them to recognize their own weaknesses, their blind spots — to recognize how to improve what they’ve already written.
So half the book is about the common storytelling problems I’ve seen and how to fix them, and the other half walks writers through the editorial process, so they can see the steps you have to take to edit your own work.
I’ve encountered a lot of writers who — I hate to say it — come to me and say, “I just wrote it and printed it.” They read it once, or they let a friend read it, and that was all they needed. That’s why some of the independent, self-published comics aren’t as good as they could be.
A lot of writers who Kickstart books are super excited about their idea, they share it with the world, but they don’t get a lot of positive feedback. This book is hoping to elevate everything and help you get the feedback you want — the word of mouth, all of that.
Can you give a specific anecdote — anonymized a bit — of a story that came to you in a certain state, and you helped get it to a very different state?
Some writers come to me almost looking for someone to just say, “This is great, use the character’s name.” But I had one creator who was willing to put in the work — it took her years of editing and rewriting and revising. I pointed out some of the things we’ve already discussed, like making it too easy on the character, or the lack of agency. Her ideas, the world-building, the character, the action — it was already there. I was just able to point out some of the things keeping it from being a great story.
And she worked at it. She worked at it, and it was published earlier this year. She put in crazy amounts of effort. She didn’t want to self-publish, so she kept at it and kept at it.
The fact that you said it took her years — I’m glad you said that, because I don’t blink an eye at that at all. That’s actually par for the course, I’d say.
Yeah. You’ve seen it from both sides of the table, right?
Yeah. So people who expect, you know, “I’m going to write my first draft and be ready to publish next month” — I mean, you can do that technically, but it’s rarely going to be as polished and impactful as it could be.
One other thing I wanted to touch on: within traditional publishing, I feel like editors don’t have the ability to edit very much anymore, just because everybody’s doing the work of five different jobs. Editors at publishers these days are almost more project managers than they are editors. That’s too bad! To me, editors are the unsung heroes of the industry — a good editor can do amazing things to your work.
I think a lot of writers don’t really understand the role of the editor — that’s part of it. And I think we’re in the age of instant gratification. If you’re going to make yourself a recognizable name, you need to publish, and you need to publish fast and often. So it’s a challenge to sit back and recognize all the work you have to put in.
Honestly, whenever I hear someone say what you just said — that editors are more project managers now — it breaks my heart a little. I mean, I’m an editor, so that’s part of it. But I just know how valuable they are, not only in improving the manuscript, but in helping writers with their next manuscript. You learn with this one, and your next one’s going to be better, and the one after that better still.
It’s fairly common knowledge that if you write a book, your next one’s going to be better just because you’ve gone through the process. But that only takes you so far. Having someone to guide you and show you the things you’re not seeing — how to make your characters come to life, how to make your world-building stronger — that’s not something you’re going to see just because you wrote a second book. Someone needs to point it out.
And beta readers — I love beta readers, but they’re probably your friends and family, and they’re not going to critique you in a way that’s valuable as a learning tool. That’s where a good editor comes in.
It just occurred to me that it would be kind of like trying to be an athlete with no coach at all.
Yeah, that’s true. You can have innate ability, but that’s only going to take you so far without someone to guide you.
Right. And the coach can do so much to help you.
It’s just kind of the way our world is structured right now, but it’s too bad, because I don’t think a single bad idea has crossed my desk. That’s not how it works. If you’re going to write a comic or a novel, you usually have good ideas, you have good characters, you have a couple of good plot points, the ending is there.
It just doesn’t come together into a complete story, or something that’s truly engaging.
When I go to a convention and buy some independent comics, or when books come across my desk, I’m assuming you’re similar — where you think, this is so close, I just wish this person had spent a little more time, or had someone help develop it with them. I wish everybody had an editor to work with them and help guide them.
Well, now they can buy your book as a first step.
I’ve given this book to friends and strangers. You mentioned earlier that the book you were describing was written for you — I’ve had three people send me emails with almost that exact quote, and they don’t know each other. Each of them said, “It’s almost as if you wrote this book for me.”
That lights me up, because it tells me something in there triggered something for them to recognize in their own storytelling.
And that’s the whole point of the book. It’s two hundred pages, and there are hundreds of tips in there, and they all weave together. Even if you found ten things — or four things — in here that helped elevate your work in the way they’re all connected, I really do think this will help a lot of writers. I’m not trying to hype my book up — or maybe I am, I don’t know.
You should be! That’s my job too, to help you hype your book.
It’s funny. Like we said about the athlete a second ago with innate ability — this stuff comes so naturally to me that it almost feels like what I share isn’t valuable. Does that make sense?
