Are you a planner or a panster with your writing in your comics/novels?

[smokesalty]

Okay there's an spectrum of course, but I'm curious to see how people go about writing/plotting their stories!

For me, I thought I was a panster- I WAS VERY WRONG​ (props to people who can do this istg) I'm much more of a planner when it comes to comics, I'm more loose with my novel writing if I'm being honest. But yeah, pantsing just caused me to not finish anything, so it just does not work for me.

For my current comic I started with working out the beginning, middle and end based on what the end goal of the story was. I then went in and started outlining, which is me just dot pointing ideas and building off of them until I have specific events (later edited based on how relevant or not they end up being) I continued onto the script, which was less of a headache since I knew what was going to happen- and I would add scenes/dialogue based on what fit the story. There were a ton of changes made from the outline.

It took me a while but I finished my script, and that's when I started editing (PAIN)- I still change things in the comic itself, which has led to a lot of fun character moments that fit naturally in the story.

But yeah, I'd say I plan more with comics since I need to know locations and visuals and also because redrawing something is a hell of a lot harder than re-writing it.

[DualDragons]

I think I'm somewhere in the middle road. For my planned comic (planned says it) I did write a script. But I tend to stray away a little bit whenever I have some great ideas I can put in the comic.

I also do thumbnails for my planned comic to help me determine what I want to draw on the page.

As for my current comic? Totally pantser

[Manyana]

I am a pantser in terms of writing, but I intensively plan the outline and character backgrounds. I have at least three subplots written already since last year but haven't posted them yet because they are still not in the story.
So... I don't knooow

[Lensing]

That is an interesting question.
I tried both and it didn´t work for me but being a plantser works.

I tried the planning thing, wrote the script from start to finish, storyboard, character sheets etc
When I started penciling I had better ideas while I was drawing the panels. After and during every panel
I had 20 ideas which were better. So I never finished those comics because it was a mess

Pantser also didn´t work because it was just too messy.

The mix / plantser works good for me. I plan a rough story and have 2 characters and I add everything
else while drawing the comic. It gives me enough flexibility. I´m on page 3 of a comic right now and I didn´t
know what will happen on page 2 when I finished page 1 but I know what will happen on page 32 (the goal)
and some steps in between. The goal can vary and the steps can vary too.
Being a plantser makes drawing the most entertaining for myself because it´s exciting how a story
develops and how the characters seem to act for themselves when I put the pencil to the paper

[TheLemmaLlama]

Tbh I think it's more helpful to think of our approach to writing on 2 axes:

top-down <---> bottom-up
linear <---> non-linear

The archetypical pantser would be bottom-up/linear while the archetypal plotter is top-down/non-linear.

I'm bottom-up/nonlinear.

I start with individual scenes and characters; I struggle to start a story with the overarching plan without it feeling 'basic'/'stereotyped'/lackluster. Hence bottom-up.

But I can't write linearly; if I try to write 'what happens next', I get stuck. This is where I differ from the archetypal pantser. I have to just write 'what happens'; whether it happens next, or at the end, or in the past, I have to just let it happen whenever it want to. This means I tend to end up with a plan relatively early on anyway as I arrange the scenes in a way that forms (the skeleton of) a cohesive whole. (But I can't make the plan without having written some scenes first, which is where I differ from the archetypal plotter)

So my comic writing process goes as follows:
1. get struck with inspiration/feels and come up with scenes
2. arrange the scenes in some order, informing the backbone of an outline
3. (simutaneous) start filling in the blanks from from the beginning, writing as much as needed (to stay ahead of my art).
3. (simultaneous) get struck with some more inspiration and come up with more future scenes that I'll have to fit into the outline
3. (simultaneous) edit the outline to improve its structure and accommodate scenes I really like (or cut them if they hurt the structure :'D), while also keeping it coherent with the part of my story that's already been 'locked in' (i.e. the parts I've already drawn)
4. repeat (3's) until story is finished

In a sense, I guess my art is also a 'timer' for how long I've got to finish my writing, because heck knows I'll never finish it otherwise XD

[zeitybitey]

Oh I'm a planner through and through. Got too many ideas coming all the time, and I need to make them all somehow work together! I hate not knowing what I'm leading up to since I normally work backwards (ending,middle,start). And..well, I tend to easily forget plot points

[TheSingularitySeed]

I think I'm more of a planner.

I also start from the end and build from there. My order for stories is usually end, beginning, middle, prologue.

That said, I usually leave the middle the most open ended because I get bored with my own stories when I know everything that happens.

[rumpenstiltzkin]

Im probably something inbetween...

Ive sicne long had the beginning, middle and end in mind, but i dont have a script.
I do write down some help words now and then when i suddenly get new ideas in the middle of the night when im supposed to sleep and sometimes i write down dialogue and specific things that need to happen but i never know how long my chapters is gonna be or anything and the words often change when i thumb out my pages, i just let the characters tell me their thing and hope for the best

im a horrible planner, but im learning lately it partly has to do with my ADD

[faisalhussein394]

I thought I was a panster because I continue making the pages without thinking much except for making sure the timeline, ground rules, exposition, and lore are not shattered but while doing pages I was actually planning ahead on what comes later on.

I don't keep notes, every plan is in my head and I never use a script and storyboard.

I already planned a beginning, middle, and an end and so far, every setting in between is done. The only way to reach there is to keep making pages.

[allenT]

Planner. But I don't write dialogues before hand, just keypoints with an overall knowing what the characters are going to convey.

[BoomerZ]

Just going to throw this out there but all the great comics are planned. Most are planned all the way down to dialogue. The "marvel way" of dialogue was a hold over when one guy was writing 20 comics a month and he needed all the help he could get to just make it happen. All manga, watchmen, sandman, etc are all planned, edited, full script comics. There is a simple reason for this, it works. That doesn't mean you can't tweek it as you go, changing some of the dialogue (editing) but just going as you are going is a recipe for writing yourself into a corner.

[Lensing]

I´m not sure if I understood what you wrote.
So you think the Marvel way doesn´t lead to great results?

[BoomerZ]

The Marvel way, putting in dialogue after the pictures are drawn, is a form of making comics that was specific to a time period. Stan (or other writers) were writing 10-15 comics a month solo. So they had a rough outline and gave it to the artist to draw with lots for freedom. Then they would go back and fill in the dialogue to match the art. Its a time saving thing. As a person doing one comic, this is not needed. First of all, go read those old comics, the dialogue was awful. Second, if you are drawing the comic, you never really knew where the dialogue balloon was going to go so you had to draw everything. But if you place the balloons and dialogue after roughs, but before pencils, you know what you don't have to draw. This is easily done in digital. Why waste time drawing this awesome background if it's covered by a massive monologue. The more control over the story you have, the better results will happen. Yes, you can have lightning in a bottle or just be that good you can do what you want. But most people are not that. There is a reason why things are done differently in movies and novels, because it works.

[powerplantanimations]

Both lmao. I plan out my story very seriously, but I fly at the seat of my pants whenever I get the chance. I remember saying that I create this strict outline, but everytime I finish a issue, I change things up.

I won't spoil what happens in That Stick Figure Isekai, but in the next arc I was like "Ha ha, wouldn't it be funny if" but then I took the joke seriously and now it's deeply integrated in the plot.

[Lensing]

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I understood you correctly.

I grew up with european comics, straight storytelling over 48-64 pages. Beginning middle end.
TinTin, Asterix, Lucky Luke etc. Then I started reading Marvel & DC comics because I wanted to
check them out and literally every story was: flying, fighting, being exhausted from fighting while
talking, being trapped, almost dying, repeat. And at some point I thought it was just because
they had no real story idea and just characters

[AlydaB]

I wish I were disciplined enough to be a planner 100%, but in reality, I'm somewhere in between.

I like knowing where the plot is going, what the character arcs are going to be, and which tone and overarching themes/messages I want to get across, with the goal that my story doesn't come off as aimless... but it's been difficult making that happen :')

I think the fact that my story takes so long to produce hurts me in that regard, because my perception of the story and characters shifts a lot with time and I end up forgetting why I wrote certain scenes and even characters into the plot, eventually realizing they no longer serve the desired purpose and have become irrelevant or redundant. My story and cast are simply big. It's years old, has hundreds of pages of notes (most of which are no longer canon) and concept art and scrapped drafts, and has become a lot to keep up with. It takes concerted effort to keep it from wandering too much.

Anyways, I don't think any of that necessarily makes me a pantser... Maybe just a bad planner due to laziness, lack of free time, and my scatterbrained tendency to forget things. ;-;

Gotta admit I haven't planned out my story's conclusion yet either, though I have several working ideas for how it might end. I have a rough outline of the plot, broken down into arcs, and write my scripts as I go.

[goatbat]

I would say I planned pretty extensively. Only difference really is I haven't finished all of the scripts & thumbs since I figured it'd be literally more than a year until I catch up to the thumbs . . . let alone the script. I think balancing preparation with actually yknow, doing the thing is important- as getting a break in between working on it for a long time is more of a good idea than delaying it unecessarily. Sure I'd probably get it done faster if I did do all the prep work but . . . eh. There's also a chance I would have never started had I not forced myself.

It went rough outline -> chaptered outline -> script -> thumbs. I used a base structure for the outline, then little 'chapters' were based on specific scenes I wanted to do and I built the surrounding story around them to make the script. I did a lot of changes from outlines to scripts, and even more to script to thumbs- I kind of used it as a chance to do a tertiary edit. Thumbs are like 50% the way through the story and script is like 80% or so done- I just wanted to leave the exact details of the end end after I've done the comic for quite a long time. So basically planner who strategically pants.

[NickRowler]

I usually have an idea of what I want each chapter to sort of be but I don’t really script a chapter until I finish the previous one. The reason why I do this is if I make changes in the previous chapters, I can easily apply it to the next.

I originally wrote a bunch of chapters in advance for my series Crow’s Worth but ended up scrapping a lot of them once I got to that point in the story. Biggest issue was that they had continuity errors that couldn’t really be easily fixed. So doing everything chapter by chapter just works better for me.

[LouisWinter]

If 0 is Panster and 100 is Planner, then I'd say I'm about 65.

[Kann]

All I can say is that I'm definitely not 100% Planner. Even in a mostly planned out story there are things I make up as I go.