How did you guys get confident enough in your story to start it?

Personally I don't have confidence in most things I post on here. I just do it for the sake of doing it. The best I can tell you as far as motivating yourself to get your work made is to give it a purpose of some sort. I know it sounds lame and probably not an answer you want to hear, but if your work has a realistic purpose (i.e. something simple like I want to tell a story, or I have a message to send) then instead of focusing on being popular or good enough you can just focus on the task you want to succeed in. It's how I bare to continue doing what I do, and I know it's something a lot of my favorite creators tend to follow as a motto as well. If you know why you're wanting to create your comic and you feel you can succeed in that purpose you'll be fine. Don't focus on popularity follow a goal instead.

I personally just get too excited to show to the world my story , i don't care if my art is good enough , i only care to deliver the story the way i imagine it.

First off, I think one needs to enjoy what they do, be it writing and or drawing.

I've maintained the idea that as a creator, there's a sort of arrogance which leads us to publish our work, despite the negativity that may come from it.

I still ponder over the idea of people not taking kindly to my work. And it's easy to put yourself down. But in those cases, that's when the passion for what you do comes in. If you really love what you do, keep at it. You can always go back and fix the things that people may tell you you need to work on - but you will never know anything about your work (good or bad) if it's never published.

Go ahead an publish. Trust me. What little positivity you get, greatly outweighs the bad.....or at least that's how it is with me.

I don't particularly confident about my works. Most if the time I just say "F*ck it!" before updating something and laughing uncontrollably after published a chapters (I seriously have no idea why I'm laughing every time).

I'm the kind of person that low on motivation, and keep on distracting myself with unimportant stuff just to running away from my works. I always need a kick in the butt to starting to continue my works though, but in the end it was going to be me being miserable for not doing anything productive instead of sitting and doing nothing, so I just need the kick (figuratively) every time before I start to being productive again.

...well, my post is not helping at all huh? Its basically just a rant, lol X3 .

A panelist at a con said, 'Your first comic/story will be your worst so you may as well get it over with.'

Taking that to heart resulted in a +10 confidence boost with a 'just go out there and do it' bonus

For me the key has been to not place too much importance on a particular project. If a particular story is very important to you and you really want to execute it well, but your art / storytelling isn't good enough yet to give you the results you want, then you will feel the lack of confidence. And this lack of confidence is not necessarily bad; sometimes it just means you have an accurate sense of your own limitations.

There are a couple projects I intend to do in the future, but I wouldn't start on them just yet because they are too important to me and I don't want to mess them up. So for the time being I work on something less serious as a means of improving my skills. Because I am setting realistically low expectations for myself, I am not anxious about 'failing' anything.

My comic isn't really story-driven, but I feel like with a lot of creative endeavors, the best thing to do is to just START. The first, blank page is usually the scariest, so if you go "whatever!" and start, things will get done and you'll have something to post

No matter how happy you are with what you make today, tomorrow you will see things in it that you want to fix. Maybe start with a "smaller"/"less special" project for practicing your methods/techniques; you'll be ready for the big one in no time

So, don't get tangled up in details or worry about "perfection" right now; just put that "pen to paper" and start, and enjoy the process!

Hey aqua03!

I know exactly where you're at and what it feels like. It always sucked to feel like I'd get so far and then hate everything. So...I found a mentor. And my mentor took me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes lovingly and said:

"HOW THE F*CK CAN YOU GET BETTER IF YOU NEVER FINISH A M*THER-F*CKING THING?!"

...and he shook me. Hard.

So after dislodging my heart from my throat, I was kinda pissed at him. I left that meeting feeling REALLY frustrated because even they agreed that the work I created had flaws. I brooded on this over the Christmas holiday. My husband had gotten me a book (stick with me here, I promise there's a point to this), called Bird by Bird. In it the author talks about writing, she talks about what's called the "shitty first draft."

Basically the idea is this: Finish it. Even if you hate it. Just get it down. Because at the end of the day it's easier and more productive to take a finished piece and edit it, than write a perfect draft out the gate. After reading that...well,I begrudgingly decided my mentor was was right.

Look, if you want to finish something you've got to stop listening to that inner critic and editor and just get. the. thing. down. If you don't get it down you don't have work. If you get it down and you HATE it, at least you have somewhere to start - editing and rewrites especially.

