I'm starting a long comic for the first time! Any tips?

@Awesomeness_Studios Marlene
Thu, 05 Jan 2023 01:55:23 +0000

@Awesomeness_Studios wrote:

Here’s my tips as someone who has been making her longest comic for the past year and a half and also has read 400+ webcomics for even longer.

Make a buffer!!! It will save your (webcomic’s) life!! Hiatuses are normal and will happen, but you want to avoid having them too often or it can hurt your comic’s growth.

When you decide to have a hiatus, try to plan it at a normal stopping point, like after you finish a chapter or an arc or a season etc. It makes it easier for readers to keep track of the story since they probably won’t need to backtrack as much to remember what’s going on. But life happens, so don’t beat yourself up if you need to take a break right before the climax.

And speaking of stopping points, consider letting your comic have those. You don’t need to have chapters that end every couple of months like I do, but I highly recommend doing seasons (and you can call them other names like parts or chapters, I know a comic that calls them “clusters”, so whatever you like best). The reason why I recommend this is because it can be jarring to make a long comic, so breaking it up like this can make it less scary. Also when you end a season you can basically go on the biggest and most justifiable hiatus ever hehe.

Appreciate the length of your comic, but don’t abuse it. Yes you have more time to more deeply develop the characters and the world, but if you spend 500 pages talking about a side character’s backstory you might risk boring some of the readers. Quality over quantity is VERY important for long comics.

And last but not least, don’t worry about it. If it’s an idea you really like, you’ll naturally put all your passion and try to push through to make it to the end. But if it turns out it actually isn’t something you want to continue, there is no shame in canceling it. I canceled my first series in an attempt to find out how to make the best comic I can make, and 4 years later I finally made it.