The Writing Thread

[Pomniman]

Powerlevel, and useless question.

How do you go about writing a web comic or long form story while keeping personal interest in the project?


I know this is the age old "pantser vs planner" debate, but I'm wondering how it's done as, unlike a typical novel, you can't go back and edit in earlier pages like a pantser, but also you can't plan for infinity, even planning out a whole arc can result in a lack of interest as the project progresses and a lack of flexibility as skills improve and feedback comes in. I never read long running mangas like One Piece and Berserk, but clearly they've done something right.

I'm asking because I've been annoyed by web comics I should like. I won't name names, but I'll choose two examples.
One was a fetish comic with a mystery/action plot where the artist seemed to lose interest. Going from a page every few days, to every couple of weeks, to one or two months between pages. The artist now seems to working on another project that disappeared up it's own arse explaining esoteric lore.
The other is a comic that has been recommended a lot. Supposedly 80s style action comic with a heavy dose of cheesecake, only for much of the comic to be taken up by an obvious author insert OC involved in unfunny slapstick situations.

I'm a shit artist and a worse writer. I've gained confidence in large part to various kiwis sharing their beginner efforts in other threads. I'm busy in RL with many time consuming projects so this will likely never see the light of day, but I want to know.


The motivation, if it isn't obvious, would be to deliver on promises made without too much of the writing equivalent of feature creep. So if I promise mechs, they'll be stomping around a few pages in. If I promise hot babes fighting dinosaurs, there won't be extended scenes of old men talking about philosophy. I'm not trying to make money on this, and I don't expect anyone will read it. And to reiterate. I doubt I'll ever get the free time or will to make it due to other projects. I'm just sick of the bait and switch or artists abandoning things mid story.

My back-of-the-envelope idea is a simple, bare bones action adventure story. Possibly involving some amount of cheesecake depending on what people want. I don't know how to budget a story pages in terms of length, but what I have seen is artists tend to start losing interest 10 pages in, and abandon entirely at about 30-50 pages. 10 pages seems a bit slight to tell a story, so I'll aim for 30 pages.

With anything serialized, and this is going to be the exact opposite of what you want to hear, but I'd say the key to staying motivated is giving even less of a shit about your hypothetical audience and doing whatever excites or entertains you, especially if you're doing it for free. Worrying about disappointing an audience before it even exists makes no sense. If you're just doing this for fun, make something you like and hope other people like it too, if not, fuck em. It's that easy.

 

[Judge Dredd]

the key to staying motivated is giving even less of a shit about your hypothetical audience and doing whatever excites or entertains you,

I want the project to excite me, obviously, but I want to maintain that excitement at least long enough to complete an arc. I don't want it to be something I ditch 10 pages in to focus on the next idea that excites, then ditching that, then ditching the next thing, over and over.

 

[cigint]

How do you go about writing a web comic or long form story while keeping personal interest in the project?

The tendency is for emotional dross to accumulate over time in any creative pursuit where you're building a single thing for a long time, because the complexity of the work increases and its flexibility decreases. How good are you in general at following through with long projects? When drawing and animating, because of the amount of time and effort it takes to complete a part of it, you're more emotionally divorced from the work by the time you're done, than if you're just writing. Whatever it is that gives you the feeling of being rewarded for your work, if at some future point it isn't in proportion to the mental labor it takes to cross the threshold to start working on that next publication unit (be it a panel or a page or whatever for you), you'll find just about any reason to do anything else other than work on it.

You didn't state anywhere what motivates you to create the work. It isn't admiration or readership, since you say you doubt anyone will read it. But once you identify what it is you want out of making it, project that 15-20 pages into the future. Imagine that the work now feels mundane, the rest of the story is pretty much set in stone, there are no surprises for you etc. Maybe you got so much better in technique that you feel the need to keep up a higher standard of work (this crushes many creators). Aside from identifying and pursuing an emotional reward that you can calculate is going to stay high enough vs the dross, there are no cheat codes or mantras to "keeping up interest" as such.

I never read long running mangas like One Piece and Berserk, but clearly they've done something right.

A lot of these are actually cautionary tales of what happens when an author is pushed to continue a work that they have no personal passion for.

 

[Humble Architect]

@Pomniman bro, get a blog or just drink/get a guy to hook you up with adderall.

Writing is not a complex thing, you either put fries in the bag or you don’t.

 

[Judge Dredd]

You didn't state anywhere what motivates you to create the work.

It's right there.

The motivation, if it isn't obvious, would be to deliver on promises made without too much of the writing equivalent of feature creep.

I like X, but most comics don't do X well. The ones that do get abandoned by the artist. The ones people recommend for doing X often bait and switch. "This comic says it's about X, but actually it's about Y."

I doubt frustration/spite is a good motivator. But I think that's what inspired Shlock Mercenary (frustration at webcomics missing upload dates)

 

[cigint]

It's right there. [to deliver on promises made]

I thought you were saying this is what you estimate would keep you going, not the underlying reason you're creating this. I'll be honest that I would probably only produce at most a single inked portrait, if it's solely on the basis of just having promised someone a work.

 

[Castoreum]

Haven't posted in the thread since the first time I posted lol. Got good advice and thought abt it. Thx guys.

I am working on my outline and having a grand ol' time. Did my elevator pitch to a handful of ppl and it was warmly received. Still in the process of creating. Real life is in the way rn but it helps me realize more clearly what I want to say.

