The point I'm unsure about is if she writes the story she does because that's where her own interests lay and she doesn't want to tell a different kind of story, or if she's unsure if she could tell a different story. I think she is capable of it, maybe she just lacks the creative inspiration. Or maybe the Patreon model doesn't incentivise her to do something different. I'm not sure.
I do think that most of it is her writing what she's passionate about. The common thing in all her stories are these gradual changes that call out changes despite not necessarily going through details. I know I've gone through phases where that was my preferred reading material (just like I've gone through submissive sissy phases, body swap phases, etc). And as a writer, I know that I often keep in my preferred wheelhouse when I'm writing for pleasure (which is one of the reasons I purposefully do exercises to expand my skillset). Of course, I have the luxury of not monetizing my works and writing at my own (glacial) pace. So me taking time to experiment doesn't hurt my income.
Genuinely, I think the main thing Melissa is lacking is an editor. That process of having your works dissected, and getting meaningful feedback or having a meaningful back and forth to determine whether the written intent is coming through is extremely important for improvement. Especially when you're already good. Public reviews really only go so far and considering the average reader doesn't have the experience or background to do so means that you're more likely to have your works (at least from a literary standpoint) get worse from feedback from your readers than improve.
But the reason I mention Maryanne Peters is because I'm a Patron of hers. They upload 3 stories a week. Sometimes the stories are just 2 pages long, others are 8 pages long. Sometimes they're barely that. They're quick in and outs. But because of the sheer volume every month you get a few stories that are really fun and interesting.
So I'm gonna rant a little bit, and I apologize as I hate "yucking someone's yum", but I've butted heads with Maryanne in the past and every interaction has left me with an awful taste in my mouth.
Generally, it drives me up the wall how she complains about not getting enough reviews, and if any review actually calls out mistakes or areas of improvement, Maryanne gets extremely defensive about how it's just a quick short story and because she's just writing a quick story people shouldn't point out spelling mistakes or flaws. Ever since she started posting, I've been unable to use Fictionmania's SWI listing because it's been completely flooded with only her works. Even if I wasn't immediately turned off whenever I see that she's the author, not having a synopsis doesn't help in the slightest. If you are a fan, good luck ever finding that story again, especially now that she's posted over 1300 "stories" (I gonna gatekeep a bit here: back in the day, if you were writing all these drabbles/short stories, you'd compile them into an anthology just to avoid flooding a site with only your works). Writing short stories is a legitimate art form and an excellent exercise for "less is more" when improving your own writing. But from the bragging about every story count milestone, the fighting in the message board, and the fact that most of the caption rewrites don't actually develop the story in a meaninigful way beyond the original caption, she's rubbed me the wrong way.
One last note: There's something that drives me a little crazy that she's very proud of writing short stories (as if it's harder, or something that takes massive skill). And yet, a huge percentage of her work is rewriting a captioned image, which is already a short story and often a very effective short story, and making it slightly longer.
But tying it to this topic: The reason why making comics is "hard" is because comic writing is different from normal text writing: It has a long history of people iterating and discovering different story telling methods unique to comics. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to learn it. Far from it. But it's a good idea to take advantage of the history to not have to reinvent the wheel. I always complain about this, but I think the biggest thing Melissa and other people doing TG comics (or even captioned images) could learn is to implement time compression. That and cut down on internal thought bubbles/monologues when the image is showing us already.
Exploring concepts is very fulfilling as exercises. I do it all the time and have a lot of fun (and I think grow as a writer) by testing myself. But most of that stuff are works I don't consider "fit for consumption". Maybe I'm setting my standards too high, but generally, a lot of my drafts are just that: drafts. Just like an artists sketchbook, it's something that's used for self-growth, not really useful for being posted except to people specifically interested in the behind the scenes stuff/teasers.
Writing is problem solving. The longer the story, the more problems there are to solve. Without a length limit, the trap of long form writing is that there's always more room to retcon or justify a previous mistake. So it's a blessing and a curse. I don't think long works are inherently better or worse, but if you aren't cognizant of the potential pitfalls, it's easy to abandon basic tenants of good writing.
This is something you see with any long runner. Just about every long running show, book series, comic series, etc has fallen into the trap of forsaking core tenants of good storytelling to justify something else. Whether it be to kickstart a spinoff, justify a plothole, setup a sequel, or introducing contradictory characterization just because the story has gone on so long it's easy to contradict yourself... This doesn't mean this has to happen. Just like how short stories don't
have to be shallow even though many fall into that trap. But without (good) editors, it's very easy to fall into these natural traps.
