How do you "write" your stories?

[Fascher]

First, after I have an idea, I draw lots and lots and lots of pictures about the characters and the story just in my notebook. It helps to get a general idea of the story down (I find it really good for coming up with new ideas) and also the character designs which I always end up doing first.
Then, I usually type the story down so I don't forget.

A bit later after I have even more ideas for it I do a spreadsheet thing listing my characters, what their motivations are and how they affect the other characters which links it all together really nicely.

Finally, what actually happens in a page and such is usually decided a few weeks before I post it. I'm typically around 3 weeks ahead in thumbnails.

I like this because its relaxed and if I come up with a cool idea while I'm drawing it I can add it in no problem

[allenthomas]

I've been scripting my comic since 2012. I still change things here and there in the sketching and thumbnailing process but I never stray far from the core of the story. I've pretty much had the story in my mind since 2004 (middle school at the time) tapastic.com/series/shadosassins

[bluefairy]

Actually, I don't really write the story for the comic right away! When I have the idea, first I play with it in my head, put some pieces together as if it is a puzzle. Then I sit and write it, but not as a script, but as a plan - the basic ideas behind the story that I wish to express and the hidden motives, that make characters act in the way they act. I have to know that, while the reader must get just the surface of the truth. The way I get to express that surface is also important, but that comes when I actually start to draw - then it is as if I am director of a film and I enrich the behaviour of the actors sometimes in the spur of the moment with the new inspiration and ideas that come to me while drawing. Sometimes they act on their own, according to their already established character and surprise me! And it gets even more fun then...

[Ayumi]

I kinda do the same as bluefairy. Well, I dream a lot, so I usually write down the interesting ones (like Furusato House), what can be a story, or just get an idea first, what I start to just open in my head. I try to get to know my characters, what's their background, etc., and things just starts to connect. (Character planning is my favourite part <3) Then, I write a script, from chapter to chapter, about what happens, what the character say, and do, aaaand: Starts to draw it! ^^

[glennsong]

I used to start with a scene or an idea and then write my stories (wait for it) word by word until the characters started to take on a life of their own, but the problem there is it takes way to long and most of the time waffled. For an experiment, I wrote a novel word by word, an hour or so each day. Nine months later I gave birth to a first draft of 300k words. I had it printed out and tucked away for a bit. I came back to it with fresh eyes about a year later. Some parts were good. Most parts were bad. Plot holes everywhere, but what did I expect? I didn't really plan anything.

I sat down and studied structure because writing word by word by the seat of my pants just wasn't enough. It would be nice to kinda know where I'm going. Robert McKee's "Story" is a great book if you want to know structure. He takes a very engineering approach to breaking down story and character. Yeah, it's for screenplays, but I think a lot can be gained from it for any type of storytelling. The only problem with structure for me is that I could plan it out to the nines and as soon as I write I'd be off course.

But, I found a decent middle ground. McKee talks about "research" and not just book research or ride alongs in police cars (if you were doing a crime novel), but researching your imagination too. I started to take inventory of ideas. I had an inkling for a story around this time and I began to take notes: what the characters looked liked, their personalities, not all at once, but as they flowed to me in-between all the other things I had to do (work, sleep, eat, etc) -- I did not start the novel. I would be walking outside, and I'd sit down and pull out my phone and tap the notes down as ideas connected in my mind. I organized them in a text file, then later Evernote. I wrote out scenes between characters as if I were writing short plays. I wrote their dialogue, thoughts, and actions -- any combination of them as it came to me. After a year i had accumulated a lot of material. I had a loose structure for a story that I could glue this material too and make up other stuff along the way. So I could have my story skeleton and I could have fun writing word by word because it wasn't just a blank canvas I was starting on. There were scribbles of the picture here and there that I could flesh out and connect them. By then, the characters voices were so loud in my head, in my sleep even, that the story demanded to be written, so I did it for NaNoWriMo and poured out 110,000 words.

