16 / 53
Jun 2018

The art is good and the writing's okay from what I've seen. Wouldn't hurt to read a writing guide but I see no reason for you to quit.

I'm terrible at playing emotional cheerleader, so I'll just say that you ought to focus on the certainties in your life. Does this comic make you happy? Then keep going.

You may not be an emotional cheerleader, but you sure gave him the advice he needed

I forgot to add this to my last post.

If you need resources, I recommend these books:


If you need a good resource for creative writing or ideas, I highly recommend this site. Most are free~

If you need ideas or to relieve creative block, I suggest reading books or watching shows opposite to the genre you're doing.

Do you agree with the criticism given to you? If not, don't listen! After all, that's only another person's opinion and they might differ quite a lot from your point of view.

Do you have close friends who've read your comic, and whose opinion you trust? Do ask them if they agree with the criticism!

I've had my comics being brutally slaughtered by both friends and critics but I'm aware that mine's a slow paced comic (too slow paced if you ask them, haha!). At first I got really down and sad about it but I kinda felt like: Heck, I'm going to prove them wrong!
My comic was my very first long running comic (still running after 3 years after the critique I got) and I had (and pretty much still don't) no knowledge about how to create an interesting comic!

You say you've got 35K subs BEFORE getting picked by Webtoon and holy shit D:
That's lots of people enjoying your work so you're definitely on to something here, don't quit it! As others have said in the thread: Take a break!
Sometimes that's needed to improve your skills<3

. . . I still maintain that you can judge a work as high-quality without necessarily liking it and vice-versa. Taste may be subjective but there are still generally-accepted standards about what makes a piece good or bad.

That's what happens when anything or anyone becomes popular, not just comic writers. Just remember that not everything is for everyone, but also that many people who comment, don't always know what they're talking about. The subs you got are the ones that appreciate your art, writing, or both. The ones that just started hating on it are the ones looking to see why your comic got so popular. These are the people who have different tastes, so don't focus on them, focus on the ones that actually enjoy your content.

Like I said, not everything is for everyone, but there will always be someone who likes your work. There's always room for criticism of course, so keep that in mind as well. If you yourself think your writing needs improvement, then do some research, learn about what works and what doesn't, and just keep practicing like you do with your art. Practicing with your current comic is also another reason to not quit, if you really do want to improve. Just don't be afraid to try something new.

For the record, there's a chance I don't know what I'm talking about either, especially since I don't have past experience on this kind of stuff. But I do hope this helps somewhat.

Never quit just because someone says you suck.

Keep in mind, well established comics have editors. Some artist are partnered with professional writers. You are doing this yourself and this is your first comic.

So of course your comic isn't going to be perfect. You are a baby still learning to take its first step. The haters/brutal honesty are people saying you suck at walking. Because yeah, you are a baby still learning. Like WTF. Are you going to stop trying to walk and just crawl the rest of your life just because they say you suck at it? No. Look them straight in the eye as you take your next step/ your next update. You will trip and fall, but that is part of learning. You will be walking and sprinting in no time and you have 35k followers that have your back.

And like you said, you started this comic to strengthen your drawing weaknesses and practicing your writing. How is quitting going to solve that?

I'm not sure if you replied to me, or the thread?
(Because that's not what I meant, what I meant was: Does OP feel like the criticism's right or not? And that they can choose whether or not to listen to it.)

Since they do feel very let down by the critiques, maybe they weren't written in a good, constructive way?
Taking criticism is always hard, but one can give, and receive that in a constructive way.
It is, after all, still someone else's opinion. They may be right, and they may be wrong. :wink:

I haven't read the comic so I can only go by what was written in the first post.

Well it seems like you're almost being dragged along and forced to take this seriously when that was far from your original intention. I think rationally you know that these comments are to be expected to some extent, but you never really got the chance to prepare yourself psychologically. What might help is gaining control over you situation by taking a step back and making a plan for what you intend to do with art and webcomics. And specifically, what does your current comic mean to you? Do you want to continue to treat this as writing practice or do you want to change your approach? How would this fit into your larger plan? Do you have other projects you want to work on and how far do you want to take those? Try to get a larger perspective of how you can move things forward towards your goal. Then hopefully you'll able to face these comments easier and feel less anxiety since you know that you are building up to something even bigger.

Here's the big secret about the internet.

It's mostly full of mouthy a-holes and idiots who get off on making other people feel bad.

I don't know what criticism you actually got, but I'm betting it's a mix of honest appraisals of your work, and shitposts telling you how awful a human being you are for daring to exist and for thinking anybody wants to read your crap..

The former group might be worth listening to, because nobody's perfect and everybody has some flaws that they themselves are blind to. Learning how to take constructive criticism and to take it on board is an important skill to learn. No works are created in a vacuum and nobody learns how to be a good artist or writer without at least one person telling them how flawed a writer or artist they really are. How many rejection letters do you think JK Rowling got before she managed to get Harry Potter published?

