Your Story Idea (+spoilers or plans)

[shazzbaa]

Something I really wanted in my story was for people to be able to meet the characters as people. In the first few pages I had a reader ask why Tareth could speak, which would've been easy enough to answer -- she had a lot of speech therapy, that's not really a spoiler and it's not even important to the story -- but I liked the idea of creating a world where you didn't know who these people were, and had to get to know them without asking, so I didn't say anything -- I wanted people to learn that sort of thing from Tareth, not from me.

I feel like disclosing who these characters are outside the comic before we get to know them, even in small silly ways, can colour the way you see them within the comic, so it's something I do very carefully. A lot of people have laughed about the fact that even when I do non-canon filler doodles, my magically-silenced character still can't talk -- but to me, giving him a moment to speak outside the comic would take away a lot of its weight within the comic. And if I were to spoil whether my plans for Character A are ultimately a redemption arc, or to show them turn out to be horrible, or whatever, then that kinda wrecks the actual experience of it, y'know? You don't invest in them as a person the same way.

So.... that's why I'm not quite answering this question -- I want people to draw their own conclusions and take away their own experience before I share my intent. These forums aren't private, and while I'm certainly not worried about idea theft (the ideas themselves aren't really the important part!), I'm protective of the meaning and emotion of my story, and I don't want to ruin others' experience of it. ;u;

[Kamikaze]

Giving away story stuff WITH spoilers? As tempting as this is...

[indagold]

I'll reveal what my some of my intentions were for both of my comics. The plot for one of them is 41 pages long haha...

Garden Of Mold was a fun little game in designing a silent, sorta abstract short story. I did each part separately from the summer of 2015 to the spring of 2016. There wasn't much I put into it as depth, it was more a surreal art comic. I wanted to touch upon fear, paranoia, anxiety and how it can ruin life decisions but also overcoming them can help you to confront real life in the end.

Welcome Back Series Is just a massive beast of weirdness. I intended to go all out for this comic, do things I would never do in a normal comic piece and ultimately the decision to be weird lead to a lot of style changes for me. I actually did this over the course of 5 years. The first part "Forgive or Forget" I did over a few months. The second part "Welcome Back..." I did over the course of almost 4 years. I had everything planned out beforehand so the sequel wasn't a last minute thing.

The style of the comic started out as a parody of slice of life: Bullies, highschool, crushes with dark, twisted overtones and a strange totalitarian dreamworld added. I also wanted to sorta parody kinda hipster/hippie themed work I see all over the internet. I did a lot of research too for this comic. A lot of psychology research and some on mythology.

The first story, Forgive or Forget I was aiming for an alice in wonderland type plot. It really wasn't very in depth in character development but it did give some idea to the world and what characters would appear in the sequel. The sequel, Welcome Back, is the meat of this comic story really. It goes into darker territories, character's struggle with mental illness, more specifically self image in a world of dreams. Such things like the main character Jacob always presenting himself as an egotistical narcissistic villain obsessed with forcing people to like him in his dreams when in real life he's a depressed youth who struggles finding friends.

[El_Psy_Congroo]

Knights started out as an idea for a video game kinda like Final Fantasy and Monster Hunter. But I wanted a really good story so I started making some characters, some I had already cooked up. The game proved too ambitious but I really loved the characters so I decided to tell the story as a webcomic. I'm not going to talk about the characters because its a character-driven story and that would give away the plot. But I'll talk a bit about the world building since they don't really know how their world came to be.

The setting took a while to figure out. Eventually I based it around an observation that in this day and age, despite the fact that so many of us have access to a wealth of history, we seem to keep making the same mistakes. So I imagined a world where the majority of written history is lost.
Due to global warming the seas rise at an exponential rate, changing the landscape and causing the destruction of most coastal cities. Fights over scarce resources lead to wars and nuclear detonations. Vast waves of immigration and refugees change the demographics of many regions. Centuries later, due to continued catastrophes, there are only a few bastions of civilization left, essentially city-states. Most people outside these city-states face extinction in the face of monsters that attack humans on sight. The origin and their hostility to humans remains unknown (for now). Before the drastic population bottleneck, there was a decent period of history where all information was digitized. Because digital technology is too complicated for the humans remaining to figure out and reproduce, absolutely nothing is known about this period. The few physically written documents that survived, and whatever knowledge was passed down generation to generation, are the only things left of the past.

[DeputyRust]

The main idea of Freak of Nature comes from looking about the world from a more innocent and loving view through the eyes of our main character Ben.

I also wanted to work on a story where you learn about the world with the character, and learn about the character with him as he recovers his memories. It's basically inspired through gameplay of Mega Man X, where you formed a bond with E game's character, I want people to form bonds in a sense with Ben.

Plus, i wanted to try to help make a comic with a character who doesn't really understand why there's hate or why people dont seem to try understand each other, especially with how things are going on nowadays where it seems like it's black or white and right and left, no middle ground to try to meet each other in. I thought a character who had no memories and there for no experience would be able to look at things in a new light, removing completely those prejudices and seeing love and hope.

