Creators: what ideas didn't quite make it into your story?

[RobertBMarks]

So, in the vein of some of the other interesting questions, here's a new one: what interesting ideas did you have for your series/story/novel/webcomic that you just couldn't use?

For Re:Apotheosis, for quite a while I thought about having an expy of Scrooge McDuck show up. My thought would be that he'd be this cockney English sounding adventurer duck (I had Ian McShane's voice in my head for this) from a children's cartoon, and his character arc would be discovering that he was now in a world where there were serious consequences (along the lines of if you throw somebody out of a fifth story window in the middle of a fight, they die, and just stealing people's national treasures counts as, well, THEFT).

...and, I just couldn't figure out any way to put an anthropomorphized duck into the story and make it work. Just couldn't do it.

So, anybody else?

Read Re:Apotheosis | Tapas Web Novels

[CandyDaisies]

Extremely tough to include superhero content without it being profoundly campy, so I feel like I'm in for a lifetime of "this power is too out there" and "okay, this is okay, but it has to have this significant limitation or I'll need to nerf it later."

[JaveCraze]

oh oh oh!!! i have a few
my mc used to be part of the psuedo-military, and was taken captive by... a standin for a company. which company? who knows. this company had the generic lasers everywhere aesthetic, and even had a beautiful color scheme.. greyscale. the story used to take place mostly in the middle of a desert with some mountains... yeah. I'm very glad that I never kept these things. However, my mc remains and the boss/underling from that company are both supporting characters now. There was also some surface level religious symbolism that just.. awkwardly remains in some character designs. Meh. At least I got some things out of that "V1" version of the story.

[darthmongoose]

There are some big ones in Errant, but the biggest is definitely: Petrified Athena Lune.

So in the prologue, even in the current version, Rekki, Sarin and Urien all wander into a ruin and find Excalibur. The thing that was cut from early scripts, was that rather than just remarking that Rekki's grandmother, Athena Lune, died there, she was going to literally be there, petrified into a statue. (Errant readers may be aware that some demons have random extra powers like breathing fire, especially powerful ones, well in this case, there was a demon that could petrify people like a Gorgon. I don't know if I'll ever reuse that).

Where it got really wild was that at some point she was going to get un-petrified, and it was going to be this really weird experience for her where she's like... a 30 year old from the 20th century living in modern times where her kids are older than her and her former allies are all in their 70s and stuff. It was going to cause Rekki a lot of frustration because she's never felt like she lives up to the legend of her grandmother.

It's easy to see why I took this out really. It would bloat out the prologue to put her in there in the background and explain who she is, she kind of took over the mid-story arcs because her whole deal is so wild, and Rekki doesn't need another reason to feel insecure and insignificant, or even a person to feel she can't measure up to, because Sarin Aoki exists and is just a way more fun character. Plus Athena Lune being dead allows her to be way more perfect than she possibly could have been in real life, because that's how it is when a public figure who did some impressive and important things died. If Rekki ever met Athena, she'd quickly learn her Grandmother was actually not the perfect saint and peerless warrior she's remembered as, which is less interesting than her coming to understand how people's collective memory simplifies things for herself.

I think I just like timeskip or "frozen in time" stories a lot, but yeah, sometimes you gotta cut it even if it's a fun concept!

[DualDragons]

In the first drafts of Square One I was originally planning to have magic that could be accessed through tattoo's or bloodline powers. Yes, Danivere could swing her weapon and create slashes of fire and water!

I scrapped it because I wanted to do a different 'power system'. The tattoo's still remain but serve no battle purpose, their only purpose is to identify a member of one of the royal families now (which is a consequence of a past event in Square One).

Also... (and I can reveal this without spoilers) Artimedes was originally intended to be the antagonist (even villain) of the story.

But after trying to figure out what his motives and goals would be it didn't make sense for him to be one. He didn't really have a reason to endanger the kingdoms and play a villain even though he totally has the resources to do it. So I delegated the role of villain to someone else. He still has a antagonist role early on, but far from villainous.

[wispysing]

In my earlier drafts of Heavenfall, Ciel was a floating city atop a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In another version, it was a city carved into a massive sinkhole–with shadier districts being closer to the bottom. The draft I'm currently working on takes the middle ground of the two earlier concepts–one being a floating district and another that remains on ground.

Another would be Theo the gunsmith, one of the main cast. I figured he couldn't add anything to the story, to an extent that I was forcing him into the storyline just because I've grown emotionally attached. But even though he's been part of the main cast (for 6 years now), it just doesn't work, and I've reduced him to a mere passerby background character in the end.

Creating a story comes with its sacrifices, right?

[TheLemmaLlama]

In ATWWS, there's this huge ancient artifact the size of a building in the middle of a city, and one of my previous ideas was for it to be an 'afterlife' of sorts that the precursors downloaded their consciousnesses into which also absorbed the souls of anyone else who dies in this plane of existence. I'm scrapping it because:

• it cheapened one of my plot points which revolved around a character condemning a bunch of people's souls to eternal suffering in 'hell', so to find it actually didn't happen because they went to this artificial afterlife instead makes it feel like I didn't have the guts to have this character do something actually bad
• it complicated my metaphysics in annoying ways; I wanted to have characters travel to different planes of existence but why can their souls leave the plane but dead souls can't? The one way I thought of to write around this felt contrived, and I didn't like it XD
• oddly enough, I only came up with it in the first place to fix a plot hole. I currently have a solution to that plot hole that's less contrived than the plot hole that this 'solution' introduces, so I'm better odd without it

[Kann]

• Two characters having a baby together as a sideplot. I decided this would take too long and wouldn't really be the hottest plot point.

