NO.1 writing something I hate

Ever since 2020, when I was at the tip of 13, I created a story out of two random characters I drew. Ever since then, this story, Antagonism, has continued to develop and grow and now I'm planning to do both a webnovel and webcomic for it.

There's about 7 arcs total and I've been stalling for yeaaaarss cause I'm trying to develop this thick story of 200+ chapters because I really get to writing. Needless to say, I'm fucking pissed!!!!!!!!!!!!

April 5th marked the 4 YEARS ANNIVERSARY of the development of Antagonism, and the reason why I don't even have the first arc done is because it SUCKS SO BAD!!!!!!!!!

Before I had even planned about doing the novel and only stuck to doing a webcomic, I wrote out about 10-20 different scripts, all of which, never got far, because I kept having to rewrite the FIRST CHAPTER,,, all because it was SO BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then here comes the novel, same thing. Rewriting the first chapter or the first few chapters over and over again because it was HOT ASS!!!!!!!!

2023 came around and I was like, you know what? Nothing's going to go far if I keep playing this game. I need to get this shit done!! With an estimated 30-40 chapters for the first arc, I created a year-long schedule for how many chapters I needed to get done. I watched this youtube video from ana neu about planning out a novel chapter by chapter and honestly, best thing ever. That's what helped me organized and kept going. Back to the yearly schedule thing, yeah, about that. I didn't really follow it and only locked in by December... whoops....

And I did promise my friends that I was going to have it done by the end of the year, but the second I started to actually have the motivation to work on it? A nuclear bomb of school issues hit me. To clarify, I'm both an IB student and dual enrollment student. If any of y'all don't know what either of those mean, just know, work = absolute hell, especially for a last minute person like me (whoops).

Honestly, I'm great at creating time management schedules. But when it comes to following them? Not really, clearly. 

So basically, I barely had a few chapters done by the end of the year. And all my friends, they asked me, "When is Antagonism getting done?" "December is here Axium!!" And I told them, 

"January. By the end of January, I'll have it done."

Spoiler alert: I did! (sorta)

I was being serious this time, and everyone could tell I was being serious! With the amount of chapters I had, this time, I was on a chapter a DAY schedule. Not like my previous, one chapter every 2 weeks or one chapter a week schedule that I thought was rigorous for me, but A CHAPTER A DAY! Eventually that schedule was racked up to 1-2 chapters a day! And I was so serious, that I ACTUALLY FOLLOWED IT. 

I was on my laptop every minute, typing away up until 4 A.M. (Note: I typically used to sleep at 10 P.M. I think my sleep schedule started deteriorating from here), I cancelled plans, I skipped meals, sometimes even showers, just to make my deadline!

I wanted chapters to be short, about 2K words because I know I'm a sloppy writer and I can't write much detail (plus, it's a webnovel), but some cases it got insane and I ended up having not just 5K, but 10K WORD CHAPTERS!! WHAT THE HELL!! Obviously, it was excessive, and those chapters could be split. But I just wanted to keep it together either way cause I wanted to say I had like 30 chapters instead of 40. Worse thing is, I CUT DOWN THE STORY OF THIS ARC 10X SHORTER because this is the arc I hate the most (I'll get into that later) and the arc that I want to be the shortest.

Then as the end of January approached, almost all chapters complete except for 1 or 2 non-essential chapters, totalling 100k words....

A terrible beginner writer, writing an entire first volume of a size of a novel, 100K words, in a month...

It sounds like a pretty great achievement right, to my standards at least? 

But there was nothing to feel achieved about, nothing to be proud of,

Because the story was UTTER SHIT. 

Needless to say, this is my first draft, I didn't consider it my final product, and I didn't upload it anywhere or let anyone see. I know I have this issue of always hating things I make without knowing its value, I end up realizing later that it's not that bad and its just my artist mindset, but after months later I KNOW 100% this was BAD.

