Graphic novelist Jessica Abel has never been afraid to stand out from the crowd. In high school, she prepared for breakfast by dressing up in black leggings and bright lipstick.
"I knew it was way punk of me to read comics," Abel said.
Abel spoke about her experiences as a graphic novelist during her lecture at Pattee Library's Foster Auditorium on Thursday. About 130 people filled the venue for the
event, which was part of Penn State's Graphic Novel Speaker Series.
Abel has been trying to figure out how to tell good stories for years, and her lecture largely focused on storytelling and what she has learned about the craft.
"It's one thing to like comics and read them," she said. "It's quite another to make them your life."
Presenting a slideshow with pictures of herself as an adolescent with short hair dressed in punk clothing, she illustrated her gradual progression into a cartoonist.
No matter what she tried, she said, her stories were never fully developed.
"I had nothing to say, nowhere to go," she said.
However, she had a breakthrough with one of her comics when the main character, who ends up crying, refuses to admit he did so.
From that point forward, Abel said she began writing The New Yorker-style stories, in which a character comes to a self-realization or epiphany near the end of the narrative.
"I started organizing my stories into a three-act story structure, even though I didn't have three acts or a whole lot of structure," Abel said.
She said she was no longer afraid to include action or drama in her comics because she had control over shaping the story. She now teaches the same method to her students at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Alexis Bennett attended the event and said she aspires to make her own comic someday.
"I really liked how she showed her transition from an amateur to a professor because it showed me you can get better if you try," Bennett (sophomore-art) said.
Eileen Akin helped organize the event and was pleased with the turnout, she said.
"Students can come away with an understanding of how to tell a compelling story," said Akin, coordinator of the Fred Waring Collection in the Special Collections Library. "You don't have to be interested in comics to appreciate that."
