I feel like giving up on my comic. (Rant)

[TheKao]

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?

[Chopythes]

. . . I still maintain that you can judge a work as high-quality without necessarily liking it and vice-versa.

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.

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

[Hodge]

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.

[indigodrawing]

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?

[joe_galindez]

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.

[BlackRose108]

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...

[shazzbaa]

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 comic. 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!!!

[Laht]

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.

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.

[Zugaikotsu]

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!

[miramiee]

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.

[A-weird-girler]

Look, I'm going to be honest with you, it has some lackluster parts. You shouldn't quit tho, it's quite good. Just put it on hold and it'll all be fine. Take as much time as you want dear. (Edit: Don't establish a possible romance right after the characters meet. That comes later)

[eristeine]

Yo. I've read Hellish before, adored the sheer amount of effort placed into the art. But a quick scroll through your tumblr yielded that yes, you weren't sure about your writing. Considering your post now, you seem to think that some of these flames are criticism. Here's the thing, right. If people are shouting at you/ranting at you instead of carefully taking the time to explain their point of view in order to help you improve, that's not criticism. Criticism is there to help you, not to scream about so and so.
Now, it's good to be able to reflect on yourself and your work and step back. That's great! However, you can't internalize everything that flamers/haters/even legit critics say about your comic. Believe me, I've been there. It consumed me, held me back, it made me take down my comic series twice. The joy was sucked out of me until I could produce something that was 'good enough.'
What really happened was that I took it down. Not because of wanting to improve, or getting tired of the story, or even because i moved on. It was because of internalized flames turning to my inner critic's voice.
So here: don't listen to it. Don't listen to them. I know it's hard. They've echoed for so long with me too. But here's the solution I found: Accept criticism only from people you ask from, because they'll be critiquing you in order to help you improve, not for the chance to tear you down for one reason or another.
Bro, if you want to drop the comic, that's all fine and good. But if you want to continue, fight your way to the finish line, your readers will be there for you
If absolutely nothing else, take out the bad and good comments, take out the reader engagement, if nobody read it at all, would you still continue it for your own joy? If so, then do it.
P.S. Hell, if you want beta-readers or help in general, I'm down. But mostly I just wish you a lot of luck

[Hecarim]

@punkarsenic
"hellish is gonna be complete garbage. and im gonna love it."

I love that. That line felt like it flipped a switch in my head. I'm actually going to print it out and hang it over my workspace with your username attached to it to remind me not to take myself too seriously.

Crap, I actually cried after I finished your post. Thank you so much for your input.

@BlackRose108
Holy cow. Thank you for taking your time to do that. I appreciate it, and I don't see it as being mean, not even a little bit. You mentioned everything I was struggling with, and you've given me ways to improve on it. I'll keep going back to this post while working on the dialogue/story of future episodes. And I will keep working on it, because everyone who's posted here has given me a new perspective. If I ever stop, it'll be for myself only.

[Hecarim]

@TheKao
You're absolutely right.

I often forget that this IS absolutely my first comic. I'm going to suck, because I'm in the process of learning.

Your post reminded me of how much I've improved since my first episode. I didn't even know how to make speech bubbles in Photoshop 2 months ago. The second episode? I realized my panel spacing was too crowded, and I went back to fix the previous episodes. And so on and so forth.

None of that would've happened if I had quit. I think I've just been misled by people's expectations of me in the comments. I am a noob, and I'll get better episode by episode.

Thank you for your words.

@shazzbaa
I honestly... I feel like I'm breathing again after reading your post. That's exactly how I feel, 100%! I was afraid that I would be seen as ungrateful, that this post would be interpreted as me being snooty about free exposure (which nobody has thought at all! I love this community and I am so humbled by all the support I've gotten today).

You hit the nail right on the head. My comic is on episode 5, and I'm still the artist who doesn't know how to color properly, or draw feet and hands. The writer who doesn't know how to write dialogue that isn't tacky. Waking up one morning with 3x the audience I had a day ago made me feel like I was on a platform surrounded with strangers, at their mercy. It's not like I don't want the audience... I just need more time to get better, and to become more confident in myself before it happened.

