National Graphic Novel Writing Month Day 25: Wait, Who Was That Again? The Importance Of Cast Lists
Here’s another insanely useful thing when writing: a cast list.
You’ve seen these before, right? Probably when reading Shakespeare. In Romeo and Juliet, the cast list includes entries like:
- Montague, head of one house, at odds with Capulets
- Capulet, head of one house, at odds with Montagues
- Romeo, son to Montague
- Mercutio, kinsman to the Prince and friend to Romeo
- Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo
- Juliet, daughter to Capulet
- Tybalt, Juliet’s brother
Now, even if you’ve never read Romeo and Juliet, and never heard the story—which means you’ve apparently lived on a remote island all your life, but never mind that now—you already have some idea how this is going to go. Two houses that hate each other, a young man from one house, a young woman from the other—you can practically see the romantic tension brewing. The cast list sets up the key relationships, and then the play just allows them to develop narratively.
But that doesn’t mean you’re going to want to have your cast list on the front page of your graphic novel. Not usually. A few books like the Justice League of America or The Legion of Super-Heroes can get away with that, but that’s because both of those are team books and so they want the reader to know which members of the team are actually involved in each issue.
But normally the cast list isn’t for your readers. It’s for you.
For those of you who haven’t read the three-issue comic book miniseries 
, by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, don’t worry. The movie version is to the comic book as [[[Blade Runner]]] was to Philip K. Dick’s novel [[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]] That is, Red takes the comic book’s basic concept—a retired CIA assassin, Frank Moses, finds himself under attack and comes out of retirement to deal with the problem—and then spins it off in a new direction. In this movie’s case, that direction is a fast, fun film with a fantastic cast, great action, great lines, and more than a little bit of humor.
There’s a lot of violence, of course. But no real gore. No nudity either, and not much profanity. Plus the light tone and the romantic element offsets all the talk about killing and killers. The film’s rated PG-13 and I think that’s fair.
I’m a writer. It’s what I do. More than that, though, it’s who I am. I can’t not write—I actually get something similar to withdrawal symptoms if I go too long without writing. Writing is an essential part of my nature.
Often when I talk to new people the topic of roleplaying games comes up (particularly after I’m asked “so what do you do?”), at which point I learn whether they’re gamers or not. If they’re not I usually get the classic question, “What’s a roleplaying game?” Then I explain about tabletop gaming—most often I define it as “collaborative interactive storytelling, like a mix between improv theater and a staged reading.” Sometimes they ask a few more questions about how it works, but that definition is enough to satisfy most people. But then I may get the follow-up question: “Why?”
Born in Sangley Point, Cavite City, Philippines in 1963, Whilce Portacio joined Marvel Comics as an inker in 1985 but soon began penciling for them as well. He worked on The Punisher, X-Factor, and The Uncanny X-Men before leaving in 1992 to found Image Comics with several other well-known comic book artists. 
Born in Philadelphia in 1930, Al Wiesner loved comic books as a boy but noticed a curious thing—there were plenty of Jewish writers and artists but no Jewish main characters. 
