Ever wanna get out of your current storyline?

[Prettysenshi]

But wouldn't that cut your story dramatically short if you did that for every chapter? I can't stand getting into a story and then it's too short. I'd go, "Wait, didn't I just start reading? Why is it already over?" If I did that for my comic, it'd end in like a year, and for me, that's not cool.

The length of the story should depend only on material it has in it. It's not cool dragging out a story that is basically short, with some irrelevant digressions. There are many things that writer adds to the story, that make sence to him but don't do the same for the reader. That's why reviding the written material is a must.

I guess. I just want to work on my comic for longer, cuz I'd like to have a nice lil hobby in college....and if that's the case, I guess my comic will have to move to a weekly schedule, b/c at this point, I don't know how long the story for my webcomic will be. I tried scripting out my webcomic a few nights ago, but I stopped midway, b/c it just didn't feel as organic as plotting it in my head...that's just me. I'm working on it, though!!

[Reinder]

Limyaael recently posted ten tips on what to do if you get bored with your novel. I think most of these tips can be applied to comics as well.
I thought it mentioned the ninja thing, with the real motivation for it - the point of adding ninjas is figuring out what they would want. Once you've done that, you can remove the ninjas again - but it's not there. I must have read it somewhere else.

I tried her tenth and final tip, "Slog" in my last long Rogues of Clwyd-Rhanstoryline, which was over 300 pages and took 2 1/2 years to finish. I'm not going to do that again, at least not with such a long story. In fact, I'm taking a long break from the series and running old material on the site for a while. I've been drawing the comic for 13 years and a lot of the material hasn't made it online yet.

While I'm not drawing my main comic, I've been looking at the existing material of a comic that I started even longer ago, back in 1989. Yes, I'm ancient. I've got a Past. I decided to start putting that comic, The Lives of X!Gloop online as a weekend comic. Then, a funny thing happened. I had two unfinished X!Gloop stories in my files, and I started thinking about finishing them. One had 4 more pages of script, which I took a look at and thought "hey, that's rather good. It's got subjects in there that I've been thinking about later."
The other was always improvised, but 12 years after abandoning it, I could easily see where it went off the rails. So I'll backtrack a bit to just before that point, and improvise from there again.

It's very exciting and a bit nerve-wracking. Can I still even do the improvised thing like I did when I was 20? If that other script hadn't made me realised how little my thinking about stories had changed, I wouldn't have worked up the courage to have another shot.

So this is my solution: abandon your story for years on end, then see where it went wrong.

[Phalanx]

Tell me about it. I've been on Chapter 3: Black Earth for over a year. It's driving me absolutely mad. If it hadn't been for the fact that I know there's only a few pages left I'd go bonkers.

I am never ever doing a chapter this long again. EVER.

What I learnt from this chapter: Script ahead. Then edit and cut your script mercilessly until it's at least 75% of the original length. 50% is even better.

But wouldn't that cut your story dramatically short if you did that for every chapter? I can't stand getting into a story and then it's too short. I'd go, "Wait, didn't I just start reading? Why is it already over?" If I did that for my comic, it'd end in like a year, and for me, that's not cool.

Well, I base this rule on the majority of human nature, which is to be too ambitious/long-winded for your own good. (Seriously. Thousands upon thousands of stories and comics ongoing. Most of them end before they finish because their scopes are greater than the creator efforts)

In the preliminary versions of script one generally just tosses in whatever one thinks is cool. When you revise you then start going over and removing stuff until you have what only you need with a bit left over.

Also, it's not just cutting out unnecessary parts. It's compressing stuff so you get the same point across in fewer pages or panels. Have an important scene that explains plot points? Takes 5 pages? Keep writing and rewriting it until it does the same in two.

It may not seem like much, but it all adds up. It's been my observation that slow progression of a storyline is one of the biggest killers of webcomics. The story moves so slow that eventually the creators get impatient and abandon the project. Even worse, the readers lose interest because so much happens but so little of it is the important stuff!

Of course, you do come across the occasional person who is capable of writing succinctly first time round, in which case they can probably ignore anything I say