How did you start coming up with your story?

[JokesterComics]

For me, it was during covid 19, me and my family had a chance to get away from everyone, so we did, then I started getting back into books. I mostly read manga, and that was my main inspiration. I then started drawing anime characters, but didn't want to draw the same characters from the manga and anime I was into, so I came up with my own characters. There were a few ones that I didn't really do much with. Mostly just practice for drawing. But then I designed my main character and her friend, who really stuck with me. I actually drew my MC as a boy first, but there were a few things that I considered story wise, that made me change my mind.

[LostKelp]

It's a tad convoluted, but around 2018 I made an illustration of this mercenary character that was heavily inspired from Star Wars and fallout aesthetics and called her Thana. At the time I really enjoyed a grungy army sci-fi, I started developing a story for her where she lived in a post-apocalyptic deserted earth. Where the world was totally barren and the people either lived below the surface or in space stations orbiting earth, and Thana collected resources from the surface to sell in the under lands. While on one of these missions she found a crashed spaceship with two kids inside, Najm and Alya (Star and Sky), these kids were from the space station and needed to get back, so Thana treks with them across the undercities to an old spaceport so she can get them back to space. She gets hurt in the process and the kids take her with them to the stations where she meets with her Ex-wife who abandoned her to live among the stars. I'm not sure what happened after this point.

It's a good story, right? I'd been tinkering with the idea for around 3 years, I might make this at some point. But when I started STS I thought: well, this is fine, but it's a bit long, I should make a backstory comic for Najm and Alya before their ship crashes on Thana's planet. I'm sure this will be shorter.

So I took Najm and Alya and I made an outline for a love story between a war machine and the technician that maintains them. And that's all well and good, but I don't actually like writing love stories that much. I liked the idea that these outer cites were super unethical. I've always thought a story from the perspective of the unwilling minions of a greater evil would be interesting. Especially in our late-stage capitalism times, where getting by often means feeding into a giant evil system. So my simple, small backstory for these two characters spiraled into its own separate universe and giant plot line and lore and whatever. Two other main characters were introduced to add other perspectives on their circumstances. Alya and Najm's characterization shifted to the point that I realized that as people, they would make for a terrible couple. So basically everything I started with got scrapped.

WITH ALL THAT SAID, am I happy with the results? Hell yeah! I like a lot of the ideas I started with, but I also know that some of the best parts of the comic wouldn't have been made if I stuck with my first idea, I kept a lot of my draft outlines. I can re-use them for something else. Thana and the dead earth is a good idea, she'll get her story someday.

[faisalhussein394]

Interesting. Mine was at first inspired by the Manga/Anime series such as DBZ, Naruto, and Bleach since I was a teenager but it as not enough for me to start my comic until I watched The lord of the Rings trilogy, and Played a strategy game called Warcraft lll.

That was enough to inspire me to start a comic, but while I could barely draw, I can't write. The story was too edgy, fights came out of nowhere, and no traits among characters that would differentiate from each other to look special.

So I end up making fan made crossover comic of my favorite characters, and although it brings me a lot of followers, and readers, it is still too edgy as my first attempt of making a comic. So I stopped for a few years.

It was then during my college years, I started making a new comic that was inspired by other series such as Wakfu. Despite my attempt of making this new comic, I slowly lost my passion and stopped because maybe it has something to do with not gaining a lot of readers, and followers in DA.

So I go back to my fan made crossover comic, but even that I lost my will to continue it.

So it was after my college years, I began to read histories, and mythologies. It inspired me so much that I want to start a new comic, and realize the lack of comics inspired by Arab culture, history, and mythology traits on Tapas. So that is where I start, but I need an inspiration to draw better, and that is where I found this comic/manga called Kingdom.

Although, the color is not my favorite, my god, the pages are outstanding to see.

I was even inspired by the camera shots from total war games:

So that is where I started my comic; Mukhtar here on Tapas. Though it may look like I am very fond of battle scene, I do prioritize story telling, world building, magic systems, and established ground rules, and only do battle when it is necessary. If you're interested, You can take a look, and see for yourself.

It is the one comic I am very passionate about it for years, and still do to this day. It is my comic I am willing to continue and there will be a second comic based on Sci-Fi genre. Here is the link to my Fantasy Genre inspired by Middle Eastern Culture, Mythology, and historical events:

Read Mukhtar | Tapas Web Community

[JokesterComics]

Damn that's a really interesting story. I get writing one continuous story can be difficult, but it seems you've found the right one. History is super interesting, and I get some inspiration from it too lol. Also, are the drawings you've put up your own ones? Because that looks incredible, and super well detailed. I could never draw something like that lmao

[faisalhussein394]

Yes, after close to 15 years, I manage to make my own art work. I know it took that long, but I manage to make it through. Remember, I started drawing since I was a 15 and it was a rough experience but I manage to make it through. I just need to find many inspiring artworks from many artists.

