writing progress notes 1

i've considered making posts about my writing process more, so sorry this one doesn't have an image or anything. i don't really have a clear vision of what i want for them yet.

i haven't worked much on my writing in a long time; in fact, even the streams i did about development didn't necessarily kick me into gear. over the last week or 2, i've tried to put my foot down and touch on ANY writing at all, knowing i'll eventually run out of what i produced in the process of running of a comic.

the stories i have in progress are as follows:

•  eat your heart out, which features a luna moth named monday as the protagonist, and a skunk named patience as the love interest. it's primarily about eating disorders and learning to love yourself. 
• drawing a blank, which features a chameleon named outis as the protagonist, and is about art and phenomenology, or as a more trite artist would put it, "identity."
• catharsis, which features a cat named felix as the protagonist, and is primarily about fantasies, and what a lie to yourself is, if a lie is a statement you believe is not true told to someone with the intent of deception.
• fresh meat, which is the comic i'm drawing now and still needs script cleaning and tweaking, as all works do until they're all done, in my opinion.
• an unnamed comic about 2 twin border collies who are named mallory and marina trying to rebuild their bond, mainly about learning that to connect with someone you need to feel connected to yourself as much as them.
• and another unnamed comic about a lovebird, hermit crab, and lovebug in a polyamorous triad. none of them have names yet. it's mainly supposed to be a rom-com thing.

quite a few projects... they're not all meant to be finished all at once or anything. i have mainly only touched the scripts and documents for catharsis, drawing a blank, and eat your heart out.
i've noticed it's really hard to juggle stories evenly. it takes energy to switch into different headspaces to focus on different topics... and at the same time it all feels too same-y. i've tried not to worry too much about focusing on them all equally, because i won't be able to draw them all with equal priority anyway...

catharsis has given me a lot of trouble, so much so that i wrote about it in 2 streams of like 5 during the last development streams vote. i decided on a basic premise that synthesized a couple of the original ideas, and settled on a central "lie" to work the plot around.
i only really came up with a more concrete idea for the plot by letting some inhibitions go about felix as a character with DID (no, killing off one of their alters isn't that inhibition, i promise) and from going over the themes and goals i wanted for a longer story: saga will be fabricating an alter who doesn't actually exist internally and externally.
the next step is probably an outline.

eat your heart out has progressed only a little. i've written down some scenes i considered really clever and notes, but no outline or general plot yet. i'm thinking i need to change patience's design a bit so that she's never so thin to be more realistic. even though i was skin and bones at my worst, that isn't the case for most people, and i was reminded of this, so why not change it sooner than later? i've also been tweaking monday's family, as i changed the decision to have her be estranged. again, that's something i can relate to and consider a default (it also makes them easier to write), but i should try branching out more, especially for characters who aren't my race.
so far i just know that patience will probably meet monday by joining a food collection organization as she struggles with college and is pressured to take up some kind of volunteer work by her family.
monday will probably find her general physical weakness and comments about food noteworthy, and invite her to lunch, as friends, which patience will turn down... but she'll accept a coffee date.
monday's home life will probably cause somewhat sparse attendance or availability (both emotionally and literally) and most of the plot from monday's side will be confusion about why she can't stop thinking about this girl as they connect. i have more written out there but i'd hate to spoil it all... i'm not sure where to draw the line yet about spoilers when talking about the writing process.

anyway, drawing a blank i reworked a lot of in a very short amount of time just recently. outis's character was refreshed and the goal of the story was completely recentered. for this one in particular-- i'll just say that the script before i touched it was at about 55 pages of notes and material. i think that writers are encouraged to doubt themselves too much, but your first ideas are often more solid than you think, and trying to rework some of the first aspects you decided on for a character can be much messier than you think... sort of a jenga tower of details in backstories and personalities.
first, i will say that outis has OSDD (similar to felix's DID), and the story incorporates a self-discovery aspect. they originally had 3 alters, as i noticed when first writing out my idea of the character that i couldn't adequately summarize them in a couple of sentences like keshet. i split up the seemingly contradictory aspects of their personality into "personas- which eventually became canonical alters.
i became stuck with them a lot when they were met with narrative and thematic challenges that these 3 couldn't accommodate without seeming "out of character," but it left me confused about how i was supposed to figure out how many alters they should have, if they needed more. i realized i just needed to give them enough to fit with their backstory that they could, in theory, express the emotional and thoughtful range of an individual without a major dissociative disorder. it sounds like a no-brainer, but it really helped to put it so straightforwardly.
originally, i've mentioned several times, the story was trying to answer a question, i had, which i wrote at the top of the document: "the point of this story is to answering questions about identity, regarding to c-ptsd. if you’re abused as a child, you grow up into the person you are wholly based around that life. are all your accomplishments, by extension, thanks to the ones who abused you? are they always a part of who you are by nature? that’s what the story should always be about."
upon recentering the story, i wrote this (3 whole pages, actually, but i'm trying to just pick one snippet to summarize) in response: "i’ve done a lot of research in search of a more satisfying answer, even if it was the same one. i’ve felt for a long time that i’d found that answer, too, and found some peace with it for myself… but it never seemed to come together for this story. the answer wasn’t something intelligible to other people.
i thought maybe that’s just how this issue would be… that trauma is so unique to each person, no story can help more than being touched. but i still feel like we all feel pain and love and fear and joy in a similar way… we’re all built with the same operating system. there has to be a way to connect, especially to people who are so afraid of being touched by other human beings in a more palpable way."
now for this story, i'll need to review all ~40 scenes and figure out what can be reworked into a new plot. the plot, also-- features a different aspect of outis that i didn't want to include initially out of self-consciousness. i've decided they'll have a separate journaling project about their symptoms, and they'll be much more invested in knowing specific things about the brain, as someone who likes to push its buttons with art.
for this story especially, i will be trying to keep in mind rejecting the overwrought expository compulsions i tend to do with writing (ie. i feel like i can't skip many days or hours because the reader Needs To See, etc.), although it's going to be long, no doubt. i just don't want the length to jump out as a surprise when i've actually started like what's happened with fresh meat.

i haven't touched mallory and marina's story at all (and, for what it's worth, not sasha and nicole's, either).

the other unnamed story about the trio, i just finished making concept designs for them like a week ago. i'm happy with how they're shaping up to be. unlike the other stories, this one is supposed to be episodic and a comedy.
i have to make a decision soon about whether i'd like the episodic format to contain some plot or not. i really love when seasons of a tv show have overarching plot elements that wrap up at the end of every season.
first, i have some more work to do with tweaking designs and outlining backstories and personalities for these 3, though.

for fresh meat, i haven't really gone back to scripting more of the scenes yet. i've been actually rereading summaries and outlines and trying hard to visualize where else they might go. i don't often visualize scenes vividly, unless they're BIG moments to me, so it's a challenge to try figuring it out in detail... but not TOO much detail that it'll bite me in the ass when i'm actually trying to draw it on a deadline.

that's about all i have right now as an update. i really am working on stuff, figured i should update. sorry about the messiness of this, i will try to figure out how to incorporate more pictures/screenshots and focus on updates for one story at a time in the future, it's just a lot of overhauls and new ideas at once.