In September I was lucky enough to be accepted to join the Do It Together Festival, hosted by the Ubele Initiative, to give a workshop about creative writing, specifically fantasy worldbuilding, for the BAME writer. The workshop had only been an hour long, so I'm taking this opportunity to build on the points we touched on, dive deeper, and build higher. Writing is intimidating enough as it is, but creating a story within a notoriously whitewashed genre as fantasy (here I mainly discussed High Fantasy and Sci-Fi Fantasy), a BAME writer can feel horribly confined by years and years worth of Euro-centric imagery, metaphor and culture. It's not their fault - so how do they build a world that doesn't direct them to whiteness, writing whiteness, and believing this whiteness was the only foundation for their story to grow from? Well, I hope this will be a little insight into how. Imagine a brick wall. That brick wall is going to become a beautiful and colourful and meaningful mural. But before we slap on the plastering and paint, we have to make sure that wall is as steady and sturdy as possible before moving on to draft, fill and create our mural. Our brick wall is the world we mean to set our story in. It needs to be strong and sure so that it is easily accessible through our storytelling. We can dip into that foundation at any time throughout our narrative and use the details we've established to really bring our writing to life. And because the culture, the history, the flesh, blood and bones of our fantasy worlds are laid out in front of us, all we have to do is write. And a great way to start is following (if loosely) this simple diagram, above, appropriately named The Hero's Journey. Here, we can track how and why our protagonist interacts with the world we've built, the points in which they would access information about the world, and how this would be used to propel their journey foward to its conclusion. From the ordinary world (the place where our protagonist is most settled or knowledgeable of i.e. the Shire for Frodo and Bilbo, or Market Chipping for Sophie Hatter in Howl's Moving Castle) the main character will be chosen, or pulled into action, by a call to adventure, beginning the chain of events that will lead the protagonist further into our fantasy world to complete their quest. Above are later variations of the same cycle - Leeming and Cousineau simplifying the steps (I'm personally most drawn to the latter as it allows for more freedom when writing) in comparison to Campbell's original journey. The steps themselves can and should be altered by our own writing - these aren't rules to command our stories by, but the guidance and direction the journey gives is invaluable, pariticularly when and how to dip into the rich worlds we've already built.
Look out for my next post for part 2 where we'll talk about soft and hard worldbuilding, and really start to understand the history of Eurocentric fantasy writing!
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Don't get me wrong, being an artist is great (heh). But it's hard work.
Why you want to be an artist, in my humble opinion, doesn't matter. You're producing art. You're contributing to the web of humanity's past, present and future and, yes, your first piece might be an inch of a thread in the biggest and most colourful tapestry this earth has ever seen, but it's still there, and definitely an essential part of it. That's great, right? (Disclaimer: if the aim of your art is to hurt, demean or degrade innocent people: please, get off my site.) But there's no manual of how exactly to feel like you're an artist and this random mash-up of thoughts you're reading certainly isn't trying to be one. You could find instructional guides on how to monetise your craft, that's helpful, or what other artists did to name themselves artists. You could read a book, you could read a hundred. It all boils down to one simple fact. If you create art, I need to tell you something important: you're already an artist. Okay, that sketch of an eye on your phone is technically more realistic looking than the one you're staring down at in your sketchbook, the one your hands spent the last hour and a half shading, colouring, lining. You thought the way you used that eraser to get the highlight on the eyeball, just touching the iris (but not enough to, in your eyes, ruin it) was pretty cool. The eyelashes are exactly how you like them, you even managed to control the weight of your hand to get the crease under the bottom eyelid just right. Just how it satisfied you. And then you looked at your phone and saw something, in your mind at least, that was a better eye. It's not better. It's just different. An Instagram feed's worth of illustrations, 3D renders, music, paintings, poems and sculptures shouldn't deter you from creating what is, inarguably, yours. You have to understand that the standard of work you're aspiring to is one link in that particular artist's ever-growing chain of development. Maybe you're on link four. You'll get to link eight, then sixteen, then so on and so forth. You're already an artist, just like them. It's what you do next that determines what kind of artist you intend to be. And no, despite what we've been told, there aren't any rules to abide to, no compartments to fit in. You like sketching in markers? Keep doing that. Maybe one day you'll pick up a lump of clay, or an embroidery hoop, or, like, a trumpet. And you'll do that, too. Be careful of burnout but understand one thing: creativity is not limited, and certainly not to one medium. At some point you need to ask yourself whether the notoriety you're seeking is for your art, or yourself. There's nothing wrong with either. Validation through your media, both for your artwork and you, the artist, is fine - you don't have to pretend it's your spiritual calling, you don't have to be ashamed of using your skill, perhaps you'd call it a talent, to get that money rolling in. Art for art's sake is more than just a 19th century cultural movement, perhaps it's more personal than it sets out to be. Let me explain. In the 1800s a bunch of artists and philosophers decided to remove any meaning from the art they produced in reaction to the highly evocative and moralistic art of these crazy kids' predecessors and contemporaries. Where these previous artists crammed as much significance into their art, the aestheticists removed it all: political, social, philosophical, everything. I'm not going to give you a whole history lesson on it (but please research the movement, it is very interesting) but I will give you this - their art didn't have to mean anything. It didn't have to shake the world, it didn't have to bring tears to eyes or solve humanity's mysteries. You, yes, you, are allowed to just create. For no reason. You like drawing Tanjiro from Kimestu no Yaiba over and over again all over your sketchbook because he's the best character you've come across since Goku? Keep doing that. Conversely, if you want your art to mean something: who is stopping you from doing that, either? Whether or not your creating for meaning, to say something, to scream it, perhaps, your craft and what you produce from it matters. You're an artist, aren't you? Keep doing that. |
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