Writing advice! How HTBAW came to be

Sorry I haven't been around much this month! I was helping with a local fundraiser, but now that that's done, my load has lightened considerably :). I got a message in response to my post asking for ideas on what writing advice you guys might be interested in, so today I'm going to talk about the history of How to be a Werewolf!

I had been wanting to do a webcomic for like, a decade? before I started HTBAW. Mostly because I've always been pretty decent at writing, and good at drawing, and I knew I could make a great product if I had the time. Finally, my friend Neil was tired of hearing me complain, and he offered me a challenge. (Neil enjoys challenging people to things to help them accomplish stuff...mostly his wife and myself, though!) Neil told me to make one comic a week for 20 weeks. That sounds like a long time, but it really wasn't! And I did! They're all hiding fairly far back in my Tumblr, but I made a comic a week for 20 weeks. It really helped me try out different styles and see how long it took me to make different styles of comics.

Some of you might have seen this kicking around on tumblr! It's been almost 3 years and it still gets notes from time to time. You can see that these two went on to influence Marin and Elias, eventually. And really, this comic ended up sort of starting my brain on fire.

My main goals for the story I wanted to write were this:

1) Female protagonist. I was tired of stories about dudes.

2) Everybody's an adult. I was tired of stories about teens.

3) Potential to go on for however long I needed it to, but still with a coherent story arc and a general direction. I wanted something that pushed forward and wouldn't stagnate immediately.

4) If I went with werewolves, I wanted to take things in directions that I hadn't seen before. Making anything feel "new" with werewolves is a big challenge, but I felt like I mostly kept seeing the same tropes repeated over and over.

I thought on these things for awhile, and I did a few more test comics. 

Things were getting more concrete here, though Malaya wasn't quite nailed down, and she looked kind of Hispanic? The glowing eyes came into play, too. This page was mostly to mess around with space and action. Actually, coloring this page kind of convinced me to lay off color, at least initially. I didn't feel comfortable going full color right off the bat. I also hadn't gone nuts drawing hair yet.

I think there was another page before this one that had Mal struggle with transforming, but I can't find it completed, so you get this instead.

I was trying to work out color, again, and getting better at drawing everyone consistently. This also started the idea in my mind for concentrating on hands as the first point of transformation.

So, by this point, I had three characters. I was tossing around the idea of the title How to be a Werewolf to my friends, with the idea that Malaya (who maybe had a name by this point, IDK) was struggling to figure out how to actually be a werewolf. THEN, I started working backwards. Working backwards is a great way to fill in gaps! If you know where you want to go, work back to find out what would get you to that point. So, she needed to be bad at being a werewolf...so what if Malaya had grown up not understanding werewolf stuff? Okay, so why would she not understand werewolf stuff? Well, what if her parents were human? Okay, so why would she be a werewolf? Well, what if she were bitten as a kid, but didn't get taken? 

And on and on and on. That gave me a place to start. Then, I just kept asking myself questions until I'd answered most of them. 

1) I wanted Marin in the story, but how would she fit in? Well, maybe she lives in Malaya's town. Okay, but why wouldn't they know about each other? What if Malaya isn't able to be detected? Why wouldn't she be able to be detected? What if she were under a spell? Who would put a spell on her? What if there was a witch nearby...AND THAT took off in some directions, obviously...Okay, well I wanted Marin to not be alone, and now we have witches, and we need someone to figure out WTF is going on as far as magic goes...what if she has a girlfriend who's a witch? (Right about here, I should have thought harder about everyone's name starting with a Ma- sound, and that half the cast ended up gay...oops?)

2) I wanted Elias in the story, and I wanted him to be gay, and I wanted him to have a love interest. Well, what if Malaya had a brother? Problem solved. What's her brother's deal? He's protective, but kind of a dick! Excellent. How does Elias find out Malaya's a werewolf? Work backwards from the spell...he can't tell she's a werewolf...but what if he CAN, it just takes a little longer...and the whole sniffing scene formed in my head and snowballed from there.

Admittedly, by the time I got done with Chapter 1, I only had the bare bones. I knew there was a witch in the woods, but I didn't have her motivation figured out yet. I knew Aubrey existed, but didn't flesh out the rest of her pack and her motivations until like...Chapter 4 or something. I knew that once I got underway, I'd have some stuff to figure out, but I had a place to start. 

THEN, for good measure, I went to the library and checked out some books on writing and structure so I wasn't flying more blind than I needed to. Check out some of the sources I used on this post I wrote back in Chapter 6!  

From there...I just went balls to the wall, basically. I picked Tuesday/Wednesday, because at the time, I wasn't working those days typically, but I WAS working the weekend, so that gave me some leeway. I liked the idea of two pages in a row instead of leaving myself too much time to slack in between. 

Hopefully that helps some of you guys understand what went into making this comic come to be! It wasn't a quick process, but probably faster than a lot of people. The biggest hurdle is overcoming your fear, and being willing to toss bad ideas out the window. There's a good chance that if you can't find a way forward with whatever story you're working on, the answer is in your characters and their motivations. Keep your plot pretty simple. HTBAW has a very straightforward plot, it's just told very thoroughly. I've tried to pace it so that you get pieces of the whole picture as the story moves along, but that those pieces are clearly headed somewhere. People like to read a story that feels full of possibilities! And I try to keep every character's wants, needs, and motivations in the back of my mind as I write.

For example, I've had Marin and Marisa's backstory in my head since like, chapter 2. I wanted Marin to be a little clueless about basic things like TV and popular media, because I love characters like that, but I worked backwards to find a motivation that felt like her cluelessness wasn't because she was dumb or unobservant. That landed me on the idea that she could have been raised in a cult or something, and it all spiraled from there.

Just keep asking yourself questions and filling in the answers. That's 90% of what writing a story is, anyway :)