Welcome to the first A.N.A. Comics Writers workshop. It runs from 01.25.10 through 02.25.10. Lets get started.

OK, here's the deal. Once a month we're going to do writing workshops. Participants come up with short 1 or 2 page ideas that everyone in the workshop would participate in, critique, and we'll learn and grow together. Our workshops will be focused on a single theme, you'll write your 1 or 2 pages and then submit them for critiques and review.

You can do it in prose, or comic script, or whatever you are most comfortable with.


Please only submit ONE entry. Get then in ASAP as this allows the most time for feed back and participation.


Remember in Comics you have to do three things: BE FAST, BE GOOD, and BE FAST... If you are game, Make IT Happen!!!


Theme for our first month is: FINDING YOUR POTENTIAL

ill have to give this some thought. i can't wait to see what other people come up with

maybe you should be a little more specific with this.....i'm not exactly sure what your looking for. how long can it be or how short it too short? is there a limit to how much we can write or put on here? what format should it be in, just regular ole quick, badly punctuated, mistyped writing, scripted like a comic book page or a play script? are there more rules we have to follow like, if someone starts it and has a character they like can the next guy who writes kill them off? how do we know when to end the workshop or when the story is completed? if there is any other questions people want to add, please do so i can start this if no one else will, cause i dont want to type up this long in depth emotional or action or any kind of story that i put a lot of time and effort into if no one is gonna add to it or just completely destroy the story. cause i think this workshop has a lot of potential, but i think it will have a potential for argumants and fighting if these questions and other things don't get figured out. i mean are their turns we take? what if two people are typing at the same time and one submits first and the other does right after but his part doesn't make since now because to people are talking about the same moment, what then? does the other person say tough cookie or does everyone decide which path is best for the overall story progression? just trying to figure this out so nothing chaotic happens and a good fun thing turns into a bitter unenjoyable thing for all participants.

I think you should re-read the initial post.

"write your 1 or 2 pages and then submit them for critiques and review.

You can do it in prose, or comic script, or whatever you are most comfortable with."

Everything is pretty clear. You're writing your own piece. No one is goin to destroy anything. The work shop for this month is just to write YOUR OWN 1 to 2 page story based around the idea of "FINDING YOUR POTENTIAL".

I appologise it was hard to understand. Just stick to the guidelines. Your questions took the workshop in a direction it is not intended to go at this time.

yeah but i mean you should specify what two pages are, typed, double spaced two pages or front to back college ruled two pages? ( joking about that lol). so we're not doing the story continuation idea anymore?

Let me finally be the FIRST for a workshop! Woot!

Sorry, it's a bit of a read. about a page and 1/4 on Word.

Subject: Finding Your Potential.

Billy Compton huddled in the shack that huddled in the heart of the wilderness. Where that wilderness was settled, it was anyone’s guess. Regardless, Billy Compton was there. Or more accurately, Billy Compton’s body was there. His mind was elsewhere, doing other things.

How Billy found himself in the shack was a bit of a mystery to him. Many things that happened in his life were. His life was filled with holes and muddied waters and white noise. Those around him were aware of him, they would hold there children closer to them as he shambled down the street. Some would even cross to the other side of the street, or wait to leave the store until he walked past. But Billy was not aware of their apprehension. He wasn’t aware of much.

Up until a year ago, his mother had taken care of him as best she could, crippled with arthritis. His father had ended his life 10 years earlier by drowning himself in liquid courage and running his car off Huffington’s Bluff. Now it was just Billy and the rest of the town that tried not to notice him.

About a month ago, a cat had stopped and talked with Billy. He had told Billy that he could be more aware of the world if he wanted to be. All that he had to do was leave his body behind with his damaged and crumpled neurons. The first time he tried this, he nearly died, but the cat was there to remind him that a part of him had to stay behind and make sure that the vessel was safe. That’s what the cat called it and Billy found it strange. So, he learned to leave his damaged body and still attach a portion of his awareness to make sure everything ran smoothly and eventually Billy learned that outside of his body, he was free of the fog and the white noise and he could experience the world like he had never done before.

But with this new awareness, he also noticed the townfolk and how they grew even more frightened when he left his body. There was a even one time where he left the body to venture out over a wide open pasture and when he came back, the vessel was gone. He began to think of his body as more a vessel instead of a real part of him. So he followed the thread that was still attached to the vessel to find it located in the local hospital.

He came back and after a lengthy time of convincing the doctors that he was ok, which was hard to do when your brain is as fuzzy as billy’s is, he was able to leave the hospital. At that time, he new he needed to find a place isolated enough to where he could truly unlock his newfound freedom. And from there he found his way to the shack in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of nowhere.

While Billy was away from his vessel in the shack, he came upon a farmer, not to far from where he was. That farmer had been attempting to clean a portion of the muck and swamp and brush that began the forgotten area around Billy’s shack. But he sensed something was very wrong with the farmer. When he flew, or thought, in closer he noticed that the farmer’s blood was pumping erratically and it was causing him pain.

Billy was back in his vessel, telling it to stand, fighting through the static to get it out the door and fighting through the cobwebs to get his bearing on the farmer he had seen. He plunged into the thickness around him and eventually crashed through the undergrowth just in time to see the farmer fall to the ground. The farmer gasped that the pills were on the tractor, the pills for his heart. Billy fought his vessels dim thoughts and forced it to process what the farmer was telling him. He grabbed for the pills and quickly put 3 or 4 of them in the farmers mouth and helped him chew. The entire time he was doing this, he yelled to the house. After a bit the farmers wife stumbled out the back screen door and ran across the field to them.

A few minutes later the first responders were there and the sight they saw, with Billy holding the farmer in his arms and the farmers wife hugging Billy and weeping with joy and kissing him all over on the cheeks until he was blushing. They laded the farmer up into the ambulance and tried to talk to Billy about what had happened, but by then the cobwebs and fog has come back into the vessel and Billy was no longer in control of the vessel anymore. Just a passenger once again.