Into the Third Space

BACKGROUND This research in the field of creative writing uses both form and content to position comics/graphic narrative as a kind of creative writing. Through authoring a creative-critical paper that constellates fragments of memoir, reflection, proposition/argument, and comics itself, the co-authors suggest that comics is both a unique medium and one that fits within the scope of creative writing more broadly. Comics studies is founded on debates of belonging and form, e.g. McCloud 1993 and Groensteen 2007. This creative-crticial work suggests that comics enters a 'third space' of thinking and making and that this space accords with creative writing. CONTRIBUTION How can comics scholarship and creative writing mutually enrich each other? Based on their experience making, editing, publishing, researching, and teaching comics, as well as their mutual experience doing the same with text, the three co-authors decided to create a work that was primarily textual but exploited tools more often found in comics, such as reliance on the gutter as a site of meaning. We experimented with grouping sections of scholarly material, reflective and creative sections into 'attention units' that 'windowed attention' after the comics scholarship of Neil Cohn, and seeing if a text could explore the tension of sequentiality and simultaneity identified by Molotiu as driving meaning in comics. SIGNIFICANCE This research benefits both comics-makers and creative writers through opening new ways to understand both fields. Comics-makers experience significant hurdles in framing their practice; by showing how comics both fits within and contributes to creative writing, this research has the potential to open a place for key works in this significant medium to be differently understood. It enriches creative writing by providing creative writers with new tools to make, structure, and read work.