This and Decompressed Comic are complaining: Writing For The Trade

This page seems to be Complaining About Narrative Formats You Don't Like, and also doesn't seem to reflect any kind of consensus among comic book fans. I know I'm not the only one who waits for trades to come out anyway and so isn't affected by the cons of the writing style, and there are many, many extremely popular series that are only written like this. DMZ, Scalped, 100 Bullets, Hellboy, B.P.R.D, Northlanders, Criminal, The Umbrella Academy, The Goon, and many more come to mind. All of them are both critically-acclaimed and very popular with the fans. I think the page should be re-written to represent both the pros and cons of the writing style, and the examples need to be edited or in some cases cut to reflect that Writing For The Trades is not necessarily a bad thing, and is really more often a good thing.

Decompressed Comic is mostly a pretty decent page, but there's altogether too much negative wording in the description. The decompressed narrative format became popular for a reason. Yes, some fans and creators have recently been going back to the old-school 1-3 issue story format, but that doesn't mean that "everybody hates decompressed comics," which is the message I get from the trope description.

Ultimately, I'd like to edit both pages fairly heavily to remove the unnecessary negative bias. Perhaps someone who's seen it used more often can tell me if "writing for the trades" is really a common complaint among comic book fans. I certainly haven't heard or read it as a complaint anywhere before.

Decompressed Comic seems pretty even-handed to me. It notes that it can be done well, or be done poorly.

Writing for the Trade is sort of weird. The definition itself ("When a story is written with the intention of reading well as a trade paperback, with the consequence of it being just a pain to follow when first released as monthly or weekly installments.") is overly negative, but the rest of the article is quite positive towards arc-centric writing and TPB's. Basically, "Arc-centric writing is perfectly legitimate; this trope is arc-centric writing done badly."

I think Writing for the Trade and Better on DVD are similar enough that they ought to be merged.

Better In Sequence?

The trope is basically "the work is better when you Archive Binge it", right? Seems like the title should reference that somehow, but I can't bludgeon my brain into thinking of anything that does.

Better When Binged, then?

I know this is a stupid, stupid objection but the word "binged" looks like the past tense of bing, not binge. Suggest: Better On A Binge.

I have no issue with the title. It's the complaining nature of the grope description that bothers me. I think the name is fine and the description just needs to be reworked to be more objective.

I changed the first sentence. I think the entire page could do with a chainsaw since it's getting into the history of a trope.

Interesting. I was doubtful that "writing for the trade" was an established term, but a google search pulled up a few articles that used the term in the headline. [1] [2] [3] Except they aren't using it the same way we are. We've defined it as "arc-centric writing that makes individual issues less entertaining as standalones". Whereas DC Comics is using it to mean "taking six issues to tell a story that could be told in two." In other words, a comic industry term for padding.

edited 2nd Jan '12 9:43:00 PM by MetaFour

No, the trope description reflects that exactly. See here:

"However, as the trend was picked up by less talented (or perhaps more lazy) writers, this resulted in stories that could have been told in two or three issues going on for six or seven. And with most comics coming out once a month, that meant half a year could be spent telling a single story. Coincidentally — or perhaps not — six or seven issues is about the same size as a trade paperback, hence the accusation that anyone taking six issues or more to tell one story is Writing for the Trade. "

That's right out of the trope description. I'm not arguing that this kind of padding doesn't exist, but I just feel that the trope page and examples could better reflect the pros and cons of the practice, just like Decompressed Comic. I'll do some work on it later today when I get home.

Well then, the article needs to say that in the first paragraph, not in the sixth.

I suppose technically Writing for the Trade is a subtrope of Decompressed Comic. That is, D.C. is any instance where a storyline is padded and W.F.T.T. specifically adds the clause "to the length of six or seven issues so we can publish it as a standalone later".

No, Decompressed Comic is not synonymous with padding. It just means a more cinematic approach to the storytelling. Like I said in the initial post, there are many popular and acclaimed series that use this technique. It's not generally considered a bad trend in the community. Today I'll try to take some time after work to really sit down and rework both descriptions.

Oh, and Metafour, it's only the fourth paragraph that explains what you were confused by, and it's pretty much a bullet point with no bullet. I guess it could be a little more clear, but it doesn't need to be the first thing in the trope description. I'll see what I can do with it to improve overall.

I definitely would have thought that was the definition of Decompressed Comic, and I'm pretty sure that's how I've seen it used.

Better on DVD says this is the comic book version of that trope. Given the descriptions of the two I'm not sure.

Writing for the Trade is a term very widely used in comics communities (particularly those geared to superhero comics fans) for two kinda-related things:

1) Stories that are serialized, but are primarily designed with an eye towards having a good effect when read in the eventual collected form, and may not work as well when read in individual monthly chunks (related to Better on DVD);

2) Writing that is slow-moving or discursive, giving people who are used to American comics' traditionally very action-packed pacing the effect that "not enough happens" in each installment (related to Decompressed Comic).

[use 3), padding a story so that it is long enough for a trade collection, is also a common complaint but frequently is driven by a negative reaction to type 2 stories]

In the context of serialized superhero-type comics, both of these things are usually seen as negative by hardcore fans who follow the serialized version, although less-comitted fans who primarily read the collected versions may not see anything wrong with the stories the first group complains about.

Decompressed Comic is a manga-influenced approach to pacing that can be used to terrific effect, although as with Writing for the Trade, hardcore DC/Marvel fans usually hate it.

In other words, both Writing for the Trade and Decompressed Comic are perfectly valid storytelling choices with a inherently Broken Base, between the fans who are willing to prioritize the overall structure and effect of the work and those who want every issue of the comic to have "good story value" (which usually translates as Thrilling! Nonstop! Action! Fight! Fight! Fight!).

Very good breakdown. I'll do some edits to both pages accordingly. I think this can be locked.

When the edits are done, then I'll lock this.

Ok, I'm gonna have to wait until I get home in the evening, my phone isn't good for doing significant edits, especially when they require research.

Decompressed Comic was fine since I made the edit when I first started this thread. I just made the fix to the Writing for the Trade description to make it neutral. I'll be making edits to the examples later. Can we lock this now?

Locking.