How well did you plan out the plot of your comic?

[Chronitis]

I'm currently making one (not yet uploaded) and I am having trouble for what happens WAY down the road. I have the main characters planned out, but my plot isn't fully finished. Should I keep going with it and (when ready) upload it, even though I'm not fully sure of what will happen later?

[AnnaLandin]

Knowing how it ends is always a good idea!

You don't need to have every step of the way figured out, but having a beginning, a rough idea of the middle, and an end in mind before you start posting is usually a good thing to do. Just a big-picture view of the whole thing, with the most significant events noted down.

If you know how it ends, you know what you're supposed to be aiming for, which means that even if you don't have everything meticulously planned out, you can keep from writing yourself into corners.

I have a general outline of my whole story from beginning to end, but I've tweaked a bunch of stuff and added scenes and taken away others, introduced minor characters I didn't originally intend to, and written others out. I know enough about where I'm going with all this to be able to change things around as necessary when better ideas occur to me.

[inkorporate]

Personally I prefer working on short stories so that I can plan every details. For Interface, I finished the whole thing before starting to post. I working on a new one now.

I started to work like that after listening to this great speech by Ray Bradbury https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-r7ABrMYU

[Chronitis]

Thank you, I actually have an idea for a story where I do know the beginning, fragments of the middle, and how it will end. I just wanted so see if there were ways I could make the current one work, because I have the character designs done for every charter, and the other one with the story well thought out, I haven't started on a single charters design.

[respheal]

For my comic....NOT WELL ENOUGH!

I've got mine maybe 50% sorted: the beginning, most of the middle, and the very end. I realized that there's issues around the 75% mark that resulted in me dropping in a whole other story arc that isn't really all that planned out yet, although I know the gist of a few events that need to happen.

The biggest danger of not having the story completely written out is the possibility of needing to ret-con earlier events in the story due to events later on (such as adding a plot element that should have been woven in much sooner). As long as you're confident that you won't need to rewrite any of the beginning or early middle, however, you should be fine to get started.

[eleoza]

Go with it :3
Not knowing which road your comic takes and what happens in the middle keeps things interesting for yourself.
That's kinda how I work. I know how it all ends and some big events during the story but that's all.

[Shanny8]

Not thorough- but I'm like that. I have ideas for a few possibilities...some smaller plot stuff I can see clearly, while other stuff is a still a but fuzzy. Usually in the process of working on the current material I start to come with the answers to the incomplete plots that are still floating out there.

[KSlinger]

If you're struggling to figure out where your plot goes further down the line I recommend figuring out the core message or tagline that describes your story at the most basic level and crafting the plot around it. Like for the film Toy Story it would be something like 'a toy learning to accept change', and for Beauty and The Beast something like 'two people learning to empathize with each other', that kind of thing. Knowing what is supposed to happen at the end can be as vague as 'main character lets go of the past' or 'main character finally finds that they were looking for', but so long as you generally know what kind of person or situation you need to end up with you can figure out what basic things need to happen to get there.

For example, in Toy Story, in order for us to actually recognize that Woody has changed as a character he needed to go through a 'rock bottom' moment (Sid's house) and the 'oh shit, I'm to blame' moment to follow after (Buzz is depressed, Woody restores his confidence, etc).

Whatever your plot is and whatever your character arcs contain, its up to you to construct the landmarks that show the reader what stage of the journey they have reached. Like we know that Woody knocking Buzz out the window was his character at his worst, we know that Woody reigniting Buzz in Sid's bedroom was his character turning around, and the moment the he trusts Buzz to get him back to Andy as they fly towards the moving van is the moment the arc is complete. If you can identify the landmarks your characters need to reach on their journey (major plot points) you can angle all the minor details in that direction, guiding them towards those moments.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope it helps!

Edit:

Woody reigniting Buzz in Sid's bedroom

Just realized how kinky that sounds, helloooo. What version of Toy Story is this??

[punkarsenic]

honestly, itll be pretty stressful if you dont know where youre going while posting your comic. at least bulletpoint out vaguely what your ending is, and how you get there - its a big weight off your mind.

before i started, i planned out the main plot points on a timeline, but left myself wiggle room for extra characterisation and less plot-important scenes during the writing process itself. i try to write my script at least one chapter ahead of the comic, but that falls through sometimes - that gets bad for timing.

