Do you have a bad past?

Authors regularly use novels and comics to work through their own trauma. It's pretty common to project your traumatic and non-traumatic experiences on a character and then use them to work through your grief.

I personally project things that have happened to me onto my characters and have found a kind of catharsis in it. While my experiences weren't great, I'm able to write more realistic experiences because of it. (I don't mean to say that you can't write character trauma unless you've suffered it btw. )

With the world the way it is, it seems a lot of us have had negative experiences at some point in our lives. No one will think badly of you if you add that to your story. Comics are a form of self expression, so putting your experiences or traits into your story just makes it more true to you, in my opinion. In fact, artists put some of themselves in their work more frequently than they may realize.

Just don't be afraid, but don't feel pressured to write things you may not want to relive.

When I include actual past experiences from my own life into a script it's usually by accident. I also try not to worry about what others will think since I rarely disclose what is from my own life and what is fiction. Since what you are talking about doing is a much more personal story I say go ahead and do it if it is what you truly want to do. Just try and keep in mind its the story that you want to tell and don't let what others might think get to you.

Everyone has something they need to work through and let out. If you do that through art and story telling than so be it. It might help you, it might even help someone who is going through something similar.

I sometimes base character off certain aspects of my personality or have them do or be what I felt like I couldn’t. I try not to go to deep because mostly I want to have fun.

Escape is why I read stories, it’s why I write them. They always end so nicely. Especially fairytales and fantasy!

My series is loosely based on my self-esteem struggles and anxieties that I don't usually talk about. Trying to turn my growing pains into something that helps others has allowed me to turn a place of hurt into a place of healing.

I have definitely written a lot based of personal experiences (good and bad). I’ve also written stuff based off research. But, yes, I’d definitely say I have written from personal experiences and thoughts.

I did include a bit but in such a way that nobody would know what it's about. I had a traumatic experience happen to me about 3 years ago and was thinking of writing a short comic about it. I think it would be difficult for me since I tried a sort of autobiography comic once and it came out really bad. If I were to do it, I want to do it with some made up, simple, cutesy kind of characters.

I don't think I've really seen a comic more in-depth about the type of situation though. So I wanted to give readers a bit more information and I also wanted to express some of the feelings I had at the time, a recent similar situation that happened, and how I am now.

I do that with my comic2. The initial idea of starting it was because I was going through many medical complications for years and it was jumping loop after loop to even try and get treatment. Then there are other things that I plan to put in such as childhood traumas, poor mental health, and drugs abuse. I decided to cover these sensitive subjects as a way to share experiences that I had but to also relate to those who have gone through something similar and to let them know that they are not alone in such situations.

a very big resounding yes

most of the time, no. though sometimes i think its very obvious, which is fine. im very careful about what i let 'the public' know about my life, so a lot of the time personal stuff can be shrouded under several layers of separation - but most of what i write draws originally from somewhere very personal, albeit not exactly autobiographical.

i think this is fairly common - your ideology, the things you care about and the experiences that shape you are bound to seep into your work, and most people draw from their own experiences in one way or another. 'a bad past' is almost expected of an artist. its not something that will alienate you, and i severely doubt anyone will judge you because of anything in your past. unless youre a murderer, i guess. but i doubt youre a murderer.

I had an extremely traumatic and abusive childhood, so because of how bad it was, I choose to never detail any of it in my stories. My childhood was shameful because the events should have never happened and pretty much nothing can be taken or learned out of what I had to go through growing up.

The death of my own estranged father made me completely reevaluate the opening of The Accidental Prince. The rewritten version that will go Premium has my main character far more conflicted and less hateful than the original. He also recognises surrogate father figures in his life. In the end, the book became a lot more about family than it would have previously been without that bereavement.

Another work that I definitely used to process through trauma is Freedom's Pyre (previously Freedom's Gate). I'm not going to get into specifics, but the main character of that book is abused and neglected by his parents, who favour his older brother more. The specifics of the abuse that Kit suffers are completely different to anything I went through, but the feelings and conflict he feels is definitely coming from somewhere deep inside. Some of my readers know that it is written from that perspective, but I mostly don't tell them. It has led to some readers becoming frustrated with characters at time (WHY CAN'T THEY JUST HURRY UP AND BANG??? WHY IS THIS CHARACTER SO ANNOYING AND OVERTHINKING THINGS ALL THE TIME??? WHY WON'T HE THINK ABOUT HIMSELF FOR ONCE??? etc) but the path to recovery is real and has been praised by others who are working through those same issues. Those are the ones I'm predominantly writing for - to let them know that it'll be okay. And I don't have to explain to those people as they can sense the authenticity of the sentiments. The ones that do question it or have problems with it aren't my target audience anyway.

(Also, I should note here that Freedom's Pyre is not an angst-ridden abuse story. No graphic abuse happens on page and the majority of the novel is focused on the character's journey away from his abusers and building up a life that has meaning without them. It's a lot more about magic and swords and cool guys called Shin than it is about the other stuff - though that's there for sure).

All in all, you should write what you want to or need to write. You will find an audience for a story about tough subjects, and perhaps those are the subjects that need to be written about most of all.

I think your personal experiences are going to be present in your work whether it's fiction or straight autobiography. They find a way in there somehow. And people are fascinated by hardship and misfortune, if anything being honest and open about your experiences will only endear you more to your audience than if you pretended nothing bad ever happened.

Parts of my past are bad and I use my comic to express those feelings metaphorically and literally. I reveal what I want people to know.

I believe that viewing a comic that is based on the life of the author is a form of creative art. Sometimes expressing real experiences not only help the author vent and learn from situations, but it can help others as well.

...yes. it's not something I ever talked about, bit they generally manage to seeps into my ideas and such. Pieces by pieces, and making it bigger.

Yeah, probably about the same amount as most people on here. I was in a situation in the earlier years of my life where there was some emotional abuse but due to a crazy amount of circumstances it wasn't anyone's actual fault. Which I know sounds ridiculous for those who haven't been in that sort of situation, but things like that are much more morally ambiguous then people want to let on.

There was also just a solid two-three years where I was manipulated by my peers for fun because due to my early childhood there was some social development issues. While I can't say I'm completely better I'm much more socially in tune then I was six years ago, so that's something.

I also had to acquaint myself with loss at a young age, and during my darker years where I was manipulated I had the death of three grandparents, an uncle and my father. So yeah, that was also pretty hard. The fact I didn't kill myself was a blessing within itself, because that's where I was at for a while.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing it shaped is how monstrous, realistically manipulative, spiteful and lost in their own thoughts my characters can be. Not a specific idea or theme, unlike most writers. I just want to express these things in my story because for the longest time those are the only things I ever knew.

Even tho this is an old thread, Imma add into it! Yes I had a very bad past. I wasnt a good person and I knew this. So I tried to change. I started looking at life more positively and started to accept people for who they were and started opening up to others. But my past kept coming back in forms of ex-friends and drama. So to ease the pain of struggling with who I wanted to be and who I really was, I wrote What is the Price of Freedom.