How do you extend a webcomic and still keep it interesting?

[Delphonse]

Hey everyone Del here. I study comics a lot and work on them from time to time. I had a question that I have been trying to figure out for years.

How can someone write 100s of chapters of a webcomic and keep it interesting each episode give or take a few slower episodes from time to time. I study some series and I notice that they draw things out by kinda sidetracking from the issue or talking in depth about their thought process about tackling certain issues or by just drawing out the action scenes more. like I see a lot of different methods of doing this but I was wondering what other people noticed when reading these kind of stories. Any tips or advice is welcomed ^.^

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I think a lot of comic authors have the opposite problem, actually: trying to keep something a manageable length. My first chapter was over 100 pages, and took me over two years to draw, and I'm 16 pages into drawing chapter two, which promises to be just as long. I have at least five chapters total planned (that's a conservative estimate), and I have no reason to suspect that each chapter won't be at least 100 pages long, taking two years-ish each to draw. Meaning this comic, again at a conservative estimate, will take approximately ten years of my life to create. Minimum.

And this was the SHORTER option from my original idea.

With something this long, I do try to make each page count. I make sure that each page includes something significant: an important piece of information, an interaction that tells you something about a character, a change of scenery, or something that advances the plot. People don't mind longer stories if each page feels worth reading.

[BoomerZ]

I'm 56 episodes into my comic. I just started book 3 of 5 as a weekly webcomic, with each episode being about 30ish panels. I don't find me looking to draw out the story as I have a narrative I'm following, with each book telling a small arc of the large 5 book story. The ending was wrote before I even started so I'm just working toward it. My theory is every episode has to move the story forward toward your conclusion. There should be no filler episodes, I don't want to waste the readers time.

[darthmongoose]

I've read through a lot of webcomics that are hundreds, or even thousands of pages long (oh, hi again, Homestuck...), and stopped at certain points with others I'd read for well over a hundred pages and then just couldn't continue.

Things that may cause or contribute to fatigue:

• A storyarc that has the same characters in the same place doing the same thing for way too long. So say there's a storyarc where the characters get lost in the jungle after an argument, and at first, it's pretty cool because they're both in the jungle, lost and full of regret... but then it starts to get really repetitive; every week you turn up for new content and it's more "two sad people moping around in the trees being sad some more".
• The plot takes a detour to focus on a supporting character, who might be doing something with quite a different vibe or tone from the main cast, and for a short while, it's really refreshing, but it goes on too long and takes the comic away from the characters and story or humour type that the audience like about the comic for longer than they'd like (the Miko arc in Order of the Stick is a popular example. It's a really long break from the fun antics and humour of a comic about a D&D party focused on the very serious story of this very serious character with very little humour and only occasional brief cutaways to the main cast.)
• There's an obvious end goal or target in sight for the comic to roll towards, but it just stops and treads water to fill pages. Think like... the last two seasons of How I Met Your Mother, where we've met the mother, and the conclusion is in sight, but then it just drags out every little thing that happened at the wedding and a bunch of other stuff that slows everything down to fill in seasons before the ending.
• Something happens... and then it gets undone in a way that returns everything to an earlier state but with zero changes, rendering a whole arc pointless. Sometimes, when a comic creator has committed to moving the comic forward, so has say, the character finally get together with or marry the love interest, they then get cold feet. "Oh crap! Some of the readers didn't like that! They say the comic is "different now", Aaagh!" So... they have the pair split up, and the protagonist goes back to acting exactly how he acted before, and the love interest quietly vanishes or goes back to being his sassy friend... basically everyone acts like that whole thing never happened. The famous example is of course... the "Loss" storyline from the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del, where there's a whole pregnancy arc that progresses quickly, then the character's partner has a miscarriage... then there's very brief mourning and then everyone acts basically like it never happened.

I think the golden rule for avoiding it is: Never take the audience's time or attention for granted. No matter how popular your comic gets, and how many people have been reading, and for how long, assume they're only sticking around as long as you're providing them interesting content that reflects the general tone, style and pacing you established in your earlier pages. Sunk cost fallacy and belief in the creator might make them fight their urge to bail for a while, but don't assume it makes you invincible.
Plus additionally: Nobody wants to read a hundred pages that aren't interesting or pleasant to look at or read. This applies whether you're a super-popular comic deciding to do some artsy, introspective, serious detour for a hundred boring pages, or whether you're a new comic with a really long, dull setup trying to tell people "no, no! It gets good 100 pages in! I promise!"

[thepenmonster]

A recent commentary on the idea of the eternal story...

