To finish the script for his indie-music mage miniseries Phonogram: The Singles Club, comic scribe Kieron Gillen took a novel approach - he drank whatever the characters in his comic drank. Unfortunately for Gillen, his characters pounded swill.
Phonogram: The Singles Club details a club night in which music magics - or "phonomancers" - dance, drink, and bicker about records and magic. Gillen explains his "method drinking" approach in the addendum to the recently released trade paperback edition of The Singles Club:
I generally write most of the first draft of any Phonogram script drunk, and then edit it into shape sober (i.e. I edit a lot). About half way through writing The Singles Club, I had a little brain wave. As well as my usual routine of obsessively listening to the records the characters would like, I'd become a method drinker. In other words, drink whatever the character I'm writing would be drinking. For example, when I'm dealing with Laura, I'd be throwing back neat swigs of the cheapest vodka from the corner shop - which was fantastic motivation to get a move on with the issue, just so I could stop drinking the foul stuff. This had a few unforeseen consequences. For example, when getting alco-popped up for Seth and Silent Girl's issue, I didn't realize the enormous bottles of cheap stuff were actually highly caffeinated. As such, I spent most of the night twitching with chemical energy. I never said I was smart.
I can see this method being very dangerous for anyone writing Wolverine, Hercules, or Iron Man's early years.
[Phonogram: The Singles Club is out now; artwork by Jamie McKelvie.]