One of the toughest aspects of writing in college is treading that fine line between listening to advice from better writers with a lot more experience than you and doing whatever the hell your professor tells you to do in order to get a good grade no matter what it does to the story you want to tell. It’s very difficult to find your own voice, be true to that voice, listen to and incorporate the criticism and advice that instructors offer, ignore the bits of it that don’t work for you or your story, AND try to grow as an artist all at the same time. In the end, you’ve got to trust your muse.
This is why I agree with Stuart Moore (not, surprisingly enough, all that frequent an occurrence) when he says that Robert McKee’s much-ballyhooed how-to guide for screenwriters (and now comics writers) Story is a crock of shit. I’m sure there’s good points in there–just like there’s plenty of good points in the Bill Jemas comics-writing rules mentioned below–but the notion that it would behoove every writer on Earth to follow the same road-map into Storytelling Nirvana is almost too ludicrous to be taken seriously. Just to give one example (one I may go into at some length one day), the fourth season of The Sopranos was torn to shreds by critics who ostensibly are looking for something unique-different-personal-passionate, yet freaked out because it didn’t follow some boring three-act formula where everything happened for a reason and everything tied together at the end. Eff that, my friends. Rules are important sometimes–we don’t want writers running around thinking they can put any damn thing on the page and that it’s instant gold, and this includes myself–but rules are made not just to be broken, but to be ignored entirely. Half the problem of superhero comics to begin with is following rules that should have been tossed out decades ago. McKee’s Story cult isn’t going to help that process by any stretch of the imagination.