Bite-Size 2.0: A Creator Discussion and Advice Thread

Intimidation

I'm really shy and easily intimidated. I consider myself a baby, while the other creators are all adults, and that difference makes me want to just stay at the back of the imaginary room. I'm content being the silent fan of the bigger writers. So no, I haven't overcome this part.

Humor

I don't consider myself a funny person so I often worry that I'm forcing things to be funny. Because of that, I let them come naturally in the dialogue. I don't force it or think hard about it.

Jokes do add or take away from the story depending on the timing and the atmosphere in the scene.

For the first bullet point, I can say that sometimes I actually feel like I'll get more time later on. I have a lot of schoolwork, so I feel like even adulthood will give me more time to do stuff (especially since there are a lot of adult creators with other full-time jobs).

For all the other bullets, I basically have the same answer: I do not believe my age has an impact on creation. I may be a teen but if I think I have a great idea now, I'll do it. I've learned that mistakes early on make you better sooner, so I might as well keep writing. Of course, I believe that some stories need more preparation and experience to make, but for the ones I think I can do now, I shall do. That's why I'm working on a short story-driven series right now -- so I can make a longer story-driven series later on. To me, I don't see age as something that stops me: it's all about that experience

•To an extent, it was when I was about to turn 30 when I realized time on getting Dragon Sparking made was running shorter and shorter. I realized that I absolutely had to start it for real before I turned 30 or I'd never actually do it.
But now that I'm on the path, I'm not too worried, it was mostly just getting started that I was panicked about.

•Nope. I'm 32 now so no.

•Not really, but I'm very picky with what I read and watch already. Though video games have lost their shine, and I get really bored while playing them. I just don't have much 'fun' time to waste, when I could be doing my art instead, it's much more fulfilling.

•I remind myself that I plan on doing this art thing until I die so there's no immediate rush to be big or anything. Now that I've started, I can just run the race until it's done.

• Not quite, but I get anxious thinking of how long a single project takes and if I'm not wasting precious time on time on it instead of doing smaller ones. However, if I only do small ones, I can't make the big one I want, I guess.
• A bit; it's also the huge impression that either you get in straight out of college or you take 10+ years to get that call. Doesn't stop me from trying anyway.
• Not really, my mood for certain genres and mediums shifts every few months, not much with age. Except for horror, I used to tolerate it as a kid, now I can't get anywhere close to it
• Reading other people's works or talking with other creators! You really aren't alone in most of these feelings, so many people that share your age or position out there and are nice to discuss these matters with.

Oh my god I feel you! I've been making miniseries to share as many stories as I want, but I also REEAALLLY want to make longer stories. I have plans to make a longer one after Doing Fine, Supine however.

• To represent reality.

It is never a conscious one for me. No, I am not the good person who wants to give people "representation" nor it is the point of my works, there are better people with such intention that can handle it better. I just find it off when we can find fifty shades of alien races with bizzare biology but not a single person of colour or someone who does not want to fuck.

• I just try to do some research and play it safe.

My works are all fantasy with fictional worlds and races, the rule and power dynamic are different from ours even in a work where our world exists. However, the races are inspired by real-life ones and although they are different I try to avoid offensive things and stereotypes associated by their real-life inspiration. Researching and reading a lot of things that are happening in our world helps a lot. It is even more helpful when you look from another perspective: e.g. when you read what a racist thinks about racism, you will get a clearer point why it exists.

In fantasy setting it is can be tricky, because you are challenged by questions you cannot find an exact answer. For example, it is racist to make a group of shape shifters have brown skin in their human form? Will it reinforce the notion that people of colour are animals? Although being what you categorise as people of colour myself I do not find it offensive, I tried to play safe by implementing the logic that their human appearance is mimicking a human race they are close to, and having another kind of shape shifter who looks white in their human form.

For some other topics which is more difficult for me even if when I do my research, I try to just know my limit. For example, writing neurodiverse people, people with mental illness, and survivors needs immense amount of sensitivity and empathy which I lack. I will rationalize: How important it is for the story? If it not I will discard it to avoid presenting it incorrectly, if it important then I need to do extra effort to make it acceptable.

I just wish, both creator and audience can be reasonable in this topic. Creators first should do their research, ask for opinion, and most importantly listen to people. Audience should give creators chance to fix their mistakes, you cannot be woke overnight and be perfect.

Not everyone is living in woke America or Scandinavian dreamland. Some live in restrictive place with heavily censored media/internet, religious zealots that will harm you for showing the smallest symptoms of gayness, growing up indoctrinated in homogeneous environment, abusive parents who will do god knows what it is when you look up "unacceptable things"; it is not as easy for them to gain freedom, information, and change of mind overnight. Sure they can change, but change can be a slow progress and rather than demonizing them from making mistake, as long as they are willing to listen please guide them.

