My comic started as a bad fanfiction. What about yours? Share your experience, comics and novels

[Lunar-Turtle]

When things get big, I’m sure I want to talk about how I began my comic and all the creative madness behind it. Until then, I can talk about it in pieces on forums, lol. And now I am talking about the total original beginnings of my story. I think we all know it, the times when your idea didn’t even exist yet and it was just pieces in your head.

If I should be as strict as possible, my story started as bad fanfiction to one movie and it all goes back to the year 2015. That year I discovered a small movie named Chappie, not a big hit, but I love robots, so it captured me and I started to draw fan art and draw stories for it. Now, how does it connect to my story? My main character Charlie practically started as that robot, I also made more fan characters and things kinda stayed. And even when I left the fanfiction for the movie, I made them into pokemon and made a pokemon fan comic with them, based on that movie. Getting lost yet? And just after that, in 2018, I totally disappeared from fanfiction territory and started to work on my own word. But the fact is, many things and my characters have roots in these stupid fanfictions I did so many years ago, even though they have nothing in common anymore. I think this is something people can relate to and it’s important to remember where you started.

And this is the comic I am talking about

SYNASTRY | Tapas

What’s your story? Did you start with bad fanfiction, just like I did, or were you smarter than that? lol, Share your stories and works.

[joannekwan]

My novel started as a simple idea for some kinky smut scenes. It was supposed to just stay as fun no-strings-attached erotica but of course I had to get carried away with a plot and actual character development and now I've got two sequels planned.

[Bokyongyo]

Oof mine started off as a Fairy Tale hopping comic called TaleStory; reason why I dropped that concept entirely was because one, it felt way too long and two, the concept of using FairyTale characters and their stories felt way too restrictive creatively

(ex: trying to fit a original story as well as keeping the story of red riding hood in tact while writing was just too boring and not fulfilling enough creatively to keep going)

With that, I branched out to something else entirely which is also way smaller in scope and also helping me to use my creativity in a much more unique way which looking back was a benefit in retrospect.

Rewrite | Tapas

[cherrystark]

I guess mine started "pseudo fan-fiction". There were quiet a few series that I liked that fit into the genre, so I decided to try my hand at it. Now, it's a hodge-podge between sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, drama, superhero stuff, etc. It takes on a new angle with each story I write. haha. I'm really happy with the growth it's gone through.

The Museum | Tapas

[crowstories]

Mine started out as somebody explaining Twilight to me, me being like "that's ridiculous" and then getting an idea for a plot twist that would make it all much, much more interesting to me.

So yeah, it's basically a Twilight parody written by somebody who isn't willing to read or watch Twilight, plus a lot of maniacal cackling.

Monsters | Tapas

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

(Spoilers ahead)

My story actually started out as a monologue. I was watching a review of the movie "Annihilation" and I heard about how the director got into trouble for misrepresenting character's races after the sequel came out and it was revealed that they were not, in fact, white, which wasn't out yet at the time of the film. I thought "Huh, with enough tweaking that could be a really cool backstory." I toyed with the idea and spat out this improvised monologue about a guy who made an adaptation film and it bombed, and then the author of the book wrote a second book. That gave me the idea of writing a story about people sharing the stories of their lives after an apocalypse. So... yeah.

[maiishira04]

I didn't really have a basis for my story. I had the idea to make a webtoon while I was sitting at my desk at like 1 am. It was an extremely spontaneous decision. After that, it took me a while to think about what it was gonna be about. I'm not that good at storytelling, so I wanted it to be an anthology of sorts. Also, I wanted to make it so that I wouldn't have to create dialogue, which is why my webcomic is mostly speechless. I decided to make my webtoon a small anthology about the way love can be seen in everyday lives, using the greek forms of love as the basis. My main inspiration is this little bit from this anime called "Nichijou". The name of the bit was called Love Like. I thought it was cute.

