These are all excuses. The act of writing daily is key, whether you’re writing for the webcomic, for a novel, or even a blog. Set goals for yourself and set milestones. Start with one page of script per day. One page of script should represent a single installment of your webcomic.
Build up a buffer for yourself so that the artist (if you’re not the artist) always has something to do. It usually takes longer to draw a webcomic than it does to write it, so the last thing you want is the artist waiting on your script.
When launching a brand-new webcomic, one of the first things to develop is a character bible. This document not only helps you understand your characters better and gives them three dimensions, it also assists the artist with the initial character sketches.
The character bible should list each important character that the story will introduce. If you plan to introduce more characters later down the line, that’s OK. It’s up to you whether or not to list them—you may not quite yet have a handle on those future characters. The important thing is to write about who will be the initial focus of the story.
Describe the character’s looks, personality, and motivation. Feel free to reveal all the secrets that your work contains, because nobody will see it except you and the artist. It may be adapted later into a section of the website, but the spoilers will be removed.
When working as part of a creative team, it’s important to standardize communication between the writer and artist. Most teams in comics have used the comic script format to do so.
Comic scripts are related but not identical to scripts used in the television and movie industries. One big difference that people should realize, whether coming in from those industries or not, is the concept of static panels.
Within a single comic panel, only one movement or action per object can occur. In other words, it’s impossible for someone to move across the room and pick up an object in one panel. It takes a panel to move and a panel to pick up. Better yet, chuck the moving and just have the guy pick up the object.
Another tip is to limit one-panel installments, also called splash pages. These should be saved for key moments.
Lastly, a comic strip has one to five panels, and a comic page usually has no more than six or seven panels. Panels tend to increase during a fast, intense sequence of events and decrease when the reader is meant to pause on a singular moment.
If you’re going solo, rather than as part of a team, it still helps to learn this format. It might help you get your thoughts on paper before the drawing starts.
Unlike a print comic book or graphic novel, webcomics have no finite page count. Your beginning, middle, and end need not fit between the staples of a 22-page comic book. You don’t need to write a story that’s exactly six issues in length to fit into a trade paperback. This freedom from rigid page counts, though, means that you have to be twice as aware of story structure. Just because your installment or page count is open ended doesn’t mean your story shouldn’t go somewhere.
There are two major approaches to storytelling. You can base it on the characters and their personalities, reactions, interactions, and quirks. The actual events that happen to the characters are important insofar as they give you more emotion and personality to play with. This sort of approach is called character driven.
The second approach is to have an overall plot, such as a quest, and have events move inexorably forward. The story is the thing. The characters, while important, are there to serve the sequence of events. This is called story driven.
Many quality stories cherry-pick from the best elements of both approaches, but there are excellent stories that are primarily one or the other. Whatever feels like the most natural approach for your story is the one you should go with.
Still another approach is to throw story and character out the window and just tell good jokes. This is the gag-a-day webcomic.
A story arc is a sequence of events told from the beginning to the end. Story arcs often come in layers. Your webcomic may have one huge over-arching story arc. Perhaps you have someplace in mind you want your characters to get, years from now. You know what their death scenes look like, and you want to get a chance to write those scenes someday. You know for a fact that two characters will hook up, but you want to take your sweet time getting there.
You may not have a longer arc in mind. You’re more interested in telling a series of stories until you run out of ideas, which may be never. That’s perfectly all right, because what we’re more concerned with are the shorter story arcs within that epic. These arcs represent the situations that your characters are in right now. Here’s how they solve, or fail to solve, their current problems, and here’s how the story alters their lives, if at all. These arcs can last one installment (though that’d be kind of tricky) and can take as long as weeks or months or years to complete.
The former “longer arc” approach can be compared to the Lord of the Rings books or movies, where there is one complete story to tell. The series of stories, or episodic approach, can be compared to the James Bond movies. Every movie is a fresh start and a new adventure for Bond.
Another note on the gag-a-day format. Gag-based strips represent a huge percentage of what’s popular on the Web. Many of these webcomics don’t have story arcs; some of them do. Some of them kill off main characters only to bring them back to life next time. There are no rules to comedy, so when writing a gag comic, feel free to ignore arcs altogether.
Regardless of how many installments belong in your story arc, it’s a good idea to structure the arc so that it follows three acts. You may already be doing this unconsciously. Most fiction is written in three acts. Those that aren’t tend to meander and leave readers feeling oddly unsatisfied.
In the first act, a problem, conflict, or goal is introduced to the characters. This is something that will be resolved by the end of the arc. This stumbling block is the heart of the story you’re telling and is one big reason the story’s being told in the first place.
Don’t start the story arc at the beginning. Yes, that’s right. Act One should start as deep into the events as possible. This technique is called in media res. By dispensing with all the boring stuff that happens before the real meat of the story, readers are immediately pulled in. If there’s any important backstory, the readers will be filled in as they go.
If this is the very first story arc of the webcomic, this is also where the characters are introduced.
Don’t begin with the characters’ origins, either, to use a word from super-hero comics. Revealing the characters’ backstories here will only delay the start of the story. Instead, the origin can be revealed over the course of the story where necessary, if you choose to reveal it at all.
In the second act, things go wrong. Obstacles are placed in the path of our protagonist. The hero’s life is in danger, or he has lost it all in pursuit of the goal. This is the part where you can’t be afraid to let bad things happen if it serves the story and doesn’t wreck the characters in the process.
