robolord
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Let's talk - November
🕑 Added 2024-11-03 19:49:59 +0000 UTC
There's a block of text below, sorry about that in advance!
A whole while back I talked about storytelling. Ever since then I have been making an attempt at improving this. Mainly with series like Defiant Growth and The Girl Nextdoor. Now in my eyes I’m still not there. But I’ve been writing a lot of stories, most of which will probably never see the light of day, but some if which are in my eyes definitely an improvement.
Now one thing that I’ve noticed, is that any bigger storyline I want to tell essentially leads to anywhere between 300-600 pages. Honestly, a story like The Family of Amazons isn’t much different in length than Defiant Growth or Alt Amazon, it’s just in one continuous form rather than chapters.
Which got me thinking a little. The reason that I do stories in chapters is so that I can better structure them and in between chapters have a chance to ask for feedback. While the grand, overarching story is always already written when the first episode starts, details might change or the story might evolve. Or even more importantly, you guys might not enjoy the story at all. It is also why I do polls even in between chapters of certain stories. If you guys like other ideas better, I’d gladly make those instead. Whenever I make a poll, I make sure that I’ll enjoy making any of the options you guys choose. Sure, I might be more excited for one story than the other, but I definitely enjoy making all options. I suck at making things I don’t enjoy making.
Now the second thing I do is spreading out these chapters into parts, 10 or 20 pages every week. There have been some very rightful concerns about this approach in the comments every now and then. About cliffhangers and the lack of progress and having to wait weeks for a story to complete. I fully understand these concerns and agree with them.
Now essentially it’s a weigh of against variation and speed. Now I make two regular comics, one ten pages one twenty pages, one futa comic of ten pages and the X of Amazon larger comics with ten pages a week as well. In my eyes, this provides a lot of variation in the content provided on a weekly basis, though it doesn’t do so on a longer timescale. To create a full 80/100 page story from 10 pages a week it takes two months to do so, which is without a doubt a long time. With 20 pages a week this already halves of course.
Now I see several options for this, but all of them have upsides and downsides. I’d also like your input in this, so we’ll have a poll below!
Option #1: Continue as is, ten pages Monday, ten pages Wednesday, ten pages Thursday and twenty pages Friday.
Option #2: One comic a week done on Friday. I should also provide some context for this option. I currently make 50 pages a week minimum, so 200 a month at a minimum. Now when translating this to 100 page comics, this would mean two comics a month, not four as would be implied by having a comic every Friday as this option does. So in this case, I can’t say with certainty that these would be 80-100 page comics every Friday. It might even be every other Friday or three a month. I’d say it’s essentially double the workload but this would also be false. When making a story with the same characters and same scenes I would spend less time creating new characters and scenes, being solely focused on one story. If this option turns out to have a large preference, I will give it a sincere try to see how it works for me. But we will definitely see less activity throughout the week, with more content being focused towards the Friday. On the other hand I feel this could be a nice compromise on variety as long as I do not focus around only one series. For example only making two comics maximum of a certain series in a certain month.
Option #3: We take an in between road. 20 pages on Monday, 20 pages on Wednesday, 20 pages on Friday. We will have slightly less variety than usual, but the stories will progress slightly quicker. I do not know what the content outside of these three days will look like until the dust settles, but I do think there will be the occasional extra comic/meme/pin-up set/animation. If there is a large preference for this the “X of Amazon” series will probably eventually translate into chaptered stories as well. I think I will stick with one day for Futa and two days for non-Futa stories.
Now I’m not even going to suggest an option for ten pages every day, because in my eyes it’s the worst option of all. Sure, slightly more variety, but stories will take even longer to wrap up. Which is the whole initial grievance with the current system in place of course.
Now don’t get me wrong, if this poll say gets 40% votes for one option and 30% for the other two I’m not going to throw everything around. If anything it’s just a way for me to get a general idea about what people prefer. Would you rather have a full comic at the end of the week? Or more variety of comics being completed in parallel? But slightly quicker than now? Or are you happy with how it is now? Please vote below!
Due to real life side progress on bigger projects has been slow, but I definitely intend to pick these up again soon!
Comments
MGS-and-M
Three 20-pages per week seems the most balanced to me. It keeps a good variety and eases the need of constant cliffhangers (good ones are not that easy to come by, and too many of them can backfire and truncate the narrative's flow). The weekly sets could be a nice extra to the package, but maybe release them once every fortnight to not push yourself too hard?
DKJ
lol Me Too!
Malcolm holmes
And also i miss a lot the weekly sets
Malcolm holmes
Is great to see how much you allow your patrons to participate in your process, but i have to admit that the stories are really long and it takes a lot of time before they go somewhere
Robolord
Thanks!
A N
I like Option 3, but don't have that strong of a preference. I really appreciate the opportunity to weigh in and the amount of thought you put into it. Your stuff is the best. Thanks!
DKJ
I agree. It’s just moreso understanding and capitalizing on what works. We love the different characters and scenarios. We love the long form stories as well sometimes you can get bogged down from it as well. Furthermore, you could always collab with other creators to add ldk like illustrated stories as well when you are still working on stories that are longer. I’m sure there are storied authors that would love to work with you and create stories using still of OC you create. We love your content. If you feel like it’s overwhelming at times you can always step back and reassess or maybe look into bringing people on that help you.
Doovel
I would go for option 2.5, a 60 page release every Friday. This would reduce the need for cliffhangers and would let you make the story flow better.
Robolord
Yeah you make a very good point. A description alone can be hard to base a choice of. Perhaps I should indeed make a few starting pages for each comic I put in the polls. This'll be a bit more work on my end but will definitely allow you guys to make a much more informed choice without any regret.
Samuel E. N. Furlano
Hey, an Amazon muscle babe is an Amazon muscle babe to me :D! Whichever is easiest for you in my book. Yes, every job has stress, but a cool job like this has to have lots of fun as well in the process without burning you out.
DKJ
I’m between option 2 and 3. I was seriously thinking about this dilemma not too long ago. The stories seem good, but because we are getting drip feed pages it tends to feel like there is hardly progress or things feel drawn out when it might not necessarily be the case. This also makes the story seem a-little anti climactic when there cliffhangers in an already interesting story. This could kill enthusiasm if you’ve built this narrative in your head and you finally see it played out. Hmm that being said, I do think your biggest strengths is variety. If you want me to be completely honest, your weekly sets were a big strength because it was like storyboarding concepts that people maybe interested about rather than just a blurb description to vote on. Which option you choose I hope you look into bring that back. Small stories that, drop idk what day but build up interest for storylines you are interested in the future. Probably option 3 would be the best option.