For my comic on Tapastic I did something similar but in a faster cycle, and now that the comic is in production, I need to figure out the next story (as I draw the current one), but since I've been writing scenes and creating characters and living with them in my head, it should be faster to create rough drafts this time. Maybe.

[XexiliaZajac]

I write an entire script first, usually. Occasionally I'll change some things as I'm drawing.

[fanyart]

I often get ideas pretty randomly and then spend the whole night thinking thoroughly about the story. When I have the next day off or lectures or job start late, I write it down, more or less detailed based on what I managed to think through properly. The next night it continues until I'm satisfied or have something better to do. Of course, when the next day I don't have time, the ideas often go to waste because I forget them. >_>

What I found important and useful is not to worry about stylistic stuff and write things down accurately and quickly in one giant block. I use paragraphs only when there is a big break or hole in the story I haven't thought through enough.
Also I write important visual things like "morning sun shines through the window", what is lit and what's in the shadow, overall colors etc.

Then goes storyboarding, quick sketching out panels in a prepared sheet of rectangles representing pages (16 pages per sheet I found is the best) with bubbles only rough circles without text to see what space is needed to be left for them. Some scenes that have some important visual lighting I quickly color right in the storyboard process, like the characters' faces being lit by the setting sun in the first row. The right side of the sheet has more space for unused drawings that later got changed to something else or were used in later panels on following sheets.
I highly recommend doing stroryboarding this way, I have been doing it like this for years. If you want, I can send the empty sheet to you.

(in this sheet I added text for exporting it so that my friend could read it)

What I also found good is to do color marks next to the text of the script (in the upper right corner or enlarged below) when there is something changing in the scene - in this there is sun setting during the conversation and the light color changes as indicated by the color strips on the left. Also, you can see I made vertical marks in the text to indicate what goes into another panel.

Hope this helps!

(One funny note: these storyboards are from a comic I sketched over nights in summer. At the end of summer we had a week long excursion to Germany from our faculty and as I don't like travelling, I thought "I need to finish this before I leave for the trip!". I really managed to finish sketching the last page an hour before I had to go take bus to the meeting place and all satisfied I boarded the trip minibus and fell asleep. Later my classmates who were in the minibus with me told me I kept whispering in sleep and asked me "why my boyfriend has such a weird nickname and why I talk to him in English" (I write and think stories in English though I'm Czech). Huh. )

[Viro_Veteruscy]

Sit in a dark room and slowly go into madness... (wings it) :3

[Hunterzero]

I simply write a description of what will happen and then make the character dialogs according from there.....hard to explain....Random example: The criminal breaks out of jail etc and they need to catch her/him...from there you just start writing how he/she escapes and why etc....as for text well that depends on what story your making so it varies

[Zanreo]

1. Find an idea, either some gaming news or part of gaming history, that I find fun/interesting and try basing a joke/story around
2. Think about how to best put it together, sketch it, think of dialogue
3. Draw

[FromFinn]

This may be a bit puzzling. I write a simple main subject of what I want to see in this page along with a paragraph of what I want to feel and see in page. I sketch little stills and place them on the wall- after that I write actions and questions in screenplay form. While keeping the stills in mind I think about "why is what?" and try to visualize the feelings that I want then I start drawing. After that is all done then I'll add the dialog last- and since I write in self-narration it's easy for me to write about the main subject in tandem with the panels I already drew.

[3picdonut421]

I write my comics by just scetching out the entire comic. I just think up ideas for the comic and put it in there, then later go over it in artist pens.

