What to do when you've outgrown your own story

[CallMeMattheww]

So I've been developing the same webcomic for over 4+ years now (only started uploading it this year), I first started working on it when I was about 20 and now I've just turned 24 (oh god i'm getting old ) and I've been noticing that almost everything about the series bores / irritates me or at the very least doesn't get me as excited as it once did.

I'm actually worried that I might have spent too much time on this project and so I feel like it just got really stale and expired (I don't know how else to phrase it LOL) I want to cancel it and move on but that feels like I'd be wasting so much time and effort that I have already invested into this project.....

So I guess what I'd like to know is

1) What do you do with it once you realize that you've outgrown your own story? (do you try to salvage key ideas for later stories or maybe you re-tweak your story to work with your present day interests / sensibilities)

2) Do you have a webcomic, book, OC, design, video game concept etc... that you've worked on for so long (or even too long) that you sadly outgrown ?

[joannekwan]

I MOVE ON

I've had tons of ideas that I've abandoned over the years; of course I save my writings/doodles in the event I ever decide to rework the idea or pick up pieces for new concepts. But more often than not, they simply stand as monuments of different times in my life that I enjoy looking back at.

I'm not overly attached to any of them, like I've seen people keep and develop ideas from their teenage years. I cannot do that. Sure the stories and characters are important to me (some more than others), but like old friends and family members, times change, we move on, we let go.

[AllynCrowe]

So, I've been writing for at least a decade now, if not more. Outgrowing a story is the natural state of creation. Nobody can forever do a story,and that's completely fine. I've outgrown at least 4 of my stories, which at the time I thought would be the most amazing books, and which I worked on for years.
Don't be too afraid to just call it enough, and take all you've learnt from your comic with you to the next grand project. Don't get obsessed with the idea that you should indefinitely be able to work on something, but instead learn how to end your projects with grace. Write satisfying endings, or even leave them open for interpretation if you so wish.
Think of this ending more or less as putting the cap on a bottle of soda, so it doesn't spill out and get wasted, or lose its fizz. Then you can put it back in the fridge and go have something else you want more, or maybe come back to it and take a sip out of it later.

I'm sure your next project will be better, and you'll find more enjoyment in it. And if you do not, there's always another idea right around the corner waiting to be worked out

[CallMeMattheww]

I guess it really is for the best to cut my loses and move on to new ideas, oh well, guess it will just be a sweet reminder of my younger self....
But I wish that I could just sell the idea to someone, at the very least get some profit from it

[joannekwan]

Unfortunately ideas are cheap, the value is in their execution/production.
In my youth I used to have the idea that I would work as an original concept creator, but soon came to realize the above.

[CallMeMattheww]

I think the one thing that's probably getting to me the most is just the thought that it might take me another 4+ years to develop a new idea and sadly I just don't have the time

But that does make me wonder about you, how long did it take you to work on those 4 other stories, did you manage to write faster the more stories you wrote or did they all take the same amount of time?

[AllynCrowe]

I may be a bit of an anomaly in that case, I think? I have story ideas immediately and on the fly, often more than I can write out. At this moment alone, I have 3 different stories thought of, of which I am only dedicated to one. So I don't think I can help you with this... since I sort of haven't run out of ideas yet

oh and ehm, they all take up about the same amount of time? It really depends on my free time. I'm still a student, so writing has always been more of a hobby that I do regularly, but not with speed in mind.
What I did notice was that the quality went up, since I know better how to construct my sentences and prose. The same will probably happen for your art, since you get more practised in your own style.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

If you really can't bear to work on it anymore, yet you'd feel too regretful to leave it, I'd suggest transforming it.
I had an issue like that with a webcomic series I started when I was 13. Needless to say, I've matured a lot since that time, and it got to the point where looking through my old work was starting to become a cringefest. ^^; After a few years trying and failing to "improve" the bad ideas, one day I just up and said, "okay, this is canceled. I'm taking these characters and starting a new thing with them, something that's more in line with my current skill level".

It's been hard, sure. Finding motivation, trying to build trust with a new audience...but I think it's better than discarding the entire project, even though I have plenty of other things to work on.

[Oksa]

I'm not sure am I the best person to say this, but yea. I have had a story i created way younger, and ofc I outgrew from it. Unfortunately, this comic is my dream and I loved the characters too much. So I decided to write the whole story again, and changed a lot. Many scenes and plot points changed completely, but this way my whole story idea and characters didn't go to waste.
You could try to improve your idea to better, 'updated' for your tastes, but if it doesn't work, I say you ditch the idea. also like @DokiDokiTsuna said, you could take the characters and make a whole new story idea with them.

Hope you'll get to the best conclusion for you

[Rhonder]

I feel this really hard. I have a comic project that was my baby from like... 2007/8 - 2017 and was essentially my motivation to learn how to draw and keep at it. It was outlined with my middle school sensibilities at the forefront (2007 was when I was 12 lol) and was basically just my take on a shonen manga series, like Naruto or etc.

