🤯Writing in an Age of WTF
Your Right to Write
Episodes of Storymaze feature: writing tips or a work-in-progress; something creative I’m digging; + a quote that’s got me thinking.
I’ve gathering support for a new horror/adventure comic on Kickstarter. Would you take a look and consider signing up? tinyurl.com/axlesinfernal
Recently, a well known writer of terrific, inspirational tales posted about the fucked-up state of tribal politics and the feral warlords intent on abuse and the aggregation of personal profit and power. How it has undermined the values America has stood for, coarsened some people, reduced others — and shattered any sense that there is any moral arc of the universe that bends toward justice. Sorry, did I type that out loud?
It’s cast a distressing pall on that writer’s previous positive world view and how that person would exercise not only their talent — but how they now feel they must navigate a terribly upside-down world.
It certainly echoed my own feelings — as it did many other folks reading the post. When I expressed empathy for that writer, one person in the comments tagged me in — let’s call him Ted. Ted wondered if I had any advice on how they could soldier on with their own imaginative projects in an atmosphere of dread, uncertainty and blanket statements and corruptive action meant to sow division and satisfy grievance. With some light editing to remove specific deets, here’s what I had to say…
Hey Ted, thanks for tagging me in on this. I'd say you should go all in on your imaginative project precisely because of all the horrors and cruelty. Your underlying theme of a monster society is a perfect vehicle to explore these issues, for yourself and hopefully your audience. Maybe especially for yourself to start.
It will ENRAGE you and perhaps SADDEN you as you do so, because you can't realistically (I consider monsters of all sorts quite real, thank you!) have an outcome where all is well. Or even necessarily a switch where the bright light of awareness shines through to the majority. But maybe one character in the opposition takes pause. Maybe one character comes to a different conclusion. And maybe that gets a reader — just one — thinking differently.
I don’t think that can be your goal. You’re not writing a polemic. But through your work you’re exercising your right to represent things that matter to you. And the law of averages (which may be as valid as that moral arc, I don’t know) says what matters to you matters to someone else — and they are just as alone right now. But looking for commonality.
We can go off on a whole other tangent on the fact we are where we are because we have lost community. But there is perhaps opportunity. You’re creating a world where like minded beasts have come together. By representing that you’re expressing the same things comics like the X-Men (and similar) probably spoke to in you: I feel different, I wish there was a group like me.
And for a time that overblown real estate on Graymalkin Lane represented that and had you acting differently in the real world because of that, seeking out different friendships. Your project can do the same.
Or hell, just express rage and lack of control — issues I believe monsters suffer from. Those don’t seem too relevant to “our” world, do they? ;-)
Again, I can’t stress enough this is not your goal in a project. (Editor’s hat on.) The moment you take an important issue and decide to use your character to express it directly — you’re soapboxing. And your story dies. All you can/should do as a creator is to infuse your character(s) with enough backstory and issues and values and tragedy and conflicts that RELATE to what’s important to you. Then YOUR CHARACTERS will tell you what they will do with that.
One "trick" that may help with avoiding the soapboxing is to write backstories for those characters: work in your soapboxing as parts of their lived experience. Then when you get to them acting out in your story, they're doing the talking, not you. And don't be afraid to let them wander. If they're good peeps they'll take you good (not always pleasant) places.
Another way to exercise power through your story is who you choose to represent. I have a fledgling project in mind where I’ve shifted the “main” character to being a nurse — precisely because science and helping and healthcare are so viciously under attack. She will never explicitly say, “As a nurse, I help people and my work validates a belief in science and healthcare!” (Oh damn, she just did!)
But by making her that I’m putting a spotlight there for readers to at least consider. (It’s a little bit of the Uhura Effect: people sometimes criticized the original Star Trek for that character doing little more than “opening hailing frequencies Captain.” But a black woman at that time in a prominent role treated equally — and no one in the crew acting like it’s anything but normal? Powerful indirect influence for many.)
I’m free writing here, so not sure any of this is adding up. But at the end of my ramble I am encouraged to respond because it sounds like you have a story to tell — and that’s a great thing. I’m sick to fucking death of THEIR story. Make your own.
It won’t be/can’t be perhaps the 100% “write something positive” you originally envisioned. But if your characters are any good, surround them with that bitterness and anger — and see how they respond to it. (It’s the job of writers to torture their characters anyway. Nothing is more boring than, “And Frank had another great day!”)
Let your monsters lead the way. They may surprise you where they take you and readers. In time.
No one really plans to get sucked into a sprawling 30 issue comic book story of a space faring empire spiraling into self-destruction fueled by android racism. But that’s exactly what happened to me with Descender.
Hunted boy-droid TIM-21 serves as the galactic center for a ragtag collection of characters: mad scientists, tortured robot miners, broken starship captains, rebel father figures, all in need in redemption. Power up your optic circuits and enjoy.
Along the “long strange trip it’s been” was this sell sheet from Harvey Comics’ aborted line of adventure comics. (Yes, Richie Rich, Caspar — them guys in the adventure biz.)
I was tapped to their editor in chief, and as an enticement/opening salvo had been offered this rather cool team-up with the always amazing Denys Cowan. The series came together really well, as I recall — but launched a bit too under the radar. Probably because Harvey then choose to retreat back to the safety of their kids line. (They pulled this on me twice over the years! Twice enticed…twice gullible.)
The impossibly thin font they choose for the backside is a bit too hard to read, so here’s what it promises:
Written by D.G. "Nightbreed" Chichester
Art by Denys"Deathlok" Cowan
In 4 parts. 25 pages. Color. Coming in spring 99.
A killer terrorizes a city, thieving organs and body parts from living victims. A monstrous ghetto hermit is suspected of the crimes until it's discovered that he’s made up of some of the missing parts — he’s not the killer, but one of his victims. As the cops’ only lead, an eyewitness to his own murder, Frank joins the manhunt in this contemporary revision of the Frankenstein classic. Once a man, now a monster, his life alter death is a quest to discover not only who he was, but who he is and why.
In book 1 of 1, Frank, a mysterious recluse wrongly accused of murder, refuses to go quietly.
(And since they were an LA-based outfit…)
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
(I’m still waiting for my tickets!)
“You know, the Matrix says, ‘Pick an identity and stick with it. Because I want to sell you some beer and shampoo and I need you to stick with what you are so I’ll know how to market it to you.’ Drag is the opposite. Drag says, 'Identity is a joke.’”
— RuPaul
Amazing Times
I’m D.G. Chichester. Seems pretentious to me, so if you’d rather just call me “Dan”, and have a go at the last name as Chai (like the tea) Chester (like it looks).
I earned my word-cred writing comic book titles like Daredevil, Terror Inc., Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. I like weird tales, so if things here bend that way — now you know why!
Folks seem to like the comic book adventures I’ve written, so if you haven’t checked one out — please do. Many are now available in fab collected editions — including the recent rad retro
For the moments between newsletters…
I remember buying the first issue of Frank! ah!