Colors of Love

[NiWo21k]

A story has always to start somewhere, and a lot of great stories started from a place you never knew

The story of the comic I am working on started its life as a throwaway character of an RPG over 15 years ago. It was just an idea we wanted to try but never intended to work with. But I somehow really worked her out, and in the end, just didn´t want to throw her away. While I threw everything out, she stayed with me over all these years and I tinkered with her bio a lot over time. I tried to write a novel about her a few years back, but I failed spectacularly

But I always felt I want to give her another chance, and so the comic was born. And I even found an artist who was able to bring my thoughts into picture form

So, now the adventure of a thief and her partner who try to untangle the strange history of their world is finally told the way it always should.

[MK_Wizard]

Intially, Jekyll and Hyde started off as a fanfic that was for fun and inspired by an online free slot machine that was Jekyll and Hyde themed which also felt very Disney-Pixar in its style. For fun, I wrote a script for what I believed a Disney version of Jekyll and Hyde would be like. I wound up loving the story a lot so I started making the comic and the rest is all history.

MK's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Tapas

[Iridium]

Hello there!

Well... Menmar came to me in a dream around 2013-2014, prior to the massive art block I had in my college years. Back then, I had this awesome, but crude idea of a plot involving a girl and a djinn kicking ass and taking names, but since I was already wrapped up in college stuff and another two personal projects (one was a fanfic from a MMORPG that I still play to this day, but I finished the fic already, and the other is a personal project that will be revived in the near future), I decided to bench Menmar for that time. However, I got a massive block and I was only able to draw as I was demanded by my college major (I have a degree in Design) and all projects that I hadn't finished or started by 2017 were put on hold.

Then, I began working as a professional illustrator in 2019 (my Instagram if it piques your interest) and decided to revive Menmar as a trial-series, so that I could get my creative juices back once more. And now, in 2021, I can honestly and proudly say: it worked! I am far more creative than ever, working happier than ever did, and I look forward to making much more art!

Menmar (EN) | Tapas

Menmar (PTBR) | Tapas

[Crusoe]

Fair, No Fair started as an rp I did! A lot of the major plotpoints ended up being the same, but the story is much more nuanced and polished now with some extra scenes, events, etc to create a proper buildup and stuff. The rp ended after a while, but I thought it was such a shame, because the characters were so much fun and I felt like I had more of a story to tell for them. So with permission of the other person I rp'ed with I started writing the story! I hadn't written more than a short story since I was a kid and never something in English of this magnitude, so the story is both very comforting to write for me as well as challenging!

Obviously I did change a lot about the story. For example, in the rp Simon was called Stijn and he was a really good iceskater instead of a ballet dancer. I also added some more sidecharacters like a lot of Joey's friends, Simon's friends and the teachers.

Fair, No Fair | Tapas

[Rhonder]

My first "original" comic was super guilty of that too I wrote it back in middle school after only having done pure fan comics before. It actually started out as a fan comic of the manga "+Anima" as well, before I decided that I wanted to do an original story instead. Even so, it ended up just being a frankenstein monster of borrowed elements from just about everything else I liked at the time.

The isekai elements (before I knew that was a whole genre) were borrowed from series like MAR and Dragon Drive,

The charm system was kind of a mix between MAR's arms and Megaman Battle Network's battle chips,

the magic system was almost completely ripped from Zatch Bell,

the animal transformation portion of the magic was carried over from +Anima,

the main character's name and general hairstyle was grabbed from the game Rune Factory,

the main char's best friend is one of my friend's OCs that he let me borrow,

Several other main characters were stolen from a forum roleplay I made for my story on the Gaia Online forums back in the day, which were all technically other people's OCs...

etc. etc.

When smashed together I think it did actually come together to something relatively original, but it was still just so much idea theft xD

--

My current comic is straightforward: it started out as a D&D campaign last year~ It's a retelling/adaptation It's been an interesting project consequentially because I only had direct control over one of the characters, the other 4 party members all had other players acting for them, of course, and the overall plot and events were dictated by the DM. So in a way it's almost like a collaborative storytelling effort xD

Dungeons & Dinosaurs: Royal Road Trip | Tapas

[MK-AKA-Morgan]

My comic started off as a dream I had- and then I changed literally every plot point in my dream except for the fact that it's about mermaids lol. The story was originally supposed to be a romance but I changed the love interests sexuality to Aro/Ace so now there's very little romance, which I kind of regret because romance is basically the most received genre on Tapas, but I really just wanted some aro/ace representation since it's so rare for people to included characters who are aro/ace in their comics.

