The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Having created a comic before returning to my alphabetic narrative was truly helpful. There are two major changes in my Literacy Narrative Part 3 essay, both inspired by my comic. First, I was able to use more vivid language in the new version to make my narrative more engaging. Although this seems to be the trend of all revising process, having converted the text narrative in the form of a visual medium beforehand definitely makes the revision on language easier. For example, in my original version of the essay, I wrote, “whenever I felt like letting my thought fly away, it always ended up hitting the walls they built.” When visualizing this part of the narrative through comic, I chose to depict a bird locked up in a cage to symbolize my helplessness in that situation. This image, then, surprisingly inspired me to reframe the sentence in a more engaging way: “whenever my thoughts struggled to break free from the iron chains, hopping and flapping desperately to find a way out, they always ended up hitting the towering walls of rules, wounded.” In conclusion, the comic allowed me to actually envision my narrative and through the imagery, I was able to further polish my wording. The other major revision is on the overall content of my narrative. During the peer review process, I realized that each of my peers gave very different interpretations of the theme of my narrative, which led me to reflect on how to make my theme clearer in the upcoming revision. Reading over my comic again, I found that I needed to emphasize more on my discovery of the power of combining visuals and written texts,  which is the intended overarching theme of both my essay and comic. Therefore, I went back to my alphabetic text and strengthened this idea through reframing sentences for emphasis. I also noticed that the second part of my original essay was a bit unrelated to my theme, so in my revised version, I focus more on portraying how I learnt to incorporate images and words to overcome difficulties I met when reading and writing. It really surprised me that viewing visual mediums like comics seemed to be a quite “sensory” process, yet it actually contributed to the overall logic and structure of my text narrative.

The literacy narrative assignment undoubtedly helped me meet several aspects of the learning outcomes of this course. Having revised the essay three times (including the comic creation process), I learnt that writing is an ongoing process that every time we go back to the text, something new would come up and be changed. The repeated editing is, indeed, the indispensable process of creating a successful and thought-through essay. Moreover, as aforementioned, I was inspired by visual elements to polish the language and identity tensions of my narrative. And this process of jumping back and forth between visuals and alphabetic text and generating new ideas from it is exactly the demonstration of visual thinking strategies.

Re-visualizing my literacy narrative has been a truly eye opening process for me. My original literacy narrative and this updated version, The Story Behind the Pan and Paper, depict very different aspects of my journey with reading and writing. While creating these drafts, it became clear to me that the story I wished to share with the world had changed immensely. In this new version I decided to dive head first into the true driving forces behind my literacy journey instead of the surface level story in my original. Thus, I was forced to expand my analytical thinking and break down the experiences and memories that eventually drove me to my love for reading and writing. Doing this allowed for a deeper writing process that was, at times nerve-wracking, but ultimately liberating as I was able to share my story and release some of the trauma that I’ve faced in my life.

After working with a visual medium in creating the comic version, this story seemed to fully come alive in my mind. It was difficult to draw each image and relive the memories that I was depicting, but it gave me the opportunity to look back at these experiences and what I really felt in those moments. Creating the comic provided me with a deeper understanding of my real story and all the emotions that came with it.

The literacy narrative assignment as a whole has truly challenged me to become a better writer and to look back at some of the most traumatic moments of my life. As for the learning outcomes for this course, I believe completing this project as helped me meet many of them. Writing as a process has been one outcome that I have really come to understand because of this project. My first draft was not my best work, but it allowed me to reflect and think deeper in order to complete my comic and final narrative. Along with this, the comic portion of this assignment forced me to imagine my story visually and compose it in a medium that had been all new to me. Ultimately, the literacy narrative project provided me with great progression as a writer. It has taught me many things about myself and showed me the potential I have for the future. I feel very proud of the work that I have completed and will use what I have learned from this assignment for all of my writing to come.