I was so insanely drained, so tired, I decided, I needed a break.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I'll try again soon in a few weeks or so (cause this is my life's passion! I still had the urge to work on it!) just so I can reread it once my mind is clear and see what was wrong. I wanted to have the second draft done by the anniversary and by deuteragonist's birthday, which is April 5th, but obviously I didn't make that deadline. Eventually, a few weeks into February when I was reviewing my first draft and writing my own critiques on it, I came across a Clip Studio Paint comic contest for $3K and I was like hey, first competition, why not try it out?

Now this story isn't about that competition, that's for another blog post, but I will say it ended a similar way as the novel situation (hard work + sacrifice = no good results, life is unfair!) 

The contest ended up taking up both my February and March, so I couldn't 

In came spring break at the first of April to the 8th, and this was my break from the comic contest. The contest shenanigan lasted till the 31st, so I wanted to let myself chill during that time. Then came the past two weeks where I was hit with a school work nuke due to deadlines that approached and trying to fix up my missing assignments from the contest era (again, will be talked about for another time)

Now for my actual rant after that long exposition more excessive than my 10K word chapter, 

I HATE THIS GODDAMN FIRST ARC!!!!!!!!

I've been rewriting this shit over and over and over and over and over and over again, and NOTHING ABOUT IT IS SATISFACTORY!

I've listed so many ideas, changed so much, included so many different possibilities, made 10 different chapter planning charts, every idea I KNOW was bad, I KNOW nobody would like it, and I KNOW I will always hate it!!! 

Sometimes, it just feels like it's impossible to write this out, because if I can't do something  myself, I need others to help me, but OUTSIDE HELP BARELY EVEN WORKS!!!

Most advice gets me to DO something, but none of it actually leads to anything big to help me change the story, only to get me working on it properly. Plus, any idea suggestions are 98% useless cause it ends up not working out. I don't know I thought it would work out anyways, my worldbuilding and characters are too thick and so are my vague goals with the story. 

AND I DON'T BLAME ANYONE WHO GIVES ME ADVICE AT ALL!! THIS ISN'T A COMPLAINT AGAINST THEM!!! I LOVE THEM ALL!! But I KNOW that this is my story and my expectations, and I can't expect anyone to carry me in any way because my idea of the story is different from theirs, and sometimes, it's frustrating! 

I don't want this story that I want to be legendary, the story I want to be my representative, my life, my spirit, to be PURE JUNK!!

You know, I've seen this one piece of advice floating around and I feel like this advice may be personally provided to me one day, it was something along the lines of;

"Just stop working on it! Work on something else, or just finish it as is and just accept it! Or scrap it! It'll be good experience for your next work!"

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT????

Like I get taking a break! I get working on something else! I get pushing through your first draft just to have it done! I did that! I understand that! It's super helpful!! 100% would recommend! That's not it! Some people are- you know what, maybe I'm being delusional or something, and nobody actually says this. 

But there's a reason why I keep retrying on this, there's a reason why I want it to be so perfect, 

Because this is my livelihood! This is the reason why I'm into comics and writing in the first place!

I can go on a entire rant about how much this is a huge passion for me, how much I love this story, how much I want this to be the best and how much it runs my life, but I'm trying to be busy talking about hating on it right now, so I'll put that aside! 

No, maybe I am being delusional, I'm actually not sure if I've seen advice like that and I'm just mad at the air or misinterpretation, and I might just look stupid right now, but if I have, it's frustrating! Fuck you, stupid imaginary argument subject! 

I used to never understand how people could just drop one work from here to the next just because, because I can never let go of this, but when it came to some of my other stories I understand. Not everyone may have their main piece just like I do, so for some people, it might've just been simpler for them. 

It reminds me of the advice where people say '"just make your first comic, it's going to be bad either way just do it for experience," and I'd be like ? No? What the fuck? Do you not have a work that you want to represent you, one you're so passionate about that you want it to be so good? You'd make that kind of sacrifice on something so important to you?

But one thing they never clarify is that your first comic doesn't have to be that main thing, nor does it need to be PUBLIC. It could be a oneshot, it could be a comedy, or a short story. Once I become big in the future, I'll always clarify that to anyone asking me advice. Because actually, that's the best advice ever for anyone getting into comics. 

I'm glad I knew that myself, because I'd jump off a cliff if I followed that advice without thinking it through and decided to jump start on Antagonism and made and released the comic of the first versions of it. Seriously, I never want anyone to see that.