 

[Pomniman]

@Pomniman bro, get a blog or just drink/get a guy to hook you up with adderall.

Writing is not a complex thing, you either put fries in the bag or you don’t.

Believe me, I know. When I actually do it I completely turn my brain off and it just happens. That's how I've written 6 books and a bunch of other shit over the years. I just got lost in the weeds with that other guy because he wanted to get all queer and philosophical about it.

 

[The Projects]

I absolutely detest "high-level" writing conventions. I hate the tendency of so many authors to write in an obtuse way, I can't stand writing that takes the longest route possible to say something simple. There is this pressure to sound intelligent, and so many people take it as license to be as unnecessarily verbose as they possibly can be. I'm fine with grammar rules, for instance. Using proper punctuation, syntax, spelling, etc, but the idea that the bigger the idea or the more complex idea is, the more complex the writing must be, is retarded. In fact, I am a believer in the idea that the more complex the idea, the more to the point the writing should be.

Writing as an artform, to me, is about conveying the ideas of the narrative. There is a time and a place for stiff, ornate prose, but I am more interested in the exploration of the ideas themselves, or the story itself. You can flex vocabulary and linguistic skills without making the text sound stuffy and pompous. There is such a thing as over-writing! I don't want to throw the term around loosely, because everyone has different styles that they enjoy, but the tendency to over-engineer writing for maximum confusion just makes me want to scream, "PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL!"

I believe that good complexity comes from the build-up and interaction of simple things, brick by brick, one might say. Bad complexity is starting with a bunch of over-complicated things and trying to push them all together without any consideration for how it matches up. There is a beauty to the simplicity of writing as you speak, and I feel nauseous anytime I read stuff like I've described. If your writing feels as though its purpose is to show off your skill in writing, I just find it annoying. Let me engage with your ideas, not with your wordsmithing abilities.

Terry Davis put it best, "An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity."

 

[cigint]

I absolutely detest alladat alladat

Yes, this is why the pursuit of technical writing skill is almost meaningless.

Without an emotional core, a work of fiction is essentially worthless. This was always true, but it comes into focus much more now in the age of generative AI, when machines can write endless books of meaningless but competent prose. Works that belonged in the domain of what we politely term "vanity publishing" can now be plainly called garbage, which they always were.

Terry Davis put it best, "An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity."

He would be glad of the attention, but probably frustrated that 99% of the time his quote is invoked just as an excuse not to think.

 

[Pomniman]

Yes, this is why the pursuit of technical writing skill is almost meaningless.

Without an emotional core, a work of fiction is essentially worthless. This was always true, but it comes into focus much more now in the age of generative AI, when machines can write endless books of meaningless but competent prose. Works that belonged in the domain of what we politely term "vanity publishing" can now be plainly called garbage, which they always were.

An "emotional core" still won't save something that's too banal and saccharine from being slop just because machines can churn their own slop out faster now. This is more of a problem with Asian storytelling because they have a fixation on low rent tearjerkers and vapid "human" drama as "art". Trying to elevate a trashy soap opera into The Nibelungenlied or a generic war story into The Seven Against Thebes almost never works.

 

[cigint]

An "emotional core" still won't save something that's too banal and saccharine from being slop

Normally I would agree, since I'm only saying it's a required condition, not a sufficient condition. But thinking about it more closely, I'm not so sure. After all, The Princess Bride is both banal and saccharine. But it is a masterpiece because of its emotional core (no scare quotes needed).

 

[Pomniman]

Normally I would agree, since I'm only saying it's a required condition, not a sufficient condition. But thinking about it more closely, I'm not so sure. After all, The Princess Bride is both banal and saccharine. But it is a masterpiece because of its emotional core (no scare quotes needed).

The Princess Bride wouldn't have worked if it wasn't also self-aware and that's a step away from raw emotions towards a light cynicism. You have to understand that humans are animals and emotions can be swayed by something as simple as words on a page following certain rhythmic patterns (very much a "technical" albeit atavistic thing rather than a matter of feelings).

 

[liam dees]

here we go again!

 

[A Hot Potato]

Fuck off and get a room you two retards holy shit

 

[The Projects]

here we go again!

Fuck off and get a room you two retards holy shit

kek, I read these and decided to read the last page, my bad guys, I probably should have checked to see if the writing thread has spergfights before I made... Any statement about anything...

 

[Pomniman]

kek, I read these and decided to read the last page, my bad guys, I probably should have checked to see if the writing thread has spergfights before I made... Any statement about anything...

It's not a spergfight until there are essay-length posts again. But I don't care if I'm crowned KANG Nigger of GayRapetard mountain, if I want to say something I'll say it. I wouldn't be on this site at all if I wasn't a dickhead.

 

[cigint]

The Princess Bride wouldn't have worked if it wasn't also self-aware

I agree, and that's part of the emotional core of the work. Despite the word "emotional" it does not just refer to the emotions directly expressed by characters in the work.

 

[Pomniman]

I agree, and that's part of the emotional core of the work. Despite the word "emotional" it does not just refer to the emotions directly expressed by characters in the work.

I'm accounting for the emotions of the writer and the audience at the same time. What you think of as authenticity or a heart to heart connection between the entertainer and the entertained is almost always just another kind of parlor trick any ape off the street can be taught or manipulated into doing by some Svengali.

 

[cigint]

What I referred to as the emotional core of the Princess Bride encompasses all these aspects of its particular charm. A large set of things that elevate it above a silly fairy tale movie.