I never sat down and actually drew very much of it out, as I would reboot the drawings for it once a year or every 2 years or so, but I continued designing OCs for it, thinking out plot arcs in the back of my mind, etc. Finally in 2016/2017 I sat down and actually started rewriting the plot because as a college grad, I felt as though the bones were still good (world, basic plot, magic system, etc.) but I knew that a lot of the characters were written super poorly, there were numerous plot holes, etc.

Last November (2017) I actually started redrawing it from Ch 1 again with the intent to start uploading to Tapas/Webtoons/etc. The art and writing were both muuuuuch improved relative to any of the previous versions. However after completing 8 pages I stopped to reevaluate. Although it was a lot better than before, I looked at the big picture and realized that completing the story as designed would be a ridiculous time-sink and for an idea that was simply a patched up middle schooler's story. The story would probably be at least 100 chapters long, which at the pace of ~1 page a week (as I'm an amateur/fledgling comic author) would take, frankly, years. The thing that put it in perspective was that I had been drawing for 2 months and the first big action scene would be like... a year and a half away LOL.

So I decided to shelf the project and tackle some one-shots/shorter projects instead. I'm not abandoning the idea/work completely, in fact I'd very much like to revisit it someday. BUT I'm going to see how I can grow as an author, get some completed works out, and see if I can find a way to do the project that makes sense, even if that's just writing a new story with those characters/world.

tl;dr - Just within the last year or so I temporarily abandoned a story I've been conceptualizing for ~10 years for the same reason of out growing it and realized that by not branching out, I was kind of shackling myself to a story that would almost certainly not be my best work.

[punkarsenic]

have you started making it? how far in are you?

if youre closer to the start than the end, id say seriously consider cancelling and moving on. onto significantly shorter projects. significantly shorter.

1) What do you do with it once you realize that you've outgrown your own story?

iiiiiiiiiiiif i havent started it yet, i let it die. if im already halfway through... i try to keep kicking til its done, and try to make that as soon as possible.

2) Do you have a webcomic, book, OC, design, video game concept etc... that you've worked on for so long (or even too long) that you sadly outgrown ?

like yeah.

i started twaw when i was 16, and there are so many elements of it im fed up with. ive outgrown a lot of it in the past year. theres still parts i really like, but as a story i really want a fresh start. i feel like it suffers a lot from me not having time to draft, so theres stuff thats less than a year old that i now reaaaaaaaallyyyyyyyyyyy haaaaaaaaaaaaaaateeeeeeee bc i didnt have an editor telling me when an idea was bad, or enough time to figure that out on my own before things were due. just gotta work w em

ive fiddled the story so twaw is now half way through. structurally its gonna be a fucking mess, but hey, its a webcomic. im hoping to get it done within a year and be onto smaller and better things.

ive found myself developing really rapidly in my ideas and interests and how i approach things for the past year, which means ive also been able to watch myself outgrow some projects in realtime, and its kinda stressful. like, i cant develop so fast that i go off a short project halfway through, thats not sustainable. im tryna counter this by getting better at my time management so i get ideas, make them, finish them, and leave them behind to move onto the next thing. its haaard.

[CrispyGhee]

This really is an emotionally tough one, and I think anyone who loves writing and pours themselves into things goes through this. I agree with pretty much everyone here saying that putting it aside and moving on sounds like it'll be the best thing to do. I usually take a moment to think about what the story meant to me at the time I created it, and acknowledge why it was important, and then what I learned in the process of working on it. And then kinda thank it for that and let it go.

When you're making stuff for yourself, what time you have to work on those things is super precious. You'd be cautious about spending your time making something for someone else, right? It's kind of like that with old stories. You were a different person back then, and sometimes the only reason you're still holding onto it is because you told that person that you would. Letting go would give you more time to focus on things that is more relevant to you!

But mang, i get you on fearing you spent too much time on something. There's this whole thing called the "sunk cost fallacy" that says that the amount of time you spent on something does not inherently make it more valuable than something you haven't spent any time on yet, but... that is something that I haven't quite emotionally got my own head around yet .-. This stuff is for sure tough.

[lartianmartian1]

I just did this very thing a few short months ago. I outgrew the college-based comic I started in (you guessed it!) college, and now that I'm a thirty-something I aged up those exact same characters and forced them to "adult". It was the best decision I've made creatively thus far.

I had nothing noteworthy to add to the college webcomic subgenre anyway, aside from my own wackadoo style. Plus, the internet has Dumbing of Age. And it's still pretty good, I guess??

I've discarded countless other ideas over the years, and I don't feel sad about it. I'm trying to make the most of my time by actually enjoying what I do. I'm not worried about what lies ahead, because there is little point in it. Of course a project of this scale is years in the making, so what?! And my anxiety over such things has held me back long enough, I just wanna draw, dammit.

