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this was originally an entry in my physical diary. i expanded on some parts, but didn’t rearrange or edit the stuff that was already there, so it’s largely stream of consciousness lol.
i read a piece in the new yorker about mike white (of white lotus and school of rock fame) and it made me want to make stuff. i’m reading “what’s not to love” by jonathan ames and also feeling inspired by that. i want to develop the courage and impulsivity it takes to make my own stuff and often (the keyword in this).
but what do i mean by “my own stuff”? i make plenty of silly autobiographical stuff, and self-indulgent oc/canon sketches. is that not my own stuff?
i guess i mean to say fiction, using my characters, telling a semi-linear story and being really obsessed with my original work. but i’ve said that repeatedly over the years, ever since i was a kid – that i want to get really into my own characters – and have yet to really make good on that promise.
whatever short fiction i’ve written that i still feel proud of, i like because of my concept and execution and the effort i put into it. i have very little interest in my characters outside of the purpose they serve in executing my idea, but i’m a character-driven person as a story-reader, which seems like an odd contradiction. i’ll get very very into shitty media with a story i have a million gripes with if i find a character compelling, and that’s what i end up making a whole bunch of work about.
i think original fiction scares me, honestly, because i don’t think my observation skills are very good. i’m self-centered and it shows in my reads on other people and on the world, and it especially shows up in my fiction. “what is this in relation to me?” “how do i understand this?” “what do i want to say about this?” i can’t get into someone else’s head very well, not well enough, because i am always in my own.
but i like reading fiction that allows you to inhabit the strange mind of someone else. i like stories with characters with weird and varied mental models. fe3h appealed to me because i thought it did a good job of making an interesting, BIG cast of characters who were really consistent in their worldviews, whose growth also made sense, and whose relationships with each other were textured. you see so much of faerghus culture in the blue lions, and yet all of them have very distinct personalities and worldviews based on their individual backgrounds and experiences. in short, they’re like real people.
of course, i assume there’s a team of writers behind fe3h, but the article mentions that mike white1 prefers – pretty much has it as a rule – to work alone. and yet the white lotus is full of all these very real characters, who speak and act in a way that feels right for them, despite them being very different from him.
i don’t think i can do that. i indulge too much in wishful thinking – want to make my characters act the way i want them to, not the way they would. this is all well and good in the realm of fanwork, in my opinion, because i am doing it to be self-indulgent, and just make up a story to please myself, quality be damned. but my frame of mind shifts when i’m telling an original story, and i evaluate it the same way i evaluate the works i like to read. my character immersion abilities as a writer fall short of what i expect as a reader. i want characters that feel real and detached from me, but struggle with making them from scratch. i self-insert into every character i make, which i find unskilled and illusion-shattering when i recognize it in other writers’ work2, so i have no love for my own fiction.
i don’t know if my self-centered mental model is something i can train myself out of or hope to naturally outgrow. but i’ve lived a quarter of my life this way already, and not to my detriment – it’s in fact made me very good at understanding myself and identifying the stories i enjoy, so it’s a trait i don’t resent too much. i don’t know if i’m willing to put in a lot of effort to go against my nature when i don’t really have nor want to. it would be nice to tell a good story about the human condition with interesting, realistic, full characters – the kind i’d be obsessed with as a reader – but it’s not like i’ll regret my life if i don’t get to do that.
if i think about it a little harder: i realize i’m more interested in the mortifying ordeal of being known, and having other people feel known while enjoying the stuff that i make. if i capture any truth, it’s a truth i personally believe in that i’m happy to find other people relate to. if i make something vulnerable and weird, it’s in the spirit of knowing my own weirdness a bit better, and sharing it means i’ll be able to find people who find that interesting, who might make the same kind of work. i think most of the stuff i’ve made has been in an effort to communicate with other people, to find people who feel similarly, to make new friends. that’s why i share anything at all.
i guess that begs the question: “well, don’t your original characters say something about you?” or “wouldn’t your original stories also draw like-minded people to you?” i GUESS. i don’t think i’m done interrogating why i’m really not very interested in my own silly guys nor have i exhausted the list of options for becoming very very insane about them. but that’s a concern to be addressed another time, along with questions like “what makes your ttrpg and oc/canon ocs different?”… all in good time…
added later: …it feels good to say what my purpose is in storytelling, and what it doesn’t need to be. sometimes i wonder if i’m closing doors by being “quick” to define these parameters for what i am and am not able to do (not very growth mindset of me), but i don’t think i’m hasty about it. in fact, in this case, i have YEARS of seeing myself Not do something from which i can make conclusions. clearly i don’t actually want to write and share original fiction That badly. but if i wanted to later on, i still could!
i think closing the door need not be a bad thing, actually – i would otherwise be paralyzed with indecision if there were too many things i felt i could pursue and wanted to see through to the end. because i am the type to fret about that, to mentally jump 10 steps ahead and see what acting on this now will bring in the future, to weigh the risks, to struggle with too many endeavors, and to want to put 100% of myself into all of them. i know at least that much about myself.
Footnotes
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tangent: i somewhat relate to mike white’s demanding exactness, and though i think that means it would make him difficult for me to get along with creatively (there’s me relating what i read to myself again), i respect that it’s something he can afford to be, being very good at what he does. ↩
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of course, i probably don’t recognize EVERY writer’s self-insertions, seeing as i don’t know them personally. i don’t even usually look them up. so there are likely writers who just Skillfully self-inserted. but STILL!!! i know ME personally and i know I’M self-inserting, and i have no way of assessing if i’m doing so skillfully because i’m myself!!! ↩