As for the latter group? Fuck 'em. You don't know them, you've never met them, what does it matter if they think you suck? They're perfectly entitled to think that, just as you're perfectly entitled to not give a shit what they think. Another important skill you need as an artist is learning how to ignore trolls and a-holes.

If you quit, you're handing these guys a victory. Do you really want to give them the satisfaction?

I was replying to you in a general sense. Like, criticism can't be entirely subjective because there's some agreement on what constitutes quality. Good and bad are not relative because it's possible to hate something and acknowledge its high quality, or love something and admit to yourself that it's not for everybody.

For example, I find Kubrick's 2001 unwatchable but I still see why it's important. And I have a weakness for fish-out-of-water time travel stories and am prepared to tolerate less-than-perfect prose.

Okay, I read all of what you have at the moment and here's my two cents. A quick and free writing critique that I hope isn't taken as me being mean, cause that's NOT my intention, I'm not hatin, just trying to help, I guess.

I think it's good that you noticed something you could work on and are looking to perhaps fix it. That's how you improve. Some commenters can be very rude and wrong, but others (while they might not word it as gracefully or helpfully as they should) might be right about things you need to improve on, so don't exactly ignore all criticism you see even if it sucks to get...

Your art is definitely good, what these critics might be sensing even if they can't articulate it correctly is that the dialogue is rather stiff and the characterization could use some tweaking. I'll elaborate though, since there's no point in saying this if i'm not gonna give a way to improve it.

Characterization is a more mild complaint because the story has barely gotten started in terms of plot, so we don't know the characters THAT well yet. Though I can say that they're a tad bland, though lovely to look at. Also, everyone is WAY too eager to share their life story. Did Jace really need to say "my family isn't a part of my life anymore?" It could've been just as effective with stopping after, "There's no rush at all to get back", leaving the reader to wonder why that might be.

It's a classic pitfall to feel that the only way to get out a backstory is to have the characters talk about it then move on and now you don't have to worry about that anymore. But most people aren't so eager to just tell a stranger their motivations and life situations, unless them being an open book who will anyone everything about themselves is part of their personality, which is fine.

I remember one quote i heard on youtube that "backstory is the story". Treat character's backstories more preciously. Not that you have to hide everything about your character, but avoid info dumping because you think the reader has to know it all at the beginning. Slowly reveal things, so that reveals have more of a punch and so we get to know the characters for their personality before the weight of their full backstory. And it doesn't always have to be revealed in conversation, if plotted out correctly flashbacks CAN be very effective. Conversation reveals of backstory are definitely something that needs to be earned. That's essentially someone sitting down and telling someone else their whole life story. Tread lightly and treat that as heavy as it would be in real life. If treated that way it can be a great way to show how close two characters are or have become.

Now moving onto the dialogue which is connected to characterization as well. But, I feel like this is the major thing people mean when they might say the writing is "bad". The dialogue is very flat and lacks a natural flow to it. Now, truly good dialogue is HARD to write, so don't feel bad. But there are ways to get better.

1) Make the dialogue personality driven. Make sure every character has a distinct way of talking. imagine if you could cover the pictures and only the dialogue remained, would you still be able to tell who was talking if that was covered? So, rather than just trying to get whatever information you need to out of a character think about how they're saying it. Is there a more personality-driven way that they can say what they're saying? Figure out how their personality works into what type of speaker they are and how their sentences are constructed.Obviously, this does mean that you have to know your character's personality pretty well.

I did notice that once Charlene came in the dialogue did get a lot more fun. Her conversations with Evie are definitely better. So perhaps tap into some of that and run with it.

2) Use dialogue to reveal changes in character and development.

Also keep in mind how people speak to other people and can reveal how they feel about said character and how their relationship is developing. A person might be very spare with their words at first, but then slowly open up. A person might have two different ways of communicating. One type for when they're with new people, and another type with they're with people they're comfortable around. Seeing a person shift between these two types with a character they slowly get to know can be rewarding to read. So...yeah, also think about how dialogue evolves and shows character relationships.

3) Really think about how an actual person would say it versus what's grammatically correct. Most people will say "Me and Kevin" rather than "Kevin and I". If someone says "Kevin and I" you're giving the reader an indication that they're very proper and grammar conscious and then will expect all of their grammar to be correct.

Also, sometimes people start incomplete sentences. Like "You going home?" sounds more natural than "Are you going home?" Or saying "Cause" rather than "Because".This is why most dialogue sounds stiff, that forcing people to talk in complete, grammatically correct sentences.

Don't forget words like "well", "just", "I guess", "yeah", "kay", "um" and other little connector words and phrases. Having a character say, "I don't know, I feel bad today." sounds a bit stiff. Having them say, "I don't know, I guess I just feel bad today." sounds much better.

