I Suck at being Concise

This drives me nuts. I'm almost incapable of doing a "little project." Like with my webcomic Boy Aurus. The first chapter was supposed to be short, the plot was pretty simple with two wizards fighting each other but ended up with 41 pages. Chapter 2 is 24 pages so far and the end of the chapter always seems like it's farther and farther away despite the fact I already chopped out a ton of elements unimportant to the plot.

My other projects/ideas/plotbunnies are also hopelessly long.

And I have the attention span of a goldfish so I don't know why the heck I keep trying to talk myself into long projects that I know I am incapable of finishing. So far all I've learned is that traditional media makes me stick longer because I don't want to stop once I set up my painting stuff since if I'm opposed to anything in this world, it's cleaning more often than I have to.

I currently want to do a comic with white acrylic paint dry brush on black paper, but in the interest of not spending tons of money on tons of nice black paper, I want to write something short.

But nothing I think up ever seems to be that short!

Even the simple tiny concepts explode into something bigger as I mull over them.

x_x I just wish I could write a nice short 20 page or less comic. I can't seem to write anything short besides one-page gags (though I might cancel myself out with crazy ranting and raving in the Artist Description section below the short tiny gag comic).

First off, I wish I had this problem. I pretty much never get past the first page, if that.

Secondly, if you're interested in holding together storylines but being able to progress them a lot faster, head over to Schlock Mercenary to see how Howard Tayler does it. And check out Writing Excuses, the podcast he does with Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells - I think in one he says how much he edits his scripts beforehand, cutting out every non-essential action or dialogue bubble he can to maintain the four panel format.

EDIT: Checked out Boy Aurus. Love your art style.

edited 25th Feb '11 5:08:26 AM by Hedgewolf

Here are two solutions:

1. Leave Chapter One as it is, and make all the other chapters around twenty-pages or so. In manga, the first chapter is almost always around fifty pages, compared with the regular twenty pages, because its the pilot.

2. Split Chapter One into two.

EDIT: I am like you too! I sometimes get myself into projects I'll never finish, like my first fan-fic!

edited 25th Feb '11 5:02:16 AM by chihuahua0

Sounds like you need an editor. So here's how you do it yourself: Make a simple sketch comic, with say, stick figures. The pages don't need to be high detail at all, just set up like you usually would. When you're done, look at it, how much of it do you consider necessary? Cut out the bits that don't seem necessary, compress or expand panels as needed. The skill takes time to be fine tuned, but I can guarantee you'll get better at it as you keep trying it.

Once you've done all of your cutting, pasting, and general tinkering around, then draw the actual comic with the full detail drawings and text.

You say that you have a short attention span yourself. That may be a big part of the problem — look at whether you get bored with the main plot and start adding in other ideas because they're "more interesting", then have to resolve them before the main plot can continue. If that's the case, you simply need to force yourself to not digress, no matter how much more fun it seems like it would be.

My greatest flaw in writing is exposition. It trips me up so often that I rarely get more than a few words down. There's just so much information to get across in the settings I tend to use. Consider yourself lucky that your problem is writing to much rather than the other way around.

@hedgewolf: I've started listening Writing Excuses recently. @_@ stuff to mull about.

@Madrugada: I do digress a bit. >_> I felt very sad cutting out a lot of Mint's dialogue, whether or not he used to be a Double Reverse Quadruple Agent is rather irrelevant to the plot since it never catches up with him. The only important bit is that he's slightly homicidal and very protective of Niccolo since Niccolo has been given a very competent bodyguard because his father prefers his son to not be dead.

In general, I have a tendency to make up tons and tons of characters without thinking very hard about how they fit into the plot.

But I also seem to be terrible at thinking up a plot first. It's usually "I like drawing this dude!" to "let's make this dude do something cool!"