And your last lines about criticism are amazing as well. Maybe I knew that deep down, but needed someone to confirm it before I would listen. Maybe I had read too many deviantart forum posts about NEEDING to accept strangers´critique if it was polite and written with class.

[MelancholicOtaku]

Use the criticism to your advantage, need to work to on writing, perhaps having a second person reading the script before you draw it might be a good start. Dont give up, remember a good creator takes criticism to improve their work. Good luck and remember to have fun.

[amortelito]

Hi, dear...everyone pretty much said it all. Just wanted to remind you that you have no obligation whatever to please anyone. Not the staff, not other creators, not even the readers...Don't let pressure kill your joy. Literally go back to the basics: What is it that you WANT to do. Yes, you can improve many things, but keep your happiness in doing so. And if your writing is really sh*it you can work on that... or NOT even work on that If you like it how it is. I'm not advising you to be mediocre, I see you beat yourself far too much to tell you to improve (you already tell that to yourself). What I think you need is to remember to draw and write with your heart.

By the way on the internet people are never F*happy I don't get the sense of entitlement some readers have over free art. People are more likely to leave a negative comment than positive. Seriously they can love your work and be silent for years but the minute thye find a mistake they will not let it slip. I hope you are feeling better now.

[mong2]

I'm not an author so I can't give any advice regarding writing or handling criticism... I think your comic is great though (and I'm being completely honest). I'm not sure what bad writing in a comic looks like so I can't really critique you on that. There's only 5 episodes so far, excluding the bonus episodes, so I think it's too early to say whether the story is bad or not.

The more you write, the more you'll improve so I think you should keep writing. Hellish imo is really good for a first time comic, heck you were chosen by Webtoons so your comic has gotta be decent. You can't get everyone to like your comic, there will always be someone who will hate it with or without reason. So I think it's more important for you to write the comic for yourself, there's no point to making a comic if you feel unhappy doing it.

Sorry for this useless and unhelpful comment, but I'm a subscriber of yours so I wanted to give a hand in raising your morale.

[KSlinger]

I'm sorry you're getting a load of criticism off the back of what has to be a really exciting time in your creative life. It's rubbish that you can't enjoy this period as fully as you should. That's not your fault. I think anyone would be bummed out by the idea of someone going out of their way to bitch and moan about another person's personal project-- legit crit aside. Seriously, how sad and envious do you have to be to go out of your way to write that crap? The world is full of stupid, petty individuals with zero introspection. These won't be the last you meet, I promise!

But, that said, please don't give up! I wish I could give you more solid advice on how to deal with the way you're feeling (not that I know any better, I haven't worked on my project for the past two months for the same reason), but really all I can do is remind you of a few things, like:

1. Even the most successful creatives deal with this shit daily. It's like a tax. The fact that you're dealing with this means you're doing something right. Ever heard the saying 'if you keep encountering enemies, you're going in the right direction'? Well here we are! You're smashing it!

2. Having serious doubts about your ability is going to happen forever. Honestly. Forever. You know how many books I've read and then gone back to what I was working on only to wonder why the hell I've wasted my time? It happens to everyone in this field. We do it with artwork, writing, pacing, structure, linework. Go read the Tvtropes if you fancy a nice dose of insecurity (no- don't!). Trust me, you aren't alone. And I think you're right to get it out on paper somehow. Better to deal with these feelings than swallow them. Hopefully the support from everyone here will make you feel better.

3. You will continue to rise from your already fantastic position the longer you keep putting in the work. If you keep on going in this vein imagine where you will be this time next year, and the year after that. Hellish may be your first project (may be your last if you choose), but you have the time and talent for many more stories besides this one and with each one of those you will get better and better at the things you struggle with now. We all start in the same place-- you, me, Neil Gaiman, JRR Tolkien-- and we can all get where we want to go if we just keep going, even when it gets rough. But you already know that.