• One character ends up in a situation where everyone else assumes they're dead only for said character to come back later.

• One character getting stalked by a rando obsessed with them.

Mostly I got rid of all that since it's all for one of my series, which is so long already... xD I just left stuff that needs to be done and I'm just slowly trying to finish the story.

[smokesalty]

So, how my comic is structured is having my villain- the cult leader gradually worsen his 'punishments' he gives his cult members for breaking rules. He's very abusive- but the way he hurts his members is more 'creative' for a lack of a better term - it's meant to be psychologically damaging.

I used to have this scene in the story that was a sort of Russian roulette with food- where the characters could choose to either starve or eat food that's potentially poisoned (usually makes them extremely unwell, not to kill them) It was the cult leader's way of either having someone confess to being in the wrong or punishing them by chance instead.

Problem with this scene was that I couldn't actually have most of the characters get hurt just yet. My main character and secondary villain are the only two characters within the cult that have never been punished by the cult leader (for spoilery reasons) and the secondary villain getting finally caught and punished for being an awful person is a very big moment in the 3rd act (so it definitely couldn't happen here!)

Because of these reasons, the way this scene been written left it feeling overly long and anticlimactic. And, the one character that did need to be hurt in this scene would have rather starved than be ill an unable to take care of the MC- so this scene was replaced with a scene much more impactful and shorter in length. It gave the cult leader's choice to hurt that character much more intent. I needed the scene to be more violent than a character throwing up (and there was no real follow through in this scene)

The original scene had a cool concept, so I might include it in my comic's extras. The food roulette thing is still a thing happens in this weird ass cult (off screen)- but actually including it would have bloated the chapter and not really added much to what was previously established.

[Learasc]

Ohh there are many ideas that I scrapped as I thought of the story many years ago and it was changed many times. But the biggest thing I changed/ what didn't make it into the story was a school setting. I originally wanted the main character to get transported into another world into a school and for her to meet the other characters there at this school. But over the years since I thought of this story, the "isekai" genre started blowing up, so I thought that nowadays there are too many storys that have this kind of setting... So I had to think of another way the main character starts living in this other world.

[NickRowler]

I have a bunch for Crow's Worth. The series was based off of something I wrote as a teen and a lot of my old stuff was very "LOL Random" sort of what is is like in the first chapter. But I sort of overtime wanted to move away from that.

There was one about Brad's cousins getting married (one on his dad's side and the other on his mom's side). It was suppose to be very awkward and just jokes, but was cut for being pointless.

There was another one about an obnoxious man with a giant magical pencil. It was cut because it was based on an inside joke and there was a part in it that sort of broke the lore.

I was also going to have one of the female character come out as transmasculine at one point but scraped it because I don't have that many female characters and I thought turning one of them into a boy would just sort of make the male to female ratio worst. But now people can theorizes who it was...lol.

There was almost going to be this character called The Worth, they were this creepy half hybrid of Crow's parents. It was cut for being sort of upsetting and a bit emotionally disturbing. They were both male and female but had more the conscience of the father than the mother.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I just a week or two ago made the choice to axe three more plot points to the current arc so I can finish off my comic with a semblance of an ending within the remainder of this year.

Some of the things cut:
A giant dragon that desolates landscapes by eating all the vegetation.
Main character getting his power stolen permanently
An entire character arc for a side character

Four more villains in two new locations for the heroes to fight.

Oh. And the entire rest of the series I had planned so far.

[Stargazer31]

In some early drafts, Gunhild was called Freya. I dropped this because the Norse goddess Freyja also featured in the story, and it would just get confusing after a while.
There was also going to be a plot where Baldr had to save Gunhild from being executed by Odin, because she freed Loki, but I dropped this in favour of the "evil Baldr" plot.

[Teira]

In the original script of my webcomic, a few more people were gonna die but I ended up keeping them around. There was also a part where one person was gonna use a gun and the main character was gonna get caught by the monster but that got completely changed.

[Chaz]

I had a different story for "Go, Grape, Go!" from my comic Apple and Grape. Apple and Grape were going to work on the Go-Go kart in the junkyard in secret. Daisy and Gretchen discover the kart and Gretchen goes on a joyride, propelling Apple, Grape, and Daisy to try and save her.

[N1ghtm4r3]

later in the story i intended to have a tournament arc ,but then it started to not fit with the story so it got the axe

[powerplantanimations]

Naota and Nikado were going to be brothers.

I thought that would be sorta lame. Having them being two random dudes who happen to be exactly alike is funnier......

Especially after what happens in my NEXT arc.

Read That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas Web Comics

[Lady_T_Musings]

Pairing everyone off with A romantic partner in the end.

I felt like it needed to be a thing for folks to have their happy ending, but like it really doesn't have to be a thing. Some folks are totally happy in relationships that don't have romance in them and are completely fulfilled, just as others find that fulfillment in multiple folks. Axing that idea of romance=happy and relationships = romance lead me to the idea I have now :).

[irresponsiblepics]

Only one. A character has a baby but dies giving birth. Tonal shift was too much so I ditched it.

[system]

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