Unfinished Joe

I always thought it would be fun to have conversations with the story characters I created. I like to think that all creative writers have some deeper layer of connection to their characters, one that teeters on the borderline of breaking their mind’s fourth wall. It was in this mysterious space of almost child-like imagination that the idea of Joe was born.

I think was inspired by the meme of writers unflinchingly putting their characters through hell for the sake of a gripping story. The characters never had any say whatsoever on the circumstances writers threw them into. All they could do was helplessly bear the weight of their creator’s assigned traumas.

With Joe, I decided against that. Rather than give him a stereotypical traumatic main character’s backstory, I thought it would be funny if he didn’t have a backstory at all.

And this would be rather aggravating to him.

I actually created Joe back in 2019. I was still new to digital drawing and most of the time I fumbled my way through it. In one particular comic, my main character (Jinx) was complaining about academic writing and how it wasn’t even comparable to creative writing. This was in response to an ignorant remark that all writing was the same, and that Jinx probably enjoyed her college writing assignments. Someone needed to be the ignorant fellow who made that remark.

I didn’t put much thought into this character. All I did was quickly draw up a human form wearing a sweater, plastered an unremarkable name across its blank face, and called it good enough. I hadn’t even bothered to give the character hair. Thus, Joe the afterthought was born.

It wasn’t until a couple years later I came across Joe again. At that point it was 2021, and I was armed with a sleek new iPad and determination to draw more of this comic. I knew I wanted to have Jinx interact with her fictional characters to some degree, but I was at a loss how to go about it.

I was refamiliarizing myself with Writing Whoas and going through the old comic when I came across the one Joe was in. I found myself staring at that character and wondering about him. Who was he? How did he even know Jinx? Were they friends? Colleagues? Distant acquaintances? I laughed at my past self for not even bothering to give him a face, much less a backstory. And that’s when it hit me. The absence of a backstory was Joe. His undefined personality and backstory all made up his role as an unfinished character.

And so, I decided to give him his own origin story. I wanted his creation to embody the other unfinished characters other writers are guilty of abandoning. However, this character will be able to voice his discontent to the writer who created him.

Joe will be making his appearance periodically throughout the life of this comic. Be ready to expect an irate character who can’t stand his writer.

While I’m not the fastest, nor the most talented artist, I really do enjoy bringing these ridiculous situations to life for other writers to relate to. I won’t always post my comic here in the Chapters Community, because sometimes I don’t have 600 words to say on every little installment. Instead, I’ll probably post them in the Poets Community, due to the smaller word count requirements. It’s also fun to write poetry. I’ll make sure to link each comic to the previous so they can be easily located.

If you want to see more of Writing Whoas, or read more of my content, please consider subscribing. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. :3

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