Do Reader Expectations/Comments Ever Influence Your Comic?

[sybaritemouse]

Sometimes. It is important to hear the feedback of your readers, but never loose your personal creative identity. Sure, you can hear recommendations and ideas, you can try give them what they want but don't loose the creators identity and personality. I think thats the most important thing in a comic

[JRHoch]

Yes, certain times I think my meaning is clear between two characters but people focus on a different aspect than I was. Or my subtlety gets in the way.

[joannekwan]

I've found that a lot of people also are expecting the worst to happen in a story.
So when they are predicting a certain event, I have to insert a scene or snippet of dialogue explaining why it won't happen lol.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Having this come up as an issue wasn't even remotely possible for me until recently, so I'm not really sure...

On the one hand, of all the people who need to like my story, I am the most important person to please, so what I want to have happen supercedes everyone else's desires.

But on the other hand, there are a lot of things I could want. ^^ I'm a very flexible storyteller, and easily influenced to boot. I'm fully prepared for the future me to take cues from commenters to make my stories the best versions of themselves.
And if it so happens that they suggest something great that simply can't fit into the story, there are always joke comics~

[skicoak]

An advantage to the short story/anthology format, by the time readers start having comments about "direction", that story arc is over. Maybe that gives us more agency, as a creative group at Oddly Vanilla, to take narrative risks.

We've been getting different feedback at Webcomics app than we ever did here at Tapas...so who knows if that starts influencing future tales.

[TAMAnnoying]

Very rarely and very little. Like most people above said, it’s usually slight changes depending on if the audience is “getting it”

If the audience seems to be picking up what I’m putting down about a character, be it there ideology, what type of person they are or there motives, I usually start taking out any super repetitive scenes (still leaving in the plot important ones). There’s no reason o go overboard on showing off a characters traits if the audience already understands what’s happening. On the same note I will push some scenes forward of backstory or fun lore stuff they seem to be hungry for so long as it still flows well into the ongoing narrative.

I never make any big changes but I will make small changes that will hopefully help the flow and enjoyability of reading.

[Moshimitsu]

Actually there're not that many readers interested in my comic so generaly that's not even an issue. But two of them were deceived with appearance of one of the MCs. They thought he's a female because I failed with drawing a chest area at some point and this mistake continued through later pages. Of course I answered them and now all I have to do is avoid exageration and find a way to make this mouse both masculine and fragile which I wanted to achieve from the beggining.

Recently one of the readers had a suggestion about what's going to happen to a character. I almost freaked out because this seemed more merciful and reasonable, and the fact that I made him as miserable as he can now made me feel guilty. Instead of changing the plot - because at the end of the chapter there'll be an event that will change everything - I put more significance to something already planned so it kinda feels like what the reader wrote... But no more than that.

[JRHoch]

And what's been the feedback?

[Shanny8]

NOPE.

A lot of the finer points of my comic have already been decided.

[TJSchongar]

I have allowed readers to influence SMALL details or directions that I take, just because their ideas are SO DANG GOOD. But it’s not from Tapas comments - it’s from readers that I know and trust and have become friends with, and their ideas have come out via discussion with them over Discord. I’m very careful with what I’ll allow to influence me...and I try to give credit when influence happens

[Rhonder]

Nah, for TreasureHUNT!!'s first season, at least, the whole thing was very rigidly planned out from the start, so I haven't changed anything based on reader comments or feedback (although it's very fun reading all of the speculations about what will happen next! Many entertaining AU's could be created from my comment sections xD)

BUUUUUUT there are lots of neat concepts and tidbits from my readers that I'm absolutely considering incorporating in some way or another in future seasons~ I'm approaching this series in an episodic fashion, so while I have the general concepts of what the next 3 arcs will be like (that's as far ahead as I've thought of/loosely planned), a lot of the details are still up in the air. So it's somewhat likely some reader feedback will surface in one way or another.

I'm just not likely to change things mid-season is all~

[LittleMissDevil]

I don't change the general plot because of the readers influence. The outcome and general flow of the story has been decided long ago and for (I think) good reasons. If I changed - say - the ending the whole setup before it wouldn't make any sense, not even talking about the thematic implications of a different ending.