My comic: https://tapas.io/MK-AKA-Morgan

[thedude3445]

I made Systemless to spite toxic readers on the website Royal Road, but then I found it too funny to end it early so I just kept going with it...

Reborn on a Systemless Earth... With a System | Tapas

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I originally created my comics' main character over 21 years ago as a Sonic OC. You probably can't tell xD, it's not obvious at all

But back then, he didn't look anything like the above picture.

[azzy-m]

Mine started off as characters for my ripoff Hetalia slice-of-life universe until I decided, "man, I don't wanna research this" then I filled in my own lore, and it morphed into the comic now (or it's going to be, since it's not yet out).

It was nearly 5 years ago that i came up with this. What a world.

[TheOddFungi]

Mine started off as an almost blatant rip-off to the manga/anime "Black Cat" by Kentaro Yabuki. I pretty much took the plot and theme and kind of just shoved my own characters into it. I also just really needed an escape and Black Cat was my favorite series at the time.

This was over a decade though and the story and characters have matured a lot. There are still a couple similarities, but everything is gonna have similarities to something else.

Red Dragon Part 1: Broken | Tapas

[Hexigate]

My comic started as concept art for a fantasy MMORPG project me and some buddies wanted to make back in late-middle-school/early-high-school. (We didn't know an ounce of coding or game design, but y'know.) I was in charge of most of the concept art and world design, and though I wasn't considered the "lead artist," I was by far the most artistic. I came up with a technologically advanced civilization, but my ideas were largely discouraged by the other members; they wanted a more traditional medieval setting.
After I left, I forgot about the ideas for a while. Then like two years later I suddenly remembered the concepts. I decided I was going to make a story out of the world, so yeah. A lot has developed and changed, but some things have still remained; I like to think the "spirit" of that original world is preserved.

Here's "Aegis."

Aegis | Tapas

[DreamyPastel]

Mine started as a theater project! I had some ocs before this time, but I didn't have a story in mind. In 8th grade, I took my first and only theater class which was so incredibly fun. We had split teachers since we didn't actually have an official theater teacher so my chorus teacher and an english teacher split the students and switched out every other day. In both classes, we had to come up with a character to act as. The first teacher had us create a character based off of someone we knew. That's when I designed Seth, one of the main characters of my comic. Later on in my second theater teacher's class, we designed another one, and I decided to go for a character completely opposite of Seth, which is my main character Joyce. Since they both were created in my theater class, I decided to make them siblings cause they came from the same idea and kind of project. After that, I incorporated them with my other ocs, and I loved creating a story with them (minor future characters spolier-ish?): my first comic idea with my characters was Joyce, Seth, and their friend Storm being trapped in a room with my demon oc Melissa who was trying to possess Joyce. Alex, Joyce and Seth's babysitter, trapped outside of the room, trying her best to break in. It never got fully fleshed out until about a year later when I created a whole bunch of characters and started world building around them. I'm really proud of how far my story has come so far, and I'd like to present to you my comic: The Hidden Monachopsis

The Hidden Monachopsis | Tapas

[Kura]

I didn't like journals as a kid because people would read them. (You were required to have them in school and the teachers would read them and comment on them. I hate that. So I would basically just throw some 'choice words' directed at my teachers for my school journal instead of actually writing in it)

Then because of that, the idea of having one at home was absolutely terrifying, cause school basically taught me that journals are basically there for adults to read.

So having no personal outlets I just put it all into my characters and called it a story. Just a depressing nothing will get better, I'm so alone, LGBT kid living in the closet feels disguised with a plot.

It was pretty genius thinking back. For some reason adults were obsessed with getting in your business and wanting to read personal stuff like blogs and journals, but no one gave a fuk about any stories you were writing to the point where even if you wanted a parent or teacher to read you stories no one would and would pull every trick in the book to avoid having to read it.

Fast forward to now, found it cleaning up, decided "you know, I could actually work on this and make it into a legitimate story" and well, here we are.