Is posting unfinished chapters and editing in new pages as you make them valid?

[Korosuna]

Due to my short attention span, I tend to lose interest in working on comic chapters if I don't get my work out as quickly as possible, so the best solution I thought of would be to upload pages as I create them, editing chapters to add in the new pages.
Is this allowed or even a valid thing to do? Does editing a chapter cause the comic to show back up in the fresh section or not? Would a better option to be posting single page chapters separately?

[darthmongoose]

Don't do it!

I can totally empathise with having a short attention span and wanting the pages done, but don't do it! It's not worth it! Readers on Tapas have really high expectations for the polish level of a comic, and it's really important to train yourself to put in those extra "attention to detail" steps to present it all nicely at the end before uploading if you want to get the attention you desire.

You can notify readers when you edit an update so it tells them the page has been updated, but some people might get a bit pissed off if your comic is always bugging them with push notifications because you keep uploading unfinished pages and then having them read a page twice.

Don't indulge your impatience. Find ways to work around it and manage it. I find that working in short bursts while watching stuff or listening to audiobooks or music, and having pages going up to a consistent schedule (every Friday morning) helps a lot.

[Korosuna]

I really appreciate the advice, honestly, but I don't really know if it'd work out for me.
I'm making whole pages, albeit not extremely polished ones, and I feel as though posting them right after finishing them would be the best way to satisfy my ADHD. To begin with, a page takes an hour or so to draw and doesn't have any coloring, but even that is about my limit of attention unless it's a really good day, and not to mention that going back to an unfinished work is tough. I don't mean to sound like a downer at all, I'm just mentioning some things to work with.
I feel bad for asking for advice, then denying the very first one I get, really sorry about that.

Would a good alternative be to post entire chapters on Tapas, but have an alternative site I can post pages as they come out? The action of publishing finished pages as they come out allows my brain to feel more accomplished in small victories rather than to wait a lot longer to do something bigger.

[Surihpas]

I strongly agree with the advice @darthmongoose gave you (which is probably even better than the one I can provide since I write novels, not comics).

However, I do understand that need to share a more primal version of something you worked on for that boost of motivation. Because writing (a book or comic) is no easy thing. I think one of the things that can help with it is find your community/support system. People who know you write (and support you doing that, this is a crucial part), that will celebrate those small yet big milestones with you. So you can let them know once you're done creating a page/chapter, maybe even ask them for feedback or a beta read of some sort.

Then, after you polished it to be the finished product, you should upload it so that this finished version is also the one your audience meets first (because honestly I don't know if people would want to constantly go back and re-read what they already did, and I'm almost certain they would prefer a finished product to be the one they read. I know that as a writer, when I take a step back from that very valid need in external motivation, that's also the version I want them to meet when they read my story).

[Kelheor]

You make a non-colored comic, right? Or do you also color the pages later?

[darthmongoose]

Please consider my advice as being from somebody who is no stranger to having to work around a neurodiverse brain. At my day job, I had to strategise with my boss and coworkers around how best to deal with my really quite bad issues with autistic inertia, executive function disorder and over-stimulation in meetings or under-stimulation doing repetitive tasks. We make it work by taking care of how much task-switching I need to do, and being aware that my productivity fluctuates a lot depending on the task, total workload and time of day.

I have learned to manage my brain and to work professionally in this industry for over ten years, been published and placed in national comics competitions.

Personally, a big way I manage myself is to split the tasks up smaller, so I can celebrate small victories when making pages. I can check off "thumbnails done!" "pencilling done!" "inking done!" "lettering done!" and take a little break to play a game of Hearthstone or something between each step.
Inking is the worst step (very understimulating for me), so I always make sure I have something fun on in the background while I'm doing it and usually when I finish the inking I call that "done for today" and do the colours the next day if possible.
Having these sorts of breakpoints also makes coming back to a half-finished page less scary. It's not an unfinished page, it's a pencilled page that needs inking, or an inked page that needs colouring. It removes a lot of the "where do I start?" and "Can I keep this consistent with how I did it yesterday?" feelings.
If I need to upload WIP panels from unfinished pages, or concept drawings, or just to braindump about my work to keep me motivated, I do it with discord friends in private groups who don't mind spoilers, so that only finished work goes live on the main comic.

