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disqette
Dec '20

I'm a huge fan of stories that just go hecking balls to the walls insane. Trippy dream sequences, Kingdom Hearts level ridiculousness, obscure symbolism, the whole nine yards.

I really want to do crazy stuff with story (and I have, to a small extent), but I tend to find myself really hesitating to go full throttle. Like... I'm trying to make my comic appeal to a large audience, and most of my readers are fairly young. Is it insulting to the readers' intelligence to refrain from going big brain? Especially when I'm seeing most popular comics on WT have simple stories, with a small handful of exceptions. Is it because the authors prefer simpler stories or because they're holding back?

idk man. I love the idea of crazy stories, but I also don't want to turn so many people away that I can't profit off my work.

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    Dec '20

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    Jan '21
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nathanKmcwilliamsIn the making of Bunneh The Rabbit
Dec '20

Haha I just went off the rails and added extraplanar beings to my comic. WITH NO WARNING. Yeah. I love going unhinged, it's very freeing.

If people don't like it, they don't have to read it. I can get new readers that will appreciate it.

therosesword
Dec '20

Y'all need to read "House of Leaves" if you haven't already.

darthmongoose
Dec '20

I think so long as the basic plot can be followed and the human heart of your story is relatable, you can go pretty wild. A good example is Star Wars. The plot is very easy to understand: basic hero's journey about young farm boy who goes on quest with wizard to rescue beautiful princess from the bad guy castle. But the stuff in that movie was completely bonkers for the time, nobody had seen anything like it! Star ships as big as cities manned by space nazis, farms that farm water on a desert planet where people drink blue milk and there are bars full of weird aliens listening to live jazz music, bickering robots, space wizard knights with laser swords, spaceship dogfights, a big evil cyborg samurai who breathes in raspy breaths.

This is the approach I take on Errant. At heart it's a story about flawed people and their relationships and the struggle over this magic sword. Everyone has weird hair and incredibly impractical oversized weapons and often odd fashion, and there are demons in gym wear that explode into rainbow sparkles and a political activist who wears an opera cloak and a bird skull mask, but so long as the main thing the story is about is the simple story of a terrible girl who turned a blind eye to the mistreatment of her friend for power and attention and how she's going to fix that, these weird elements are just flavour.

Freemints30
Dec '20

brah, aaaalll the time. But I want to start with something simple to get people engaged befor going insane. Frequency Overload is just small town kids looking into urban legend mystery before it gets to what I really want to do. With monsters and people on Tv mind controlling and ...other things.

Same with my novel though it starts somewhat quirky in the sense the world is weird but with a seemly normal person with a normal job before going 100% off the rails into insanity and messed up stuff.

Me taking my stories of the tracks an into the ocean is my bread and butter

impossiblesoul
Dec '20

Is it insulting to the readers' intelligence to refrain from going big brain?

It's not insulting because the bulk of people won't realize you're patronizing them. That's the irony.

If you want to appeal to as many as possible though, you could write a story that hits both the lowest common denominator as well as the higher ones. By that I mean, you'd develop an exciting plot that anyone can follow but with symbolism or concepts that only big brains care enough to explore. An example would be Attack on Titan. Less big brained people: "WOAH! DUDE JUST GOT EATEN. WHO'S GONNA DIE NEXT??" Bigger brained people: argues endlessly in wall-of-text paragraphs in comment sections over the ethics of the story/characters

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if I should've been less blunt with how I feel regarding my own writing but I'm already too far in and committed to stop.

aqua03Party Planner
Dec '20
darthmongoose

A big evil cyborg samurai based off of a Shotaro Ishinomori tokusatsu show no less!

rajillustration
Jan '21

I love bonkers ass stories--ones with Kojima level of weird layers going on--and I totally want to get good enough to write one that is still coherent at the end. One of the biggest problems with comics is making it all......coherent. Making all the panels work in conjunction is hard enough when the plot is simple (because the whole concept of comics is really abstract, when you think about it), but then when it's a plot going four different directions--it's so easy to drop everything. It's a lot of fun but I haven't managed to make my bonkers stuff come together yet (although it's hella fun and cathartic for me to make). When I do I'll let you know, haha.

Jenny-Toons
Jan '21

@darthmongoose kinda hit it on the head: long as it's relatable to some degree, people will be drawn to that unhinged appeal.

But more importantly -- the best unhinged stuff I've read always had faith that I understood what went down and the weight of it. AKA -- don't assume your readers (and potential readers) are stupid and won't get the message.

I do cosmic horror romance -- I let loose every update: and yet it's still relatable. People like the weight of Brenda & "Christina"'s relationship, and there is still that message of "loving someone with their differences". They've found love despite the horror and dangers, and the unhinged scenes, combined with the love, makes it work.

Unhinged without substance and context is non-sequitur. Unhinged with meaning pulls people in.

thedude3445
Jan '21

I love going completely off the rails. Like the way an Ed Edd and Eddy episode will just veer off into a completely new plot halfway through, but for an entire novel.

Siromany
Jan '21

Being unhinged is like, a core concept of the comic I make. It deals with both a dream world and the character's own perceptions of things, as he feels things in extremes. It's also a comic with body horror in it which is a lot of fun to do!!! I'm very much someone who leans in heavily with symbolism, as I really love it in things I read.

Also I do feel that content like this isn't like, widespread friendly just because it's not for everyone. It's not wrong that not everyone is into weird stuff, but content that's easier to grasp right out of the gate will be noticed a lot more. Especially when a lot of more unhinged content gets dismissed with the whole "oh man what drugs was this person on?" sort of thing. There's a lot of effort behind weird content. People who do appreciate it will be pretty loyal, but it can be hard to market it to everyone. We've all been there for that "the door is red for x reason" vs the "the door is red because it's red" It really just comes down the audience itself. I'm sticking with the concepts I have, and if someone isn't into reading that, they don't have to.

Legendofgenii
Jan '21

My antagonist controls and manipulates my protagonist’s soul. Things are gonna get weird.

N1ghtm4r3
Jan '21

i kinda want to sometimes, just do like how till lindmann(lead singer of rammstien) and rammstien do , they just do something and for the most part dont care about the haters or people who are offended by so on

Azifri
Jan '21

Going unhinged is an important part of my current comic, one I'm afraid may confuse readers because it's a combination of hard sci-fi and weird trips into the minds of some of the characters :sweat_02:

Tanako
Jan '21

does this mean throwing random plot into your work? because I'm trying to understand this thread LOL

domisotto
Jan '21
darthmongoose

@darthmongoose said what I was thinking.

Part of writing is making sure that nothing stands in the way of delivering a gripping story with vibrant characters. That includes all the writing excesses that please the writer, but loses the audience. Excessively pretty language, 20 page dream sequence with obscure symbolism, etc, everything you yourself would skim through 2 years down the road.