Creating a story and presenting it as a comic book are two fundamentally different activities. Whereas the author only has to concentrate on the contents of his creation when dealing with a novel, he has to take into account additional factors when developing a comic. In particular, special attention must be paid to the visual impression and the arrangement of individual panels on the page.
A comic lets you tell a story with pictures, so that one panel can often say more than a paragraph of text. Knowing how to lay out your comic will help you make comics that are easy to follow, fun to read, and visually appealing.
In this chapter, we’re going to look at the process of taking a story you’ve already written and preparing it to become an actual comic.
1. Breaking Your Story Into Chapters
One of the first things that we think about when creating our comic is what we intend to present as individual chapters within the story. Dividing the graphic novel into chapters is essential because it helps organize significant incidents while providing a sense of cohesion.
Each chapter should represent a self-contained story that relates to a particular issue or presents a new aspect of the mother plot.
I suggest that before you begin slicing your narrative into segments you will define what needs to be included in it. Do not try to capture all of the details, just note the essential plot points and how they are related. Once you have them all written down, you will have a better idea of what can be grouped into chapters and what would need to be separated.
Giving Each Chapter a Purpose
One helpful way to do this is to come up with a question to ask yourself as you work on each chapter. For instance:
Chapter 1 – The Beginning: What do you want to happen while introducing your scenario and main character?
Chapter 2 – The Problem: What goes wrong and prevents him or her from achieving his or her goal?
Chapter 3 – Rising Conflict: What happens that makes things more difficult and causes the main character to make a choice?
Chapter 4 – The Turning Point: What happens that changes everything?
Chapter 5 – The Consequences: What happens as a result of the decision?
Of course, you could also have five chapters, twenty chapters, or any other number. It all depends on what you want to accomplish and how you want to tell your story. The most important thing is that your chapters contribute meaningfully to your story.
Creating Conflict and Building Tension
Conflict is one of the essential elements of any story, as it creates hurdles for characters to jump over.
It can take many forms: not necessarily a fight or even a dangerous chase, but also a love triangle or a heated argument, a moral dilemma or a previously unknown secret that needs to be uncovered, an obstacle on the road to success.
In any case, as the narrative you create picks up speed, this conflict will grow more complex, revealing new details and complications, presenting characters with difficult choices and consequences of their actions.
And most importantly, resist the temptation to allow your characters to always win – let them suffer failures and defeats, so they have to reevaluate their course of action.
Knowing When to End a Chapter
You don’t need every chapter to end in a cliffhanger. Sometimes it’s good to end a chapter after a big conversation, realization, or when a character achieves a small goal.
But having an unanswered question or a sudden plot twist at the end of a chapter can entice readers to keep reading.
Make sure you leave your chapters on interesting hooks that make people want to read the next part.
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King
2. Writing Your Comic Script
Once you’ve got your chapters, you’re ready to turn them into script form.
Your script is essentially an expansion of the chapter ideas.
There’s no official right or wrong way to format a script. Some writers like to include lots of description; others go bare bones, using only dialogue and chapter hints.
Creating Scenes That Matter
A scene is a chapter segment that is tied to a story event such as a character finding a cryptic message or confronting a neighbor who may have witnessed the murder.
Like chapters, scenes should have a clear beginning and end and should contribute significantly to your story.
Before you do any writing, ask yourself what purpose the scene should serve.
What do you want your character to accomplish? What obstacles stand in their way? What, if anything, should change by the time your character reaches the end of the scene?
If you can’t think of a reason for your character to be where they’re in a scene or doing what they’re doing, chances are, the scene isn’t worth writing.
Writing Natural Dialogue
In many ways, dialogue is your most important tool, because it can accomplish so much. By writing conversations between characters, you not only reveal what these people are saying to each other, but also what they aren’t willing to say, how they act when they think nobody is looking, and how distinct personalities clash.
No two characters should sound the same, especially if they aren’t related in real life.
When putting two people in a conversation, avoid cliched sayings and let each character say whatever he or she wants.
Sometimes, the meaning of a conversation is found in what the characters are willing to say — and what they aren’t.
Connecting Your Scenes Together
Once you have your scenes written, you will need to tie them together into a cohesive story.
A good story has cause and effect; that is, one event leads to, or influences another.
Perhaps the thoughtlessness of one character will come back to haunt them or everyone, in the end. Maybe a throwaway line by a minor character will come up in a crucial chapter.
While you shouldn’t overdo it, though, don’t make it unnecessarily complicated either. No one wants to read a needlessly convoluted mystery in which you have planted every possible clue for the reader to find.
Give the reader some credit for imagination, but make sure that, at every step along the way, enough information has been given for the characters’ actions to make sense.
Revising Your First Draft
A first draft should never be revised. Wait! I mean, a first draft should be revised whenever you feel like it.
Seriously, though, your goal in putting together the first draft was to simply get your ideas down on paper. Now you should revisit your work with a more critical eye, looking for glaring problems.
Read through chapters and ask yourself whether things make sense.
Was there a character whose actions seemed out of left field? Are there parts of the story that lag? Are certain scenes inappropriately placed? Does every single thing the characters do seem logical and fair?
It’s normal to cut and paste whole sections of text, or even to rewrite entire chapters.
Rewriting is a vital part of story writing. And remember, every great writer got his or her start with a first draft.
Final Thoughts
The process of writing a comic starts with developing a story that will carry a clear direction and conclusion, have well-thought plots and subplots, and keep the reader engaged. Organizing your chapters and subplots and writing descriptive and engaging scenes will help you accomplish this goal.
Do not be afraid to revise your work and re-develop plots and subplots, and the more you invest in your writing, the more success you will have. In the following chapters, you will learn how to transform your written story into a comic by learning the artistic techniques needed for the job.
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