WDCS146
'Omelet'

U$64
Treasure of Marco Polo

U$25
The Flying Dutchman

FC0367
A Christmas for Shacktown

WDCS158
'To Bee or Not to Bee'

When scripting a story, Barks usually began with the ending. He would dream up a climax and then he asked himself how the characters would end up in such a predicament. Several plots were based on many of the jobs he knew from his younger days when he was working different fields in a 20 year period. Example: His experiences from when he was a chicken farmer were 'retold' in WDCS146 'Omelet'.

Barks distinguished quite firmly between his 10-pagers and the long adventure stories when it came to the basic plots. In the 10-pagers the action was more vivid - and often more violent - and most circled around different parent/children relationships, where Donald and the nephews took 'turns' in being the underdogs. In the adventure stories the action was much more epically founded - more laid back - with time to develop and show long and sometimes complicated plots. Donald and the nephews were often equals helping each other instead of competing with each other.

One of Barks' strengths as a storyteller was his vivid imagination regarding his characters' names. He dreamt up precise and descriptive names as no one else could. Here are 10 examples: Rockjaw Bumrisk (WDCS145 'Bing! You're Hypnotized!'), Whan Beeg Rhat (U$64 Treasure of Marco Polo), Snake McViper (U$69 The Cattle King), Applecheeks Teengiggle (WDCS209 'The Perfect Mailman'), Angina Arthritis (WDCS090 'Telegram Boys'), Brainerd Brainmore (U$57 The Swamp of No Return), Porkmuscle J. Hamfat (WDCS179 'The Canoe Contest'), Longhorn Tallgrass (U$23 Fabulous Tycoon), Trestleman Truckhorse (WDCS188 'Olympic Tryouts'), Mrs. J. Crowsfoot Dryskin of Turtleneck-On-The-Mohawk (WDCS308 The Beauty Business).

Barks was never a literary man. So much more impressive is it that he succeeded, in a thoroughly convincing way, in his storytelling. Most of the credit goes to Barks' never-ending feeling that he could always do just a little more with the dialogue. He would change, add, alter endlessly, and when he was fairly satisfied with the dialogue 'skeleton' he would start polishing and re-polishing until he was fully satisfied. Guess how many other Disney artists who imposed that kind of workload on themselves...
Barks spent countless hours polishing the scripts in a way that would bring the story forward. The speech balloons received the same attention. Some times I even had to count the words to compress them to the format of the bubbles. He quickly understood the folly in letting the characters express what was already obvious from the pictures, and this fact may be a contributing reason that his stories moved along so smoothly.

Barks would spend much more time on his stories and panels than any other Disney artist at the time. Generations of kids have learned a great deal about real historical and mythological events from Barks' story, because Barks usually took time to research his stories properly. How many of today's kids would have even heard of the Flying Dutchman (U$25 The Flying Dutchman), the fountain of youth (U$32 That's No Fable), the Philosopher's Stone (U$10 The Fabulous Philosopher's Stone), ancient European Gods (U$34 Mythic Mystery), or the golden fleece (U$12 The Golden Fleecing) if they had not read Barks' stories?

Barks rewrote every single story a number of times until he himself was satisfied with its 'flow'. He also took the trouble to add many background effects into his panels; just think of all the hilarious examples with odd pictures and aquariums in Donald's home and the strange vehicles encountered in the streets of Duckburg. Example: Who has really paid attention to the goings-on in the background of the downtown panel in FC0367 A Christmas for Shacktown?

Sometimes Barks literally dreamt up his best ideas. This resulted in him keeping a pencil and pad on his bedside table. Many a night his wife Garé was awakened as he would suddenly sit up in bed to scribble down an idea.

Barks took an extremely long time forming the words. Under no circumstances would he belittle his readers or put in meaningless dialogue. The text always had a close connection to the characters who, in turn, had distinctive facial expressions which contributed to the pictures. He never used repetitive drawings in the stories.
He polished the dialogue and then re-polished to the point where the words expressed exactly what they were supposed to. Example: Donald is attacked by bees dropping pollen on his beak. Barks referred to them as Buzzbombers (WDCS158 'To Bee or Not to Bee'). No wonder adults love reading Barks' comics.