However how the readers react does influence smaller scenes sometimes. As in "oh, there seems to be an interest in this aspect of the world, maybe I can drop a little bit of dialouge about it". I find it hard to determine what amount of world building my comic needs. I wanna keep it to a minimum, as in "just the necessary information for the world to feel alive", so I don't drown the readers in exposition dumps. But I also don't wanna confuse them with missing information. The general reaction of the readers does help me determine what kind of fluff I should leave in. I generally try to connect that fluff to the situation of the characters as much as possible, which is always a fun challenge.

[KRWright]

I might beef up a side character if people really like them, but it's never changed the plot of one of my novels whether a reader likes or dislikes a character. Sometimes, readers don't really understand the narrative point of a particular character, for example, and in serialised formats, some thematic devices get lost or people can get a bit confused. So I try not to let reader expectation influence me too much, because I have the big picture laid in front of me.

[skicoak]

And what's been the feedback?

Well... It's kinda complicated.

I think with Tapas, we're sort of in the same loop a lot of people get stuck in. You start a series and get your friends and family to make accounts ...that growth stagnates and if it wasn't enough activity to move the algorithm to get you on the front page... You come to forums and ask advice on gaining readers.

"Get active on the forums." is the actionable advice...so you post your link everywhere you can...and build a layer of other creators subscriptions.

So our reader comments here come mainly from those two groups. That creates a certain type of discourse.

Now at Webcomicsapp, we haven't made a big social media push to our friends and families loop over there yet. During the upspree period, all the readers we're getting are getting generated by their on site tools. We were Featured, we show up for longer periods in New comics and it's generating actual readers.

Readers comment on things differently than your Uncle does. Readers want to know about different things than a fellow creator would.

We're finding ourselves answering types of questions and having discussion more specific to the individual story arcs.

[draweththeraven]

yes and no.
i don't get a lot of traffic on my comic or suggestions from readers i'm not close to, and if my comic got big i probably wouldn't read and get ideas from fanfic and stuff (just bad practice), but id still listen to comments with genuine suggestions, because i deal with some serious stuff. studying world religion and cultural sensitivity are pretty integral to making sure my comic idea works so discussions with close religious friends who read my comic tend to really influence how characters are depicted too!

but things like key plot points are decided early on, and my chapters are written and thumbnailed well in advance of me scheduling the comics, which are usually done a few episodes ahead of schedule, so comments about things immediately about to happen in the comic wouldnt be able to influence me at all except for being more careful in the future

[JRHoch]

Interesting. I came to Tapas and Webtoon with zero friends and family. (My peeps don't read webcomics.)

While I have some creator subs, most of the people I have following my comic are from when I update and get on the fresh tab. However I ended up getting about 20 subs while on hiatus with no updates. I'm not sure where these people came from; a few from forum but many not.

I think with Tapas, because people can see other people's libraries, that might have helped some. And maybe some anonymous angels put out a good word.

[OttoGruenwald]

I don't really get all that many, so no.

[skicoak]

I came to Tapas and Webtoon with zero friends and family. (My peeps don't read webcomics.)

Which, according to the algorithm heads, is the way to go. All those friends and family subscriptions don't help if they're not active accounts that move other metrics...because of the way Tapas crunches numbers.

I'm not sure where these people came from; a few from forum but many not.

Now you get subscribers because of the quality of your strip but as much as people wanna debate it...you're getting a lot of initial eyes because of your category, BL. I don't have a bias either way about this phenomenon but it is observable so denying it's existence seems silly.

[JRHoch]

I know BL is a good category, but I just updated after 1.5 months of no posts. How do people find you when you don't update. It's not like I'm featured.

[skicoak]

Obviously, we don't have access to data that could conclusively say one way or the other...

But if I'm being asked my opinion, it's a combination.

1. Readers seeking BL were giving greater agency in reaching content when BL was separated from the Romance genre. Only the Gaming genre has a more narrow classification and series count. With only 1,452 series in BL, you could conceivably skim the entire selection in a reasonable time.

And...

1. Readers seeking BL are WILLING and dedicated enough to search through BL to find content that connects to them. We're talking about a sub-genre that integrated identifiers into thumbnails to create a quicker identification of content.

And all of this benefits you and your strip...without disadvantaging anyone.

I wish we had more genre/sub genre options for everyone else. I don't think getting specific content to readers looking for it has a downside.