Baring All?

I happen to be reading a book entitled Writing for Comics with Peter David which just happens to be written by Peter David. Just to provide a brief biography, Peter David is a comic book writer known for his work on The Hulk, Supergirl, X-Factor, and other better or lesser known Marvel and DC comic titles.

May I say that I absolutely love comic books? I don’t care that I’m currently 21 years old and about to move across the country to hunt for work. I grew up on comic books and the myriad of 90’s cartoon spin-offs on the Fox Kids Television Network. But, for me, comics were never just… well, comics. I loved how the characters came alive and leapt off the page. They were very real seeming, and each character seemed to illustrate some aspect of my life or the world around me.

For Example, one of my favorite X-Men characters:

Gambit: A Cajun with a mysterious past in the criminal underworld. He can kinetically charge any object just by touching it and plug it so full of energy that it explodes. Basically, he can make bombs out of anything. Pretty cool, so cool in fact, that he is featured in the upcoming movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The coolest thing about him though was always his nonchalant attitude. He was a man of mystery and confidence. I always wanted to be like that as a child and young teen. I wanted to be that mysterious man, the one who everyone wanted to know more about, but couldn’t pry any more information out of than was allowed. I wanted to be that slightly dangerous, yet good, card wielding Cajun. Call it fantasy or catharsis if you will, but as a child, I empathized with this character. He was an extension of a hidden longing within.

So as I’m reading this book, Peter David goes into a discussion of how to create a character and how to create characters that are compelling for the audience. Here is a quote that particularly struck me:

“Don’t hold back. Writers have to be willing to metaphorically drop their pants and invite the world to take its best shot. If there are aspects of yourself that you really don’t like, be willing to explore them within a fictional construct. Not only might you create a compelling character, but you might find out interesting things about yourself.”

~ Peter David

So here’s the catch, am I brave enough as a writer to expose my inner demons to the world? Is that something I want to risk? I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, thinking about how this applies to my writing and my future in the film industry (and any storytelling industry, honestly) and I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been what I’ve wanted to do all along. I often say that I want to create stories that reveal things to people which they didn’t know about themselves before, that I want to expose the corners of the room that are currently hidden in shadows. So yes, this is exactly what I want to do as a storyteller. My goal though, is to create characters that can live in dreams and goals and aspirations just like so many Marvel characters did in my childhood. To do that takes time, courage, and self-examination. It may involve going places that I'm not comfortable going or writing difficult characters and situations, but in the end, it's worth it. If I can create characters that I empathize with, then I can create characters that the world empathizes with as well, and in so doing, maybe we can learn a thing or two about ourselves.