MAKING OF: In These Fifteen Seconds by Hien Pham (Patreon)

Erika here! Hien Pham turned in an absolute stunner of a comic this week with In These Fifteen Seconds, which is quite possibly my most favorite comic of his ever. Don't be fooled by how easy it is to read, though, because this puppy went through weeks of intense feedback and revisions between Hien and OJST's editors, Matt and Ziggy. Read on to get a peek behind the curtain at how a comic can be developed, as generously written by our very own Hien Pham.

Take it away, Hien!

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The inspiration

On New Year's Eve, I was invited to hang out with a few friends I've made in the Pup community here in Perth. It was a lovely, lovely night, and I even got my first NYE kiss(es) ever! At some point, a dear friend of mine - Garrett - went off to a separate room to regroup from all the socializing. I was randomly wandering around and noticed him there, so I sat with him for a bit.

We were both on the couch together, lit by a single candle that I can't remember if it was fake or not. We spoke softly, reflecting on our struggles in the year that was about to pass. At some point, he pinned me down playfully and gently and he asked:

G: "Do you feel connected?"
H: "Yeah."
G: "Are you enjoying yourself?"
H: "Yeah."
G: "Then that's all that matters."

The first draft

Comics like this are always the hardest to write, because it's not a long conversation that I wanted to capture, rather, it's a single moment of clarity - someone said something that changed the way I think about the world and about myself. Often, that clarity is brought on by me thinking about that moment for the several days that follows, and coming to an insightful conclusion on my own.

What that means is the script usually looks like me monologuing and narrating instead of a conversation between me and my friends. It’s not the worst thing in the world but often we want something more back-and-forth, more dynamic.

My initial thoughts were very scattered and hard to find a common throughline in. They were anxious questions plagued with bias, self-deprecation, and flawed ways of thinking. Personally, I LOVE reading and writing thoughts that start off quite unhealthy because it shows that I have to put conscious effort into changing the way I mind works.

Sometimes the default position we assume in those thoughts is that we are the worst of the worst and everyone else is perfect and happy and why can't we be that way. And sometimes we think about love and relationships and efforts as transactional and problematic and that's okay because the first thoughts that pop into our heads aren't going to be the most thought-out well-written narrations.

We have to work to chisel those raw lines of thinking into something genuinely healthy and positive for our growth. We have to displace ourselves from the center of our thinking and look at the bigger picture of maybe other people aren't as happy as we think they are. And by projecting our insecurities and jealousy onto them, we end up treating them unfairly and hurting not only them, the relationship between us and them, but also ourselves in turn because we continue to paint such an unachievable goalpost.

Ahem... sorry, went on a tangent there. Anyway, the first draft turned out to be... too depressing? Too anxious? Too much of a bummer to read through. OJST has more lighthearted a vibe, and sometimes I forget that my writing always lean quite heavy in tone!

The following two pages would become the problem pages that I spent most of my time rewriting over two weeks.

The second draft

For the second try at the script, I rewrote the first page to be a bit more self-aware of what I'm saying. So it's still a touch heavy in content, but I point out the heaviness and analyze it a little bit. The other page, though, is where I made a mistake: I rewatched Train To Busan while writing it.

I was sobbing to the end of the movie, as per usual, and my brain was still working on writing, and this sentence popped into my mind:

"You are not the consequence of someone else's action.
You are the purpose."

It’s an incomplete sentiment. It doesn’t have a concrete context or a setting to really hit the idea home with. It’s the kind of sentiment that needs a whole comic dedicated to it. Still, I felt so strongly about it that I wanted to put it to the page. And thus:

The thing about this draft is that... I have scattered its focus even further. If I had more pages and more patience, I could potentially link that first page back to the second page by exploring exactly how I was taught to be sad and to feel like a mistake, instead of just stating it. I like the writing, but it doesn't make too much sense in the context of this 5-page comic.

Obviously, I didn't really see any of that until my editors pointed it out. And thus, more rewriting to be done...

The third draft

For this one, I was given the advice to go back to that original moment between me and Garrett and hone the focus of the comic. And, well, there was another piece to the conversation we had:

H: "Thanks for spending time with me."
G: "Why wouldn't I?"

Originally I left this out of the comic because it felt like a different direction, a different comic. My initial drafts didn't work out so I thought I would pursue this one. And this third draft, honestly, is my favourite one:

Turns out, this version was the most polarizing one of all! One of my editors really loved the sentiment, but others didn’t! I’ll save you the lengthy discussion but the bottom line is that it’s still not as easily digestible as we’d like. And similar to the previous draft: this idea could use a whole comic dedicated to its exploration!

After two intense weeks, I took a day off and went to the sauna and just fully melted into the hot tub because Y'ALL this comic was STRESSING ME OUT! I couldn't afford to throw it out, and I know there's something worth putting in front of the eyes of the public from this comic. I just needed to shave it all down to a razor-sharp point. I needed to kill all of my darlings so that only one may thrive above the rest.

Another full day of work later, and the final comic was finally approved.

Some comics are easier to make than others, and this one was hard. Still, I’m very fond of how Fifteen Seconds turned out in the end! I hope you enjoyed as much as we enjoyed making it. And I hope you’ll stick around to see many more from us here at OJST!