How to Lose Readership (in Webcomics and elsewhere)
So there's this webcomic, right? really nice looking, decent enough storyline...
and today I have had enough. Last straw, camel-time.
The other day the writer puts up a page where one character (villain) is "monologing," you know the usual villain stuff. But his words are not good. They don't sound real. He knows he hasn't found the right words and just put the page up. When the villain quotes a famous line, the author cheerfully states he has no idea where the line is from but he "liked it."
Today he puts up a page and says "I don't like the first line, someone suggest something better for me." And sure enough, his readers offer him suggestions.
The pages look beautiful, the story was okay (if heavily Christian-centric preachy--not on the outside, but you can hear it in the background... and getting louder...)
But an author who tells me "I just threw a line on there, someone else fix it for me" is not worth my attention any longer. I have comics with passable art and fantastic writing that serve me better. If you can't tell your own story, I'm not interested in doing your job for you. I fall on the "substance" side of the "style versus substance" argument. And this is the crux of the story, where the heavy plot turns, and the writing MUST be spot on. It only gets harder from here. If it's failing at this point on the easy stuff, it's really going to fail later.
This is not the same as some comics where the pages are from a few years back, not recent, and the artist looks at a page with the eyes of retrospect and says, "today I would have done it different" or "I'm not happy with this part I did." At no time does the artist ask people to do their storytelling job for them. They're pointing out their maturity, their growth as an artist.
So, there it goes. I know several of these kinds of stories, beautiful images, no cohesive story. I know some of the people who make them. But no amount of shiny covers up lazy, or poor, storytelling.
Farewell, "Dreamland Chronicles." Yeah, you were shiny... but ultimately hollow.
and today I have had enough. Last straw, camel-time.
The other day the writer puts up a page where one character (villain) is "monologing," you know the usual villain stuff. But his words are not good. They don't sound real. He knows he hasn't found the right words and just put the page up. When the villain quotes a famous line, the author cheerfully states he has no idea where the line is from but he "liked it."
Today he puts up a page and says "I don't like the first line, someone suggest something better for me." And sure enough, his readers offer him suggestions.
The pages look beautiful, the story was okay (if heavily Christian-centric preachy--not on the outside, but you can hear it in the background... and getting louder...)
But an author who tells me "I just threw a line on there, someone else fix it for me" is not worth my attention any longer. I have comics with passable art and fantastic writing that serve me better. If you can't tell your own story, I'm not interested in doing your job for you. I fall on the "substance" side of the "style versus substance" argument. And this is the crux of the story, where the heavy plot turns, and the writing MUST be spot on. It only gets harder from here. If it's failing at this point on the easy stuff, it's really going to fail later.
This is not the same as some comics where the pages are from a few years back, not recent, and the artist looks at a page with the eyes of retrospect and says, "today I would have done it different" or "I'm not happy with this part I did." At no time does the artist ask people to do their storytelling job for them. They're pointing out their maturity, their growth as an artist.
So, there it goes. I know several of these kinds of stories, beautiful images, no cohesive story. I know some of the people who make them. But no amount of shiny covers up lazy, or poor, storytelling.
Farewell, "Dreamland Chronicles." Yeah, you were shiny... but ultimately hollow.