It does make sense to me. When you’re really good at something, you feel like it doesn’t have value. I completely get it — I sometimes have the same problem. But that’s such a mistaken way to see things.
I picture you as having all this knowledge from experience and from your interests, and I can almost see you being similar — like, “Well, everybody knows this.” Because you know it so well, and the people you talk to on a regular basis know it really well.
But then you share it with others, and they say, “I never knew this,” and you’re like, “That’s interesting.” Not everybody has the same experience you do.
I think I’m going to learn from your book. I’ve been an editor, and as an agent I do some editing, but I don’t consider that my genius zone. I’m always eager to learn — that’s part of why I asked whether you had a light-bulb moment. But it seems like for you it was kind of innate. I have to ask, though: did you ever have a coach-type person in your life who helped you become a better writer or editor?
My instinct is to say no, because I’ve never had one single person who came to me as a coach. But I’ve been lucky enough to have plenty of editors back me and show me how to edit others and how to write for myself.
Now that you mention it, I’ve probably had ten or twelve different coaches, even though that wasn’t their role.
I’d edit an article for a newspaper and turn it in, and an editor would point out, “Hey, I noticed you edited this — another way to do it would be this.” So I’ve had guides as far as editing goes, but also guides with my own writing. And like you, I’m on both sides. You understand what it’s like to be the creator, and what it’s like to be the businessperson. I’m on both sides too, so I think that’s another thing I bring to the table.
I understand how hard it is to be edited by someone. You put your heart into this for months, if not years, and then suddenly some stranger comes in and redlines everything. I just edited a novel with over two thousand comments, and I had to cushion that a little bit — “Hey, trust me, we’re on the same team here.”
I think part of that is understanding it almost like a doctor’s bedside manner. I understand how hard it is to be edited, so I go into it as a learning tool and try to guide writers, rather than just coming in and saying, “Here are all the things you need to fix.”
So true. People talk about the critique sandwich. This is reminding me of a conversation I had with a very well-known graphic novelist, who was talking about how, even when he’s edited, he still needs a little pat on the back. He needs them to say, “Great work, we made so much progress — and now here’s everything we need to work on.” It’s hard work, and we need encouragement almost as much as we need the tips on how to improve.
That’s interesting that you say that, because one of the hard things — for writers, and maybe all creators — is that you can read your script today and think, “This is Eisner-worthy, I’m going to blow up, everyone’s going to love me.”
And then you read that same scene the next day and think, “I’m a hack, I should take up knitting.”
We’re taught to see our weaknesses, which is great; you can learn from that. But one of the things I try to do as an editor, and in this book, is to make you aware of the things you’re good at. If you’re really good at dialogue, maybe you lean into that and have a dialogue-heavy script or novel. I remember growing up reading — I think it was Elmore Leonard — and his books were almost all dialogue.
So figure out who you are as a writer. Understand your why, going back to that, but also your strengths and weaknesses. Once you start to see your weaknesses, they’re no longer blind spots — you can overcome them.
But also embrace the fact that, hey, I’m really good at this. I’m really good at visual storytelling — that’s why I chose comics — and I’m going to have pages and pages with no dialogue, if that’s your thing.
One of the things I always go back to: you can read all the books, you can work with editors, you can take all the seminars, but ultimately a story works or it doesn’t. There’s no roadmap, there’s no recipe.
So figure out what you like to do, what you’re good at, and let that shine through.
That’s a great note to wrap things up on. I do want to ask, though — how should people connect with you? How can they support the book on Kickstarter? Tell me the details.
My website is JamesPowellEditing.com. I’m also on Substack — I have a weekly email called The Fiction Coach, where my goal is to pinpoint common problems I see in manuscripts, both for novelists and comic writers. Those are the easiest ways to get a hold of me. And I have a Kickstarter starting July 28th that runs through August 22nd, for the book. Subscribe or reach out, or shoot me an email through JamesPowellEditing.com.
So on Kickstarter, is the title of the book Self-Editing for Comics?
Yes, Self-Editing for Comic Book Writers.
I know it’s not a very catchy name, it’s not very fun, but ultimately I wanted a title that told you exactly what you get. And as far as marketing, I heard that’s probably good for SEO. I’m not good at marketing, but you are.
Haha! I think being straightforward and clear is always a good way to go. All right, James — it was so great talking to you. Thank you for taking the time.
Thanks for having me. This was fun.
Connect with James Powell
Follow James’s work: JamesPowellEditing.com
Read his newsletter: The Fiction Coach on Substack
Back the Kickstarter: Self-Editing for Comic Book Writers (live July 28–August 22).
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