For how long have you been plotting your stories?

Truthfully I havent spend much time building/plotting my story, but...I've built and plotted it A LOT in the short amount of time that I've been working on my comic. There are a few patches here & there that I havent filled in yet, but I find at times those are the spots that I like to wait til last minute to complete.

Around 3 years but it’s only because of the lore and current world events going in the story. So that’s a long time and I honestly still haven’t lost interest in my story or characters. I only started posting pages this year. Though I can proudly say I pretty much can answer anything that goes on in the world.

My current comic I intended to be a book first before I turned it into a comic. It was a two year endeavor where I wrote 1200 words a day and I rename the file whenever I finished a draft of the story so I have rewritten the book 48 times. And now it's a comic, which is essentially another rewrite.

And really, I feel like this is pretty normal. Most people say that 1-2 years is how long they spend on a book before they ever start sending it to publishers. For graphic novels it's probably very similar.

I plotted my story, which started as one book and eventually became four (that's final), from November 2007 through November 2012. Five NaNoWriMos. So, 5 years. 🤷‍♀️ It changed a little bit after that, but not by much.

I'm still plotting it. I think it's fine to start work on your comic before you have thought out the ending as long as you have a general understanding of what the ending will be. For my comic, the story ends when the heroes defeat the main villain. I think having the required amount of background and back story in place is more important than having your ending figured out. Your ending is going to depend on elements of your plot which could be subject to change if better ideas come to light.

Well, I just finished a script for a comic, and about 80% of it was written just this afternoon. ^^; So I guess not a lot (sometimes).

It really depends on the story. I recently started drawing a webcomic that's been in the works for the majority of my young adult life (I'm still going to keep rewriting it as it's being posted). But that one is kind of an epic, with a lot of dramatic character interactions and philosophical themes that make me think.

On the other hand, the one I picked up and finished today is more of a joke comic. It does have a story, but it's not all that serious and it spends a lot of time making fun of itself, so it's very easy and stress-free to write. So yeah, I kinda expected to finish its script quickly. I'm probably gonna spend 50x as much time drawing it...

Me... Around 2013 when I first created the series...

But only published the episodes like last 2017 whoops... It took awhile for me to figure out which episode is episode 1 :'''D

For almost 7 years! But for 6 of those I only had Chapter 1, and none of the actual writing quality. Like with rajillustration, Splitting Image started as a single-issue book, so I could practice for a real big story and learning some portuguese and english vocabulary. While that's stayed now I'm making a comic(maybe more than one if fortune allows) to prepare for a book because I now know better than to turn 1 page of text into 50 pictures, whoops. But I'm way more open to making it illustrated every few pages like I've seen more commonly in recent years, which is nice.

However, in the transition last year, I just threw in everything I had planned for it beginning to end and rewrote, rewrote, rewrote with my current skills and knowledge to make something I liked to read to myself. Only when I had a full set of "this is arc 1, this is arc 2, 3 and ending" notes and some healthy amount of art to figure out the characters I actually went into script and comic process.

I started writing a story in the same "universe" as my main comic in 2008 or 2009, but I changed a lot the focus of the story and the main characters... and I didn't even start publishing it yet

In 2011 I scrapped the first story and started my actual main comic, focused on different characters in another nation, but kept some elements of the original plot (I'm using Unicorn's Ballad as a placeholder name for it, but it might still change...) Around 2015~2016 I changed the main characters again, but decided the main story was going to be too long to start making as my first webcomic, so I started writing Narwhal's Song as a prequel using the main characters of the 2011 version, both to introduce the universe and to practice with something shorter and less serious.

I started publishing Narwhal's Song in 2017, and the main structure of this story is already all planned... but I wanna at least decide some things about Unicorn's Ballad before I finish NS, so both stories actually make sense together my beta readers say they feel kinda confusing bc there's a lot of elements, probably because I added and changed a lot of stuff since 2008. I really want to make the main plot of both stories "cleaner", hopefully still this year, so I can finish NS next year and actually start drawing UB!!

How long I take to plot a story normally depends on whether I have the time to start writing it anytime soon or not. Like, I'm writing five different projects right now so it's humanly impossible for me to pick up another one even if I wanted to. I use that time to plot out some other stuff and when I finish writing one of my projects, I start on one of those that I have plotted. If I don't have as many projects or if I come up with a new one when I am close to finishing one or just finished another one, then I will jump right back into writing after a short pause.
So sometimes years will go by from getting the idea to when I start writing but I don't spend much of that time actually plotting a specific story. Sometimes it's just a few days or weeks. To be honest, I feel like I don't need much time to plot. I seldom sit down and actively plot as in with pen and paper and writing stuff down or anything. It just kind of happens in my head while I go about my usual day?