I think I'm derailing a bit, so I'll get back to what I was saying about my first arc. 

Basically, post comic contest hell and post school work hell, these past few days I've been redoing the first arc. And as I've screamed about before, I hate it and it's not working out.

This arc in particular is the hardest to write, mainly because it's so different from the rest of the story. It's basically an introduction, about two years behind the main timeline (which is the rest of the arcs).

Let me make this a bit clearer. 

Basically, I'm writing this worldly war story sort of thing. The plot is too much to explain so I'll say the main characters are soldiers in the military. However, this placed two years before they joined the military, and before they even met and became friends. It doesn't involve the conflict of the whole world as much, but involves a more personal conflict between the two main characters and someone important to them. 

Basically 1st arc = focuses on their personal issue (I have to save this person important to me)

Rest of the arcs = focuses on the whole world issue and the main conflict of the story AS A WHOLE (I have to end the war) 

Also, it's there to serve as an introduction to the universe, some of the characters, 10x foreshadowing for hell, have an impact on the two main characters and introduce them to each other (because their bond is just about one of the most important things in this story)

(I'm trying to exclude spoilers because I still plan to release this soon!) 

So basically, it's not a main part of the story I love, and the part of the story I find so exciting.

The characters are also much different, since it's two years in the past and they were younger then. Through the time skip, they also matured and changed a lot. 

I don't have a single idea as to what the enemy's plans are, nor their motives, nor their actions, or the reasoning for their actions. Theres three major characters where I can't fully conceptualize and I have to keep changing what their role is. I don't fully understand their personality, their goals, their place in the story as a whole. 

These three characters, actually, are a problem for me because they're the most poorly written characters I have. I love these three characters so much, but I can't understand them or figure out what I want them to be. I can't fit their place in the story but at the same time I really need them. There was a character in a similar situation once, her name was Adillion. She went from being a childhood friend of the main character, to the friend of his godfather, to the friend of his parents, to a servant of the queen, to a journalist who commits treason, to a friend of the main character's godfather's brother (goduncle?). She was worse than these 3, I had to force a place for her every time, and I realized she simply didn't belong here. I ended up having to cut her out, despite loving her so much. I don't want that to happen for these three characters though, because they have a stronger role than she did.

I think what makes this arc so vague is because I can't figure anything out, nothing makes sense. I'm constantly asking myself, why did the enemy do this? why did they do that? why would this make sense? why would that work? and then I just end up forcing an excuse that ends up being sloppy and having to ruin my characters just to make the excuse work. I don't like that. 

At this point, I don't even KNOW what I want in this arc anymore, what specifically I want to achieve. I mean, I know what I want the goals are, but not want leads up to those goals, if you can understand what I mean? I know but I don't know... it's hard to explain clearly, because I don't even understand it clearly myself!!

This arc is just me endlessly forcing everything together, all to the point where I'm forcing myself to go through it, and to try not to hate it. 

I have tried to cut this arc out a few times, but every time I think I'm able to do it it just feels like it wouldn't work since there's still a lot of important stuff going on + this has been in my head for YEARS and it has been this way for years, it's hard for me to change.

But now, I'm really wondering if I should put my energy into cutting it out again in the first place? There's major events that I really want to be shown, a lot of contrast and factors I want the readers to think about, but maybe I could simply cut this arc down and include it as a flashback? A short one, preferably split up, and not 100k words? 

I don't know, it sounds like a good consideration now since I've been going nowhere with this and I can't envision this arc being entertaining in any sort of way. 

I think I'll cut this post here! It's getting too long and honestly writing all that exposition watered down my fury too much so I forgot most of what I wanted to say! Plus, I'm now at the point where I've been typing something for so long that I forgot the necessary basics of English!
The cut the arc idea is starting to sound like the option to me, since I never really loved this arc anyways! I hate it! If I have to force myself through 30-40 chapters, then that means my readers will have to as well, and that's the worst thing to have a reader do in the beginning of a series!

So, I'll shut up now and expend my energy and mind effort on that! Closing for today!