How much did the lore and canon of your story change before the actual release?

[DualDragons]

A lot.
It used to be a collection quest type of story where the mc, Andrew, had to find seven keys to unlock an ancient weapon to beat the evil demon Overlord.

Now?
Andrew is on a journey to find his father and save him, the demon aspect has actually been reworked in both him and his father.

[AmazementComics]

Initially, the comics were meant to be small scale. They were supposed to be about four teenage "ninjas" and their giant apple ninja friend protecting their fictional neighborhood. That idea was scrapped and later reworked into a series about four giant fruit ninjas who protect New York.

But it didn't stop there. A huge inspiration for Amazement Comics was Marvel and DC comics. So the idea was to create a full-fledged universe of characters and places that take place in real time to make the characters and stories more relevant to the hear and now.

[darthmongoose]

There were a fair few changes, like the auras of the knights worked differently and Rekki's was more like this defensive wall of force that stopped things hitting her... but it was a pretty boring power to work with!

One big change was that Urien was fused with a demon in very, very early plans, apparently... I'd completely forgotten that but it says in my notes he was! I must have decided very early on that it was way more interesting if Urien was just your average kind of a bad, toxic person and having power brought out the worst in him than having him be part demonic.

If you go back to Fan Dan Go though, the thing Errant reboots, there are massive changes and basically only the main characters and that they do Runic sword draws stay the same. There were no Arthurian elements, it was set in alternate universe 1975 instead of roughly the present, Rekki had always had her abilities, Juliet's older brother was named Frederick and was dead.... or so everyone thought because really he was a vampire forced into service of the evil vampire empress! ....Uh yeah, there were vampires... and...a vampire empress who was to be the main villain. Let's just say Errant is a lot better thought out and carefully planned than FDG was.

[Llyrel]

I ended up changing a lot of things, too.
While the core of the story itself didn't change, A LOT was added throughout the years. More specifically:

1. The bad guys got a lot more screen time, as well as more defined personalities and goals that weren't just "we're doing this because we're evil, mwahahah";
2. Secondary characters that were supposed to disappear after chapter 2 got their own mini-arcs.
3. The way certain rituals and spells work changed a lot, sometimes because the original versions were causing major plot holes, other times because changing certain things simply made the story flow better. Heck, some spells are still being changed as I work on them :'D
4. Story got longer. Like, WAY longer. What was originally meant to be a 20-something pages long comic eventually turned into a 40+ chapters monster :'D

That's what I can think of as of now, but I'm pretty sure there's even more, lol.

[NellieVP318]

My original novel was supposed to take place when the characters are in high school. So I aged up the characters in a more appropriate age since I thought it was way too much for a young person to do. Still keeping the young naive part to the MCs.

The bad guys were a bit generic since I didn't do my background research about cults either. They were also all over the place in my old works in the story.

Also, there was supposed to be only one MC for the whole story but then the other two characters had more development with a similar plot line.As a result, it ended up being a multi-POV story rather than one considering I had so much ground to cover. While the story line is similar, I had to take out the high school area part of the story which was my favorite, but it wasn't working for it.

In addition, a lot of characters were changed over the years from how their bands were formed to who they are as a person.

I believe I did all this all under two years lol. I worked on the original story in 2010 or 2011, dropped it, then picked it back up around two years ago.

[shapeshiftingmel]

My characters have definitely changed A LOT over the span of several different drafts before I started releasing my novel on tapas. Strangely enough though, the world and overall setting of it never underwent those kind of changes, except for some minor additions.

[Desertfyre]

Usually by the time I release my novels I have solidified just about everything. I don't even post until I finish a rough draft straight through. Then by the time I post I'm in soft editing field. Since I don't like to post as I go, I get through all those changes before I even upload it.

I did try to write as I go for the most part with webtoons but that never ended well. But with my writings I always had to quirk.

[thedude3445]

It' rare to see people scale back on their plans rather than make them bigger as they progress. That's a pretty cool thing, honestly.

[MattsyKun]

Hahahaha... a lot.

My comic started out as 3 completely different storylines: one from when I was fresh out of high school 10 years ago, one from about 5 years ago, and the MC's current storyline (from earlier this year when I decided to do this). While the main conflicts and character basics have stayed the same, every character has undergone revisions so all 3 stories would work in one universe.

My villain went from a tyrannical dirtbag to a character I actually feel REALLY bad for because his motives are just misguided. One of my MCs went from a literal murderhobo to a former murderhobo who REALLY loves his wife. And that MC's brother went from a pure-hearted do-gooder to kinda a jerk. But, all my characters went through changes as I got older, and I'm glad I waited 10 years to make this comic, because those changes really benefited the story!