Some other tips that helped me:
- Outline your story. Work from that.
- If you have an outline, you don't have to write in order. You can write chapter 6 or 12. Doesn't matter. That was REALLY freeing for me.
- Don't edit while you write.Let me repeat that: DO NOT EDIT WHILE YOU WRITE.
- An old screenwriters trick from Star Trek: If you need some techno-mubo jumbo or to explain how ThingTM works do this -> [TECHNO BABBLE, research black holes] <- This allows you to move the heck on with writing, and you can add that stuff later. Otherwise you go down a distracted wiki rabbit hole and nothing gets finished.
- Confidence is built up by finishing projects. That's...just one of the things about creating. You don't improve unless you DO it.

Good luck m'dear!

• C

I didn't.

I started with no confidence not knowing anything I was doing, figuring that I would just learn if I started doing it, which was lead by the thought 'no one will read my crap anyway' cause that is what I had been taught by my friends who I would try to get to read my stuff just to see if it was any good when attempting to get any kind of feedback.

I still have no confidence. People will suggest that I apply to a collective, for publishing or a exclusive host, but I won't because it feels like the success I have is a fluke, or I just got lucky. I don't think I'm good enough, and I never will be.

The only reason I started posting stuff online was because I thought it was stop me from redrawing the first 60 pages over and over again.

I don't use any script so i don't know how to give you advice on it. Just do it i guess

I bookmarked this earlier so I would remember to respond to it. And then I got swept into a sea of conversation with a friend who might've fallen asleep seeing as it's the proper time to do that and I'm just weird and staying awake.

Okay!

Hi, hello. I'm Bones, it's nice to meet you. I'm the resident skeleton tis a pleasure. Now let me take a second to do some real talk with you.

You think your idea is a good idea right? Then it is!

But then you start to wonder if it's a good idea, everyone else's comics and novels look a hell of a lot better to you. Will you match up to them? Can you even compete? Wow, this is getting hard, let me try to rework this again.

And then the cycle repeats.

Listen, my friend. You don't need confidence to start drawing your work to publish it. You don't need the will of a thousand men to carry you there. All you need is the knowledge that you enjoy your work and that come hell or high water, you're proud of yourself for getting it out there.

Does it matter if other people like your work or not? That's something for you to decide.
Could your work be better if you take a little longer to get it out? Maybe.

But who will be the person that will regret not even putting it up at all? If we're betting, I'd say that's you.

I have many regrets in the short time I've been on this Earth and 90% of them are things that I wish I did but I didn't do. Now, I'm living my life trying to do whatever the hell I want under the sun within reason and come hell or highwater, I'm gonna be happy that I did it even if I messed up.

I haven't read DRGN or seen it yet but I'm pretty sure it's already great. You drawing it, posting it up, getting it out there, you're not failing. You're not messing up. You're not lesser. You're doing what you like and you're doing what you love and you're only going to get better as you nurture it. Don't destroy it and tear it down and try to rebuild it, just change it, mold it into what you're seeing in your mind and everything will come together.

I'm not a very confident person. I honestly put myself down a lot but I have only one life to live and I'd be damned if I'm gonna live it with regrets.

What about you?

Existential dread works in my case x)

My anxiety-ridden mind drowns out fears of whether I'm good enough or can do justice to a developing idea with an even greater fear-

I think of all the artists and writers I've met who were far older and still waiting on the perfect opportunity- the ideal alignment of skill and free time- to come along, so that they could finally start their passion project after years of manufactured excuses. And then I imagine myself in that same position several decades from now- still waiting, without having released a single one of the many stories brewing in my head. The very idea terrifies me so much, I immediately feel a pressing need to get things done, consequences and reception be damned.

So this may seem like peculiar advice- it certainly isn't very uplifting- but perhaps ruminating on that fear will give you the push you need, even if your self-confidence doesn't yet seem up to the task?

On that note- I recognize being motivated by fear isn't healthy or sustainable longterm- so as someone who's struggled with mental health, I'd add that if, instead of motivating you, it just takes you to dark places- by all means stop and practice self-care.

I think the ideal motivator for any creative person is sheer love of their craft and an overwhelming desire to bring their ideas to life, whether that comes from a place of pain or joy or all of the above at different times. On a good day, this moves me forward. But realistically, I'd also say it's just half the story.

every time i lose confidence in my work, I start thinking why I started at all. My conclusion is always the same: Life is short. Too short for countless revisions and hundreds of hours of polishing. I just want to finish the stories I have on my mind before my time over. It may sound macabre, but hey... as long as it works ^^'
what I mean is that i postponed starting my comic like 6- 7 years because i thought i was not good enough. As I got older and people I knew started passing away (even young ones) I realized I can't postpone things forever as I might never get the chance to do them in the first place. It's a sad, terribly melancholic way of thinking, I am aware. And I apologize if I made anyone sad... it is not my intention to do so; merely saying what works for me. ( i'm aware it's not a healthy way of thinking and that I should probably get help)

But I do agree with the majority, that I also do continue and not dwell on improvements for the fun of creativity itself (that's also why I rarely do challenges like "redraw old art" - ain't creative enough for me)

I personally am always happy to just have something to share, so that definitely pushes me to eventually posting (and I'm really bad at working ahead of time for buffers, I really hope Patreon helps with that) - I don't want to disappoint followers/subscribers, so it's better to post something crappy than nothing at all. It makes me more uneasy to not post anything.