4. You are capable of writing. You are doing it now. You didn't fake your way here. You didn't put in a cheat code or take a shortcut. The fact is that your story-- art, writing and all-- has done well. There's no taking away from that. Even if you packed yourself up now and walked away you could put a hand on your heart in ten years time and say 'I wrote and drew an online comic and over 35,000 loved it.' Do you know how amazing that is? Or how few people do something that worthwhile in their whole lives? Be proud of yourself. You've done something incredible. You still are. Don't be so hard on yourself.

5. You can stop this train at any time-- today, tomorrow, next week, whenever-- but whenever you do feel that temptation take a moment to consider how you at thirty, or forty, or fifty might feel remembering this time of your life and all you achieved, with all the negatives and positives. Will the future you, with different commitments, less time, old experience, look back on today and say, if only I just kept going? I don't know why I stopped?

6. You’re totally entitled to feel like crap over this. You will probably always remember the doubt and hurt you feel now. I know I still remember old slights, thirteen years from where I began. But in a short while (or even a long while) you'll remember this time in the same way you remember a fight you had with your sibling or your parents, or that time you embarrassed yourself in school. It won’t mean so much. You will remember what you learned from it, but it just won’t sting. So feel the pain now as badly and deeply as it wants you to. It’s happening now and this is your moment to acknowledge it. But it will stop hurting, eventually. Try and hold on till then. Right now you’re deeply affected-- as you ought to be-- and no one should expect themselves to be wise and all-seeing in what they should or shouldn’t do when they aren’t capable of recognising what it is they’ve already done. Take some time to work through this. Nothing is lost. You’ll be alright.

[ghostmaya]

Don't give up~! YOu have 35k subs you should consider that you are so lucky to have that amount of subs. Unlike mine I only have 16k for almost 3 years and I always doubt myself ifI should continue, but in the end of the day. That is your work. Who cares about the comments, My webtoon in Season 1 it is full complains because my art is bad and episode is too short like 1 panel every episode LOL! but I listen to the readers and answer them by episode. I slowly improve, make episodes longer. Then after that. They noticed my effort and they appreciate it. At first I thought they are all bashers but eventually they become me loyal fans. Try to communicate your fans and readers in professional way. Don't act like SHEN, just because of the bike cuck meme he was snap and rant all the way. Always be professional even sometimes they are rude, be nice and chill.

[nekhcore]

you make hellish? i just discovered your comic in the carousel last week and i really liked it! i was a writer before i started working on comics and although my memory isn't the best, i don't remember anything particularly bad sticking out at me when i read your comic. that can mean anything from your writing being average to your writing being absolutely amazing. my standards are pretty low but big issues don't leave me. the only thing that really bothered me is that i have no idea where they're going or why, so i thought i missed something. but it seems like that hasn't been mentioned at all?

comics are a much more versatile medium than novels since there are details you can provide in imagery that don't need to be outright stated like literally everything in novels. but it's harder because in a way you have a lot more to think of. in prose when you're writing from a character's point of view you have to think about how they would think, what they would notice(will they count every pebble or just say that it's dirty?), how they speak, what they act like with people, etc. but in comics you have more details that the reader usually fills in when reading prose, like how does this character dress, what do they look like, how do they carry themselves, what are their physical ticks and habits?

my point is, just writing is hard enough, making a comic is harder. it's a great undertaking. this is new to you, but you're doing your best and your effort has been noticed and appreciated. the more you do the better you will do. if you think it's too much, take a break to work on your story and come back later. i was writing a novel that i loved and people liked, but it was burning me out and there were lots of things that i had to improve about myself as a writer, so i took a break. i'm technically still on break even if i'm working on a comic now, but one day i'll come back to my novel with a better vision. you can do the same. you might lose a lot of subs, but there might be twice as many people waiting patiently for you to come back.