Jeff Kinney is no wimp when it comes to success: The American author is creator of one of the most successful comic book series of all time, Diary of A Wimpy Kid.
Kinney recently spoke with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter about his iconic kids’ series and the story behind it.
The 20th installment, Partypooper, just released with a note on the front reading “over 300 million copies sold.”
“Now, we haven’t really sold 300 million books. We just put the sticker on the cover because it looks cool,” Kinney joked.
Antonio Michael Downing: Can you describe Greg and his family to someone who’s never met them?
Jeff Kinney: Greg and his family are what I would consider ordinary people. They’re based on my family in a funhouse mirror sort of way. They’re exaggerated forms of my family members, including myself as Greg.
They’re exaggerated forms of my family members, including myself as Greg.– Jeff Kinney
They’re very imperfect, flawed, make lots of mistakes and it’s a lot of fun writing characters like this.
Take us back to the beginning, when you started sketching out ideas in 1998. What was going through your head?
I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist. That was my big dream. To be like Charles Schulz or Bill Watterson. So, I took my best shot at it. I spent about three years trying to get my work syndicated and it didn’t work out. I didn’t get any encouragement and lots of rejection letters. This is a common tale for any creator trying to break in.
Eventually the newspaper started to contract. Comics were shrinking in size, and I felt like I needed to pivot so I came up with this idea of how to get my cartoon seen in a different way.
At the time, I was keeping a journal. The journals looked exactly like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, a mix of text and drawings. I thought, “Well, maybe this would work in fiction.” I worked on it for about eight years and finally was ready to share it with the world in 2006.
When you’re a syndicated cartoonist, you’re doing a lot of work that doesn’t necessarily get published. You’re just always working. Is it a similar kind of process you were doing?
First of all, I wanted to write down every funny thing that happened to me as a kid because I figured I sort of owned that.
I took about four years just writing down all those funny ideas. Then I took another four years to write the first draft and develop the characters. One of the things that I’ve never liked in cartooning is when characters change over time. Like, when you see early Peanut strips, they don’t look like the later Peanut strips, or Calvin Hobbs, or The Simpsons. That sort of breaks the spell in cartooning.
First of all, I wanted to write down every funny thing that happened to me as a kid because I figured I sort of owned that.– Jeff Kinney
My first goal was just to be consistent. I got myself into a rhythm where I could draw these characters the same way. I think they still evolved over time as I’ve written more and more books but, generally speaking, at least the heads look the same.
Greg is the same age in Partypooper as he was in the very first book in the series. What’s it like to draw a character who doesn’t age over 20 years?
He doesn’t change because that’s what cartooning has to be. Cartooning is a promise of consistency and sameness. When we check in with these characters, we want them to be reliable.
I have a statue in my studio of Scrooge McDuck, the uncle of Donald Duck. Donald Duck never changes. He doesn’t evolve. He still gets really mad and flustered and that’s why we like cartoons, because in an ever-changing world, we can rely on something and comics is one of those things.
It’s nice for kids to have something that’s consistent. Every year a kid can go out and get the new Wimpy Kid book. Eventually they might outgrow it, but it’ll always be there for them in case they want to come back to it.
Greg runs the gambit of emotions like most middle schoolers. He can be self-centred but kind. What do you draw on when you’re writing that emotional space of Greg?
My goal for Greg was that he was flawed in a way that was realistic. A lot of times in kids’ literature, the main character is sort of like a miniature adult.
In stories like Harry Potter, the characters need to be heroic to be interesting. To draw you through the story, they have to be extraordinary.
But there’s a flip side to that, which is that there are these other types of characters who are a lot more like me growing up. I made a lot of mistakes. I had flaws. I’m really trying to bring those things to the surface.
I think of my books as being like a stand-up comedian. When a comedian goes on stage, they’re usually talking about their shortcomings, their insecurities. The best comedians make the audience feel seen. The audience is sitting there in the dark watching this person on stage laying themselves bare. You laugh because you say, “I do that too. You know, I’m like that.”
That’s what I’m trying to do with these books. Hold up a mirror to kids’ lives.
I have a quote of you saying “I was an average kid who had his wimpy moments, as we all do.” What did you mean by that?
I was a normal kid. If you ask my teachers, “Do you remember Jeff Kinney?” Most of them would probably say no.
I didn’t flash. I didn’t make a big splash. I always felt like I was sort of observing life. I felt like I was my 40- or 50-year-old self but stuck in fifth grade.
I was writing it all down in my mind in a way before I knew I was going to become a writer. I felt like I was an observer. An observer usually isn’t the main character, and I definitely wasn’t the main character in the life that I grew up in.
I always felt like I was sort of observing life.– Jeff Kinney
We’ve got this image of you as an observer collecting these images throughout your life, then trying to become a syndicated comic and that’s not working. So, you pivot to “I’m going to capture every hilarious thing that’s happened to me, all my mistakes, so that I can put them into this diary of a wimpy kid.”
That’s right. I make my money by writing about my mistakes.
I was on the swim team as a kid and our swim season started really early. It was so cold in that pool in those spring months. I would jump in the pool, do one lap, and then I tell the coach I need to use a bathroom.
They’d let me go and I’d sit in that bathroom for the rest of practice, but I would be so cold that I would wrap myself in toilet paper just to stay warm.
By the time my dad came to pick me up, I would have picked the last bits of toilet paper off of myself.
That’s right in the books. Things like that go right into the books. That’s my bread and butter.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