I'm pretty fond of endings myself.

[river121693]

The reason people get bored is because your story strayed too far from the promised "goal" of your story, lack of change in the status-quo, and your character becomes stale due to stagnant/bad character development. The solution I think, is to plan multiple unique characters that have a really interesting character arc-- they do things, face consequences, and change because of it. Everything that they do also leads back toward a central goal.

A great example is Game of Thrones show (I havent read the book). The early story is massive with ton of characters but you're captivated because every character has a clear goal that intersect with one another, leading to conflicts. None of the conflicts are filler; they all fundamentally change the characters involved in some ways. Massive status quo changes happens regularly, altering path of the characters. Compare that to the later seasons of the show which lost its focus due to bad/rushed writing-- fan favorites always get away with bad decisions and never grow from it, none of the characters development make sense, and by the end, the status quo remained the same.

I actually hate it when the characters sidetrack from the issue or do something totally unrelated. I think everything they do need to end up connecting to both the character development and end goal.

I also don't like drawn out action scene unless a lot of stakes relating to the goal is involved.

[NickRowler]

When you finish one arc/plot, you start a new one. Think of anime where after defeating a villain, a new villain shows up.

With sitcoms, they often find new story plots by making episodes based off current events. Even with shows like Law and Order which literally based episodes off of news stories.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

My advice is to start with a story format that's easy to extend. :T I've never understood why so many writers in visual media specifically seem to struggle with filler content; it's actually very easy to generate as long as your story is relatively episodic, low-stakes, and each "arc" is comprehensive-- i.e. you start a conflict and FINISH it before moving on to the next one. This strategy is applicable to a wide variety of tones and genres, and a season/series finale can easily be tacked on at any point, with just a few episodes of prior buildup.

But instead, the most popular strategy seems to be to make a long-form epic where the whole universe is at stake, and just...meander away from it with an unimportant subplot when you need to keep things going for longer. o_O It's baffling...

I think it's just an unfortunate result of the kinds of stories that are popular these days...people want a BIG epic story that makes them feel mature while watching it, but they also want that same story to continue on forever with hundreds of hours of unnecessary content, without realizing that they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Like it or not, "epics" tend to have explicit goals and actually...end. Meanwhile, the episodic content that gets waved off as 'kid stuff' would be much more in line with what they actually want.

[AmazementComics]

You don’t. Let me give you a different perspective. Say you there’s a webcomic you frequent but it’s been going on for 20 chapters and 500+ episodes. If you put yourself in the mind of the reader, you’ll find that a lot of them are burnt out. But their audience is what’s driving them to make new stories.

It’s not often that you’ll find an author who doesn’t have an idea of how the story should have ended. Because that can be found in the chapter of a story that resembles a good endpoint to the comic. It’s like other forms of media. Take SpongeBob for example. The first SpongeBob movie was supposed to be the canonical ending of the show. But Nickelodeon demanded for more. And so they kept going.

I offer this piece of advice. If you’re going to extend a comic, I would recommend doing prequels and spin offs. Your main comic story should have a beginning, middle, and an end. I tell you this because that’s what I’m doing for my creative works.

[TheLemmaLlama]

people want a BIG epic story that makes them feel mature while watching it, but they also want that same story to continue on forever with hundreds of hours of unnecessary content, without realizing that they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Like it or not, "epics" tend to have explicit goals and actually...end. Meanwhile, the episodic content that gets waved off as 'kid stuff' would be much more in line with what they actually want.

I think you hit the nail on the head :'D Though I do think it's possible to kind of have your cake and eat it too; you just have to sell it as an episodic series and let the big overarching plot sneak up on the readers XD

Don't let your big overarching plot be the reason your readers are reading, because that way anything that doesn't progress towards it feels like filler and when the resolution actually happens, people are just going to be like 'finally, about frigging time'. Whereas if they came to just hang out with your characters and explore your world through little stories one after the other, it doesn't feel like filler (because it's what they're there for), and when the resolution happens, they're going to be like 'holy crap, I didn't know all of that was actually leading up to something!'

Also if your overarching plot isn't the identity/premise of your series, you'd feel more comfortable actually ending it and reaching that resolution without also feeling like you have to end your series

[powerplantanimations]

I'm on Episode 69 and my best advice is to just add a bunch of twists and turns WHILE staying focused one point and one goal. Everything has to culminate to one big arc at the end. Make your audience think "Oh so is this what the story is going to be about...? Wait... no??? It's actually about this?". Something like that. Also I like to do status quo changes at the end of every arc.