Ive always wanted to be a comic artist. And because i want my story to be perfect i've started to do everything myself -drawing -colouring -storytelling -storyboarding -etc My story is based on my own life and dressed up as a sort of superhero/love story. I seem to get stuck a lot of times eventhough i know what story i want to tell. It feels a lot like a psychic self-evaluation. That if/when i finish my story i will know myself truely. So i get the feeling that every time i get stuck ive got a personal problem or even a traumatic event i have to process before i can continue. At least that was the case every other time i got stuck. I was wondering if other artists who write stories in wich their main character is a reflection of themselves or their own lives experienced the same thing.
You are not bound by the truth or what actually happened. So, don't cuff yourself to how it all actually happened. If your character is desperate for money, let him hold up a bank even if you never did. If his wife is pregnant, let him question if he's the father, even if your wife has never been pregnant. Our lives are filled with stories, but if we are going to draw on our life and pass it off as fiction, we need to embrace the form and realize what is happens in real life doesn't usually work to just write down what happened and call it fiction. Allow yourself to play with the story. It's easy to be inspired by actual events and our lives. It's much harder to pass them off as fiction. It seems like you're doing that a little, but go ahead and venture off track even more. You'll probably get a better story out of it.
I agree with deadrats. Your life can provide fodder for your stories, but unless you're doing an autobiography, you don't have to re-create what has actually happened to you. In fact, while you 'process' things, you can actually imagine an ending or the next step, even if it's not the one you took or will take. Playing 'what if' is a great story builder. Take something about your life and ask yourself what if. What if that hadn't happened? What if something else DID happen instead? What if what happened to me had actually happened to somebody else? Somebody with a totally different personality or situation thanwhat I am or what my environment is? The most interesting thing about this approach is that you're very likely to learn more about yourself than if you just write 'what happened.' What would YOU do, if....and give yourself that 'if.' There are no limitations. You are totally in control of the story you write. You can make ANYTHING happen to anybody in it. So don't hamstring yourself by sticking only to what actually did happen to you. Use that as a starting point, not a finishing point. What would you like to have changed about your life? Change it then. But make that the STARTING point of the story. What would happen next?
As an acting director once said to me - your life is your toolbox. Use it to drive your performance. But you're not acting out events in your life, you're drawing on your experience to make your performance believable. The same applies here. Your character isn't you. He/she might be based on you, but use your experiences to make your character believable, not as a straitjacket. I mean, you're already diverging by making your character a superhero.