I started developing my story 9 years ago. Started with unique character designs and worked from there. I knew from the start I didn't want to rush it, so I just jotted ideas and sketches as they came to me naturally. I'm set to release my first chapter next month after all of these years of planning. I probably would've taken even longer, but unfortunately something my peers and I have noticed is the longer you take to produce and release your story, the more likely a coincidentally similar property is to pop up before you're done. This sadly happened to one of my college classmates, who developed his own animation story years in the making, but before he could put it out (making media takes a lot longer when you're a single person or working in a small team) a much larger company launched a children's book series with essentially the same premise. And it really hurts the little guy who just can't always keep up, because soon you've got people criticizing you for stealing work when it was never your intention. I felt that personally, after seeing this and hearing announcements of some upcoming animated series from big studios, I had to cut my development short. So after 9 years I am finally illustrating and finalizing my panels. Basically, I'd say a few years is optimum for story development. Much longer and you risk losing time, motivation, money, and original concepts. I don't regret waiting though, since my artistic capabilities and layout management is at a much more professional level now than it was when I started. I'm a very self-conscious artist and I know that if I would've just dived right into it, I would've been ashamed and embarrassed of my art quality looking back.

For those of us who struggle with words as use doodles as our notes: How dare! But I'm sure she meant it as, "don't get yourself too invested in a work that hasn't proven finishing goal line."

The little anthology I'm working on right now, each story has only taken a few months (heck, if I worked on them every day each story would likely have taken less than a month). For ref: no story in this anthology is to be longer than 20 pages and is black and white- my personal rule in making sure I get something finished. I do this because, well...

The majority of my other stories? Some of them... oh goodness, yes. Some I've had for decades. Not that I've actively worked on them nonstop. With my attention span I work on one for a month/week before cycling back to a different one and then back again. I make sure I plot stuff down because I have too many ideas and I need to cut down what to work on. If I can't get an idea to build up right it needs to be abandoned because I'm not going to live long enough to tell all of them.

I started the idea behind my current novel back in December 2018... it is October 2019 and i only have 3 chapters published and 9 chapters fully written.

I have the planning completely done, I keep making adjustments though. I just made a major plot adjustment and a few minor story adjustments today. Thankfully everything I have written and published is still good.

Depends. I'ma bit of a pantser, but I still have a beginning and ending in mind, sometimes with points in between. One epic I did entirely pantsed. I've got one massive multimedia project i've been developing for 15 years (not just a novel, but a comic, 3 animated series, a feature length film, a video game, tcg, and ttrpg).

Just depends on the project involved.

I've been working on one idea for a while (for perspective, I thought it up about maybe 3-5 years ago) sort of on and off. I've at least managed to nail down the first 2 parts of the story (parts not referring to arcs or chapters, more so being separated by certain story elements). Although, I'd personally say that it might be a good idea for efficiency's sake to plot out part of it and when you are satisfied with a sizable part, begin writing that and think up the rest of the plot along the way. Not only do you get content out, but you still have some space between what you're working on and what you've finished plotting.

I'm three weeks into publishing my comic, currently only at a rate of two pages a week so I've got six pages out so far having started on 1st October.

The story came to mind just after Halloween of 2018, I wrote character profiles for main and minor characters over the course of a month and doodled pictures of them.

Over the next month or two (ish) I wrote down the general plot from beginning to end, I assured myself that I was not going to draw anything until I knew exactly how the story would end.

Sure, I can change things later, but if I don't know where I'm going to begin with I might fall into the trap of making shit up as I go along and that might become difficult. It also makes it far easier to avoid continuity issues and easier to have fun little bits of foreshadowing that readers can enjoy when they go back to look at old pages.

It was January by the time I had a full story worked out. After that I then took the first two sections of it and turned them into a script. For me that was basically novel like to read, describing what could be seen and all the dialogue. This part took a month or two itself. (I want to stress that my timescales are restrained by working full-time and having a family life too!)

So in total I took about 4 months just writing. It's taken another 7 months to feel confident enough with my drawing skills to actually start publishing. The result is below (because who can avoid a self-plug!) =D

What your friend said is absolutely true. It's like driving: you don't have to plan out every single step, but if you don't know where you're starting or where you're going, you're going to get lost.

For my story, I've been slowly working on it for about 15 years. As in, that's when I first created some of the characters. I've been trying to make it a proper story for about 10 years. But a year and a half ago was when I really dug in and started trying to make it into something coherent, writing the outline and a bunch of the world building. I even started writing it in its first incarnation, as a novel. I got about 1/3 of the way through and realized it was the wrong format. Then about a year ago, I decided to make it into a comic.

But the actual planning part, writing down all the plot points from beginning to end, took me a couple of weeks. But only because I already knew roughly where they were.

Not every story needs extensive planning, but it certainly helps. You're saving your future self from scrambling to write the next chapter if you draw a map before you start.