(Lol, sorry for the angry emoji, I just feel strongly about this sort of thing. Also, 24 is not old, you stop that right now.)

[kytri]

I feel like this is a thing that sort of naturally happens. If you work on anything for long enough it will become commonplace.

If it's possible I generally try to wrap up the story and complete the comic. Usually I have some new idea I'd like to work on at that point, but in the long term it's good to learn how to finish a story. Also I have readers who are supporting me and I don't want to disappoint them.

If it's not possible it's okay to just drop it. If there's any concepts you like and want to salvage that's also fine. I did this with my first webcomic and am currently wrapping up the comic based on those salvaged concepts. Basically no one was reading my first comic anyway. It fucking sucked at the time but was ultimately the right decision.

I think it's important to remember that whatever you do the effort you put in so far wasn't wasted. It was valuable experience and you know more about writing and storytelling and art than you did when you started. If you start a new project tomorrow it will be better for all the effort you put into the last one.

[LordVincent]

If you haven't launched or worked long on it, let it die. Unless it's short, then you may as well finish it just to have a finished story under you.

Personally I am stuck in this exact situation with one of my comics. I don't know if what I did is anything I would advice others to do... but what I did is I cancelled one of my oldest ideas because it was so old, so far from what I wanted to do with my life and it was a commercial flop on top of all that. As a full time webcomic artist, I have to take finances into consideration or I will end up with unpaid bills.

The other one, Bloodroot, I decided to finish. It has too large a fanbase to just cancel and it would hurt my reputation a lot if I dropped it. I think many fans would also lose their trust in my ability to finish the stories I start. I am still working on finishing it, and basically what I'm doing is I cut out any padding, any unneccessary things, any just-for-fun shit etc so that the plot will wrap up as soon as I can manage. My fans know I have lost my personal connection to this project so they don't mind. They're just happy I am finishing it.

[hisstidine]

It can be hard to keep going with a story that you came up with in a different time of your life. My future projects are actually ones where I came up with the characters and plot when I was a teenager, and now I'm almost 30. So unsurprisingly those characters and stories have changed a LOT. But there's an upside to taking so long to actually get started, and it's that I've been able to jettison a lot of my bad ideas and rework the stories into something I like.

I decided to take some of the plot points that now seem like my characters having really terrible ideas and reframe them into being about characters in their early 20s learning from their mistakes.

I think some degree of boredom with your story is inevitable, but sometimes it's best to cut your losses and move on. Personally, I like the idea of salvaging as much as you can from old stories. Sometimes if you just take all the things you like and put them together, it can give you an idea of how to a) make your story into one you want to keep writing or b) write a whole new story.

[shazzbaa]

It's not a waste. Everything you create, you learn something from. The next thing you make will be even better because of the experience you have working on this one.

[charliesackett]

My favorite exercise is to take reeeeeeeeally old ideas and rework them into something I would like to read now. The comic I'm currently working on started life as a comic idea I had in high school. I sat on it for 7 years until I worked at a music store. It's about music stuff so I figured I'd let that influence what happened. I axed a bunch of the characters, reworked the remaining ones, and rewrote the plot. It still has a little bit of the ghost of comics past, but it's different enough that it's not highschool-ey.

My point is don't be afraid to change things. It's not written in stone because you haven't finished it. You can sit with it and ask yourself 'what would I be interested in reading?'. Just keep asking that any time you get bored, at least you'll entertain yourself.

[MGComics]

Oh sorry to hear that That's a very funny topic for me because most of my ideas I had them younger and I'm now 23 years old... And yep, most of them, the idea is the same but the execution changes

And yep, I tweak the details as I go along, as I'm growing. I think it's important you're still interested in your story... If you're not, it may not necessarily be because it isn't interesting.

You may be burnout (a possibility), need more creativity (have you let yourself imagine other stories, read, watch other movies, etc?) or, as you say, If you really don't like the story any more, you should change it smoothly as you go.

If you had a big outline or your whole story, then It will be even less daunting. I also change my stories. As Stephen King says, you're your first reader, you should like it ^^

I'm not saying to give up your story, but changing it drastically may be fun and more interesting. Doing it with care and making sure you still love it

Good luck!

[amortelito]

@HisNameIsMike When I started My series I was a child, now I'm 30 years old. Just now I decided to make a comic and of course, I outgrew many ideas.

What I did was to make the characters grow as well. They start being very juvenile and then their lives get more complex. This story is going to take me years, so it will be nice if young readers can grow with the characters too!

Fortunately, I didn't waste time on a "failed" comic while I was a teen and I had the time to grow up and now approach things differently starting a brand new comic. My first adventure unapologetically mocks the original idea I had, the cliches I wanted to use, and introduces my characters.

So, If you still like your story but you cringe at the clichés, etc. You can always make them a joke, or make the characters realize it and do something to improve that.

Or you could move on, but I think you can save it if you want to.