Making Friends
A new Change Log comic about needing new friends and some thoughts on character development.
I’ve always been bad at making friends. I’m not what you would call a “people” person.
It’s interesting, when I write these characters, there’s a bit of my personality in each of them and sometimes it comes out without me even realizing it. I’ve never actually written out all of their character traits, but I have a good idea of who they are and how they would respond to different situations and conversations that I put them in.
When some writers say that their characters “write themselves” what they really mean is that they know the characters so well that they don’t have to spend time thinking about what they’ll do or say. It’s like an automatic response in your brain that, of course this character would react this way.
The other nice thing about this is that you’ll know immediately when you try to make your character do or say something that is completely out of their character. It will be so obviously wrong that you probably won’t even want to write it down.
It’s like a subconscious guard rail that keeps your characters on their road.
Getting to that point can be a bit difficult, though.
For some of my characters, I knew exactly who they were right away. Others developed a bit as we went along.
Writing a regular comic strip like this one allowed me to be a bit vague with certain characters as they were introduced, but you don’t always have that luxury.
For other stories I’ve written, and for my current other comic (The Atlantean), it’s important to do the work to establish who your characters are before you start writing the story.
They’ll evolve a bit as you go through drafts and revisions, which is the whole point of writing drafts… to make sure you get the reps in on your characters and nothing feels off with the story and characters.
Unless you’re Disney and you don’t bother writing a second or third draft.
Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my artwork/sketches/ramblings, follow me on X and here on Substack Notes. And if you really want to support me, I have a store!
Also, if you’re into political cartoons, I have another newsletter called Political Nomad with a new comic every Thursday.
Have a great week!
-Brad