How do you plan your plot?

[sensibleshroom]

I know very well there are people whose doc of worldbuilding and plot outlines rivals their actual manuscript in terms of word count. But I'm really curious. How do you plan your story/world? Do you just wing it and write and surprise yourself with where everything is going? Do you have a short, to the point outline with tidy bulletpoints? Do you just write down ideas for scenes and try to connect them all? Do you have separate documents for character sheets, worldbuilding, etc? I personally just get an idea, spam the group chat with it, write some of it, spam the group chat again, spam my best friend's messages, sometimes remember to pin, get halfway through an arc before I realize I need a coherent plan, get a plan via more spam, pin it, and pray for the best. I'm just really interested in seeing how other people do it.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

For me it's a combination of making-it-up-as-I-go and some disconnected bullet points outline/ paragraphs on a note pad. It is like playing connect-the-dots.

I have tried some mobile apps for character and story planner like Pluot , Character Story Planner, Fabula, and Story Plotter (I think I haven't actually tried them all, or have tried the thing I don't list instead). While they're neat and very organized, I feel like they are less spontaneous and sometimes just too rigid to do things you actually want. For now, I only use a notepad application for both my writing and planning, which I occasionally back up to cloud storage.

I have heard some people make a private discord server (only for themselves) to do what exactly you described. If it's about characters, many people are using sites such as toyhouse or amino to store the reference and data of said characters.

[sensibleshroom]

Half of my writing is just making up random scenes I think would be cool or emotionally impactful and desperately writing to catch up with them haha. You sound a lot more neat than I am. Impressive. I try using sites, and it lasts about two weeks before I forget them. I have a bunch of worldbuilding on..... some site I think a dnd friend used for a homebrew campaign, but I forgot the name of it, so it's just Out There Somewhere.

[Demy]

Personally I've been starting with the broad strokes (as in what the plan is for the general story /portion of the story), the outline for the chapter (basically what happens in that specific chapter), then I start writing the script for the chapter based on the outline.

[sensibleshroom]

Ah, that's why I could never be a comic writer haha. It takes too much planning. It is super impressive, though! Do you write down a description of each individual panel or just have a broad idea of each step in the chapter and pick the angles and expressions as you go?

[fleurravenbooks]

For this novel i had few little ideas, i knew i wanted to do the chosen one story in my own way, i knew i wanted family dynamic like this, and i knew what i wanted society in my novel to look like. Then i just connected them and did more thinking on power imbalance, etc.

Summary

The secret of heir | Tapas

[Demy]

I go for a short description for each individual panel. Though when I reach the storyboarding phase I could probably adjust it in some way if I think it works a bit better

[iHateFridays]

Usually I just write down the entire synopsis and random info about the story lol

[cherrystark]

I am openly a pantser when it comes to putting my stories together.

Often, it starts with an idea. I had an idea for my series, "The Museum", to do a story about werewolves. But, I didn't want to rely on the popular tropes. Then my brain went to Little Red Riding Hood. For those that had read that story, they know how I worked it.

I am really big on letting ideas come naturally, especially when it comes to merging different storylines together. I am in the process of rewriting my series and while writing, I've learneed/noticed that the plotholes I found in early chapters could easily be addressed in later chapters. I also found better ways to introduce characters that weren't there in earlier drafts. All by feel.

[rajillustration]

When I'm writing a script I hella wing it. The first draft is just me getting started, getting it down, and like finishing the thing. Then as I revise I'll do research and worldbuilding because then I'll actually have a direction to where my research should go.

But I don't really start the comic until my script is very polished and done, even though I know that when it gets to the phase where I add dialogue, I do rewrite and delete dialogue that may not be necessary anymore once the visual aspect gets added in. (that and like...I may decide to change my ending by the time I get there in a few years time. And that's fine. I just don't want to start without at least one ending decided to fall back on. I'd be a pile of nerves if I was just winging my comic, since the art takes so long to do)

[N1ghtm4r3]

originally my comic was a bunch of short stories i wrote like episodes to a show ,thought of a situation and thinking about my characters and how they would act , and also for later ones thinking if anything that happened before would still be an issue ,its was crude at first but now as i draw out the comic i rethink ideas ,add new ones and wing somethings while doing my best to keep it coherent

[GumshoeComix]

my plot has been mostly planned since before I even started working on the comic
and I'm only a few chapters away from finishing the script

I bounce ideas off my bf and we rant about them for a few hours until something hits me and it all makes sense,
I also 'draw notes'. It helps me get a clearer image of what the next chapter is supposed to be like
. For example, I'll draw a picture of my character with some rough dialogue and a description and continue from there and hope it turns into a good scene.
and it usually makes it into the script which my bf edits

[KennethLopezJr921]

In the making of my comic, I spent about a year having the story play out in my head, deciding what it would be and how it would play out. I didn't write anything down within that time until I felt fully confident on what I wanted to go with. I ended up going through around 4 versions of the series (all four were different continuities themselves) before settling on the 4th one and modifying it heavily. I'm the type of person that doesn't really write any notes and keep the planning process in my head because to me, when write something down it feels concrete. Like it's set in stone. I wanted to wait until I was ready before writing the story. That's why it took a year after I first conceptualized my series before I wrote the first draft of the script.

[16BitInk]

For the comic I'm writing now, I had a very general idea what I wanted it to be about - magical girlfriends - and from there I jumped straight into drawing the first draft, which I then asked a bunch of people to read and critique. That's a very risky way to do it, since after getting the feedback and not feeling happy with it myself, I decided I needed to completely redo 95% of it

But for me I think it works, since I know I'm very good at fixing stories and characters. I make a complete mess with the first draft, but it's SO much easier to then work from a disaster instead of a blank page. I've also realised that I do need to do some scripting, just for the dialogue and a little more story structure, so I'm getting that done now and then I'll jump into the second draft! From there, I assume it's gonna play out about the same; get critique, revise, get critique, revise, until I think it's up to scratch and then I'll be drawing the final product.

This is my first serious attempt at a comic, so even I don't know how it's gonna go from here. It's a learning experience, babey!