Why is it so hard to keep making manga, even when you love it?
Questions that came up in class | Manga Storytelling Fundamentals | Session 1| Question 01

Staying consistent can be challenging, especially when creating manga takes so much time and effort. To find effective solutions, you need to identify what's making the process difficult for you.
Perhaps the reward of finishing your manga feels too far away, or perhaps the workload itself feels overwhelming.

Let's explore these two possibilities and some ways to address them.

1. Is the reward too distant?
You're excited about the idea of completing your manga, but the finished result is days, weeks, or even months away. Meanwhile, the work doesn't always feel rewarding.
What to do: Make the work more enjoyable NOW, rather than relying entirely on the satisfaction of finishing your project.

Research by psychologists suggests that immediate rewards can help people persist with long-term goals. Here are three ways to apply this to manga creation:

• Try listening to your favourite music, a podcast, or an audiobook while inking, applying screentones, or cleaning up line art. Combining visual and manual work with something nice to listen to can help reduce boredom, maintain focus, and make long drawing sessions more pleasant.

• If drawing expressive faces or dramatic compositions is what you love most, make sure to alternate these activities with the tasks you find less enjoyable. For example, if you find drawing backgrounds tedious, don't do them all at once. Alternate between backgrounds and faces, or take a break from storyboarding to sketch characters, expressions, or scenes that might come in handy later. Find ways to alternate demanding tasks with the creative parts of the work you enjoy more.

• Instead of waiting until you've finished an entire chapter, associate your drawing sessions with a small, immediate reward. For example, after 45 minutes of drawing, treat yourself to 10 minutes of reading your favourite manga, enjoying a relaxing break, or drawing something purely for fun. This gives you something pleasant to look forward to after each session, rather than waiting until you've finished an entire chapter or project to feel rewarded.

When a project takes months to complete, enjoying the time spent creating it can be just as important for maintaining motivation as wanting to reach the finish line.

2. Is the workload overwhelming?
Even a short comic seems to take forever. Every page involves so many decisions and technical challenges that progress feels painfully slow.
What to do: Identify where your time actually goes, then simplify the most demanding parts of your workflow.

• Track how much time you spend on different stages of a page: storyboard, sketching, backgrounds, inking, and corrections.

• If you repeatedly struggle with the same backgrounds or locations, prepare reusable references.

• If detailed artwork slows you down, ask yourself which details genuinely contribute to the storytelling. Not every panel needs the same level of detail.

• If your current project exceeds the time you realistically have, consider reducing its scope rather than abandoning it altogether.

Make the workload sustainable by removing unnecessary effort, not by forcing yourself to work faster.

These problems can also overlap. You might feel overwhelmed by the workload and frustrated by how long it takes to see results.
You don't need to change everything at once. Start by identifying your biggest obstacle and testing one adjustment to your workflow at a time.
The goal isn't simply to work harder. It's to find a way of making manga that you can sustain long enough to finish what you start.