Who is your main character?
What do they want?
What's stopping them from getting what they want?
A link to your webcomic would be helpful, too.
Oh, actually, my main webcomic is purely in the planning stage right now, though it's worlds more developed. Hmmm, well, my main character is a Magical Girl Petting Zoo Person named Kitoszie Dockinett. What she wants is... really nebulous at this point, considering I have no idea what the plot might be, or what might prevent her from getting that. But yeah, I haven't the slightest idea.
Everyone is Kay-fam.
So, your story is a complete mess... even though you haven't actually created anything yet. Right...
Aaanyway, the first thing I would ask you to consider is what kind of story do you actually want to tell? You've described it as a time-travelling murder-mystery story, which sounds interesting. But from the way you've described it, it feels like you're just cramming together ideas with no thought as to how they're meant to form a cohesive whole. Is a murder-mystery really the kind of story you want to tell? Or is it just what you've found yourself writing after slapping all your random ideas together?
To help you figure this out, I would also like to ask you to stop explaining everything in terms of tropes. If you can't describe something in your own words, you are never going to make it as a writer. That, and it makes you sound like an uncreative hack. Stop telling me how similar your story is to other stories out there, and start telling me what makes your story unique.
Further, if your story is a murder-mystery, then shouldn't your main character's goal be to solve the goddamn mystery? Shouldn't they be searching for clues, chasing leads and hunting for the truth? If a character was murdered, but the main character has no vested interest in finding out why, or by whom, then it's not a fucking murder-mystery, is it?
None of your 300-years-later AU, alien-from-another-canon, pseudo-science technobabble, furry Magical Girl worldbuilding fanfic horseshit matters, if you are incapable of telling a simple, straightforward story. For that, you need a main character with a clear and straightforward goal. And before you can decide on what that goal is, you need to decide what kind of story you actually want to tell.
I've always loved time travel and murder mysteries, respectively, and putting them together seems like a logical idea, so that is definitely the story I want to tell. And so, based on your advice and in the interest of that (and you were entirely right, of course- cramming ideas that I like together without any actual reason to do so is one of my largest problems as a writer), I'm cutting almost nearly everything else. Cutting the crossover fanfic origins, cutting the meta elements, cutting the AU-ness. This leaves me with this: a time travel murder mystery about magical girls.
And that's really cool; I love the idea, but when I write speculative fiction, my plots end up being somewhat worldbuilding driven. The whole AU-meta-nonsense was my lazy attempt at getting a foothold on that.
I think that means that I need to learn to try to tell stories on a much smaller scale, but that's a rather tough habit to break, and I'm not even sure if that's the problem in the first place. Do you have any input to offer?
edited 4th Jun '16 6:24:54 PM by Petricareless
Everyone is Kay-fam.
Well, generally speaking, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You start out with the exposition - the scene-setting and introduction of all relevant characters - then you show the characters chasing their wants and needs and coming into conflict with other characters or forces - the main body of the work - with the conflict rising in tension until it comes to a head, releases, and the story starts winding down - the climax, resolution, denouement, and ending.
I point this out, because a lot of newbie writers start out writing their stories with no clear idea how they're supposed to end. They just keep writing and writing, expecting that eventually some clear end-point will present itself. Meanwhile their stories trundle forwards aimlessly, introducing characters and subplots and macguffins left and right, in the vain hope that they'll prop up the audience's flagging interest. But it never works, because none of it is building to any greater point or purpose. There's no final resolution or payoff to be found. Audiences need some kind of closure, or else they'll just get bored and frustrated.
Yes, there are works out there that use a serial structure, with no real "end". But they normally split up their ongoing narrative into clear mini-narratives, setting up and resolving conflicts one after another. And yes, there are writers who can spin great yarns without deciding on an ending beforehand. But such writers usually have a knack for spotting a good ending while they're writing, and steering their work towards it. Alternatively, they're very good at taking all the raw work they've done up to that point, and viciously editing it into a coherent, driven narrative.
But you're creating a webcomic, so I assume you plan to upload each page individually. In which case, you don't have the luxury of going back and editing your work afterwards. You need to get this stuff right first time.
I also suggest deciding your ending beforehand, because it simplifies your workload a lot. Once you have a clear idea of your story's needs and boundaries, a lot of the mysticism of writing falls away, and you're left with pure problem-solving - how can I get my protagonist from the beginning of their story to the end? You can even shrink the process down to the level of individual scenes - what state are the characters in at the start of the scene, what state are they in at the end, and how can I get them there in a way that's dramatic and entertaining?
As for worldbuilding, I will tell you something that runs almost entirely counter to everything else you will read on these forums: worldbuilding does not matter. Drama does. Worldbuilding should exist to serve the needs of your story, not the other way around. Yes, you need to understand the context your characters exist in, but in the end it's all just set-dressing. If you were putting on a stage-play, you wouldn't spend time and money making sets for places the characters never visit, or costumes for characters who never appear, would you? So why spend hours, days, weeks, months or even years building an entire fictional world, if your story is just going to ignore most of it?
Once you know your story's overall arc, only then should you start worldbuilding, because then you can be sure that the elements you're building will actually be relevant to your story, and inform the plot. And if it later turns out that some element of your story is - *gasp* - unrealistic, who cares? If your central conflict is engaging enough, almost no-one. Your goals as an artist and storyteller trump the desires of internet pedants, who insist that every story bow to their specific worldview.
edited 12th Jun '16 2:48:31 PM by Tungsten74
I've debated putting this in World Building, but I figured this fits a bit better.
Okay, so my other webcomic- the one that I was supposed to be doing for writing and art practice- has turned into a complete mess. It's currently a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, to put it bluntly. It's a murder mystery involving time travel... and the setting is 300 years after an AU of my main webcomic (though this is only after a point, and this entire connection is backstory only). There's also an alien from another canon, in-universe Applied Phlebotinum (under that exact name), and Magical Girls / Boys. This started out as an MSPA fan-adventure (hence the alien from the other canon, who is a Prospitian, specifically), and slowly morphed into... whatever this is.
So, help? I can always elaborate if need be!
edited 31st May '16 7:48:05 AM by Petricareless
Everyone is Kay-fam.