Short Stories

Winging It Without Wings

There’s a lot of gag-a-day stuff to write about the retail world, but what really makes it fun are the personalities. Once created, a character can write themselves and bring a lot of positive energy to the table.

I like writing little stories about the crew. Some stories are inspired by actual events and I just take them in slightly different direction. Usually, I have no idea where I’m going with it all when I start a story. I’m comforted by the fact that many of my favorite novelists write a story the same way. They wing it.

But we’re talking about a comic strip, here, not Hemingway.

No, no, Hemingway had the ability to revise his story before publication. My little tales get published one segment at a time and there’s no going back. So for those keeping track, I’m comparing a comic strip to stories by Charles Dickens.

Writing this way allows both the reader and the writer to really wonder what’s going to happen next. Who knows, it might actually be something good.

Sometimes I have a scenario or punchline that takes a couple of strips to journey towards. “Penny gets promoted because she fell into a cave” was an idea that took quite a few strips to accomplish and the challenge was to make that interesting. You can’t spend two weeks in a cave or people will lose interest. In fact, “you can’t spend two weeks in a cave” is my advise to all aspiring writers.

So here are a couple of short stories. They’re short in that they only took a week and are in no danger of being lifted for a prime time animated special.

Inspired by true events. I didn’t buy produce for about a month. When explaining constipation to your doctor, be sure to mention the birds.

Scarecrows could be hired for all of those that find the job of store greeter to be too challenging.

Any excuse to pay homage to The Raven is wonderful. I remember worrying that people who’ve never heard of Edgar Allen Poe would be confused, but it winds up that many comic strip readers are very familiar with Poe. One reader was going to a Poe Festival on the day she read this strip. Amazing.

This was so fun to draw that I stopped worrying about people who may not get the cultural references.

Tabby and the popcorn. Drawing this led me to the conclusion, because I imagined Tabby keeping birds away from her popcorn.

Of course. Her cat-like reflexes. No birds were harmed in the production of this strip.

This picks up on Todd’s previously established crush on April Bloom. It’s a hopeless crush, and because of April Bloom’s character we’re not going to go all Charlie Brown here and have her be cruel to him. Instead, we’re focusing on Todd’s kindness to play along.

My mother’s side of the family were, and I say this with deep love and affection, religious nut bags. I spent many happy summers with them, but there were occasions when the 1800’s vibe had me wondering what century I was in. I thought my father was using comic hyperbole when he warned me about this, but soon I was listening to lectures on how Lincoln was a bad president and my ten year old brain had all of the verification it needed.

So with April Bloom’s Southern style, I added religious nut bag parents. Fun.

See? See how little stories can bring out the best in some characters? I had no idea Tabby was going to say this.

This is an actual, blunt, question from the nut bags. Love you, grandpa!

Uh, oh, I crammed to many comics into this posting for you. I’m at the end of my email length for this one. Let’s go straight to a poll.