What's something you were certain would happen in your story, that you ended up changing?

[erma]

Happy new year, everyone!

I've been on a semi-hiatus from Tapas, mostly due to school & work. As the title of this topic would suggest, I wanna talk about moments you've had with your stories where you just weren't sure about something anymore.

I'm 3 years into my first comic. Something hasn't felt quite right. For context, I created the characters before I wrote the whole story, and had already decided which two characters I wanted to end up together. I had their entire arc written out before I finished the story. But the further I get into my comic, the more I'm feeling like I'm having to find somewhere to fit this storyline, rather than it feeling natural.

I've also realised the scenes I'm most satisfied with are the interactions between the two main characters, Noel and Lillian. I've been very hesitant about whether I want Lillian to end up in a relationship. Her arc involves a lot of self-discovery and figuring out what she wants, once she is away from the life her parents attempted to force her into.

If I do go the route of Noel and Lillian together, I'd want there to be a time skip in which Lillian has had the time to independently sort out her life plans, especially after everything that's going to happen in this story. The two of them together presents a clear ending for me to write, plenty of space to develop their relationship, and I have a feeling my readers would enjoy seeing this happen.

Has something like this happened to you while writing your stories, and if so, what did you end up doing? Did you make a big change to a plot point? And does my reasoning for making this change make sense? I would love to know your thoughts!

[Coati]

I have a character who is cursed, the curse was supposed to work like an disease that could ended up killing the character. When I started working on the magic system, I decided to change it for something that fits better in the final plot.

I never planned to write a BL, It was just a fantasy story without any romance, but two characters started to look like they had a connection and just make sense to put some love in the mix. This made me change basically the first half of the story to make a decent character evolution for the couple

In resume: I started to ship my own character and with the power of the canon in my hands they are an official couple. The joys of being a creator

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Not a romance but...

I had a moment when I realized a character I had was complex enough to be a co-lead.

Originally I'd only planned for Rip to be the only lead for quite a while. But as I played with my characters in an RP I slowly connected dots with a character I'd only set up as a side character. (His adopted sister)

I realized I could tell more story and split up the lead roles, so going forward I've had to change a few things. But I think Freya will end up being a great co-lead.

[phoenixrenaissance]

Go ahead and let your story develop naturally, especially if you feel like it works best for your comic.

So my comic called "Devour" was supposed to be only a couple chapters long and is called that because the werewolf was supposed to eat his too sick to survive boyfriend. 8 chapters later, they're both still alive. (For the best, really)

And more of a "i didn't expect this to happen" but in my other comic one of my MCs has a best friend, they were planned to only ever be friends. As I keep writing they developed a back story where they used to be a couple and best friend never quite got over it. Now there might be a poly relationship at the end of the story???

[burginlewis]

Yes. At the end of my series, there's a certain couple that I originally intended to get together, but I decided it would tell the particular story I was trying to tell a little better if they didn't.

My basic reasoning was: one half of the couple just went through something major that the other half really doesn't grasp, and the traumatized party needs to cope and sort of find their footing on their own... they should have something to bring into the relationship besides needs so they're not just being a barnacle.

And since it's kind of a coming of age story, I felt that fit the overall story theme better.

[heiseihi]

I had a major plot change when my main pairing didn't end up together as was intended. It happened because of one character I initially thought would be episodical, but later on, she jumped on the front line and snatched the main guy. It felt like the right thing to do and I am rolling with it now. I hope nothing else would drastically change until I finish... which won't be soon)) As for main female character she has her own pass of developing which I guess benefits her personality growth more.

[user400]

In my story (it's a visual novel) there were supposed to be only 2 love interest. However, there was a certain half relevant side character.

This guy:

People were a little disappointed he wasn't a love interest. So I thought sure, I can write him a route too, it fit pretty well when I thought about it.
I'm so glad I did because his "bad ending" ended up being my favorite end out of all of them!
Mysteriously it's also one of the least romantic ends, and it's a BL novel...

Anyway, it was a change that added a new perspective to the story as a whole. People were happy with it. I'm happy too.

[AbelDraws]

It was fun reading everyone's experiences, and it made me feel kinda calmer about my own story hahahaha.

When I first envisioned my story there was a very big event where my mc would end up taking care of a family, he'd get very fond of them and they'd help him in a lot of ways. But then, one Day, the house would get set of fire with the family members inside and mc would feel guilty about their deaths *insert dramatic music here *.

It.... It was horrible and it didn't make sense for anything of it to happen, seriously hahaha. But I was so convinced it would be a core part of the story - it's the part I drew more of when I was little.

I had to scratch the whole thing and now the story makes way more sense, or so I hope.

Something I had super clear in my head was how mc would end up after the story ended (what he'd dedicate his life to). I've had that idea stuck in my mind until last year, but I changed it because it gave me a lot of trouble x'D

There's also been some trouble regarding shipping. There's 2 canon ships that are important for the story, but then there's another one I always envisioned would happen post canon, but now.... I'm not sure because I want the same character to be with two different ones ahdkgkh. It won't be relevant to the story tho, so maybe I'll just leave it ambiguous and let the readers go wild with headcanons.