Try to write Act Two as if the reader will have little idea how things will get fixed. In other words, make it seem as if there is no solution or no way out, unless the reader is exceptionally clever and guesses what is going on. Make things really bad for the heroes. Some writers sum up Act Two with three words: “Things get worse.”
Act Two should have a major dramatic or compelling moment, but not the biggest one. Save that for Act Three.
Act Three is where the protagonist rises above being beaten down in Act Two. This turning point leads to the climax of the story, involving the most dramatic moment of the story arc. The climax is where some sort or triumph or epiphany takes place. The characters affected by the story grow and change in some way. The quest is solved or at least advanced further for the next story arc to pick up. The arc’s conflict is resolved, but not always favorably or in a way the characters expect.
Following the climax, at the end of the arc, is a period of relief called a denouement. Think about the end of an action movie, where there are fire trucks and police cars, the main character kisses the love interest and punches the unfairly belligerent FBI agent, and the camera slowly pulls away to a bird’s eye view.
Or think about the end of many of the Harry Potter novels, where Harry sits down with Professor Dumbledore. The professor explains to a bewildered Harry what just happened during the story’s climax.
The basic problem/complication/turning point structure can be messed with a bit, but like any such rules, it helps to master them first so that you know what you’re breaking. In the end, most writers fall back on the three act structure because it works.
When writing a dramatic webcomic, within a specific story arc it’s important to consider the concept of rising action. Each of the key scenes or “beats” in your story arc should generally be more important than the last. That is, begin the arc with smaller drama. Save your second most dramatic scene for the middle of the arc, during Act Two, and your most dramatic scene for the end of Act Three. By not dropping the bomb too early, you ensure that people come back for more.
While your main story is progressing, you may want to have subplots involving one or more of the supporting cast members. The main plot, then, is called the A Plot, while the subplot is called the B Plot. These subplots can have arcs that run exactly parallel to the main story arc, but most writers have found that it’s more interesting to stagger them. In other words, when things start getting really bad for the main characters in Act Two, cut away for a moment and introduce a new situation involving supporting cast members. Or during Act Three, when things resolve for the A Plot, things get worse for the B Plot. Some A Plots and B Plots run entirely parallel and may share certain themes but don’t intersect. Some plots eventually join together and reach a combined resolution. It depends on the story.
It’s also common for a B Plot to take over the story completely, if it has just started to get underway as the original A Plot is finishing up. The point at which the B Plot takes over is where a new story arc begins.
Some writers like to introduce the next arc at the very end of the previous arc, as a sort of preview. This is less a case of a B Plot taking over and more of giving the reader a hook to keep reading after the denouement.
It’s also the case that a B plot can be long-term and can run for ages while multiple A plots come and go. Perhaps this long-running B plot finally ties into the main story, but not until the end of Act Three.
A flashback is a look into the past relative to the present day of the webcomic. It’s often a way to give meaning to present-day actions by relating them to past actions. It can give justification for a decision made by a character. It also allows development of characters who may not be alive or around in the present day.
Due to the daily or weekly narrative of most webcomics, an extended flashback sequence featuring characters in earlier incarnations can be problematic. New readers may be thrown off and think that this situation is the status quo. It also presents a problem to you, the writer: You may find the past too interesting to leave.
Some fiction writers abhor flashbacks in general. Stephen King almost never uses them, preferring to start at the beginning and reveal the past through present-day actions.
In manga, flashbacks are common. Often whole story arcs or even volumes are devoted to them.
If you do decide to use this technique, be sure to have the artist do something to the panels to make it obvious. Putting clouds or a design around the panels, making the panel borders white with black outlines, or putting an explanatory caption in each installment’s Panel 1 are all valid approaches.
If you find yourself enjoying a trip to the past, consider using it as a springboard to a new prequel series. Though running two or more webcomics at the same time is challenging, the fans may relish the opportunity to get to know characters even better.
During the course of your webcomics’ life, you may find the story drawing to a close. You still love webcomics and still want to do them, but your current webcomic is coming to a sort of natural conclusion. Or you may have intended it to be a finite series all along.
Creating a new webcomic and keeping the old audience is a challenge. The fans may have so much emotion invested in the old webcomic that they rebel against something new from the same creators.
As in other fiction, if the new series is a continuation of the old series, you may have an easier time holding on to readers. Retaining the original creative team on the new project is also a benefit.
You may also be loath to pull the plug if you’ve spent money on merchandise, convention banners, and so on (see Chapter 11, “Promotion”). You’ll have a hard time getting rid of the rest of your stuff with just the archives and no new installments.
Ultimately, though, webcomics creators create for themselves and not for an audience or a T-shirt. Your new series may end up being just as creatively and financially rewarding as the old, if not more so.
This brings up another point. Many creators try something new, if their old one just didn’t catch on, despite their best efforts. In this case, it may be wise to wrap it up and make something different. Don’t give up, though, unless you really have tried everything.
Writing and art go hand-in-hand to create the ultimate webcomic. Neither is more important than the other; rather, they share responsibility for victory or defeat. Writing webcomics well, avoiding clichés, and making things funny or interesting takes a lot of practice, but well-written webcomics can be extremely rewarding. It’s said that fans come for the art, but they stay for the writing.