If you were trying to draw a short (2-6 page) self-contained comic about characters from your longer ongoing comic, how would you go about deciding what to write, and how to pace it? Part of the difficulty I'm having is that it's a pretty limited number of pages to tell an involved story, but I don't want to just draw plot-less fluff for 6 pages.
Jul '17
Jul '17
Welp... it may be kind of obvious but the best way to go is to keep it simple.
Just think of that one think you want to say to your reader through the minicomic, it will be better to keep it character focused, keep it all close to the protagonist and don't dwell in other characters that may pop up during the story.
A story can be compared with a travel, there is a starting point and a destiny. In this case think of it as just going around the block. Define where your character is coming from and where you want him to be at the end, but don't get into too complicated stuff, you can just reafirm something about your character or show a different aspect of him or put him in a different scenario.
And most importantly, don't think too much about it and have fun,
I've found that internal monologues can help in short comics. I prefer show-don't-tell for longer work and very rarely use text boxes in my long form stuff... but for mini comics you can get more bang for your buck showing what your character is thinking. Rather than making them stop and talk to another character to say what they're thinking, you can slap a text box on a panel where they're doing something else and save space/time.
And be realistic with what you hope to accomplish. You can definitely tell stories with plot in a short comic, but you're probably not going to be able to tell anything that's super character specific, if that makes sense. If the characters are not already established in the reader's mind, it's hard to fully flesh out a character with a backstory, personality, and motivations and also have that character do something exciting in 6 pages (and near impossible in 2 pages, I'd think)... but if you have the character doing something that the reader relates to they can gain some sense of who the character is without having to have them completely fleshed out. Set the comic in any place and have the character react in a way that's true to their personality but think of something that will give the reader a foothold in the story. Like there's a 1000 unique ways to make a comic about someone going to a new location, or feeling misunderstood, or having a crush, or whatever else... but having that kind of plot is a lot more relateable than trying to get into the meat of them dismantling a shadow military organization or something.
Ramble over, but yeah basically keep it simple and have fun 
I have just done something like to this. I divide my long form web comic in to seasons like a tv drama would, and among them i try to write three chapters per season each deals with a different character and story line that sometimes inter mingles with other running story's. this last season i wanted to for a change do a flash back story of some of the parents when they went to school, so i wanted it short. I started as i often do with the end and I worked it backwards. sometime i say well thats the end and this could be the start what is the cause to meet the two? in this case it was an old school pal of a girls dad who kept calling him a name "frogger" so when she ended up visiting this guy in hospital they had time to kill and the story of why dad was called frogger came out . working backwards works well for me.
I just did one of those a few months ago. The content should really depend on if you're doing it to put out before the main project, or during it. Know that there is certain ground to cover in a short span of time. I'll use my teaser comic as an example, which you can see here: https://tapas.io/episode/67054515
1st is setting, then introducing your characters. In mine, having the readers know their names and their general personalities was a priority for page 1. The second thing I tried to fit onto the first page was an idea of what the short story was about.
Once you've established those general things, pages 2-5 are room to show the reader what to expect. A little bit of world building and information of what kind of story you're writing. In my case, I was showing off ancient ruins, shadow monsters, and magic. Then of course page 6 was to wrap up the story and show some lesson has been learned.
Doing anything shorter than 6 pages would be incredibly hard for me, because lord knows 6 pages was a challenge. When I started, I just wrote up a small, contained story. It would have been about 10 pages at first, then I looked for every non-essential thing I could take out.
It's best to think of a small arching story that doesn't need a lot of explaining to get across to people. Show more, tell less! Use the format of comics to give as much information as you can, visually, in as few panels as you can.
Best of luck! I'd love to see what you come up with!
@envelion Thanks for showing your short comic actually! That was a great use of the space you had - I didn't even realize it was just 6 pages, and you managed to fit in quite a lot about the world/characterization while still including action.
And to everyone else, thanks for the tips! Thinking of it as a small "outing" using established basic plot types, but focusing on the characters' personalities through minor actions, is definitely something to go off on. I'm still not sure if it'll be set before/during/after the main comic, but you've given me a lot to think on.
Also, the technical definition of a story is: a character undergoes change. While, this definition is arguable, it could be helpful in your case. Maybe if you focus on what changes in a character, the plot will come more easily?
For example, character A loves apple pies but by the end, is really terrified of apple pies. Why? Because some jerk decided to hide a dead mouse in her pie....
That's just a really simple example but maybe it's a starting point?
No problem. I hope it helped you see one way to get things done. The most important part is to par down as much as you can while still having a story. Then you can add on.
And like Kellychen said, thinking up an arc for your character to go through in a few pages is the best way to insure your story starts and finishes strong. Good luck!
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