The name Freak of Nature does come from Ben's abilities and what he is, but the main title and his character stem from not so much his abilities, but his attitude. He's an odd one out in the world in a sense now, no longer of the norm, fitting him into the title of freak of nature, as in the nature of our society today. He's a freak of nature because he is unusual and alien in this modern day

[vongcw]

Ahahah! Well I won't spoil Aetherwarbut give a bit of my writer's thought process to it's themes: Harry Potter meets Cthulhu.

[]

I think a lot of people see the Lovecraftian influences at this point. Horrible otherworldly cities, creatures the human mind find horrific to behold, and of course his subtle, deeper tone (that will creep in later) of our slow, inescapable, unavoidable fate of being drawn into the chasm of meaningless void.

But not everyone sees the Harry Potter side besides what will be the adventure of three young talented individuals having a crazy adventure in a fantasy setting that mixes everyday elements with the magical.

What I remember Rowling saying was that despite the highly imaginative and colourful world of Hogwarts, the Harry Potter series was actually about death. How it came into people's lives and affected them. Dunharrow is about that too. How death motivates, how it creates fear, how it releases, how it serves, how it enslaves, how different people treat it.

When I first wrote the story this was perhaps the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted a bunch of characters with cool titles like Enchantress, Wizard, Warlock, and Alchemist (all have maintained in the writing), but as the characters grew and crystallized, the book demanded a deeper theme. And here we are lol. And I'm really glad for it. It is a theme that has played greatly in my life, and one of those themes that unite us all. Thanks Rowling!

[mariusthered]

I hit a mile stone today! my comic Talesfromswipecity has been on Tapastic one year today! Yay!

at present i have published thirteen seasons of my drama comic and I'm working now on season 14 as for spoilers....

coming soon ( in season 14 )
Murder... teenage nudity ( on a roof top ) .... police Drama .. School hi-jinks and super hero action!

[efdvorsky]

Usually, when I introduce Cosmic Fish in comicbookhour or webcomicchat, I tend to say it's a comic about monsters, identities, and healing and it's true but there's a lot I'm obviously avoiding for now while the story is still stretching out with its ideas. The concept of the "monsters/ghosts" already detaches from the typical story by removing the concept of monster hunter and only hinting from the perspective of one of these creatures who tends to avoid conflict after a series of horrible experiences in the past the comic is currently showing (some). So at first it's a lot of "hearsay" of what she's been told or what she's technically and indirectly telling the reader to believe based on her certainty and her questions, and not because it's just convenient at the time. (I hate stories that purposely avoid characters from asking the obvious questions, it just turns them into plot tools)

As the story progresses, you start to see cracks in the character's statements (all of them) as they all find themselves in a gray area: the reality of one of the ghosts is that humans are awful, the other one sees no problem as they were raised by one, another simply doesn't care but shifts the blame of their situation on the guardians that protect the planet, eventually you start to see the guardians' perspectives (as they choose to take care of the ones who are "SUPPOSED to exist" and not ghosts), so on and so forth. And as the characters start having each other's realities clash, they begin to grow and form new opinions throughout the story as well as grow themselves by starting to question their thoughts/actions, and in extension, how they can affect others. (This begins to cover their own identity (be it mental, gender/sexual, etc, and how to heal from a dark mental state of doubt, anxiety, and depression).

And the mental state of the ghost is by far the most important bit of the characters. How they find themselves in their state of mind reflects how they start to physically change and in turns extends the question is "THAT who I really am/meant to be?" Which is really why the term of "ghost" is used more often rather than just "monster". It's how they view themselves as something that SHOULDN'T exist, and if it reaches a point of monstrous (again based on perspective of what that means) , something that CAN'T exist nor it can be "saved". (the latter is important too)

So I can only cover the explanation of how I introduce the comic to the readers, but there's SO MUCH I wish I could cover, but if I'm confident enough to share the tidbits of how ghosts work, at least know that it's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a complicated story, I guess? And the focus at the end of the day is characters trying to uncover what it really means to be happy and in the end, who they are and can be in a grander scale. The story IS the characters rather than the world they live in which is full of story and its own history but you rarely get to experience THIS bit first hand (since it doesn't affect the characters) but rather the worlds they choose to create. So it's highly a story about perspective......metaphoricallyandliterally.

By literally I mean...space is involved. And then science kicks in. And then things get crazy. And it's so fun but this is entering spoiler territory, but it begins to clear up why the plot itself is shown in different points in a timeline rather than a chronological order.

I'm so sorry this is long D|

Tl;Dr: It's a story about a person's view of oneself/how others see them based on their own perception of reality, and how they can choose to react to the world around them with the knowledge obtained. Also, space is awesome but it can cause existential dread.

[respheal]

Well, to start with, the tagline for my comic is "Think quickly, but above all, think." There's a good reason for this: For one, it's an extremely important phrase in-universe for a certain character, but also because once you've got a few pieces of info about how the world of Galebound works, a little bit of thinking reveals the bigger picture. I get reaaaaaaaally giddy when a reader figures things out and I love reading the ensuing "oh shi--" fridge-horror reactions xD Someone's already figured a lot out and their shocked realization sent me into a fit of evil-cackling.

