ErikaMoen
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COMIC: Space Camp, Page 9
🕑 Added 2024-06-05 22:23:47 +0000 UTCLetters From Space Camp is my memoir about going through a mental hospital program and for my pitch to publishers I am revising the Day Two chapter, which covers my second day in the program. This is my third draft of this chapter, you can read the first draft and second draft to see how it's changed (and it has changed).
The only change I made between the second draft and this third draft was going back and tracing over the art with a textured brush and adding in the paper texture to the background. 
This is one of my favorite pages, I think.
It captures that sense of us all being lost at sea, trapped inside a water drop that's holding us for the second but knowing it's about to fall.
My agent had a note for this page that I rejected. "... I feel tears rolling out of my eyes for them." is a passive statement and she encouraged me to use an active tense ('I cry with them')- or even cut it all together, since we can see the tears, no need to re-state the obvious.
I tried out her advice, but decided it just wasn't right for this scene.
When I was sitting in that circle with my fellow patients, the tears did passively roll out of my eyes for them. I didn't realize I was crying until I felt them sliding down my cheeks.
I was in such a state of numbness and exhaustion that I didn't realize I was having an emotional response until my body physically produced one.
This page is meant to be passive and fragile and isolated from the rest of the world. I love how the paper texture over the black makes it look like we're floating in a galaxy, lost at sea, suspended in a droplet.
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Earlier drafts of this page can be seen in the gallery, if you wanna compare the jump from the first to second drafts.
Comments
Margreet de Heer
Good choice for the passive wording. A touching scene. It reminds me of some AA meetings I attended.
The Ferret
Agreeing with you and the others that passive voice *fits* in this space. I can understand your editor's hesitation because we are told over and over to not use passive voice, but for sure in this case, it *is* passive and it's right damnit.
