reblog: New letter column (3rd Voice)

New letter column

--- Question about visual design... I believe that making stuff that’s fun and exciting to you, the author, is hugely important to staying engaged in a project. That said, there are times when the direction that most benefits the work isn’t the one that you’re most interested in. 1. How do you approach finding that balance self indulgent design/writing/whatever (things that you find personally appealing or enjoyable to draw) and design that’s less "fun" but serves a purpose. 2. When are "sacrifices"-- exchanging fun for variety or cohesion or flow-- worth it? How much do you think about "fun" when designing? --- Question about "secrets"... The story may not really be *about* the world’s secrets, but given your considerable, cross-platform efforts to avoid spoilers, them nonetheless seems important to what you’re trying to accomplish. 1. How important do you think "secrets" are to this kind of story. Would it be the same if you had a lore blog where you answered everyone’s burning questions? 2. How do you cultivate the self-discipline to avoid blabbing about your ideas. Maybe you don’t struggle with this, but I definitely do. C * September 9, 2024

I’m struggling a little with this framing around self-indulgence! I maybe don’t think of it in a parallel way to you. The whole thing is kind of self-indulgent to me… like cohesion, everything feeling of a piece and moving forward to build a big structure, this is self-indulgent, this is my aesthetic, basically. In terms of vis dev at least, I definitely HAVE built my approach around things I like to draw. I made this setting with room to mess around in ways I can’t predict… A lot of “staying engaged” for me, I have discovered after some thousands of pages of comics, is about planning in ways that don’t lock me in too tightly, and allowing the whole process to have some room for exploration throughout.

The avoiding revealing setting-details thing is firstly just a big central philosophical principle I have about this stuff, which maybe isn’t as widely-held as it used to be. Any story is about sequential information revelation… I am designing the story in every moment to reveal information in a particular order, and I don’t want to undercut the integrity and cohesion of the story by revealing things elsewhere out-of-order. This feels like a basic principle people making stories have kind of always had to abide by! You can’t rely on a reader knowing stuff about your story that’s outside of the text in question (I am interested in how habits of writers and readers seem to be shifting around this lately however). So it’s not ABOUT the secrets maybe, or calling them “secrets” puts too fine a point on it, but I am intentional with how things are laid out!

This info-revelation thing is maybe a little complicated by the literary device of the “INVENTED SETTING” that figures so loudly in my comics. The way we do invented settings lately depends on a shared illusion of an objective PLACE, with its own existence outside of the story. The TRICK, as a writer, is I think to see this illusion itself as something that serves the story. The thing LOOKS bigger than the story in order to lend gravity and evocativeness to the story, but it ISN’T bigger than the story. Or if it IS bigger, it’s only bigger in my own personal notes and inside my own personal brain, so in no way that is relevant to readers. I know that I have broken the rules and done word-of-god stuff sometimes in the past because the “real beyond the story” thing is compelling to me too! But I aim for this. The “self-discipline” question I don’t really have an answer for; it is always kind of a struggle but I’m interested in making comics because that is how I want to reveal the stuff, so that is how I reveal the stuff!

If I were to do a lore-blog it would be me on-the-spot making up answers to questions based on the broad setting-principles I’ve established for myself. It would probably be useful for me as a writing exercise, but I’d lock myself into all sorts of decisions I would later regret, or I’d agonize over how seriously to take material “canonized” in the lore blog. It would extend the space of the story beyond the bounds I’ve so far established, and make it flimsy and untenable!

Picking up on some of this thinking in an answer to another letter, will post in a few days.