So, no direct spoilers for you, but here's how magic works in the world: Magicians can only use it when commanded to by a Nobleman; Magicians literally cannot disobey Noblemen.

Why was Galebound created? Because once the idea was born it had to be told. Seriously these characters are holding my brain at gunpoint send help. Unfortunately for said characters, this story will break and rebuild them. The two main characters, in particular, are going to learn some harsh truths about the lies they tell themselves and the hypocrisy of their actions. My main hope for readers is that they empathize with the main characters; hopefully I've written them to be human enough for that because, magic and fantasy aside, that's what they're supposed to be: human.

[otometracker409er]

I'm glad that people are interested in telling why/how they wrote their story!
It's very interesting to what creators have to say and want to get out for their readers or other creators to see.

I'll like to share one of my story that will go on for a long time.
It's called SPACE FALL.
Originally, it was suppose to be a love story about two people breaking out of a spaceship and being the only two left in the spacecraft. They're supposed to float in space without no connection to any life in space.

But, that story was too boring so I changed it and made it as those two characters, living in a community environment. There are many communities of environments for many kinds of people even aliens.
The girl has a robotic hand and robot parents. She's an orphan.
She gets a job as a space officer, but only a newbie. And that's how she meets the guy.

Though, later on in the story, THEY will fall into space and will be left in a spacecraft where they have no connection to everyone. I'm planning that this will happen in the prologue and then reappear in the middle of the series.
Throughout the story, she will meet many people that will be part of the story and will tell their own story. I'm happy to say that there are these two other couples called the earth and the moon. The moon is a guy and he's from earth, while the girl is called earth and she's not from earth. Irconic....
They will tell their love story, etc.
Another sub-story will be about a girl who works with the main girl with the robotic hand. This girl is very cheerful and does little things for the space police force, though she gets transferred and she has to deal with a community environment that has no color. This is a utopia that is broken already. Though this is just a story that won't be in the main 'SPACE FALL', it will be separate.
I hope that this story will go far because this story has been in my mind for 2 years, yet I haven't drawn much for it.

[vongcw]

Many Happy Returns for your comic!

[CelestialNavigator]

How do I explain the thing I'm working on without giving away anything?
Okay, I will try and this will the be the worst summary ever.

Witch went to work, had a run-in with ninja-pirates and accidentally bought a gentleman. Gentleman was a bottle. And these are the least weird things that are going to happen.

Art-wise I will do a lot of things I hate. Such as buildings, multiple-point perspective, drawing actual fingers on characters and etc. Because only enough masochism kills my art-clock.

[hob]

This is like an idea in its earliest concept, but I had this idea of a romantic story that isn't truly romantic. If you read Madame Bovary, I wanted to have a style like that (minus the main character being a horrible person). It's still in the works, but as far as I would like, I wanted the style to be mixed philosophical understanding of the identity as well as korean drama.

[Mr_B]

As of recently, I find that a lot of my stories, written or drawn, tend to channel some sort of darkness inside me. When I say "darkness" I mean just that - things that I think about when I'm at my most hopeless. That doesn't mean I'm trying to write sad things; rather, through working on the stories I work out the issues, or at least put them on a page and let them breathe. In my current comic, said darkness is essentially at the core of the story, though this isn't very apparent at this point. Some of my most desperate ideas about life and existence in general form the basis of the antagonists' philosophy, whereas the protagonists represent the other side. And, of course, I'm trying to tie it all together into a story that would be interesting to read.

[tomatobird]

OOh thats a really interesting description! Like the romance part provides a framework for the story even if it's not necessarily the focus?

[tomatobird]

Started browsing your comic and I really like the way you're portraying the characters, and how their romantic lives intersect with their careers and other relationships, it feels very "adult" not necessarily in a nsfw way but in the complicated thing that life is when you are an adult making decisions and stuff. Also your style is pretty neat!

[tomatobird]

Hm for Agapetos, I'm interested in the tumultuous setting of 1st Century Judea, since it's super complicated and fascinating and I wanted to explore how various people from different backgrounds and social standings would react to it, thus the story is told from the perspective of a Jewish family as well as some local Romans and Greeks. Also, I thought it'd be great to have a story with Jesus in it that wasn't necessarily preachy/focused on conversion for once, and more about ordinary people.

Thematically I'm still kind of exploring it, but it's definitely about struggling to understand people who are different than you and dealing with hurting and being hurt by the social systems/hierarchy of the day.

[hob]

YES! That's exactly it!

[WasHNooB]

jk haha but if there is one thing I can spoil for our story The Dumpling King, its just there is a lot of feels I guess.
-WasH

[joannekwan]

Thank you!!!
I was inspired a lot by my friend's real life dating experiences, as she would often tell me about it. Can't get anymore real than real life, lol.