That being said, I had to rewrite a LOT of lore to connect all 3 stories. I'm still catching parts that I need to rewrite and make sense. It's a lot of work, but I love worldbuilding so it's totally worth it.

[JoshRaid]

Drastically. Half the cast of the series was not going to be in the story initially, and every character was at least a bit different in their early incarnation than they are now. But all that stuff happened before I even started writing. One big moment for me was when I realized that my token smart girl and Token sexy girl would make a better couple than the protagonist and the sexy girl. Also, major aspects of the worldbuilding were not originally part of the story.

[BreakingChalk]

A lot, even from the latest iterations...

One of them had Seymon (just Seymon, Key was another character and there was no Simon) and Stephanie leaving Old Town (not Puro Ladrillo) as early as chapter 1, then they met Salamon who was a head-hunter after them and later in the story Rose would appear having a less active role.

It is hard to imagine Salamon as an antagonist now, or the story's plot without Rose

[artsylilbastard]

Oh my god mine went off in a whole new direction! I originally was going with a slice of life about a boy who can see monsters after surviving the car crash that killed his parents. He goes to an orphanage and then it's the daily life of his and his monster
NOW: they are twin survivors and they go live with their uncle and he sends them off to boarding school and now it has a plot? Like it diced and blended it up tbh I almost never posted it cause I didn't think people would like it. But then the comic ghost eyes caught my attention and it is really popular, it definetly gave me the courage to \start posting.

[CttMaurice]

As a pantser, the entirety of my story and canon of the story melds as it goes. Yes not a very good way to go about things but its a way to go about it nonetheless. I'm sure there are a lot of plot holes that I have to fix but probably cant.

[artsylilbastard]

That's how I plan to end mine, I have a general idea of the plot but the story is gonna have to guide me

[ninjashira]

Nothing fundamentally changed too terribly much between my first draft of my script and the final version. I obviously tidied some things up, reworked some character moments, and basically rewrote the entire second half of the story, but the way the magic works and Skyler's whole history as a magical anime hero has remained essentially the same.

[KhanSpring]

For a story that I have been working on since 2012 - a lot. The plot originally was pretty generic and cheese rebel story in a made up country, inspired bt Italy and no magic involved.Then I added more political drama - no outher force interfiering, rather the fear of it taking advantage of their situation and attacking any moment, as well as family drama - family at ruins, the siblings separated and taking different paths only to be reunited later on but not knowing that untill later on and that was one very teary and cringy reunion. Some of the characters were changed a lot as well - Delyana went 180, because at first she was one of the main villians, while now she is a mojor ally, her relationship with Asya also changed, because obviouslly they were mortal enemies at first. Their names were Desdemona and Arabella originally, but when I started shifting towards Slavic inspired lore and culure I changed the names of almost every character.And with that change of "source"the plot evolved quite fast - romance took a secondery role, while family bonds are the main driving force in the plot. Magic appeared and evolved as well, with the creation of the types of witches and why they were immortall and how they felt about it.
The original ending is now the ending of the first part and that too chandged quite a lot - who lives, who dies, who marries who, what rank they have...
Many of the characters, even though antagonists, have reasoning behind it, not "yeah, I am bad and I want power because of it", so they are not so much of a villian(at least in my opinion), besides some people in later part.

[BlunderingAlbatross]

When I first started writing my story it was a fairly standard high fantasy (medieval tech etc), and the whole kinda wider situation was a fair bit different, but I got very stuck after a couple of chapters and didn't know where to go with it.

Then I got a burst of inspiration, changed the tech level to 1700s(ish), made the wider situation a whole lot different, and put everyone on a boat. What I did keep though was the character's names, their personalities, the pantheon I'd made, and the countries and their general characteristics.

[artsylilbastard]

This gives me happy steampunk vibes. I am also in the process of getting my novel published (it's not on tapas) adn originally it was a pirates of the Caribbean like thing based off a dream I had, now everythign is steampunk and it's set in teh year 2816

[nekocoa]

My story when through a lot of changes before I started it, mostly with what type of magic I wanted involved and it when through a lot of different iterations. Though honestly, I didn't write a script until I was 6 months into posting so it was still changing a lot as I was drawing and posting episodes.

[BlunderingAlbatross]

Sounds awesome Definitely the kind of thing I'd like to read.