Also, when I started posting my comic, I had recently read a few webcomics where I really loved the art - of the later chapters, that is. It was a real confidence boost to see that people loved these comics even though the art in the first 20 or so pages looked much worse than what I had to offer at that point.
In more cases than not, the first few chapters are bad in comparison to what the creators evolved to in later chapters. Understand that you won't get better and will be able to learn if you never post anything and thus don't receive any feedback. If you don't post anything, there's nothing people even could like and enjoy. First chapters are not the be all, end all. You will find readers, and if you gradually become better, they will notice, and maybe share your content with a friend so they know there will be good content even though the first chapters may be not so well-executed.

Maybe give yourself limitations, like you can do 3 drafts of a chapter, and then you need to post one of those 3 drafts. No buts, no ifs, no what abouts.
Imagien this is the most important assignment of the semester and if you hand in late, you'll fail. So, would you rather fail your class and maybe even fail your entire studies through that, or do you grit your teeth, knowing it's not perfect, maybe you'll get a B- instead of an A which barely even influences your overall grade?
My layout prof once said "75% is better than to aim at 100% and delivering 0%" and that is the bottom line of everything.

In addition, be aware that comics who perform exceptionally well right off the start usually are either professionally made or the creators have a very large following on social media and know how to promote themselves. If you promote updates with links to the actual update, that is what people get in touch with at first. If it's later in the story, they'll notice "wait I don't really understand what happened" and they go back to the start. You are scared that you don't have a hook but as soon as someone is curious enough to go back, you already got them 80% of the time.
And, again, there won't be a hook if you don't post anything.

I had confidence in my story.

i dont think i really did, i just... started. kinda regret it - if i had a complete plan actually drawn out before start, i think things woulda been easier. but then, your first comic is always.... interesting

really though, at your first comic, you need to stop giving a fuck. accept that therell be flaws, that itll be maybe not the most original thing, not the best writing or best art youll ever make. but its necessary to make something kinda crap to every make something kinda good - and itll prolly be less crap than you think!

that all said, make sure you have a plan of the entire plot before you start

You know, that's almost exactly my problem!
Background People3 was my first foray into writing. I had everything set up in my head: the characters, the plot, the interactions...everything! It was a breeze at first: writing down a chapter almost every week.
Then it kinda burned out. That's putting it lightly. It completely stopped.
I rewrote it, and I didn't like how it turned out. So I scrapped it, and started working on other things.

My point? Don't rush things. Don't think ahead that you're already thinking about how it's going to end. Spend some time fleshing out everything, even down to the little details. It's going to help, and when you finally complete it, it'll feel loads better. Trust me.
If you're feeling unconfident the first time, that's fine! You can always go back to your stuff, and rework it! It's only when you think it's good enough (after loads of revisions) that you can post it!

And another thing: write everything down. Write it down: plan your stuff, develop it, and then maybe share it to a friend or two. Maybe what he/she/they will say might help you feel really good with your stuff.

I believe my confidence came from two things when I started:
+ I wanted to see the story exist in the world
+ and the only way this would happen is if I made it.

You lose confidence halfway if you try to judge and edit your work while still in the midst of creating the story.

The mind space for creating a story is expansive, imaginative, and just loosely controlled enough that you stay in range of your story but still allow yourself to explore.

The mind space for editing a story is cutting, tightening, making things concise, and weighing and ordering each scene so that it serves the story overall.

These two things move in opposite directions so doing both while writing is like going forward, stopping then going reverse and stopping and so on. You may still stutter-step ahead but it'll be a jerky and disconcerting process.

Nowadays I gained confidence through studying story and how it works for a visual format. Comic writing is similar to screenwriting so I recently finished Story by Robert McKee and man did it open my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about stories.

Confidence is a mindset. Don't you feel confident when you have a sense of what you're doing? Rather than feeling out of your depth? My advice is to earnestly study the foundation of Storycraft, especially screenplay and stories made to be visual.

I have a small series of threads on which I'm summarizing my notes on aforementioned book. If you'd like to check them out to see if you want to learn more from the book here are the links: