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Oct 2024

For my first 2-3 stories all my writing was already done and my artist mostly only had to draw/interpret the scenes from my writing.

One of my recent webcomics I had to cancel was written chapter to chapter, and it was FAR too much work to the point I had to put it on hiatus and used an older/completed work.

Evening Star: Connecting Strings has been FAR smoother, simply because everything is already written out as a complete story.

What about you guys? Are you chapter by chapter, arc by arc, or is the entire story already finished and you are just writing/scripting it?

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    Sep '24
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    Nov '24
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I have a full outline for the series, but not every scene has been written out in full detail. Some stuff in the latter half is particularly hazy at the moment, lol.

For a long-term project, I think it's a good idea to give yourself some wiggle room. I'm okay with not knowing every detail of the story right now, because in the time it takes me to get to the final chapters, I imagine that my writing skills will have improved, and that I'll have come up with several new ideas for storylines to include.

I have been planning this series for years, including its ending, which none of you will have to wait too long for. If all goes well, Nixvir will be ending in June of next year.

An outline complete and knowing where I'm heading, with actual episodes done on the weekly. This allows me enough flexibility to have fun writing but not getting lost in the plot.

I kind of have a plan. l know how it will end and things that will happen during that time, but that’s it.

It always depends on what I´m working on.

I won a german comic contest with a comic which I wrote from panel to panel.
It´s hard to do it like that but I liked the result and it was fitting to the style of the comic

I´m currently creating a series of short cartoon like stories which all play in the same
setting. I´m writing a rough outline for the episodes and then give myself enough freedom
to improvise.

The fun part of making comics for me is the improvisation with a rough idea. Very
similiar to how I record an album. One of the best albums I recorded wasn´t planned
at all. We rehearsed the songs the night before the recording or on the day of the recording.

Only vague ideas for now. Which is unfortunate, because I've learned that I find it extremely difficult to write without a solid plan.

If I had to come up with a ratio, then I think 60/40 would be my preferred plotted out/unplanned balance.

I plan my story to have multiple arcs, and the first arc was around 80% finished when I started publishing. For the later arcs, I have the broad strokes of what I want to happen, but I won't plan out scene by scene until I'm ready to start writing them.

It's too early to say whether this system will work for me long term, but right now I'm quite happy with it.

Before I started releasing "Sun With a Paper Crown" (the sequel to "Damsel in the Red Dress.") and "A Dozen Morning Glories" I plot pointed the entire books chapter by chapter BUT i had not written out every chapter yet. I stocked up a certain amount of chapters in advance and wrote more while i released chapters from my buffer. I would consider the plot points much more than a vague outline since it's basically a play by play of the chapters (when i write my outlines) along with any relevant dialog or lines of description I want to make it into the final version of the chapter.

now for "Crystal Blue" I HAD an outline chapter by chapter, but it was much vaguer, and I ended up diverging from that outline and I just keep diverging. But hey the stories are better this way.

when I first started writing DITRD, i was just winging it with a vague concept of what would come later, but then i started coming up with ideas for future chapters and writing them down, organizing them chronologically, sometimes in pretty good detail, so it was kind of a combination



Yup! I have all the dialogue for Recollections written out, as well as doodles of the page concepts for some. One of the biggest benefits of this is that I can improve it as I go. Sometimes I’ll even add in a whole new page in the middle if I think it’s necessary.

AngHell dela Blackpill has 10 or 11 chapters written down.

It's definitely gonna get more intense and exciting (in my biased opinion)

I have planned this volume, 45% of my spin off, 65% of the second volume, 58% of the spin off's second volume and 20% of next, and about a 32% of the main story third volume.
Yeah, I know the direction my comic's going, I'm mostly scared that, given how far away it is, I'll change too much and grow out of my own work, so I'll try to evolve without affecting who the character in my story are.

Yes, it's the best thing you can do. It took me a little longer than I thought to publish on Tapas, but it's worth having a buffer or even the entire story written in advance. I speak from experience. :sweat_smile:🥲

I've just figured out the main parts and ending of my current work! Although I haven't thought about some details yet, which I think is pretty common for most authors, haha! :blush:

I'm planning to divide my story into 3 seasons, so I'm focusing on the first one for now! I wrote about 2 or 3 chapter drafts ahead to avoid any sudden need to change the plot. I've found this approach to be pretty helpful, I think!

