Fatherhood gives new perspective… even creatively.

When I became a father, a lot of things changed — not just in life, but creatively. There’s a sense of understanding that comes with becoming a new parent that you simply didn’t have before. It’s difficult to explain, but the moment I looked my child in the eyes for the first time, I got hit with this wave of everything — feelings, emotions, the realization that this new journey with the baby and my wife was going to be completely uncharted territory. How I view the world fundamentally changed. And because of that, how I craft stories fundamentally changed too.
It gave me a better perspective on relationships between characters, especially parent-child dynamics — the father-son, the mother-daughter relationships. Those feel more personal now because they are more personal. Obviously I had my own experience growing up as a child of my parents, but being a child of someone is a completely different thing than being a parent to someone. It just changes everything. How I deal with the relationships between characters, how I approach what drives them, what they’re protecting, what they’re afraid of — all of it shifted.
Perspective. That’s what becoming a parent changes with regards to creativity. And I think it made me a better storyteller.