[FenneFox]

More so with the idea rather than the story itself, which I am yet to write, but in one of my ideas I was thinking of just not having a romance among any of the characters in general, but the set up I had for one of the character's arc would have made her in position to get in a romance with the main, so I decided, eh, I'll make an exception.

[JRHoch]

My protagonist was going to be female and androgynous. I created about 10 panels, decided to change her to male, and had to go back and narrow the hips!

[teasidesketches]

I think I mentioned this at some point before, but I've also changed things around concerning ships.
In a long-past early draft of my story... Matthias and Felicity were supposed to end up together. Childhood friends trope and all that. I started fleshing out Matthias's character more, though, and really ironing out the details... and then decided it made more sense for them to have a sibling, familial relationship rather than a romantic one. It was a little frustrating for me at first when I made that change, but I think I like it a lot better when everything is said and done.

So uh. That ship is clearly not happening anymore!

[Iris-Grimoire]

I'm probably the only one so far going the opposite way Mortimer was supposed to either end up alone in the end or slowly getting back with the queen. Then I noticed, that's stupid and disrespectful to both characters, and I started writing with no romance in mind. Then, slowly but surely, a character development showed up that was very compatible with him, and would help both of them have situations for extra growth. So relationship halfway through it is!

Also, before I integrated the comic with my larger story universe, Mortimer got his powers through a deal with a chtullu-like entity, and he'd lose control of his actions the more he used it because its very nature was chaos. Taking the blame off of him felt disingenuous to the message I want to write, so I developed the whole black magic system, where it makes him/other characters more open to reckless acts, but no mind control is involved - just arrogance that they wouldn't let this kind of power put their emotions into extremes and drive them do to stupid things.

[elyss]

Alot really because I my fiancee has been asking alot of 'but what if' questions. The biggest one was the trajectory of the mail relationship and the character development of the love interest. He turned from a more passive personality into someone willing to take what he feels he deserves. It doesn't sound that big but I've re-written alot of my story's first draft because of it.

[spadedigsbutts]

I originally wrote one of my current comics as a romance but after I developed the main characters, it just felt really weird having them get together in any capacity so I changed it. I feel like people are still going to ship them due to their weird relationship but...hey man shippers gonna ship 🤣

[Pandastrophic]

When I started my comic I introduced a lot of side characters all of which had more to do with the plot and their own side plots, some would have been couples. After a few years of working on the comic, the writing and the plot changed so much, I realized I don't enjoy working with so many side characters, I mostly enjoyed writing the mains and the small circle of friends around them and that's it! So I ended up writing out a lot of the characters who I didn't enjoy writing for or ones that didn't have as much depth to them, now they just appear occasionally.
Doubt my readers mind, the most popular characters are definitely the leads, no one really cared about the side plots and neither did i lol.

This is one of the things I wish I'd known when I started my comic, then I wouldn't have wasted time introducing so many side-characters that didn't end up doing anything later, I would have been able to focus on the main 4 characters more.

[IndigoShirtProd]

When I first started writing the plot of my comic a few years ago, I also thought the two leads in my story were going to end up together during the comic. A romantic subplot would've been in the background of the main story. But I decided to change that, not because I don't think the characters would end up together, but because I wanted to focus more on their friendship. They both mean a lot to one another and the romance wouldn't have been as interesting in my eyes. On the flip side of that, a third character who was supposed to get a romantic subplot later in the story, now just has a girlfriend with no caveats. I thought it would be way more interesting and believable than having those other characters having their romance during the story.

[AmazementComics]

There was going to be a crucial story arc in the third season of my main series where the Supreme Court was going to establish a "Mutant Regulation Act" which required all, if any mutants to surrender to the government or they would be killed. This was in place due to high suspicions that the main characters (being mutated fruit ninjas) were responsible for the destruction of an all-female academy and the casualties that resulted from it. It would have forced the main characters to flee from the United States as a newly formed superhero team would be ordered from the government to search and bring back said "refugees" dead or alive.

The reason why this storyline was scrapped is because there were too many other important plot lines that I felt absolutely NEEDED to be incorporated into the season more than this one. Although, a similar story took place during the first seven episodes of the season, so I guess it wasn't totally wasted

[AllynCrowe]

I guess these are major spoilers for my bookseries, Silence, but at some point Tristan was supposed to die or nearly die. Alas, I decided not to use that particular timeline, since it wouldn't have been very satisfying.

[Drewbie]

Basically i've had a timeskip planned for my series for awhile but now that it's coming up I'm thinking of inserting an entire novel in where I hadn't planned for it to be. There's plenty of content for it and I am pretty sure thats what I'm gonna end up doing but still definitely big changes for the series length.

[buttersphere]

In the comic I'm developing I originally had more drama planned for it.

The biggest drama plot being an arranged marriage, in which a character would then elope with their secret love to escape from it. This would have caused events to happen for the main set of characters and effectively push my story to the 3rd act. I thought about it for a long time, and realized it wasn't necessarily the tone I want for these characters at all. I originally wrote this story and it's characters for myself, and what I want to see more of in that niche of comics. So now the love affair is just another side story of people realizing their feelings in silly ways.

To someone who loves drama it probably sounds like I made it less interesting, but dang it I just wanna see girls be sweet with one another!