Good luck with your work, Heidi! :yellow_heart:

10 days later

I just barely started, but I can tell you right now: my mind does far too much wandering for me to write out my plot in any degree of detail. As we speak, I probably have about thirty premises/plotlines bouncing around my head, waiting for me to give them an outlet. Unfortunately, only about ten percent of those make it to my idea list. Seriously, I think of the weirdest things at the weirdest times. Just recently, I had an idea for a company in a sci-fi setting. "Edibles Inc.® Inventor of Prechewed Food and the all new Edible Human!" Disgusting, I know but that's how far my mind goes. :sob::sob::sob:

Season 1 it's written chapter to chapter till mid-point, but the rest are on a MIRO board as short notes and concept art ( in mind map form). such a handy online tool :arrow_right:: https://miro.com/

The other seasons are in skeletal form with more attention on the true ending (currently aiming for 4 seasons), just enough to plan characters and foreshadow stuff. Each season is just days apart and season 2-3 the story shifts into a battle royale, just wanted to ensure it feels continuous.

Some future scenes are inspired by artwork and characters I've done in the past also.

Yep exactly it felt like it would become FAR too much work and overwhelming.
Sometimes limitations for my computer to render heavy 3d scenes and effects like fur or new ideas come after building props for the comic. Because of this, its become common for me to change scenes that were previously written and improvising sections can make the process feel fresh at times.
So because of this I don't worry too much to have it completely written.

I do episode by episode. I had to write a new script and outline because I was just pansting my way through and it didn't make sense so now I'm having to redraw everything which is fine because it came out better than expected!

23 days later

I had a buffer of about 15 chapters (broken into about 30 episodes on here) when I started. Now my buffer has shrunk to about 5 chapters, and when the current arc is concluded I plan to take a break to finish writing arc 2 before I start posting again.

I'm usually more of what they call a 'pantster'? I kind of make it up as I go. But I usually have an idea where to start and what characters i want to build and go from there. They tend to have a mind of their own after that :slight_smile:

Here's my latest story. It's kind of like if 'Solo Levling' met 'Stardust' and put a pinch of Egyptian mythology set in modern day Japan :slight_smile:

Ooh, awesome question!

For Apparent Secrets, I have an extensive outline, calendar, and plot beats written in advance to maintain continuity. There are tons of "fixed-firm" events and plot points that need to happen (in order) for the narrative and mysteries to fit together, so having everything plotted in advance is essential. As of right now, it's about 50% written, with more chapters coming after the Action Fantasy Tourney wraps up. :smile_01:

That said, for Of Lowlifes, Lutes, & Liars, I have a rough idea of the events that need to happen in the story, but I allow chapters to form organically as time goes on. Honestly, I treat it like a one-person Dungeons & Dragons homebrew, with a few "fixed-firm" events in mind, but nothing concrete. :eyebrows:

Here are links to both, if you'd like to see what kind of results each method yields: :coffee_love:


I know how it ends or some details of how it ends. Like who the final boss is, do the protagonists end up with someone etc. Then I plan my beginning. I have some ideas of events and arcs in between that I see as milestones or checkpoints. I make up the stuff in between those checkpoints as I go along.

Except this last one. Already wrote out the whole story. It was an idea I wrote out as a video game, but I'm rewriting it in a book format to be presented as a novel.

Kinda, yeah. Part 1 and portions of Finale part (ending as well) are already decided on.
Portions of middle parts are up to change, tbh.
Like I had in mind a larger group going on, but I decided to leave one of them behind to do background stuff.

Honestly, My biggest mistake was not finishing the script before posting it
It's done now thankfully but when I was halfway through the story I was still working on the script too which caused a lot of inconsistencies and issues with the story, not to mention Haitus's from a lack of backlog

13 days later

I do have it all written out already. Actually the whole graphic novel is my adaptation of a book I wrote quite awhile ago. While I was writing the book I did chapter illustrations that implied the book was a paperback of an existing comic. I still use these illustration at the beginning of each chapter. At the time I became interested in how visualization and written description worked back in forth in my head and how they were both aids to each other (at least for me) In any case the pandemic rolled in and I decided to graphically adapt the whole thing to keep myself from doing too much daytime despair drinking. The latest chapter is out now.

Right now I'm working on my new comic "Mudderflue", and my process was (and still is) all over the place haha

From the start I had a good idea of what my comic was gonna be in my mind. But something I have only realized now, is that I visualize things in scenes (like in a movie) and not broken up into panels, which made it very difficult when I sat down to start working on it. As this is only my second "proper" comic, I felt the need to learn things my own way, and not listen to people that have already experienced these things. And now that I am continuing work on the second part to the comic, I have quite a bit of self learnt experience, even if I had already seen it online.

As for if I already had my story completely written out or not, not really. At first I made some simple sketches of the locations the story takes place in and otherwise i wrote down the dialogue in great detail, almost like a screenplay visualizing the story as I went.

Funnily enough, this didn't only help me prepare for my next comic, but in a weird way also wormed its way into the comic itself as the entirety of the first act to the story.

Another thing I never thought I would have to learn the hard way is to back up my work on the cloud more often, jeeez I created a lot of extra work for myself there hehe :sweat_smile: