What do you think is your greatest writing weakness?

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Time to confess your writing sins!

I'll start!

My greatest weakness when it comes to writing is that I sometimes take things too fast. I'm a person who likes those juicy, dramatic scenes, but I know I have to build up to it for there to be any impact. So, I have to remind myself to slow down and let the characters breathe for a moment.

[Aloredd]

I feel like my weakness is I'm too vague, or when I try to add detail it's pretty disjointed and doesn't flow smoothly. Like when you read the really good authors (and I'm talking writing like novels, not the writing like script) it feels like you're there with the characters because of how smooth yet detailed it is? I can't do that. My writing feels more like you're either listening to someone tell you about it so you're only getting part of the story...or that you're looking at photo-stills of it so you get bursts of extreme detail and then there's kind of a blank between the next extremely detailed part.

[LoboSong_Hitaka5Ever]

My weaknesses are stating and ending a story (I tend to want to make a sequel) and I'm not the greatest with explaining descriptions, such as what people are doing in a scene (I tend to be repetitive with their actions) Also, fighting scenes are REALLY hard because I don't know enough terminology for attacks

[Kura]

I care about everything and every character too much to write a short story. It always turns out long.

[ConradComics]

Dialogue...

...

...yeah.

[keii4ii]

Pacing. The current scene I'm working on is a prime example of that. It's supposed to be a setup, but it reads like an utterly unsatisfying payoff due to poor pacing. It's not that things are simply too slow or too fast... It's a weird combination of multiple issues, probably.

[NanettesClouds]

Rewriting kills me. I always have to go back and change something, and sometimes I think "Oh it's just ging to be a quick little change it'll be fine" but then I have to go through the story and change a bunch of other things as a result of the one change and it's a horrible cycle. I suppose one good thing about this is that I've fixed a lot of really big problems, but the really big downside is that it's been the biggest thing preventing me from finishing my project.

There's some hope though, I found out that if I start focusing on the writing for something else I'm less tempted to change things in my main story. So by working on doing the writing for my next project while I'm working on the drawing for the current project I've been a lot more more productive.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

I know this one. I end up throwing out whole issue scripts until I'm satisfied. It got very unproductive and frustrating.

[J.Lovelace]

As for me, it's the dialogues that are hard. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how put a character's thoughts in words. Especially during their interactions, and in English, which isn't my native language either. I have to ask my friends to check the spelling for me and if the conversation between my characters feels natural.

[nessiefynn]

Pacing.
I either make everything go way too fast or way too slow. XP

[antwyonsimpson]

pacing. ive had this problem with past comics ive tried to make.

[Greg_Dickson]

Not condensing my chapters enough. My first chapter is meant to be a simple opening with some good action and introductions to key characters, but it will be a pretty long first chapter. I'm really hoping to improve on this by making shorter chapters in the future while getting to the meat of my stories. It's just so hard to fit a mix of plot advancement, character development, smooth action scenes, fun/interesting/humorous dialogue, tension, etc, into one short chapter.

[JessJackdaw]

Oh gosh, I'm the same way. I want to pace things wicked fast to get to those juicy plot heavy scenes, but I know that screws up how readers perceive it.

Another thing I struggle with is deciding how a character speaks a line. Because one expression could change everything and that's so important to how your audience precieves a character. It takes me so long to figure out and I don't know why...

The more I think about it... I can't think of my things I don't struggle with when writing. ;u; I guess it comes from lack of experience.

[NickRowler]

My pacing is way too fast and I stuff too many characters into my story. I tried to go through and cut/merge characters but then I ended up adding more characters. I just love creating a world of characters.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Yeah, especially the adding more characters part. For me, I keep adding more villains. They're just the most fun to write for me.

[dojo]

I'm bad about never explaining what's going on. Which is fairly okay considering the kind of stuff I enjoy tends to be very out there with little to no explanation and I am emulating some of that on purpose, but I don't want to give readers so little information they'll just be completely confused. Stuff like, revealing more pieces about the world and showing more moments that reveal character motives, but I guess I'm having a hard time figuring out how to do this at the same time with how the stories are set up?? I'm sure I'll figure it out with enough thought but boy howdy is it being a challenge. Luckily I'm early enough in both my stories it's not too late to work on this, though B)

[NickRowler]

For me it is more like I will create a character, then their parents, then the grandparents, then the uncles and aunts, then the coworkers, then the coworker parents, then a neighbor, then the neighbors parents...it all builds off like that.

[rmdooley]

Have trouble with transitioning between certain scenes. Scenes that demand a change in tone always seem to transition too slowly, damaging the pacing, or too quickly causing a jump that leaves the reader scrambling to catch up.

[NanettesClouds]

Quick tip for people struggling with pacing - have at least twice as much build up as there is payoff. So if your super cool dramatic moment is say, 3 pages maybe, you need to have at least 6 pages of buildup to it.

For example, imagine in a 3 panel gag comic.
Panel's 1-2 are usually set up, panel 3 is the punchline. There's twice as much buildup as there is payoff.

This is flexible though, say the big payoff moment is a huge twist and it completely changes the interpretation of the rest of your story, and that reveal happens on just one page. 2 pages of buildup probably wouldn't be enough for that now would it?

On the flipside lets say you're building up to an important character sequence where two side characters go on a first date or something, and you want to build up to their first kiss, the whole sequence is about 4 pages, 8 pages of buildup is probably too much, but maybe not, it's up to you.

[joannekwan]

For me, transitioning between scenes is sometimes tricky (trickier when figuring out how to panel it to top it off).
Sometimes I also have difficulty writing in a difference voice, since my vocabulary has limits, and my brain is my own, I just can't weave sentences like some people can.