On Authenticity

I firmly believe that it is the duty of a writer to UNDERSTAND, that is to search out for truth and meaning and relay those discoveries through fiction.

Now this might be why D.C. won’t let me write SUPERMAN. (wink).

Nonetheless, authenticity matters to me both as a creator, and a reader. Authenticity doesn’t mean that we can’t work in hyperbolic language or push our imagination towards fantasy -- it simply means that we need to maintain and culture an immense understanding of the characters, worlds and actions we create.

That is our responsibility. Because the work that we do can change lives. Ease pain. Provide understanding, or remind a reader that in this world, you not alone.

When we create characters and run them through the gauntlet of experience that either strengthens them, or destroys them, we’re making PEOPLE. Once these characters leave your mind and live on a piece of paper, they become PEOPLE and these people have to possess dimension, real motivations, depth and the complexity that you and I have in daily life. It can be the Green Goblin or a seven year old child who gets a glimpse of the Batman, but our characters have to be authentic. We have to challenge ourselves to understand the mind of a child seeing the awe inspiring power of Batman, and we have to challenge ourselves to understand the rage, fear and bitterness coursing through Norman Osborne as he threatens thousands of lives just to kill Spider-Man.

We can’t just depict madness and anger and fear. We have to understand madness and anger and fear, to the best of our ability and then write stories from that place of understanding. We aren’t absolved from this responsibility because we write popular fiction, rather we have more responsibility because popular fiction reaches more people and some of those people are young enough to still be framing their ideas of the world around them.

I’m fortunate that in addition to writing, I help counsel “troubled” teens here in Saint Louis, Mo. Their only “trouble” is that they’ve seen too much injustice at too young an age and they need positive reinforcement so they can believe they can control their lives.

And not cut themselves.
Or smoke crack.
Or starve.

I see kids from all classes, all races, all genders. In a group session my first job is to help find commonality between them, me, and the world in which we live. We always have at least this ONE THING in common.

We all have a story we love. We have a character we’ve used to define our personal struggles. We have lines of fiction branded in our hearts.

I’ve seen the thirteen-year old with burn scars who helps me understand why there are three different Goku’s in Dragon Ball Z.

I’ve held the hand of the 16 year old girl who’s father knew no boundaries. I’ve helped her dye her hair red so she can look like ALIAS’ Sydney Bristow. I’ve heard her tell me that “Sydney gets hurt and she doesn’t give up. I want to be strong like she is.”

I’ve met the twelve year old boy who wears a faded Superman T-Shirt every day because he knows that Superman would have never let his mother die in that car accident.

We, as writers, may never understand the meaning our work will have for the people who embrace it. We don’t get to choose which stories will matter for people, and in what way they will be affecting.

But they will affect.

We have to make sure everything we create has the best depth and understanding we can provide because once it leaves us, it has a life all its’ own and God forbid our work not live up to the needs of the people who read it.

There isn’t a writer in the world that wasn’t personally affected by something they read. At some point in our lives we opened a book and came away understanding more about ourselves. We left a text empowered, spun-dizzy and set on a better path.

That’s a gift and when we create we need to give that gift back. We need to reach inside ourselves and find our own truths, examine them and express them. It’s our awe that the seven year old boy feels when he sees The Batman. It’s our anger, and bitterness and fear that Norman Osborne feels when he throws explosives at Spider-Man.

Writers can’t be cowards. Writers have to expose themselves in the work. We chase our vulnerabilities, corner them like copper colored roaches in the light and we bleed them into our work.

Each one of us has things to share, insights and experience. This isn’t a dictate of one genre over another. This applies to horror and comedy and action and drama. This is just the act of making a decision to never bullshit people when you write a story.

If it’s not true to you. Don’t write it. It’s that simple.
And that difficult.

48 hours after I scattered my father’s ashes into the wind, I needed to know that I wasn’t alone. I walked into a comic book store and saw a poster of a boy kneeling in a spotlight, holding the dead hands of his mother and father. Tears in his eyes. Pearls on the ground. A book written by Frank Miller was under that poster. I read it and an hour later I wasn’t alone.

I was ten years old.

I’ve never gotten the chance to thank him in person for that.
But I show my gratitude every time I write a story and I try to do the same thing for someone else.

If our work is inauthentic, then so are we and there are too many readers who need us to be more than that. When the books are done and on shelves, and the Hollywood boys come in with checks and ambitions, and the film is made, the video game goes gold and the sequel’s announced on Dark Horizons.com, during all that there will be people...

People reading. People watching.
Some of them just need a little distraction from their lives.
Others need much, much more than that.

I see them once a week in the basement of a local church. They need your stories.
The next time tragedy strikes my life, I’m sure I’ll need your stories too.

Thanks for reading.

BH