What's the hardest part of writing a story to you? how do you overcome that struggle? share an example from your most recent story/series

[Leyelle]

All other things that I write (except songs and poems) just suck because they are not authentic and not what I feel

well, no matter what you write you can always find something in the story you can latch onto, or relate too, even if the characters situations are nothing like yours, and that can lend a sense of authenticity. I'm not a mermaid like my female lead lol, but I can relate to the constant feeling of instability and moving from place to place longing for a home that she feels and that can lend authenticity.

[Lensing]

It just feels not authentic when I write other kind of stories, I tried writing some family / kid friendly stories,
it was really hard for me to do. I only finished one comic which got printed because my mother was helping
me to write the dialogue I just have a hard time writing which feels too conservative

I also wouldn´t write anything that´s violent because that´s also not me.

[Leyelle]

well yeah, it makes sense to only write things that you can connect with

[Lensing]

Yep, but this means I can never show it anyone
that´s the struggle / hard part of it.
It would be a bad career decision to publish nsfw comics

[JoshRaed]

I think the hardest part is getting it all to weave together or something.

[arcaneer99]

Greetings!

The hardest part of writing, especially this particular story, is the plot placement. My story has multiple narrations and it's difficult to find the right place to put their story in the story. I also have to make sure that each chapter flows naturally toward it's end.

I overcame this struggle by putting all of my characters, settings, interactions and conflicts into a giant tree. As each leaf travels down the stem to the branch to the trunk, BAM! Story! Then there's the whole mess with the roots, but that's for another discussion. This method helps me with what I want in the story, what I don't want and what I'll save for later.

Read War of Neytives | Tapas Web Community

[Leyelle]

Yep, but this means I can never show it anyone

well, sometimes our art is meant for ourselves only. I write some things I would never share as well, or would be hard pressed to lol

[CanonLy]

The hardest part is describing the complex personality and feelings of my characters especially when they are experiencing mixed emotions and when I want to convey it realistically and relatable to the readers.

[Lensing]

Or maybe this is where the really interesting stories are

[KevinReijnders]

It would depend on how you handle it. There is some good money to be made in the nsfw-scene.

You could try to publish them under a pseudonym to assure there's a degree of seperation between your different artistic jobs.

It's not unheard of for artists to do both. A recent example was of a porn animator working in an animated teaser for invincible; or the author behind the Ghost in the Shell manga making a full in switch to erotica.

[arogya]

Good question!
For me more than anything, the most difficult part is juggling between job and novel. I just can't find time for writing and there's a trade off between resting and writing.
Coming up with ideas and character and situation setup not that difficult as it is to have some proper time dedicated to writing.
Solution- So what I do is whenever I get even 5 minutes free. I open my phone and write down the lines that come to my mind. And have changed episode update from thrice a week to once a week. AT the end of the week I'm ready with a raw content for 1-2 episodes. Then I process it and upload. For now this the solution I've found to my problem.
If anyone else faces the same situation do share your thoughts on how you tackle this problem.

Also give a read to my novel. 'Don't Change'

Read Don't Change | Tapas Web Community

[Lensing]

Thanks for the comment,
I´m torn between publishing under a pseudonym or just publishing under my real
name because my stories are still harmless enough to go through as erotic humour,
a bit spicier than 1950s sex comedy.

Publishing under my real name or pseudonym both has pro and cons I have to think about.

The teaching jobs are getting more at the moment and I have the opportunity to open up
a little drawing school and I don´t want to risk that for something that will maybe not
generate any money

[binahwrites]

some times to me is describing places, I do an okay job at it, but sometimes it takes me a lot of time to describe a place that is relatively normal, and something that helped me visualize it better is drawing a general map of the area on a notebook, it helped me pick and choose which aspects are more important to describe

[Leyelle]

ahh that's where poetry comes into play for me. It allows you to express the dichotomous nature of lots of things in a way that will imply the mixture of feelings your characters experience without having to spell it out.

[Leyelle]

maybe, I think it depends on the story in all contexts. Some things we suffer or experience are personal, but still make their way into our writing, which is definitely the case with some of my poetry.

[Leyelle]

Here's a hard one for me. Trying to figure out how graphic you want to be, or how honest you want to be with what your characters are thinking or feeling. I tend to censor myself a lot as a person, and I often want my writing to be at least relatively PG, but when a thought, a feeling, or an experience is really crucial to a character's story, I often debate with myself whether to bother including the scene, or how I should go about writing it.

When it comes to things like deaths and ODs, I've braced myself for the reactions and just included them because they are so central to the character's story, but other things I've censored or only hinted to. Finding the balance of allowing people to understand what happened or what's going on without spelling it out for them can be a bit tricky for me, because I struggle to know whether things will be clear ENOUGH for people. But fortunately I have an editor to help me know whether things make sense outside of my own head.

Read Damsel in the Red Dress :: Puppet (Part 2) | Tapas Community

[MelancholicOtaku]

Honestly the hardest part of writing a story to me is the planning of said story. Most of my novel is 30% planned and 70% improvised. Making sure that everything somewhat flows and makes sense can be daunting. I could also work on dialogue and descriptions. Romance is something I’m new to but I’m excited to try that out later on in the story.

Read The Lost Forest | Tapas Web Community

[Heidifisk]

Well as someone who writes novels for amazon, and does the writing for my webcomic. It's kind of interesting.

Honestly, I'd be lying if I said the payoff wasn't a part of it. My novels are like a 1/4 of my income for the month now. So I can't really stop writing them without a bit of a penalty.

But usually, it's the first 2-3 chapters that are the hardest to write. Getting over if the idea is good enough to create, and people will like.

As for scenes, sometimes I just have to brute force things. Maybe use Grammarly to help me a little find better wording for certain scenes ect.

Worse comes to worst, I'll fix it during the editing phase. Since I usually only do 2 drafts of my novels.

[Leyelle]

Most of my novel is 30% planned and 70% improvised.

yeah, i have a bad habit of planning things and then diverging from my plot points, and the thing about diverging is that once you start you kinda have to keep diverging unless you can find a way to loop back around for where you intended for the story to go next