[Houndstooth]

I always find it really important to know the ending and to have a rough idea of the middle and the climax. It's useful to make sure you're following the 3 Act structure and if relevant, the more detailed ones to help with pacing a linear story. I find that if I don't plan it out to the letter i end up going wildly off course and the climax and the overall pacing of the comic goes to ruin.
Then again, I'm a screenwriter so i'm used to writing down tons of planning stuff. For Laid in Lavender I wrote a logline, rough synopsis, treatment (spanning the entirety of the comic), beat sheet (spanning the first volume) and finally the script (also the first volume) before even touching the thumbnails stage.

[cleo_san]

Well, I thought I had everything planned well with my Comic Remember - but then over the course of time, the story and the world and especially the characters developed more and more, so... I have some points I definitely want to put in into the comic, but there will happen so much more which I haven't planned yet and which will come as the story continues =)

Creating worlds is kinda like an adventure itself =) Maybe suddenly a side character becomes very important for the story, then again, something happens which you haven't calculated... and your characters grow from that! =)

If the trouble you are facing is a loooooooong time away (or maaaany pages), then don't sweat it. Just go ahead, get started and I bet your problem will be solved "on the go" as you draw along =) Maybe the interaction with your readers or even their comments or their guesses will give you the perfect idea how to go on with the story! =)

[spadesart]

i planned maybe.....................................30% of the comic before starting. i had outlined up to chapter 3 or 4 and had a full script for chapter 1 and thats about it. i had all the major plot events in mind though which helped a lot.

[TristanJensen]

[TheRabbit]

The way I work is to plan less the further way I'm from making it. Meaning, I have plans where my comic is going (like events and shit), but because it will be years since I'll get around it, I only have 10-20% of it solid planed out. For me, having everything planed out now would be a bad move, since it would make it less exiting when I get to it. Also, by the time I'm there, I have probably evolved as a writer, and therefore would think that the old "solid" plan would suck.

So, my rule of thumb is to never plan out everything. Only 50%, and let improvisation do the rest.

[DMBrigman]

As others have said knowing where it is going is the most important thing. That will keep you on track as you progress. I knew where I wanted to start and where I need to end up, then came up with stuff that had to happen on the way. The inciting incident, formation of the team, the quest begins, etc. Then I wrote the first story arc, then the chapters within that. I make sure to keep a list of stuff that the reader has to know before we get to the end so that I can best weave that stuff in before we get there. As I have written and illustrated each chapter the characters and story became more alive and have caused me to change some initial ideas along the way to the end, so being too rigid in planning would stifle my story.

[cleo_san]

@DMBrigman never thought of making a list what the reader has to know when... awesome idea, thanks! Gotta try this right now! <3

[YourAverageArtist]

I don't like it to plan every detail of the story out. The most time I improvise. I know the rough storyline but the end and everything else I know, when I am working on. For me it's more fun that way. Because you don't know what's happen next and it is more exciting for me to explore my own story than anything else

[joannekwan]

It depends on the story really, like for my sit-com-esque series I only planned probably 40% of the way in before starting to draw it. That's because it's a touch more episodic with a meatier plot that develops the later it goes. Like at its core, it's just a girl interacting with demons, but the latter half of the series deals with how they got there in the first place.

For my romance story, it started on a whim, I just really liked these two characters I created so I started posting some pages? After the first two updates I then really buckled down and came up with a general plot that I fully fleshed out after a month, and then gradually filled in dialogue and nitty gritty details after another 3 months.

For my other compact stories, I like having the whole thing written out before starting. Of course the dialogue I write isn't set in stone and could be changed as I'm drawing.

[BubooSenchan]

I love BL, YAOI romance. Really twisted shit. So I put both together and ta taaa: Gloomy Night xd
I put everything that I like to see in comic together like: killings, suicide, hot guys, trauma, a lot of blood, sadness, but also cute things and a lot of psychological stuff.

[ahhvecadoes]

I'm almost at the end of Ch 1 and still haven't finished writing Ch 2, so not very well, lol

I DO have, like Anna said, the basics plotted out and general chapter synopsis written down, but as far as scripts, I do things generally on the fly and add pages where needed to make things flow better.