Hi all, long time no see! I guess it takes a global pandemic to get me back into the writing habit. Speaking of writing…
For the months of April and June I plan on participating in the Webtoon Short Story Contest! I put my regular comic on hiatus and have been working on my short story for the last month. I plan on submitting for the “Heartwarming” category.
I always forget how difficult short story writing is. I’ve been workshopping the story quite a bit to make sure it has the right balance of story economy. I know when I do another run on the drafts, there’s going to be extra panels that will get cut or added later to help the pacing of the story.
My short comic is going to be a departure from my usual fantasy flair. It’s more slice of life. I also gave myself the added challenge of making it mostly silent so I can concentrate on creating a visual story. I am also going for only 3 episodes instead of the 5 max because I don’t want to burn out on the process and 3 episodes is perfect for following the three part story arc.
The 20 winners will be included in a featured anthology, which I would love to be included on. Not to mention a cash prize. However, I’m sure the competition will be fierce, so I am mostly doing it for personal growth and hopefully a boost of audience for this comic and my ongoing series.
One of the main reasons I don’t have too much hope for making the top 10 for the categories rely on the judgement criteria. While I can control the first two criteria (70% of the score), I fear that audience engagement will be my downfall as there are creators participating with followings in the 10k-100+k range. It’s hard to feel like there’s a chance when you see those odds, but again, I remember that I have a lot of personal gains for this contest.
Anyway! I will post previews of my drafts when they get past the “ugly stage” of development.
ETA: Since wrapping up on the contest entry, I had a lot of thoughts about the contest experience, which I wrote in this post.
Megan Frauenhoffer 
I wanted to enter this contest, too but the audience engagement part makes me unhappy. I don’t think that’s a very fair way run it.
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I definitely get it from a marketing standpoint. The more invested the readers are in the contest, the better. It’s just a bummer when it tips the scale that much for more established webtoon artists.
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