PaulEberhardt at 8:49AM, Nov. 9, 2020

TV series always need some deadweight episodes to meet budget constraints or logistic ones. The best are those that are best at covering it up - having excellent writers on board probably helps, having excellent writers on board who aren't put off by having to adapt their storytelling choices to the available resources certainly helps. I don't envy them for their jobs.

plymayer at 7:21PM, Nov. 5, 2020

Story pacing is definitely a matter of taste. Some writers/stories do better one way or the other.

hushicho at 4:41PM, Nov. 5, 2020

If you're working on something with unlimited scope or a prolonged status quo, like superhero comics or many series, it has to be a bit uncompressed because you run out of things to say otherwise. But at the same time, passage of time is often inconsistent in such a medium, so it just presents another problem to deal with or ignore. I think pacing is something every author has to work out in their own way. Different stories, even with the same cast of characters and the same setting, will usually need to move at a different pace.

usedbooks at 4:57AM, Nov. 5, 2020

But webcomics will always have an endless feeling if you follow them. If they're published as a final product, rather than in-progress, they have a nice pace (often even more satisfying since webcomics typically have "payoff" on each page to keep readers returning).

usedbooks at 4:54AM, Nov. 5, 2020

I prefer miniseries and anime to most American series. They are a good length, and I know there will be a conclusion at the end of a season. American series have that nasty habit of putting profit over storytelling. They want to get picked up for another season, so they refuse to conclude anything. They don't even work toward a conclusion. There is no progress. Suddenly, they are cancelled and hastily write a "conclusion" on a title card where they don't even bother spelling the main character's name correctly. (Some Netflix series are changing the trend with self-contained seasons that conclude nicely but leave room for expansion.)

bravo1102 at 3:02AM, Nov. 5, 2020

Effective story telling is partly about discipline. Gotta rein yourself in from going on and on until you're frothing at the mouth and fall over blubbering away.(to use a Monty Python skit as an example)

bravo1102 at 2:59AM, Nov. 5, 2020

Considering that several comic pages would only consume a few minutes of screen time a 100 page comic could equal a 100 minute movie. A 200 page comic could be a series of maybe four one hour episodes. So we might not be translating comic to motion picture properly. I've read the Walking Dead series is padded out for the TV episodes compared to the comic. It's a TV series and that medium allows a lot of fluff that would be cut out of most anything else short of an 80,000 word novel. In webcomics there just isn't the kind of discipline you see elsewhere. A creator or team of creators only answer to themselves. There's usually not a third party editor yelling at them about deadlines and the keep it short and simple rule. Only show what the story absolutely needs and cut the rest. So a webcomic creator is free to wander all over especially if going on without a clear idea of where the story is going. It often ends up going around in more circles than a NASCAR race.

marcorossi at 1:14AM, Nov. 5, 2020

In my case, I think that the plots I instinctively write tend to be closer to that of a movie (with few important carachters and a well defined climax) than to that of a serie (with many story threads). But even so, I have problems writing stories of less than, say, 50 pages, and as I draw a bit less than 1 page per week this means that it takes me one year or more to produce a "short" story. I think this problem is common in webcomics.