Sudden Flash of Inspiration
Usually, I have ideas for one or two chapters of Nahast ahead of the current storyline; I have time to figure out the theme, goal, cool scenes and what I want to accomplish with it. This process usually takes me several days of random thought and inspiration, then several months of actual execution.
Well… today inspiration struck. Hard. Like a Mack truck.
I had the next episode pretty much laid out, but I started thinking that I wanted to squeeze in some aftermath to the current chapter, to bring closure to a few situations. Then the idea began to snowball. It grew during lunch, gaining cool scene idea after cool scene idea, then the theme to tie it all together came out on its own, dragging along the perfect place to drop a major plot point in the overall story.
So… the next episode is not going to be a fun action chapter peppered with some background plotting and the aforementioned major plot point dropped with not as much weight. It’s going to possibly be one of the darkest, most intense and full of pathos chapter so far, and in a very long while.
I’d give details, but I’d be spoiling, and in any case the current episode is not slated to end in at least 4 months at a steady weekly update pace. The only living soul I’ve told is my girlfriend, who is both my muse and my soundboard.
Which brings me to a second question: I thought to do as many other webcomics do, which is a full chapter update rather than a weekly update. I’d ask readers for patience and other artists for guest strips while I do the whole package to be uploaded in a single go. THe idea is that the story is going to be a very cathartic episode in the lives of four of the protagonists, and a weekly schedule might dilute the emotional effect.
Accomplishing the deed is another matter, though… without the pressure of a scheduled update I think I could produce three pages a week, the thing would be how much pressure I will get when the story reaches that point.