[gurukittystudio]

For my current comic, hello, albertosaurus I use a journal I wrote on our trip as the base, then I did layouts based on those. They're on post it notes in a sketchbook. My comic format is square so post-its were perfect.
For my big fantasy project I have a pin board with a map drawn on it where I make notes on locations and I'm planning out all the culture and character development in Google docs. Mostly point form.:)

[UltHamBro]

I've begun to use a "series bible" kind of format for writing. I'm doing rough scripts of a new story, purely for fun, and I've divided them into four files:

-The first one contains the backstory which takes place right before the plot starts, which is also necessary to know in order to understand it.
-The second one is named "future data" and it has rough descriptions of how I want the subplots to unfold and the planned end for the story.
- The third one is basically a series bible: it contains a summary of all the storylines I write, and also miscellaneous data and the like. This is the file I'm working the most in currently.
- The last one is a backup of the original drafts I had written for five and a half issues. I'm almost sure they'll need a complete rewrite, but they're good to check if the pace is right.

When I think I'm done with a story, I write the dialogue in a separate document, and then I do sketches of the layout for every page. And I don't really do anything else before actually starting the drawing process.

[henrikkublick]

I usually sit ready with my pen and paper, or at the keyboard, and let it come when it comes.
I might keep myself busy doing something else, so it won't be 'pressed out', but then the words appears,
and I don't care so much if its useful or not. The important thing is to get it down.

Another thing that can be useful if you are blocked, is to focus on something else, letting some idea, or a project, shape itself in your brain. The suddenly you know how to express the idea! some people call it the star-watching method. Because you see stars more clear, if you see it from the corner of your eye. (makes sense?)

Hope thats useful somehow
The Tower Expedition

[rosette]

It's always in my mind. Everyday that I do is the story of my comics. Kinda hidden message which will I remind. for short, my manga/comics is a diary in disguise hehe

[purrlpankras]

Well
I try to figure what message I want to say with the comic, and try to go from there...

But I draw out the pages small first as a sketch

[VermillionWorks]

How I write my comics now -
Step 1: Make a crap ton of notes and brainstorm like crazy.
Step 2: Write out a very shoddy summary.
Step 3: Make a bit of script for the first pages.
Step 4: Make the comic while writing new scripts for the pages along the way, as well as changing loads of things in the writing along the way.

It's a horrible, very unprofessional way to write, but so far, it's worked best for me. XD Do NOT take writing lessons from me, please.

EDIT: Uh, didn't mean to reply to you in particular JDarby. Sorry.

[AnnaLandin]

Step 1: write up a little summary of what happens in a chapter. Like, "Grumpy swordsman travels through forest. Runs into bandits. Has a fight and wins, hooray!".

Step 2: Do a page-by-page written breakdown. Like "Page one: pictures of forest and main character. Page two, main character sees a thing hanging from a tree branch. Page three: he investigates the thing" and so on until I've got a general idea of how many pages the chapter will be.

Step 3: thumbnails/storyboards on paper. Figure out the panel-layouts and roughly where the speechbubbles will go. Also, write the actual dialogue/narrative text - but leave it kind of vague, as I might need to fix and rearrange things.

Step 4: Digital rough sketches, with dialogue. Hammer out more details, fix and fiddle and move around speech bubbles, change my mind about panel-arrangements and how much space I need for things.

Step 5: Draw all the things.

Step 6: Change the dialogue again.

Step 7: Drink tea. Be beset by self-doubt. Pet cat.

Step 8: Change dialogue AGAIN.

Step 9: Leave for a couple of months, because I've got a big old buffer of pages going.

Step 10: Whoops, it's almost time to post! Panic!

Step 11: Change dialogue one last time.

Step 12: Post!

Step 13: Instant regret, urge to fix dialogue once again - but it's too late!

Step 14: Learn to live with it.

Step 15: Rinse, repeat.

But seriously - I do 80% of my writing in the thumbnail/storyboard stage. I don't separate the writing from the drawing/layouts. I need to know what a page will look like before I can decide how much dialogue or how much plot/action I can fit into it. I can't just write "PAGE ONE. First panel: a man enters a room. Dialogue: Blah blah blah. Second panel: picture of the room." and so on and so forth. I need to see it before I can write it.

Some things come together easily, others are really hard. It varies depending on what story I'm telling.

[sarahrebecca58]

I've actually started doing a pure screen play format.