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WDCS131
'The Unlucky Golfer'

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FC0178
Christmas on Bear Mountain

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FC0029
The Mummy's Ring

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WDCS182
'The Raging Bull'

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WDCS198
'Hero of the Ball'

I was never able to just sit down and write a longhand script. First, I jotted down a bunch of gags that would come to my mind. Then I would start hooking the gags together, and pretty soon I'd have a sort of a little synopsis. From that, I'd break it down into a longer synopsis. Make a mark every two or three lines and think, 'Well, that will make one page', and 'This'll make another page'. By the time I'd get to the bottom of my synopsis, I'd know whether I was going to have enough material.

Any time that I wrote a script, when I got through with it, I'd lay it aside, pick it up the next morning, and read it. If it didn't read with a lot of rhythm going right on through, I'd work on it another day or so until I got to where it sounded good, then start drawing. With the drawing, too, I would pick up sheets that I had done two or three days before and look at them. If the business didn't look right, I didn't mind doing it over. I was after a certain quality.

I was letting the story build up to a certain point in which the reader would be expecting the conventional end, and then I would fool the reader by dragging in something that was completely ridiculous, making it look plausible. Example: Donald's unexpected 'retirement' to the privacy of his closet after a turmoilish day in WDCS131 'The Unlucky Golfer'.

The choice of words also was one of Barks' passions: I'll rather use one word instead of four, he once stated, and consequently he polished and re-polished his material to perfection. I tried to make it as brief as possible. If I could find a word that would express what four words say, I would use that one word. So I had a sort of short, very crisp dialogue in my stories as a result of that contracting them down. And, in order to get the dialogue as short as possible, sometimes it was necessary to even count the syllables, and I would do that if it got down to it, and that also helped to create an even flow, so that it was almost like prose poetry the way the ducks voices would come in.

I tried to end each page, especially toward the latter part of the story, with a little zinger that would carry the reader forward. Sometimes the story would not lend itself to that kind of presentation, but that's the way we learned it at the Disney Studios working on the short subjects. There had to be a little climax just about every few seconds on the screen, so that's the way I tried to write the duck stories.

I bought a large bulletin board, and when I'd get a half sheet or a comic page done in pencil, I'd stick it up there, and then the next one, and the next one, and after I got about five of them done, I would sit back and look at the display and read the continuity. Sometimes I would take down two or three sheets and do a lot of erasing and changing. I was able to visualize my story progress much better that way.
Later, I finally got so polished at writing those stories that I didn't need to work by that method. I could just do a half page and stick it up on the shelf. I was able to visualize it more or less from my longhand, rather than having to have it up there in pencil drawings. But I think that my best work was done back in those years, when I had, say, five pages all laid out in blue pencil to criticize.

On inventing new characters:
There were definite reasons for it. When I had used Donald and his three nephews several times in a row, for example, I'd always think one ought to do something else, make up new gags, and at some point the idea came to me that one could also introduce new characters for this purpose. I introduced Gladstone Gander, for example, originally as a foil for Donald, a rival, who in his first story (WDCS088 'Cocky Combattants' - Editor's remark) concerning a bet, was just as dumb as Donald. He only later developed into such a lucky duck.
As for Scrooge McDuck, he just appeared as a grumpy uncle and had something to do with Donald, because the story required it (FC0178 Christmas on Bear Mountain - Editor's remark). But the more I used him, the more strongly I realized that one can't always draw a character in a bad light, any more than one can show the same character as having exclusively good qualities. That just gets boring.
Scrooge was created more by chance, in contrast to Magica de Spell, about whom I had more of an idea that here was a new, regular figure to be used. Magica was introduced much more intentionally, as a wicked witch who was always after Scrooge's first-earned dime (U$36 The Midas Touch - Editor's remark). I thought at the time: Disney's always had witches who were ugly and repulsive, so why shouldn't I draw one that's not ugly, but outright sexy? That's why she is Italian...

