"Blankets" of Snow

I was going to use a source mentioned in my proposal, but after I met with my teacher Monica and I was embarrassingly unprepared, I was given “Blankets” by Craig Thompson to refer to when working on my project and I’ve found it much more helpful than the source I originally referred to. This story is beautifully and creatively structured, as is the story and dialogue. This graphic novel has been giving me ideas of how I should be approaching my novel.

Generally, when I am telling a story, my mind is the lens of a film camera and I am attempting to think of all of the interesting ways to show the action. Of course, though, this is not a film, it’s a graphic novel and I’m trying to break myself of my habit to layout my stories as a storyboards.

I generally err towards larger panels because, for aesthetic purposes, a cluttered page with about fifty panels and crammed dialogue bubbles just turns me off. I am taking note of this novel though. The layout of each page is varied, some with lots of panels, but it is never over-crowded.

Moments in the story with real weight demand a fair amount of attention, so I can’t just have each panel be the same size. It takes away from the importance of the moment, so I really need to figure out appropriate sizing for each panel.

There are a lot of moments in the story of this novel that demonstrate a valuable story-telling lesson: show, don’t always tell. There are many moments when nothing is said at all in the main character’s internal monologue, but simply shown in an image or in reaction shots. There is one particular section of the story that really sticks with me. The main character is leaving a girl that he has really fallen for. They have to separate after a visit and there is a page of the car he is in backing out of a parking lot and then just falling off the face of the earth. Translating that heartbreaking feeling into a single image is just so much more powerful than explaining it and giving it the space of an entire page adds to the impact of it.

 

This story has been helpful when helping think of how to approach my story in terms of not only the layout and my artistic decisions, but also the story and dialogue, creating a meaningful story that shows, and doesn’t just tell. This author has his own unique style, which is something that I hope to create and begin to lay the foundation for in this project.