There are ways to manage this stuff without dropping unfinished pages online. Maybe consider what your style pipeline is like and see how you can make it more streamlined or more fun, make a checklist you can check off when you finish different stages, make the pages part of your routine and have specific times or days for certain tasks, or use the pomodoro method of setting a timer, working for as long as the timer and then taking a short break for something fun.

[TAMAnnoying]

As much as I agree with Darth on having a professional work flow... Uh? I mean are you just wanting to do this for fun? Do you have long term goals or is this just to indulge in your artist side?

If you're not planning on doing this as a committed thing and just want to engage in art and the art community then I think your way of doing this is fine for you? I will say it's not at all viable however.

Again I really think you should first ask why your uploading things in the first place. If it's to get your story out of your brain and people reading it is a cool bonus then I think uploading your sketches and then finish them up as you feel like is a fine experience. Idk how you want to do it but whenever you update a chapter or page you are asked if you want subscribers to be notified- if you say yes they'll be able to see the now finished version of the chapter/page. but some readers might not care about the "finished" project if they're already subscribed to you just to read the sketches.

It's not as big of a thing here as it used to be but there was a LOT of comics that where super sketchy or black and white that got a lot of readers because the audience liked the story more then the comic looking "professional" but that was as about 5 years ago now.

You also won't appear in the "fresh" area when you update pages, only when you upload. So again if your looking to make it "big" on tapas this route is gonna be a really bad one to take.

However if you DO just want to get your creative juices going and indulge in the art community and one or two commenters then have at it? I don't see the problem in doing your creative process this way if it makes you happy and you're doing it for yourself. You're just not gonna get a very big audience here on tapas.

Now you can do what you said and upload all your sketches and story stuff on places like Tumblr or Instagram and THEN when you finish you can upload pages slowly on tapas if you want it to look professional here on tapas. But that's your choice.

[RobertBMarks]

I'm going to join the chorus of voices saying "don't!"

We are all unique in how we handle our workflow. But, if you're going to be posting stuff here and you want people to read it - and keep reading it - you have to think about what the experience is going to be for THEM.

Put yourself in their shoes - what would YOU rather follow:

• A webcomic with a regular update schedule.

• A webcomic that is constantly changing the content of its posted chapters, making it so that any chapter you read when it first updates could be different by the time the next chapter goes up.

I'm betting it's the first.

Years ago I realized that the key to success came down to doing three things really well (I'm still working on dialing my own implementation of this in, but the concept holds firm):

1. Make something that people will want to consume.

2. Make it easy for people to find the thing you make.

3. Don't give people a reason NOT to consume it.

If you're constantly changing the content of your webcomic, you're hitting point number 3 like a ton of bricks - you're creating a situation when the best time to read it is after you've finished the entire thing.

[Korosuna]

Thanks for all of the input, everyone!
One thing that seems to be a misunderstanding though is that I'm not posting WIP pages, I'm posting fully made pages, but the chapter itself would be WIP. I don't know if anyone's seen my comic at all (I didn't post it here in the forums yet) but that's just the style I'm going for; low quality sketchy black and white drawings, mostly for the sake of being easier to draw in larger sessions.

All in all, maybe uploading comics to Tapas isn't something I'm really meant to do with how I would like to do things. Again, I appreciate all the advice, but most of this is just for my own sake of telling a story and drawing it out, and public input would come second to that. I know, kind of selfish, but it's a hobby I enjoy doing and don't intend to make into a professional career or anything.
There are others working hard to put out comics to make a living off of it and I suppose it'd be best they get more of the support instead.

[darthmongoose]

One thing that seems to be a misunderstanding though is that I'm not posting WIP pages, I'm posting fully made pages, but the chapter itself would be WIP.

OHHHHH.... Sorry, that's a completely different thing from what I thought you meant!

Yes, you can post individual pages as you finish them just fine. You don't need to wait to complete a chapter to upload them all at once or something. Small updates on a regular weekly schedule is the best way to build an audience here!

Apologies for the misunderstanding!

[TAMAnnoying]

If your going page my page then 100% go for it. Most people do page by page and not chapter by chapter. Most of the people who have the attention span to go chapter by chapter are also getting paid for it.

[system]

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.