Posts tagged writing

WHOA. Original written content on my Tumblr blog? Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? But I thought I’d share with you guys something about the stuff I’m doing now.

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Someone during my university years once described to me how Waterworld was likely to have been Kevin Costner’s dream concept—the one movie he had to make. The movie had massive budget issues and developmental setbacks, but Costner just had to finish it! Unfortunately, when you ask me about my thoughts on the film, I tend to find it boring and silly with a poor execution on the world-building in the narrative. The most interesting elements I find in the film are the characters, but they all seem too silly or out-of-place because of the lack of quality story elements surrounding them. When you think about it, it’s really too bad that it was how it turned out.

“What does this have to do with me,” you may be asking.

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As one who is co-writing a group of private investigators in a comic that is a bit inspired by what Britt and I can remember from Doyle’s work…

…I approve of this rant.

alexds1:

Disclaimer: this rant is written for a specific group of people. If you don’t belong to it, you already know that you don’t, congratulations, great shall be your reward in the afterlife.

DEAR [PEOPLE WHO DEBATE ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SEXUALITY],

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Ever since attempting my 24-hour comic, I’ve gotten back into inspired-to-make-comics mode. Which is great, except that it’s the worst possible time for me to be in that mode now! With school projects in the way, I haven’t really found the time to do comics brainstorming and drawing other than during excursions from point A to B or during late hours (like now). Hopefully, I’ll be able to stay sane within these next few weeks.

In particular, I’ve been thinking about how to write characters. After the jump, girls/comics/writing girls in comics!

IMAGE COURTESY MLAWSKI and CARLOS A. HANN COMMANDER

Within the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how female characters are written in fiction. While it’s something I usually try to make myself conscious about, a couple of things have sparked it recently:

1. The above flowchart article from Overthinking It, linked in a retweet from comic artist Lizz Lunney.
2. A video shown to me—via buddies Tex and Julie—by the Nostalgia Chick.

I’ll admit it, I love writing all types of characters. Flat characters, round characters: stories need a great balance of types like these to have the story be entertaining, substantial and effective. This includes some very two-dimensional characters, whether it’s a comic relief or a character with one overall idea applied to him/her, which is what “mlawski” describes in her flowchart article as “the backbone of fiction.”

Also in the video, the Nostalgia Chick argues that there’s this common misconception that women can only write for women while men can write for everyone. Of course, that isn’t true, but sadly that misconception is automatic thought for many people, whether they be publishers/producers or the general viewing public.

The above two listed features have a good point: there aren’t many complex female characters in fiction when compared to complex male characters. Honestly, I think there needs to be. The concern I have right now in terms of how I should write comics is wondering how complex a female character should be and what makes a good balance of flat and round characters (both male and female).

Currently, I’m working on—or trying to work on—two comic projects: one is a joint project between my brother and me and the other is my personal project Deathblossom: Twins with a Dark Past, the latter I hope to continue soon after leaving it alone for so long.

ABOVE: RALLY VINCENT FROM GUNSMITH CATS

The big difference between the two comics is how they’re being written. My brother’s concept is an action-comedy inspired by old grindhouse flicks and ridiculous crime anime by Kenichi Sonoda, like Gunsmith Cats and Riding Bean. As such, there will be a fair number of flat characters in this comic because the action-comedy genre dictates it. The challenge that my brother has made for himself however is to write a round character that is the leader of a team of female bounty hunters. From what he’s written so far about her, I like it. For example she’s in a violent profession, but she doesn’t really mean to be. She may not be the lead of the story, but she stands as a strong character at least, also standing for many ideas rather than just one.

With Deathblossom, I’ll admit that Dak and Lory seem very much like the whole Babs-and-Buster-Bunny bit that the Nostalgia Chick describes. I’m trying not to do that though; I want to try creating more of a dual narrative from the twins. While I label Dak as “the intellect” and Lory as “the psychotic,” those are labels that they are given within  the comic from others, something I hope to explain soon in my comics. Both characters are equally matched at what they can do, but each twin has a preference to do something a slight more than the other. On initiative Dak likes to plan and Lory likes to act but it’s not unlikely for them to reverse roles.

Also, as a side note, I think I designed Lory weeks before Dak. I didn’t even know what to name Dak until weeks later too, whereas Lory’s name was obvious to me from the start.

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That’s about all I can write now. I’ll probably follow up on this later. If you want to throw in your own two cents about this topic, go on and post a comment! And as a disclaimer, I am a dude, so it’s likely I’m naturally biased.

Now to sleep I go!