[thepenmonster]

I wanted to make a comic specifically the opposite of what's popular.

[GothickangelStudios]

I started my art journey in Kindergarden.
However, I started writing more after having vivid dreams of my OC and her world back in the 90s in my teenage years. So while bored in class, Id write up short stories about it in my binder. Then typed them up slowly, on an old windows 95 IBM computer. People had to learn the skills of keyboard typing back then. Saved them onto floppy drives. Printed them off into a duatang folder. Which now sits in my art studio.
The more manga style drawings started in college. I was taking graphic design, interactive multimedia, illustration and 3d modeling. And it grew into what my style is currently.
So back in 2020 once I got the software CSP. I finally started to combine the 2 elements of if based off those story worlds, OCs with the artwork.

[kyupol]

Anime + religion + spirituality + sociology + psychology + politics + real life experiences = ANGHELL DELA BLACKPILL

[Leyelle]

"Damsel in the Red Dress" was designed in November, and my idea was that I wanted a story with a fairly linear base idea so it could be made into a series where lots of things happen stemming from that base. The idea was that my FL Alicia promised her best friend Kattar to send him a picture of something beautiful every day to aid him through his recovery as he adjusts to life in a wheelchair. It's diverged from that somewhat now, but that was its base, and the concept of something beautiful, and her search for beauty, stemming all the rest of the things that happen in the plot remains.

"A Dozen Morning Glories" honestly feels a bit like a joke, but it was designed for a romance novel competition, and one of the judging criteria was 'strength of romantic element.' Since most stories have at least a little bit of time before the romance comes in, I think the sarcastic part of my brain is what made me decide to make my female lead, Essence Walker, a romance novel editor, and it's also why the story became a sort of love-contract plot, where the ML makes a deal/challenge with the female lead. But what that deal is, i won't spoil.

"Sketchy Business" is just a silly comic designed to help me improve my art. So I made the comic about a woman who wants to be a comic artist, and her best friend is trying to help her improve her skills.

[UnTalAugustus]

I basically combined three story concepts I had that thought could combine to do something unique.

1. A mini-story inspired by Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, that trancurred in an office job. The core of the story was that the main character's power was really "weak" (He could only control paper), and used it to overcome the corrupt boss of the company he worked for. The fights would be decided by how they used their powers and not by who was stronger.

2. A Super Sentai style story where the characters had special transformations based on their Spirit Animal, each with their own unique powers. I had many characters conceptualized, some of them, if not all, where reworked to be in the current comic I'm making now.

3. The least thought-out of the stories. Basically just an idea. A superhero comic with a scaled down power level. And my own take of what makes a superhero a superhero.

I combined what I liked from each of them. Added the setting of my country Argentina and references to argentinian songs. And I ended up making Come what May.
A comic that seemed like the most simple to begin my comic-making journey. Just a guy that gained "weak" powers and will use them as a superhero to defeat a corrupt CEO. But, it kinda derailed at some point and ended up being more complex than I anticipated... haha.

[2DLenzy]

Well, originally, Friar Chicken was a comedy, based off some random chicken facts that I wanted to portray to the audience. But as I kept coming up with funny ideas, I had wanted to string them together in story arcs, like old funnies would sometimes do. But then, I got an epiphany of the ending, and it felt sorta serious compared to what I had planned, so I decided to add more drama to my plot, and came up with the Pecking Order, cults, and other extra info-dump-worthy stuff. I also added in humans, whom I was supposed to phase out in the beginning as seen by the bad art, but now they're part of the grand scheme of things.

Now there's a lot to work with - maybe too much lol - and I've planned four huge grand arcs, kinda (just finished my first despite the ideas being all over the place, it was an experiment) Now going forward, I have a better idea of what the story is and it's messages, and that is all for the ending, which honestly won't come for a few years, but there's climatic moments I'm looking forward to drawing in each "season", once I get through the fluff.

[ArtGremlin]

I created most of the main characters of Recollections waayyyy before I really knew what I wanted to do with the story. But at some point in my algebra 2 class I created Mev. I had a vague concept of her existence before then, but I never had a solid design. She was part snake in some way originally, then I decided to make her a Gorgon. After she was created the rest of the plot fell into place.

