Writing "Authentically"
JULY 30, 2024 @ 8:25PM
One of my current projects is writing a comic called Insomnia, and it terrifies me.
OK, maybe hyperbolic, I don't know. What I mean to say is this: Writing based on my lived experiences and patterns of thinking makes me come to terms with the fact that they belong to me, and that triggers the same sort of reaction in me as when, say, someone flips through my little sketchbook and just happens to land on the page that was me learning how to draw penises or boobs or both. It's personal. "Of course it's personal, fool?? It's literally YOUR thoughts and feelings and words being given to funny animals!" says me to me. Good point, me. I guess my answer is "I killed the part of me that cringed for having kins and woke pronouns and interests (god forbid!!), so I want to or maybe need to kill the part of me that thinks talking about myself is rude/burdensome/pretentious next"
The reason why I titled this blog entry the way I did is because I've been constantly noticing that when I write scripts I will tweak little words and turns of phrases here and there. Not for clarity, but seemingly as a flight response to being too personal and truthful. Tweaking it just that little bit because I'm scared of crossing an invisible boundary I suppose? Despite the fact I intend to place content warnings, I got very twitchy at the thought of having a character that reflects some of my worse intrusive thoughts (and I do mean intrusive thoughts in the literal sense, not the watered down version I see online) [NOTE: Thankfully since being on medication I've had hardly any, and I'm doing way better these days, but the memory of experiencing them is still there, if that makes sense? It's like I'm thinking about thinking about not thinking about it whenever I think about it.]
The main reason I'm dumping this here is it's nice to think about this being seen, but also giving no shits about how it's responded to because there isn't a comment section or anything like that on here (idek if I know how to code that LMAO). That's not something I'll be rewarded when I do post any finished comics to ComicFury. See, that past sentence felt pretentious all by itself, but it's just statistics that at least 1 person will see it...I think, anyway.
Basically, I want to write as authentically to "me" as possible, or else I'm creating something inauthentic. This originally is where I wrote some ramble about writing what you know, before snapping out of it and going "I'm an illustrator!!! Making shit up is just what I DO bro" to myself. I think it just boils down to the fact that I don't want to write a happy slice of life just because I don't want to. There are happy slice of life MOMENTS in this comic, but it's not its genre. I find it cathartic and kind of evilly pleasing to make these imaginary characters go through their own hells, some of them shared by me, some not. It's useful that I've been in some of their positions, sure. I can't claim everything that has/will happen in the scripts has happened to me. I'm not transfem, I'm not 10 years old currently, I didn't have a robot mother with murderous ideations. But I pull from my experiences and the experiences of people around me, and media I watched, and asking people who know more than me, etc.
I realised I basically just rambled away from explaining what "Basically, I want to write as authentically to "me" as possible, or else I'm creating something inauthentic." means to me. It basically means if I at first write a character saying one thing, then think of some imaginary person going "whoah man...that's too far", and so I change it to be a way more neutral line, that doesn't FEEL authentic, to me at least. I don't want to change parts of my process to appease a person that doesn't have to read my work. They can just. Not. And I can have my funny little guys say horrible things to each other and jab forks into each other's eyes. Yay! Free Will!
I guess I'm slightly worried about the whole "You wrote it so you must believe it" shtick. One of my main characters is a bad person. Hell, most of them are. That's another authenticity part. I've been forcing myself to stick to their original shitty personalities instead of trying to find treasure in a trash pile. Franz, a main character, is internally homophobic, externally transphobic, and genuinly doesn't believe most people who are neurodivergent (despite being neurodivergent herself). The comics allow her to move past this, but she sure as hell isn't understanding the instant her "boyfriend" becomes her girlfriend, yknow? She needs to get to that point. I think this is a really obvious point to be honest. It's probably my overthinking telling me someone's gonna do a "piss on the poor" moment LMAO. ahhh. I don't know how fiction writers do it. I just don't.
TLDR I'm trying not to tiptoe around having uncomfortable scenes and awful people in my comics and trying my best to stamp the words YOU DON'T CONDONE IT AND YOU AREN'T SHOWING IT IN A POSITIVE LIGHT EITHER onto my brain-mush.
a final final footnote is obviously everything I said above does not incorporate straight up misinfo or accidentally regurgigating stereotypes without thinking and presenting them in a positive light. That's just poor writing at that point, and I'm happy to rectify stuff like that.