Hi everyone – most of you have seen me around the forums. Now, the topic of collaborations has come up again (when have they never not), and I’m mostly in reference to these particular threads:
I have already talked about these very topics in earlier threads last year, and my feelings about this topic still stands.
This “artist vs writer” debate?
It’s an important debate. We all need to understand each other’s professions better in the long run and appreciate them. But, when it comes to the collaborations we see on this forums, this debate is not relevant. At all.
It's a Red Herring -- a distraction to the underlying issue.
Because when we have these debates and include these users asking for free labor (who are often claiming to be writers but can be artists), we are assuming they’re on par with the rest of us here.
Unless they have shown their work and have shown they’re someone people can collaborate with, that’s a big assumption. Most often than not, the users who do these collabs have done one or more of the following:
They’re asking an artist or a writer to work for them for free. Key words are “work for”, not “work with”. They don’t provide room for the writer or artist to make any changes. No, they want them to bring their idea to life and that’s it. Which, by that logic, should mean their writer/artist should be getting paid. Which means it should be a paid collab, not unpaid.
Said work is not short-term. It’s not a one-shot of 10-20 pages. No, this user is asking for a long-term webcomic or possibly trying to get published, banking on the idea of maybe getting ad revenue (which they'll split 50/50) or maybe making book sales.
They get heavily irritated when someone offers a suggestion on how to improve their collab pitch. They might even had an attitude problem. Now, this can go either way. Sometimes, the people who offer that advice don’t really come off too nicely, and I’d be kinda hard pressed to listen to them myself. But generally, when people do give that advice, it’s in a polite manner.
They have no work to show for themselves that any of us are aware of. No writing, no script, no character sheets, no drawings, no story-boards, no published works (online or traditionally published). No, they only showcase that one idea.
Their collab is vague. It’s not really a pitch because people have to ask what the story is about, and sometimes, the answer is “PM me if you wanna hear the idea”. That’s not a good way to sell your idea or get a collab.
They haven’t really interacted with anyone else on the forums. They haven’t tried to give feedback, join any of the other threads – they might even be a new user. Now this, I give the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone is out-going, and some people are more lurkers than participants. That’s ok. But a lot of these collabs are from people (both writers and artists) who just made their account, posted their collabs, and nothing else. They might even be on the forums for a long time, and that’s all they’ll ever post.
That’s the problem on we're seeing on this forum.
Not “which field is harder”. Not “writers/artists have it worse”
Important as the "writing/art debate" can be, it's not needed here.
We have people who claim to be writers and artists asking for free work. Most of them on this particular forum seem to claim to be writers, but I’m sure on another forum, the opposite is true – that more artists than writers are asking for free work. And yet...in the debate “writing vs art”, we lump them together with everyone else who shows their work, who try to help others, and who have made a presence.
Not every user who ask for a collab is like this, and I think most of us are able to see that and pinpoint who are chill and don't mind improving their collab pitch to be more clear. In fact, I’ve worked with people who have asked for collabs on the forums, and it was BECAUSE they demonstrated they were trust-worthy and showed their work.
I'm not talking about these types of collabs or the users who make these collabs.
I'm talking about the offenders we've all seen.
When we pinpoint the users who DO act entitled, as in the case with that banned user, we STILL somehow try to put them on our level. That’s what this debate does, and we cannot do that.
These entitled users are different.
They’re not entirely like inexperienced writers and artists.
They're not even like the users who ask for collabs politely and lay out their work for others to see.
These entitled users are visionary thinkers, at best. They have a big idea, they have the passion, but they have not put in the work (or have demonstrated that they have put in the work) that even an inexperienced creator has done. Still, they think they’re the next best seller and that working with them, for free, will pay off. And they get irritated when no one takes them on their offer.
Doesn’t this sound familiar to “exposure bucks” and people asking for free commissions?
Most of us wouldn’t claim people asking for those are creators or worth arguing for. So why do we lump these repeated offenders together with us when we debate on writing and art? That’s only making the divide between the two fields larger and larger.
A lot of writers on here feel like they’re not taken seriously because of these entitled users hiding behind “writer” asking for free art or free novel-length writings.
A lot of artists on here feel they might be taken advantage of because of these very same users.
Like...I dunno, I feel we can still have this debate – just not when it comes to these iffy collabs. Because that’s not the problem when we see them. When someone comments on those collabs, generally, they don't say:
“Writing is easy! Try art”
“Art is easy, do it yourself!”
They say:
“Hey, you should give examples of your work”
“Hey, maybe you should do a trade of skills collab if money is tight”
“Hey, maybe you should say if this is unpaid or paid”
It's not "writers this" or "artists that". Not at all.
It's the type of person who does this. And this type of person can claim to be one or the other, or both.
The next step would be how to guide them to better collab pitching and to forgo that entitled thinking, but that's another thread topic.