[Thumber]

Since I could not find the type of story I liked I decided to make my own, but it didnt go as planned, instead of I drawing the comic in it was the comic that drew me out...

[Wolsal]

This is maybe the least interesting story but, oh well.
A bit ago, like a little under a year ago, I got an art assignment (I’m an art student lol) to draw a landscape using surrealistic elements. So, I drew a forested landscape with my take on a biblically accurate Angel in the background, I jokingly called this little character the “not evil angel”, as something of an oxymoron as the intent very much was to create an evil Angel, which again within itself is a double oxymoron.
I started to like this character and found myself doodling them all over my sketchbooks. I came up with the first draft, a comedic approach of an Angel doing blatantly evil things.
However, I got what I call the big ol world building bug, and kept building it up and up until it became a proper story. So, 4 pages in, I abandoned the idea of an episodic approach and decided to make a full on story driven comic series of it, then I decided that having 1 main character with no foil was super boring, and I came up with Namida, the other main character, by page 5 and introduced him later in the story.
And to make a short story long, that’s how I came up with my comic, The Totally Not Evil Angel, using my idea of a “Not Evil Angel” to make the characters name- Nea.
(As an aside, I had another comic I was working on that just wasn’t going anywhere, and truthfully was a character study without a story, my first attempt at making a proper comic. So, I soon scrapped that old comic in favor of TTNEA. I’m working on rebooting my old comic, but that’s a side project.)
Also, as for the question of “why biblically accurate angels?” I thought the whole “meme” of it was funny, but also being a person obsessed with sacrilege and mythology, it was right up my alley.

Read The Totally Not Evil Angel | Tapas Web Community

[UrMom]

The story for my comic popped in my head during an existential spiral on my way to work, it was like my brain was trying to distract me. It was 2015, and the sudden idea was kinda nice because around that time my morale was nonexistent, hardly had the motivation to draw anything up to that point. The characters were from a previous attempt at a comic, although older, more realized. Although the characters and story have morphed a bit since I first started. Like, my main story beats are the same but I've changed small details to flesh things out more, and one of my MCs used to be an AAB male who realizes they're non-binary later on, but is now intersex and prefers neutral pronouns while not seeing themselves as genderqueer. (To them their gender can't differ from their sex because, reproductively, they don't fit the standard for male or female. If that makes sense.)

Anyways! The setting and story are the way they are due to me wanting something simple so I can focus on characters. The themes are heavy as well, and trying to do something plot driven while juggling those themes would be a bit too much for me.

[EncryptedWriting]

It kind of just happened. I wanted an lgbtq+ fantasy using characters that I relate to. Truthfully, I wanted characters who were sexually unsure of what was correct (by societal and their standards). Additionally, I wanted a story where things are a mix of a slow burn but also very intense action. Meaning things aren't too slow, but there are important events that occur often that lead to key focal points.

In a weird way, it just came to me one day as I finished my 2nd novel. From then, I've been writing when I've been able to. I genuinely love the story and the characters though I need to redo the start a bit. I guess it's been spontaneous with the need to implement real human emotions into a fantasy world.

[MelancholicOtaku]

I wrote a short storty for a writing prompt,I forgot the topic but something about the world intrigued me to keep writing hence many months later I decided write chapter one of my novel.

[arcaneer99]

My first novel has a long history.

First and foremost, this story started out as two completely separate ideas. One was fitted for dystopian apocalypse with superpowered humans, while the other explores mythological beings in an action-packed mystery. Both of these stories had promising premises and characters. Unfortunately, it was hard to layer out plotlines and seeing where both will go in terms of continuation. This was during a time when I dealt with severe anxiety and helped other around me with certain issues. Soon I found some time for myself and recollected my thoughts on my stories. This time led to daydreaming more ideas and ultimately combining both stories into one magnificent piece of work.

Almost 13 years later and more peace and quiet, my story became a Science-Fantasy Epic novel. I expanded the worldbuilding I originally had and created characters that felt too surreal to write. The themes in both genres gave me the drive to write more, since I'm a big fan of Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I feel ecstatic to write the next part every day and share with others.

Read War of Neytives | Tapas Web Community

[supriyashukla2398]

I came up with my novel story because of the title "Imperfectly Perfect." Initially, I thought of writing a marriage series, but then I considered a boys' marriage series. Eventually, I decided it would be more interesting to write a forced mafia boys' marriage series.

Read Imperfectly - Perfect | Tapas Web Community