Author: otaduck

I'm an aspiring mangaka. I love BL/yaoi but don't know how to write it.

Manga Debut Strategies (Part 2)

I just finished a oneshot. I now have 3(ish) unreleased oneshots. I’m going to submit them to various magazines, but honestly, I hate them. They’re very spineless. Through an attempt to be mainstream, I feel like I’ve stripped these works of everything I’m good at.

I know I can’t just splatter anything at a canvas and expect to be serialized. There has to be some sort of curation, but I don’t know how to go about such a thing.

I don’t know how to articulate it, but whatever I just did – didn’t work.

My next contest is Kyomaf (I said I was done fiddling around on Artstreet/Medibang, but it’s the next soonest manga contest).

I’m going to make a oneshot that’s the most “me” thing imaginable. I already know this means whatever I make is doomed to fail, but I feel I need to do it.

I’ve failed in one direction for too long, now I’ll fail in the opposite direction. Every failure gets closer to success. I hope.

Why Manga

I make manga because I love manga.

Manga is a subjective term. I don’t know how to define it.

I read very little Western comics, webcomics, webtoons. I feel confused by left-to-right pages. I don’t like comics in color. Generally speaking, the color feels superfluous.

As a minimalist, I love the simplicity in the monochrome pages of manga.

There is no sound or motion in manga. A pure expression of storytelling. I see manga as the closest direct link to a person’s mind.

Movies are like a collage with everyone’s fingerprints adding to the picture. There is a value in that. However, I want to know the exact mind of another person. I think this is because I feel like my own self is misunderstood. I feel alienated from others. Many of my oneshots are an attempt to express something I can’t tell people, or I lack the words to articulate (Others are attempts at being mainstream, or an extended art exercise – but even these have a reflection of the self).

I also have the hope that my work will inspire people. Leave the world better than you found it. Maybe someone else will feel a personal connection when reading my work. Grander social and political action feels like something too complex for myself to understand, let alone artfully convey in fiction. That does not mean I want apolitical work.

It would be easier to try to make a stake in webcomics. However, this world is unfamiliar to me. I don’t know what the culture is like. I’m sure I could learn, but I don’t feel the same sense of inspiration that manga gives me. If I’m going to reach for a career in the arts, it has to be what I love.