4) And here's a weird point...go sit in public places and just listen to people talking. Haha. That'll give you a good sense of how a variety of different people that you might not be around otherwise speak. It also helps to just, speak your dialogue out loud before you write it. That way it can run through that "in an human voice" filter before you write it.

5) Natural flow. This is hard to talk about and something that will come over time. It's basically plan out the conversation to sound like it's not planned out. You have certain intentions, certain things that you want revealed in each conversation, but the dialogue needs to flow naturally between that information. Chapter 2 especially has a bit of a flow problem. But, like I said, this topic is a lot harder to talk about and master so I'm not gonna bog you down with too much info, but always make sure that there is a connection between every question being asked, every answer given, and every transition to a new topic. Don't stop and start unless you intentionally want to put in a pause for awkwardness or drama.

Anyways, I really hope this doesn't come off as mean. I'm not trying to be mean, but I think the true way to start loving your work again is improving on the things you realize might be holding you back. Your art is good and you do have a lot of subs, but it's always good to keep improving.

Also, feel free to ignore me and my long paragraphs if you so choose. I'm definitely not the be all end all to advice on anything...

I'm gonna be super honest with you:

For most people, you run into someone critiquing your work for the first time and noticing things you didn't do perfectly once in a while, and you have time to think on it and learn and grow. While your audience is still smaller, you get someone telling you that your character's action was unrealistic, and while that's perhaps true you can get over that one comment and make your character writing better and better as the story goes. As time goes on you get more and more comments, and after a year or two of this you've learned how to process that kind of criticism and determine what's helpful and what's not.

But this didn't happen with you. You've been thrust into an unnatural situation, been asked to immediately be able to handle something you weren't trained for the way everyone else was, and it's natural and normal and okay to feel overwhelmed by that.

I think if you are able to find ways to come to terms with the visibility you now have, that's really good and the ideal scenario! But I also understand that it's really hard. If you end up having to step back from your comic for a bit because it's causing you too much stress or burning you out so much that it's not enjoyable anymore -- your health comes first.
The first thing that came to mind for me when reading your post was actually Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name -- a comic that got a sudden whirlwind of popularity back in the early 2000s that became such a frighteningly overwhelming, entitled fanbase that the creator had to step away -- but now, Tess Stone is back again and going strong with his new comic3. It's not ungrateful or wasteful to need some space -- don't feel like you HAVE to suck it up if it's more than you can handle right away, because it's possible to step away and come back later!!


That said, here's a note about "brutal honesty."

People can be honest, and still not be correct. Someone might say "this art style sucks" and they're being honest -- they don't like the art style and they think it's bad -- but other people DO like the art style, so it would be more accurate for that critic to say "I don't like this art style." It's possible for one person to wholly love a thing that someone else wholly hates, and both of them are being completely, totally honest.

The problem is that people tend to be a little entitled -- to assume, without realising it, that everything on the internet is created for them, and therefore if they have a problem with a piece of media (a) the creator will want to know and (b) it's a universal problem that should be fixed....... when sometimes neither of those things are true.

It's okay to ignore criticism. It's okay to ignore well-meaning criticism. It's okay to ignore criticism that has merit. It's okay to grow at your own pace!!!

Hi there, soxu.

I believe that even with heavy promotions, most readers would still subscribe on their free will. They like what they see, so they stay for more. Please don't doubt that.

I've seen your comic from the first chapter. I already knew you'd get attention quickly. So don't doubt yourself. The more you make, the more you became better anyway. So don't give up. It's not like our first, second, or third comic should be a perfect masterpiece. :smile:

You won't be able to satisfied everyone. It's totally okay. Just make it so in the future you can re-read it thinking how much you've learned. It's your comic. Do whatever you want with it. Unless it makes you uncomfortable.

I've been on LW since 2015 and I can tell you that trolls, senseless down-votes, toxic behaviours aren't new. It's better these days though. The readers can be very young. But many of them have grown up, and a lot of them are really supportive. Believe in those who believe in you ^^

If you still find it uncomfortable to go on, just take a break. You matter.
If you still want to continue, I'll be one of the readers who cheer for you.

You re doing really well! Seriously! Most of those kids just wanna pest you cause you got a spotlight! Keep going! You re doing a great job!

Omw I actually read and subscribe to Hellish aaaah. It's wonderful, seriously.
In which case, if you're insecure about your writing, then do what you need to do to fix it. There will be so many people rooting for you to do so more than there are people who want you to quit (and your subscriber count is testament to that!). I think it's important to stay mentally healthy about creating, though. It's good that you're honest about your own abilities, but don't discredit what you've already done! Take a break if you need to, or if you really want to quit that's fine too-- but the most important thing to remember is that you really need to be liking what you do or else it's just going to be hell (pun totally not intended) until the end.

Commenting as a reader tho: Don't give up! It's really a fun read. I really hope you make it to featured someday.