Tor Freeman

Tor: Hello! I’m going to talk about my web-and-self-published comic, ‘Welcome to Oddleigh’.

Although I’ve primarily worked in children’s books during my career, my interest when I was young was in making comic strips. I think in pictures before words, and enjoy trying express myself through expressions and movement of characters, so it has always felt a natural fit for me. But it took me until very recently to realise that I could practice having the ‘right’ ideas for those drawings, too.

I wanted to make a comic about a strange town, in the vein of ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Eerie, Indiana’, Buffy and the many other stories of places with uncanny goings-on beneath the surface. I made the main protagonists police officers as that naturally involves them in all the local goings-on. I am drawn to characters that are ‘sensible’: Flora Poste in ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ is probably my favourite literary heroine, and my rat police chief Jessie was inspired by her.

I faced a few challenges starting out.

One was formatting the comic... With no guidelines and every possibility available, how would I pick what was best? I started by following The Phoenix magazine’s submission guidelines, and began working on four-page stories. But that was quickly overwhelming, especially with my lack of comic-writing experience. Shorter, episodic comics seemed the answer. As soon as I started drawing episodes onto A5 sheets, the ideas came much more easily – from a novice trying to write a full novel in one sitting to serialising it instead.

Self-motivation was another challenge; without an external deadline and no one clamouring for a finished book, I knew I needed some kind of check on myself. I’ve found social media is really helpful for this. I don’t think you need many followers to feel a commitment to finishing something you’ve promised in public – no matter how small a public it is! This suggested that a good option would be making a webcomic with a fairly strict self-imposed schedule of posting – at least twice a week.

But the main challenge I faced was my lack of comic-writing experience! Although reading comics was part of my childhood, I didn’t know much about making them, and felt I was a late and unconfident beginner. Reading books seemed a way in, and I found invaluable help in those of both Scott McCloud and Will Eisner, and re-reading Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ for the third time!

The other surprisingly helpful thing has been taking improvisation classes recently. From those I learned: going straight into stories without tons of exposition, having the characters do ‘space work’ and letting the stories devise themselves. As I’ve read other writers mention, I’ve found once I’ve got some characters they will often write their own lines.

And of course the biggest help in learning to write comics has been... writing comics! Looking back to my first ‘Welcome to Oddleighs’ from last year, I can see such an improvement since then, in both pacing and drawing.

I put each finished episode up on a Tumblr blog, and also I use the video function in Instagram to put it up frame by frame. It’s been interesting trying to promote it myself.

I decided to self-publish it in time for the Leeds comic festival’s ‘Thought Bubble’ in November last year – and Comic Printing UK did a brilliant job. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of self-publishing, the freedom and the high quality it affords... I have lots of ideas for the future!

Making a comic feels like being the director of a film for which you are also the writer, the set designer and all the actors at once. The possibilities feel endless to me – a receptacle for any idea I might have floating about. Because it’s my own project, I’m unconstrained by aiming at a particular age group or market – and the freedom feels excellent.

I feel fond of my two main characters, Jessie and Sid. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to them next!

Illustrations © Tor Freeman.

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Welcome to Oddleigh

Tor Freeman

Self-published, United Kingdom, 2016

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Chief Inspector Jessie and Sergeant Sid are tasked with policing the town of Oddleigh. Jessie's sworn to uphold the law of the town, and she's going to do it – no matter how weirdly its citizens are behaving...