• Of course.

I have a low empathy myself but I try to rationalize and combine their identities, their social status and power regarding to their identities, and their other struggles to synthesise how they possibly perceive themselves and the world.

Man, diversity is so important. It's really not as hard to do as people say it is, and yet we don't see enough of it.

• my motivation is based on my own life. I grew up in a very diverse area, and when I'm places where everyone looks like me--it doesn't feel like home. It doesn't feel real, youknow? So I add diversity without even thinking about it. To me that's just how the world is. I usaully address the race and diversity of my characters, and if I have a lack of it, there's usually a very good reason. So, for instance, right now in my story, there isn't a lot of diversity because I wanted to show how sheltered they were, but, once they are out of their current affluent circumstance, they will finally be surrounded by diversity, and will realize how little they know of the world they live in.
• As for if I I've ever had to research--I've had to research a lot. Currently I'm trying to learn the right spelling and usage of certain phrases in Lakota, which is a very rare language in the United States, and there just isn't a lot of consistent information available online since most of the websites are like...old and outdated geocities pages. I'm probably going to have to buy a book printed by a scholar or find someone fluent and ask them point blank how to spell stuff because a lot of people spell the same things differently. But, it's important because in the context I'm writing--I need to use Lakota, and while I could fudge the spelling or just omit the words entirely, that would erase even more a language that is already so endangered, despite it being how people spoke in my country for thousands of years. Although it is very daunting and I do not want to get it wrong, it's very important to me to get it in there and to get it right, even if it's for 10-12 words of a larger story.
  Not only for writing, I also have to research a lot when it comes to art. In my own personal studies I try to do a different ethnicity each time I do a painting (unfortunately fanart makes it so I can't do this as often as I'd like since most fanart subjects are pale skinned) but I do have people tell me "wow, you render this so well" and it's because........I practice a lot. If you are waiting until you are hired to paint someone with dark skin, you will not be able to do it. I think the same would go for writing. Always be practicing making characters who are of different nationalities.
  But I think research is a stage of writing and art that we shouldn't ever half-ass. It sets the building blocks so we don't waste our time making something wrong later.
  -Am I aware different people observe the world differently? Absolutely aware. Especially with all that is happening in the world today. There's a lot of things I never have to deal with, and a lot of comforts I take for granted.

• It took a lot of work. I grew up in a very privileged area (even though I'm not well off), but living and trying new experiences and meeting new people slowly but surely made me notice that I should stop thinking in "default" appearances and be varied and diverse with character design. This all came in very late teens, going to uni and REALLY discovering social causes instead of just "prejudice bad we gotta stop it", and I went back and redesigned all my stories where possible. Also, probably a bit of self acceptance, since it's a thing in my country to consider yourself white even if you're latinx, which I did do for many years and shouldn't have.
• Research, and experiencing things outside of my bubble. Reading up on people with different viewpoints, really getting into history, discovering others' struggles, that all contributes to going off of real diversity and not only what you absorbed through media osmosis. It's kind of like drawing with reference rather than without; you HAVE missed things that you won't notice until you get and understand that knowledge, gotta drop the "it's obvious I should know".
• Absolutely, and that's where research is so important. My old drafts of stories were black and white(let's be honest, very white), shallow with characters I didn't immediately make relatable, but that's not real life. You might go back for years on that character and find something about their perspective/their inspiration's perspective you were mistaken about, and it never feels done; but that's improving on being more open and accepting of other worldviews in general. The trick is to never get too comfortable.

Out of the prompts, it's crazy how non-diverse my old stories' casts are - Splitting Image has some traces of it though I've redesigned a lot of it and tried to always see what could fit perfectly on a character that I'd just overlook before. Between the first draft and now, I've watched so many shows and read so many things with characters I identify with(as I discovered myself, too), that I can't just go and make that previous world again, I want to work towards making a story where more people can relate to characters and feel a little less alone if possible, uncomfortable subjects and all.

Its getting late for me right now, but this is an important issue to me so ima keep it brief.

• My motivation is that it is the right thing to do. I decided this consciously after getting more involved in social work.

• Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to exercise this desire. The Wonderful World of Whatever didn't focus a lot on characters and there were no humans except for myself, so race is out the window. As for The Four Friendly Humors, when creating the characters I ended up calling them all he/him and forgetting that a cast like that is still an issue. Unfortunately, changing that at this point or even making the new character in the spin-off not male would seem like pandering, so I'm just going to try to avoid using pronouns (but canonically they're all he/him since I've used that in the series already).
  --Note: I can't really explore diversity in other aspects for the humors since they're literally just emotional blobs

• Yeah I'm aware of humans being this way, but I never thought about how a character can affect me. Though that makes sense: if you're getting attached to an OC, its almost like they're a friend, and you can learn from friends.