You've got to be darn sure that your idea is presented. If it's going to take three or four drawings to present that idea, the timing of it comes in on how much development you do in the first panel, how much you do in the second, how much in the third, and if you keep the development just enough that the reader can figure out what is coming, and then in the fourth panel, give it to him with a big sock right in the face. That's what I consider timing.

I don't know exactly why I did so much research for my stories, but I had the feeling the ducks had to go to real places. Otherwise the stories would look silly. I know in the other duck stories in the comics they went to islands like Booga Booga or something like that, places that didn't have any relation to reality. And they made their drawings in little squiggly backgrounds that didn't have the right character, for example the South Seas.
When I sent the ducks to an island in the South Seas, I gave it a name that sounded very much like it could actually be on the map. And I would go and look at pictures of plants there, and islands and mountains, and all the rest, and I made my background look like the ducks went to just such a place (Barks primarily used National Geographic and Encyclopedia Britannica as his sources - Editor's remark). Example: The Ducks pass by the Colossal of Memnon on the Nile in FC0029 The Mummy's Ring.

Ideas generally come in a very complicated form, and you've got to strip them down to make them useable. Boil a gag down to its simplest form and it is readily discernible to anybody who sees it.

Don't try to use too many ideas in a story plot. You have to be selective. Be mean. Throw perfectly lovely gags in the waste basket.

My stories are timeless. They can be read again and again and are still good years later. I always tried for that, just as I always tried to keep the stories as international as possible. That's why I, as far as I could, avoided particular American things like baseball, because I hardly think that you, in Germany, would understand a baseball story.

I always tried to write a story in such a manner that I wouldn't mind buying it myself. I know that I was expected to write for an audience of 12-year olds. But my faith in the 12-year old's intelligence was greater than the publisher's. In my opinion the kids should have relevant experience for their 10-cent.

When struggling for a story, I would often ask myself: what locale do I want to draw? Do I want to draw a forest, the sea with sailboats, or would it be down in the mines and caves? As soon as I thought of a locale, I could come up with a reason for putting characters in that locale.

I took a piece of paper and drew a few funny situations on it, just ideas that I had. What should I have the ducks do today? When I had enough individual gags, I'd make a short summary and develop the entire story, as a whole. That was one difference between me and the other artists and writers. I took individual gags, tightened them up and built the highpoint of the story out of them, and then I went back - how could the ducks get into such a situation, or more concretely: Why did the bull smash the china, how did he get there (plot idea from WDCS182 'The Raging Bull' - Editor's remark)? I always proceeded very logically, and the individual logical steps were made as funny as possible.

Once in a while the little kids would get themselves in some pretty bad messes and then Donald would have a chance to rescue them. But mostly it was Donald who got clobbered and the kids who rescued him. It worked out better, and it appealed to more people that way, because the readers were kids themselves. They liked to feel a little bit superior to the uncle who was strutting around.

In fact I laid it right on the line. There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face. When the Ducks went out in the desert, so did Joe Blow down the street with his kids. When Donald got buffeted around, I tried to put it over in such a way that kids would see it could happen to them. Unlike the superhero comics, my comics had parallels in human experience.

I often liked to put the ducks into situations where they could be at sea. There is something romantic about harbors and sunken ships that appeals to all kids.

There have been times when I felt nervous about taking a chance with a plot, but it wasn't enough to stop me. I'd compromise a bit if I felt I was getting too wild. I've approached every subject with my teeth chattering and knees knocking. Getting new ideas was the big nerve-racker. Often I'd feel I'd pumped the well dry and hadn't another idea in my system - I'd get real scared. I can remember times when I got so scared that when I did come up with an idea, I almost cried with relief at having gotten over that hump again.

Of all the 500 stories I wrote, there was about 10 of them that started with suggestions from someone else. Example: Barks' daughter Peggy suggested the plot for WDCS198 'Hero of the Ball'.

I was letting the story build up to a certain point in which the reader would be expecting the conventional end, and then I would fool the reader by dragging in something that was completely ridiculous, making it look plausible.

Writing was a mental strain. Once I had gotten the general idea, then that was a moment of joy ... It wasn't genius or even unusual talent that made the stories good, it was patience and a large waste basket.