How I draw short comics, part one: planning and writing.

So you want to draw a comic and you don’t know how to start?
Let me tell you how I do mine!✍️🔥🐽🔥💪✨

You can use these tips for original stories or for fanart comics. I think that drawing fan comics of existing works is an excellent practice for storytelling. Since the reader already knows the characters and the world setting, you have a lot less work to do! Unless you’re writing an AU… hahaha 😝

Let's start talking about writing! This will be a bit long, I hope it won't be boring!

First of all… plan your comic! 📝

Describe your idea. How does it start? How does it end?

If you don’t have a clear idea yet, list all the things you would like to draw. Even if it's something like “I want those two characters to kiss, to draw dinosaurs and cool motorbikes” Listing those things will give you more ideas! Everything is useful!

➡️ How long will it be?

While you draft the outline of your comic, you should think about how many pages you want to draw.

If this is your first comic, the shorter the better. I started drawing comics for friend’s fanzines and those were less than 10 pages long. Short stories were a great practice! Now, for comics I plan to print later, I always try to draw around 20 to 40 pages, which is a good number for a stapled A5 comic.

Think about comics like some kind of art’s triathlon. Even if it's only a few pages, you will draw a lot! Doing comics is a composition challenge with anatomy, expressions, clothing, backgrounds,perspective… You can’t avoid a single one of those things.

If it is too long, you may get tired, lose the excitement or get distracted with new ideas... Your first comics will be your training, so my advice is to start with short projects to build stamina for the next ones.

🗓SCHEDULE A CALENDAR

Yeah this is boring but this is a step I never skip. Even if it's just for fun. Setting deadlines helps me to be focused on finishing the comic. So, get a calendar and set up deadlines for every stage of the comic.

Set realistic deadlines, take also in consideration having breaks! Since you will be your own boss, be gentle with yourself.

Also, if you don’t reach your own deadlines, don’t worry! Reschedule again and keep in mind how much time did it take to you for the next project.

Talking about the stages of a comic, these are mine:

Brainstorming ➡️Schedule  ➡️Script draft  ➡️Thumbnails ➡️Final Script ➡️Draw

We already talked about the brainstorming stage. I just write down the things I want to draw and try to outline a plot in just a few phrases.

Then I start the writing of the first draft of the script. I have three ways:

-The fanfic writer wannabe:

I COMPLETELY FORGET that I’m writing for comics and I just write whatever comes to my mind, not minding at all about the pages and panels the scenes will take. The good part here is that I think I write better dialogues and scenes this way, cons are that it's always LONGER than I want it to be. I always re-write and edit later.

-The space controller:

I list all the pages I want to draw and I describe the actions and dialogues that will happen in each page. But writing is less natural this way, lacks mood and atmosphere… I always re-write later.

-The “I’ll have to edit later anyway so I won’t put a lot of effort on it”:

I make a simple outline of the plot and I write the script in more detail at the same time I plan the thumbnails later.

Don’t worry too much about what you’re writing in the first stage. Your main goal here is to have a good backbone for your story. Here’s some basic writing structure advice:

➡️ Setup, conflict and resolution.

This is the basic spine of so many stories!

If we use this structure on a 15 pages comic, it would be something like this

(I think it's important to keep the setup and the resolution parts as short as you can)

Sounds complicated but it’s not. You can compress this structure in just a comic strip. Something like this!

Or maybe this!

And so on. Try to find this structure in the stories you like to understand it better!

This always works. (Yes, even with nsfw works, believe me.) These are just guidelines, of course, don’t obsess over it, but it’s useful to remember this if you get stuck while writing.

Here's an example of my planning for the CJC week comic. As you can see, I made a lot of changes later! That's because usually I change a lot the script while I'm doing the thumbnails. I'll talk about this in the next part of this journal entries.

Some final advice for writing.

For doing comics you have to READ A LOT OF COMICS.

Study your faves. Analyze what you like so much from them.

Try to focus on one character. What does this character want? Do they get what they want?

Keep in mind the five Ws: Who, is doing what, when, where, and why. The reader must know the answer to all of those when they’re finished reading your story.

Think about how to end the story before fleshing out everything else. Don't start drawing anything until you know how it ends. (I deeply regret every time I do that.)

Also, start as close to the conflict as you can.

Text takes a lot of space.

Really, a lot!!! It’s hard to calculate how many words you should write per speech balloon but try to write short phrases and avoid walls of text (they’re scary and boring). Don’t use 15 words if you can say the same thing with 10.

Remember that comics are visual media,you’re not writing a fic. Show, don’t tell, as much as you can.

Originality is in your own voice, in how you tell the story, more than the story itself! Don’t worry too much about being original...everything has been done before.And what has been done before is relatable! Your main goal is to be honest and to have fun, more than to impress others.

I also recommend you to google the Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling by Emma Coats, which is great advice. If you want to read more about writing scripts, you can try these two books:

Save the cat! Blake Snyder

Making a good script great, Linda Seger

Hope you find this useful! If you have any questions, I'll be glad to help!