Nov 2016
33 / 74
Nov 2016
Dec 2016
miesmud
Nov '16

I'm struggling with writing as a whole tbh.

I'm not good at English, so dialogs are really hard to write. I don't know how cool American kids talk, so I'm always using random words I find on Tumblr and Urban dictionary.

I have a hard time finding a good pacing, my story is a slow slice of life with little action. I feel like I'll disappoint a lot of people, because I'm only building up to one small payoff.

And I'm not sure if I'm capable of making my story belieable. I always do a lot of research about everything, but I still feel like I know too little about what I'm actually writing about.

So yeah, I think writing isn't really my thing. But I still like doing it :')

shaneoid77
Nov '16

I don't consider myself a writer at all, and I leave the writing until last working from the plot I've worked out. I think my weakness is; while I try not to spoon feed my audience I may be too vague when executing this

spooktacularprize
Nov '16

I probably have a whole lot, but the one I acknowledge freely is that I like taking things slowly, to the point where stories can drag at times.

I think I may this problem too; I think the thing about this is that it's so different on a webcomic site than an actual comic. The story I'm going for isn't a short one, but I can easily dedicate well over 10 pages to a single conversation or scene, and 15 is the norm in some cases.

I've been reading your comic too, and I've been reading it in bulk since I just started, and I actually think the pacing is quite good; and if you were to cut it down and I Read in this style (in bulk) it may even seem too fast.

It feels sort of like this mentality where a webcomic has to be faster since the release rate is generally slower; I keep saying to myself that I'm not ready or about to change the pace from what seems natural in my head just to make sure people are jumping out of their seats with each new episode; but I still find myself cutting out pages to try and improve reader engagement.

But it's hard to say for sure, I try to cut down on conversation that isn't necessary and sometimes I have trouble judging whether something is or isn't, and whether something is too expositiony (for lack of a better phrase), and then this leads me to not reveal enough or get confused on ways to reveal what I want to reveal.

I'm similar to @miesmud in that I feel like I'll disappoint a lot of people, constantly worrying about what upsetting things I might be doing or how I might let the readers down! Pshew!

Kura
Nov '16

Poor grammar and not knowing very uncommon words

I'm also not 100% at English even though I have gotten pretty good over the years.

Emma
Nov '16

I feel like my dialogue feels extremely wooden at times.

punkarsenic
Nov '16

i think i struggle to find the balance between too vague and too much information, so there tends to be some level of confusion.

Puppisama
Nov '16

I feel I go to the point to fast, and leave some important things behind, like for example, on my comic, my characters haven't formally presented themselves, and I'm about to reach chapter 5 hahaha. Also, since english is not my first language, I feel limited when I want to writte something prominent.

jerreaudriessen
Nov '16

Im pretty bad at writing cuz I dont really plant things out.
Im learning how to do that now!

respheal
Nov '16

Writing description, definitely. Either I write too little or it turns into purple prose. That is one of the many reasons I decided to swing for a comic instead of continuing the novel xD But even then I think my weakness for description carries over because I got the dialogue down, but as for what's going on behind the dialogue.........ehh?

Down_the_Rabbithole
Nov '16
mariusthered

Yeah. That does sound like a pretty tricky thing to do. I can at least sympathize a little because I'm trying to represent a time long before I was born and all the mannerisms and slang that come with the time period. It's also a little hard to represent cultural attitudes of the time while still making the characters likable.

Down_the_Rabbithole
Nov '16
spooktacularprize

It sounds like you do a lot of thinking. I do that same thing.

I've also had that fear of disappointing people or breaking the plot, so that's why I keep a lot of notes about every detail. It keeps those fears at bay.

WakaXO
Nov '16

I'm sure I have a lot but I struggle most with pacing in slow/calm scenes and dialogue. I have a bad habit of adding way to much dialogue to any given conversation, which in turn makes it last forever and the pacing suffers as a result. It takes me a while to trim down the fat from conversations and make them sound natural and smooth.

indagold
Nov '16

my dyslexia and my poor reading skills, I tend to leave out information by accident or wording things wrong and writing long form stories compared to shorter ones is also a problem for me. I used to make walls of text but at least that problem I fixed. At least now I'm getting people to read the story beforehand so I can get a pretty good critique.

Kamikaze
Nov '16

Easily bloat. There's so much I want to put into a story that my first drafts are often WAY larger than they have any reason or right to be. I'm in the middle of a 1st draft edit and I've got to chop a 90 page script down to 45. It's a niiiightmare.

The good news is that once I have all the stuff farted onto a page it's easier to see exactly what needs fixing, cutting, or reworking. I love reworking dialogue, chopping it down to having the most impact with as few words as possible. It's a really fun challenge, and when it pays of it REALLY pays off!

niinasalmelin
Nov '16

My characters sound the same. The dialogue is too similar and I'm trying to work my way around it. Also I need to take better look at my grammar.

UzukiCheverie
Nov '16

When writing out the narrative, I tend to make the storytelling sound the same for all the characters. Dialogue I have no issue with, I have no problem portraying the character's personalities through their body language and words, but setting up the scene and telling the narrative sorta comes across the same no matter which character is leading it. I dunno, maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of it than I should be but I feel like conveying personality through the narrative is just as important as conveying personality through the character's reactions and words.

KSlinger
Nov '16

I struggle to keep things simple and often substitute dialogue for a panel which means everything takes much longer to get through. For example fight scenes do so much 'show don't tell' that they're ridiculously long. Chapter one of West will be around 100 pages in itself because I'm not very good at trimming back the flow.

VikiKuli
Nov '16

Transitions between scenes. I like absolutely always rush them, gotta get better at it. But I'm glad so see some other people on the same boat with me! We got this!

Valalaraptor
Nov '16

I feel like I'm going too slow in the set-up of my story, but it's all so things make sense later, so I don't have to do a bunch of boring, forced exposition. I'm just worried people are gonna lose interest before I get to the real meaty part of the story. I also worry that I hint too much at things and don't explain enough, that I'm weaving back and forth over the line of intriguing amounts of mystery and not enough info, so it's confusing. I forget that my audience doesn't know the whole story and I do, so I have to really focus on how I explain or reveal things, making sure It's thoroughly enough explained, without ruining any surprises for later on.