For this assignment I knew I wanted to do a holiday movie as soon as my roommate brought back a tree for our room so we could “feel the Christmas magic”. In order to decide on what to do, I googled “Christmas tree movies” and once this scene from Home Alone came up, I knew it was what I wanted to recreate. Logistically, the greatest struggle was finding somewhere where I could be on the other side of a “window” because there was no way to be on the other side of our dorm window. Working with my roommate, who is featured as Kevin in the picture, we brought the tree out into a study room where I would be able to peer through the study room door. One of the hardest parts of this process was having the different portions of the movie scene to scale, since our tree is much smaller than the one use in the film. We did our best to keep the wardrobes the same, but I did have to substitute a bucket hat for a beanie. I chose my roommate to be Kevin because of how she embodies child-like joy, especially around Christmas, so although her facial expression isn’t the same as Kevin’s I was happy how it turned out because it captured both her spirit and the general “Christmas magic” in the air that Home Alone portrays.

Image Source: https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/20/why-i-have-to-watch-home-alone-every-christmas-7037310/

For my third and final Literacy Narrative I revised my story of how poetry shaped me as a writer. All the revisions I’ve made to the initial draft can be surmised in the simple changing of the title from “Literacy Narrative 1” to the “The Birth of A Poet.” This rebranding of my work reflects how my perception of the assignment became more personal as I progressed over the course of this semester.

Initially I didn’t understand the purpose behind writing a story about how I became a writer. It wasn’t until after creating my comic that I understood why this assignment was so integral to my journey as a writer at Emory. These literacy narratives weren’t simply about recounting moments that made me write a certain way. They were about making me understand as a writer and critical thinker, why these moments made my writing the way it is. Upon understanding this why, I can confidently say that all of my writing assignments have become more enjoyable.

Before taking this class I did not enjoy extended writing assignments. I spoke of this discontent in my first Literacy Narrative. I also stated that I seperated the idea of writing assignment for class from creating poetry. I was very invested in poetry because “it gave me a voice and I began writing poems about people, places, politics and social justice issues I found compelling.” This was the why behind my writing.

Once I realized that not only poetry, but writing in general, allowed me to have a voice, I became more invested in my writing. Although his realization may seem obvious to some, it took a very long process for me to come to this conclusion. Ultimately it was the comic in “Literacy Narrative II” that I created which gave me this new perspective. I decided to structure the comic in the form of a poem and capture the main ideas of the alphabetic texts. To me, poetry has always been about capturing the bigger picture. In retelling the overaching concept of my alphabetic narrative in the form of a poem and illustrations I realized that poetry, drawing, and writing weren’t so different after all.

In returning to the alphabetic text I made sure that it captured the main idea of why writing was important to me instead of just recounting an boring old story. The process of creating a comic highlighted the main ideas of my first Literacy Narrative and in my revisions I believe I was able to use those main ideas to increase the clarity of my alphabetic text.

As for the Learning Outcomes I explored through the process of my Literacy Narratives, there are two primary outcomes that come to mind. The outcome of “ Rhetorical Composition” was most exemplified in the process of creating these narratives. As I stated before, it wasn’t until after I “composed texts in multiple genres,” that I was able to understand the importance of the assignment. Secondly, “Writing as Process” also helped me achieve this understanding because it wasn’t until my draft was peer edited and revised that I was able to thoroughly reflect on it. I really feel as though my comic and Literacy Narrative are “successful texts” due to the multiple revsions they underwent during the process of their publication.

The entire literacy narrative project helped me view my writing as an ever-evolving process. The process of writing, drawing, and writing again necessitated re-imagining my narrative with every new rendering. Thus, I was given the opportunity to develop my original idea more than I originally thought was possible. Returning to the alphabet narrative from having created a comic was much easier than writing from scratch. Drawing the comic after the original alphabet essay added more depth and meaning to my essay that I could pull from for the redraft. My narrative began as what I thought was a story about my anxieties around English. Upon revisiting, I realized just how superficial my first draft was – how it failed to address its subtext strongly enough to be clearly understood and deeply felt. My hesitance and need to convey a story clearly struck a balance in my comic; I could represent what was hard to say without using words, and I could spell out the ideas that would guide interpreting my illustrations. In the draft of my alphabetic narrative I took all the ideas from both drawings and text to tell my story again, this time with a bolder voice. For my literacy narrative, the three parts were practice in exacting and amplifying my writing voice, riding it of fear of saying exactly what I want to say.