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Jul 2021

I have a lot of story and scene ideas for my main character but I still feel they're too big for me to draw even for just a single short story that inserts the real premise.
But I still can't even think of short stories that fit enough in four panels or one page because most of such stories are only for jokes and nonsense slice of life stuff.

Do you have any ideas of shortest stories that I can turn into one or few pages instead of dozens but have the same energy as larger stories out there that filled with action and awe? I am not going to blatant character designs and worldbuilding.
After all, I am the only reader of my own comics, at least for now.

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    Jul '21
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    Jul '21
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I don't think it's actually possible to tell a story in a single page - I guess you could try using a single panel to show as much as you can about the world or character and that could be a good exercise? Although it's definitely not going to have the same energy as large stories. Long stories get their impact from build up and foreshadowing and you just can't do that in a single page.

What I did for practice was take the scenes I was excited for in future works and just draw those, minus the other connecting stuff. An exercise I found super helpful for this specifically was taking the one scene, and trying to see all the different ways I could portray it, from changing the tone to the colour pallet, inking styles, character expressions, switching from scroll to page format, etc. It still doesn't have the same impact it would if it was a part of a larger story, but it was helpful for learning the technical aspects. Also keep in mind that this doesn't help you learn pacing or any other 'story' elements, like character arcs, world building, etc. Those are all hard to practice without making longer stories imo.

If you do want to draw a complete story, specifically to practice comics, I found it helpful to make other mediums into comics - like I turned the first episode of Little Witch Academia into a comic, plus I have an ongoing Stardew Valley comic that I add to whenever something interesting happens in game. Anime and cartoons ere definitely the easiest to turn into a comic, so I'd probably start there, then move onto books or live action movies.
I also did a couple comics of short fanfics, which are the only ones I actually posted somewhere (though they've since been deleted). Those had the added bonus of making the original author happy, haha.

What's your definition of a short story? I never really thought of a 2 or 3 page comic as a short story - I consider my current work a short story and it's shaping up to be around 50 pages, haha. (admittedly that might not be a short story anymore, but you get my point)

This means, I have to separate the practice from comic and merely drawing as they are different craft. I thought comic and single illustration are similar thing.

Being able to draw and being able to draw comics are similar crafts, but ultimately different skills. You can take the world's best illustrator and ask them to draw a comic and wind up with something that is visually gorgeous but isn't telling a story. There's actually a great example of this where the character designer behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise illustrated a comic book, and while it's completely gorgeous, nobody can tell what's going on. There are no backgrounds to indicate where the character is, the reading flow is all over the place, there aren't enough panels indicating in-between actions for anyone to follow what's going on, and there's no real visual continuity from one panel to another. It's a bit of a beautiful mess.

At the college I attend, Illustration and Sequential Art (comics) are different Majors for this very reason. And with the upper-level students across the two majors, the Illustration students may sometimes have better draftsmanship skills, but the Sequential Art students will always tell a better visual narrative across a series of pages. Illustration students will give you a series of drawings, but Sequential Art students will give you a story.

Practicing drawing is of course a valuable skill for a comic artist, but practicing visual storytelling is an entirely different skill that needs to be developed. Knowing when you use fewer panels and when to use more, knowing when to use one large panel versus a series of smaller panels, knowing how to move the camera around from panel to panel and how the camera angle will affect the readers, maintaining visual continuity across an entire scene and finding ways to ground the character in their environment from panel to panel without having to draw the entire background over and over again.

All of these things need to be learned and studied and practiced in order to visual tell a strong narrative. And these skills don't really get developed by doing a bunch of stand-alone one-page comics. Rather than trying to find a story that fits in one page, I encourage you to find a story that fits in ten pages. It's still short enough that you can feasibly complete it and it shouldn't feel overwhelming, but in ten pages you'll really get a sense for all that stuff I was talking about and be able to actually tell a short story.

It's a lot to consider, but start small and work your way up. And I suggest reading "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud if you want to get really into the nitty-gritty of what makes a visual narrative different from just drawing pretty pictures.

oh boy, I had that exact same problem. I still do, kinda.

I asked people on r/comiccollabs or something like that, and most of them told me you can't tell an actual story in that many pages. I can also say that from my experience, whenever I tried to fit an actual story into a small number of pages, it got bloated and went from 2 pages to 14.
but they said that short stories aren't supposed to be full stories - rather, they're one moment from a full story. like Jermajay, they suggested to take one interesting scene from a larger story and draw that. all of the context just needs to be implied and told through the art. and following that advice, I managed to make some pretty neat short comics!

although now I'm discovering that what I thought were just scenes from a big story were kinda like stories by themselves... and now I'm researching comic strips, which are effectively structured the same way stories do but with just 3 panels. hell, some even have 1. so I don't exactly know what to think anymore, haha.
I may not have explained it in the best terms, so I can link you to the reddit thread if you'd like.

I read that one good way of learning how to make manga is by starting with 8 pages. You won't be able to include a full story, but you can include that "key scene" of the story, and learn how to subtract all the unnecessary information in order to manga-making.

The manga "Toki wo Yuku Uma" by Keiko Takemiya has different mangas made up of 8, 16, 24 and 32 pages each and is an interesting read that shows how much you can tell in just 8 pages. (I'm sure there is more out there but that's the shortest one, with somewhat action that I can remember.)

I'm bad at 'small' stories, too. (Which is why my comic is probably going to be nearing 100 pages before I get out of chapter 1... sob) But one thing that helps me is making sure each page I'm drawing is 'worth it' somehow. Each page should contribute something to the narrative-- either setting up a situation, furthering that situation, introducing new relevant information, or showing you an important aspect of a character. Don't try to cram too MANY 'worth it' things onto one page, though -- remember you usually only have 5-7 panels on an average comic/manga style page to get your story across.

Here's a small example of how I handled this in my prologue, which is the closest example I have to a 'short' story:

Page One: I introduced the reader to the main character, her culture, and the concept of the Song (which is an important part of the story).

Page Two: I explained a bit about what the Song IS, and how it fits into her culture.

Page Three: I show a fragment of a legend about someone who doesn't have the Song, and present it as a bad thing (which is also important).

Page Four: I set up the moment the character goes to learn the Song for herself.

Page Five: I show the moment the character is denied the Song.

Page Six: I show that the reasons why she was denied are unknown, and the repercussions this has on her.

Page Seven: I show the character moving on with her life, Song-less, and trying to fit into society, but always feeling a bit like an outsider -- which sets up the rest of the story, and eventually a life of adventure.

Seven pages. Each has a point. I give myself 5-7 panels on each page to build/make that point, but I make sure each page HAS at least one. So you could think of story-building as "What 'points' do I need to make? How many 'points' does that make? How do I show each 'point' in the span of one page?"

Dunno if that helps, but it's actually how I write my scripts-- I write a couple sentences/a short paragraph about ONE important thing that happens per page. Might be worth a shot.

Firstly I will have to stay, I don't think it is possible for a comic that short to have the full effects of a larger story.

Tho my recommendation would maybe look at American Sunday comic. It is a good example of having a very basic and short narrative.

Another thing to think about is how you format your page.
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Manga will sometimes have pages with just one or two panels. If this is how you used to making comics, you could combine pages.


Here is an example of a comic with a lot of panels on one page. Other creators may feel to break something like this up into 2 or 3 pages.

I would also recommend looking into comics featured in Sonic the Comic. Some of the weekly stories were only about 7 pages.