Anonymous asked: Hope this is the right place to ask this. I do a webcomic. My current scene is confusing some of my readers (though not all of them). Do people ever ask you to explain your comics? I'm especially thinking of Rice Boy, "Why did the rice-people cut off their heads?" and that sort of thing. How you respond? I don't want to talk down to my readers, nor do I want to appear snobbish by saying "You can probably figure it out if you read closely." Help x.X
I try (and often fail) to avoid explaining anything essential outside of the comic itself. Good storytelling should make itself clear, or be ambiguous in a controlled way and require no outside explanation. A lot of the difficulty in making stuff in an invented setting, I find, is making a story that works while also effectively teaching your readers how the context for that story works. I’ve talked a lot about this over here: http://makingplaces.tumblr.com/ . Explain outside of the comic if you want, I don’t think it’s “talking down,” but be aware that depending on your ability to do that will be to the detriment of the consistency and structure of the comic.
