Publishing a comic in an episodic format?

[oillipheist]

Hey there guys! So I'm new here (if that wasn't obvious), and my friend and I are going to be publishing a comic on here. The details of it don't matter. I just have a general formatting question.

We're considering publishing our comic in an episodic format. Allow me to elaborate: the comic would be published in a format akin to a TV show. Each episode would have it's own storyline, which would tie into the larger over-arching plot line of the series. It would be a lot of scrolling, sure, but comics on Tapas that force you to wait a week for the next 3 panels always annoy me to no end. There are a lot of comics I see with interesting premises and great art, but they're 80+ posts in and the story has gotten practically nowhere. I really cannot justify publishing in that fashion to myself. I can really only envision stories in an episodic format anyway, due to hours wasted watching various shows.

Call them what you want, episodes, chapters, whatever. I really think that this is the only way to publish a story, or at least the story that we're working on.

So my question to you is: could this work? What do you think are the pros? Cons? Should we go for it? Should we rethink it? What should we do instead? Also, can you think of any good examples of a comic publishing in this format?

Let me know.

[AnnaLandin]

You're welcome to publish in any format you want, but I will point out that having episodes that are TOO long can make people lose interest as well. The endless scrolling really will make people give up after a while. If you're going in for a longer episode, you need to find a sweet spot for appropriate length.

I've found personally that if an episode is longer than, say, 10 standard page-sized images stacked on top of one another, I will find myself wondering when the heck the episode ends.

[shazzbaa]

Agreed with Anna! Scrolling through a lot of "pages" with no episode break is exhausting.

Plus, when you close a comic on Tapastic, the website remembers what "episode" you were on -- and even without that, it's easy to navigate to a particular episode. But if you gotta stop in the middle of a 30-page episode, it's a lot harder to find your place again.

If you still want to think of it as a TV show, maybe you could think of each Tapastic episode as the pieces of the show between commercial breaks. That might be a more doable length than trying to shove an entire chapter into one episode, plus I feel like "a good spot for a commercial break" could also, writing-wise, be a good spot for an episode break.

Another important pro/con is schedule -- updating with a big chunk of content is a really good thing! But that takes time to create, and the less frequently you update, the more slowly you will gain an audience, just because it's harder to get noticed when you're not posting something new. That doesn't mean "don't do it" -- do what's best for your comic!! -- but if you decide to update with 24 pages every 2 months, just expect that you won't grow as quickly as the person who's drawing at the exact same pace but updating with 3 pages every week.

[joannekwan]

Yeah, especially if you're doing a webtoon format with one panel per horizontal axis, it will be waaaay too long to scroll through.
And I quite frankly, would never read it in that layout, no matter how good the story.

[Jabbage]

I read some comics that are split up story-wise into episodes in the same way a tv show would be, but they tend to still update 1/2 pages/chunks a week. It's just that every three months or so there's a new phase of the story, and when they publish the comic they are able to split them up into issues easily. I think it's a really good format for webcomics, so I hope it works out for you!

The way webcomics tend to update is really strange when you're new to it, especially if you're someone who'd rather sit down and read something that's complete. At first I tried to think of different ways of chunking content together rather than releasing it page by page, but in the end I realised that there is definitely a reason most people release individual pages/small episodes.

It's much easier to buid a following if you update steadily as you're likely to get new readers with each update. More chances to advertise, more chances to get people into a habit of reading your work, more chances to show your readers that you're active and producing content (since webcomic creators sometimes vanish!) You also suit both types of readers doing it that way. THe people who love the steady weekly drip of content can check weekly, while the bingers like me might hold off a few months and then read a chunk when they feel like it.

Two things I would suggest so that you don't end up with the "80+ posts and the story has gone nowhere" problem -
1 - Make sure you have a sizeable amount to upload when you first start your comic. Some people like tuning in every week for a single page, but first they've got to see enough to hook them into doing that. So perhaps you might decide to upload your opening scene or a few scenes when you first start the comic.

2- Don't decompress the story too much, unless you can put out a lot of pages. Webcomics sometimes aim to mix the drawn-out cinematic style of black and white manga with the detailed backgrounds, figures and colouring of Western comics - add in no page limitations and a lack of planning and it's easy to fall into the trap of taking forever to get anywhere.

[MissMagicGirl]

When it comes to my comic I publish episodes that are connected but each episode has some sort of beginning and end (even if there is a cliffhanger at the end of each episode) and I always publish five pages at most in each episode. I feel like that format works well for me. But it all depends on the story. But I don't think it is a bad idea to publish episodes with more then one pages. But as already said earlier in this thread. One episode should not be longer then 10 pages or it will be a bit to much scrolling. ^^; But that also depend I think on how many panels there are in each page. if there is only two panels in each page but they are really huge and there is not to much text I feel like each episode could include more pages.

[oillipheist]

Thanks for all the replies. This is exactly why I wanted to ask people, cause if I create something all on my instinct it'll usually turn into something too weird to be actually produced or consumed.

I quite frankly, would never read it in that layout, no matter how good the story.

I was honestly expecting more people to say this.

If you still want to think of it as a TV show, maybe you could think of each Tapastic episode as the pieces of the show between commercial breaks. That might be a more doable length than trying to shove an entire chapter into one episode, plus I feel like "a good spot for a commercial break" could also, writing-wise, be a good spot for an episode break.

I read some comics that are split up story-wise into episodes in the same way a tv show would be, but they tend to still update 1/2 pages/chunks a week. It's just that every three months or so there's a new phase of the story, and when they publish the comic they are able to split them up into issues easily. I think it's a really good format for webcomics, so I hope it works out for you!

This is, most likely, exactly what I'm going to do. It allows me to write the story in the way my brain is creating it, while also being digestible. Thank you so much for suggesting this. I'm going to try and make the chunks of comic that're uploaded smaller and more readable. And again, thank you so much for helping me with this.