Story Arcs/Seasons/Chapters? How do you write your comic?

[GrimRose]

I am still planning out my own comic, but I always find myself running into the same dilemma no matter which story I end up working on... How do I structure the story?

I know that print comics/manga is often broken up into individual chapters, then compiled into volumes.

But even then the story is structured differently depending on the story/genre.

Some stories follow a "monster of the week" type of structure that wraps up the story/problem after each chapter.

Others break up their story into mini/long story arcs spanning over a couple to several chapters.

Then there is webcomics/webtoons.

Several webtoons i've read break their story into episodes and seasons. This means the structure is very different to a chapter by chapter format.
I think it is closer to how a tv show might structure their story. Usually released on a week by week basis.

Breaking up the story into seasons, usually 2-3, splits the story into beginning, middle, and end. This makes it easier to structure your story and plan your story in separate chunks if you need to.

Season 1: setting up the story/characters and introducing the logic/rules of your world. Usually ends of with a cliffhanger.

Season 2-3: There is something your characters need to resolve/ a goal they must achieve. This season is usually where the villains/conflict of your story becomes apparent. If there is only 2 seasons you must resolve it by then. If not then the 3rd season is where the climax/resolution to the story has to be told.

With so many different ways to structure/tell a story, it can be overwhelming.

So what type of story structure do you guys recommend?

What type of structure did you use? (if you are a comic creator/writer)

Also are there any other ways that you can structure a story as well?

I'd like to know your thoughts

[mariusthered]

my comic blunderland has just passed 500 pages!

I write my stories as books broken down into chapters and i not only try to have chapters that tell one part of the story but im working on and almost perfected making the chapters fit the month i post them ( i post daily now) . for example last month I had 31 pages in a month that only had 28 days. so i stopped the chapter one day 27 posted the new cover on the 28th and started the new chapter with the run over pages. the comic im working on now im considering as book one and it's written for 21 chapters. book two is now in the planning stages and will be about the same amount of chapters so will take me a few years to get to the end of it, but mine is and ongoing string of tales so no rush.
my goal is to have a long story through each book and have secondary plots for each month hopefully gaining an audience as we go. I have also just set up a compendium so reader can use it to look up things about all the parts of the world building as blunderland covers so much, i thought it would come in handy for new readers who dont want to read all the back story. I think that's the trick to try and have something people can start to read without getting lost and confused by past events.

[Kamikaze]

I think you're confusing Story Structure and Format. The two are really different things.

Format is how you deliver a story (chapters, episodes, scroll vs traditional pages).

Structure is your building plans for your story as whole (The Heroes Journey, Three Act Freytag's Pyramid, The Fichtean Curve).

None of this should be confused with Plot or Story either.
Plot = WHAT happens. A queen murders the king in cold blood.
Story = WHY it happens. A queen must murder her insane husband for the good of the realm.

If these elements were staked in a (super simplistic) pyramid it'd look something like this:

Format - Capstone
Story - 3rd layer
Plot - 2nd layer
Structure - Foundation

What I'm hearing from your question, for the most part anyway, is you're struggling with how to deliver your story to your audience. That means you're struggling with format.

Format is a really personal choice for a lot of creators, because it really depends on what's best for THAT story. A creator may choose a traditional comic page and issue format for one story, but then use a chapter and scroll method for another. It just depends what serves your story best.

A word of caution: Once you choose a format stick with it. You may come up with something WAY better down the line, but if your readers are used to reading a comic one day, you'll shake them up by changing the delivery format. Especially if you change it multiple times...

Choose one, and stick with it!

[AmazementComics]

In the mainstream continuity of Amazement Comics, the series titled The Action Fruit Society uses the season long story format. These seasons are individually broken up into "seperate" series of their own. The reason for this is so that anybody who has been following the series can go back and see the episodes they missed and in exactly what season they occurred. The first season, as you previously stated, sets up the characters, then season two sets up a goal the main character(s) must accomplish, so on and so forth. Currently, our series is about to go into its third season where the is an overarching storyline broken up into two parts, 13 episodes each. So it really all depends on what story dynamic you prefer, whether chapters separated into volumes, or episodes separated into seasons, which kind of seems what Tapas is leaning more towards.

[Rhonder]

I think you already kinda stumbled upon the answer, but there's no right or wrong way, it really depends story-to-story what makes the most sense

I will add though: I do think beyond just genre and medium, your publishing frequency is something to account for when planning the structure. Like for example: serialized manga pump out a chapter a week, for a lot of series. So in that format it makes a lot of sense to have some arcs take several chapters because you can cover them before the reader forgets what was happening a chapter or two ago. A lot of American comics are released in issues, which are roughly chapter length, once a month. Some of these are standalone, and others are several month arcs. Then there's the typical hobbyist webcomic artist who can usually push out like 1-5 pages a week. And others yet that draw all of the pages ahead of time, and so can choose how much to post at a time freely. So like if you plan out your story similar to a manga where a story arc might take like 4 chapters to conclude but can only draw 1-2 pages a week, it might take like a full year just to get through the arc. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but just something to consider ^^ I'm not super familiar with webcomic seasons tbh but likening them to TV sounds about right~

For my own comic I guess I'm doing something of a cross between chapters and seasons? It was originally intended to be a standalone one-shot of +/- 60 pages, but I've already decided to continue it after the current arc finishes in kind of an episodic format (following the same characters, but not necessarily in a linear fashion and more or less readable independently of one another). So while I was thinking about them like chapters in my head, maybe calling them "seasons" where each season tells a different story is more accurate lol.

[Darkstrong]

In our case, I am writing in a way, that almost incorporates all the options that you listed. We are finishing the first ark of the story, which is structures almost like the monster of the week, with four pages per sort encounter with something supernatural. The first ark serves almost as a way to present all the characters and somewhat set up the main conflict. After that I don't think I will break the story in chapters and just have several big-ish arks all with their own story, but connecting by overarching conflict set up in the very beginning.

[unknown_user]

I've divided my story into episodes, chapters and arcs.

• I draw each episode during two-four weeks. When I'm getting tired from drawing and want to rest from it for several days in the row, I "end" an episode ( yes, just in that place, where I've tired - usually it happen after I depict one significant event ) and upload it. Readers comments, received through this time, inspire me to draw the next episode.
• I plan to end each chapter every 3-4 episodes, at the moments when something interesting is going to happen, so readers would stay intrigued (or I hope so...).
• I consider as an "arc" a whole set of events, which have happened in the same place. So, for now I have only one arc - "forest arc". The next will be "home arc". I don't mention their names in the comics itself (because they are obviously too stupid), but I have them in my scenario block-scheme in the notebook. So... this "arcs" division is actually just for me, not for reader, and is purposed just to organize things at least somehow.

TL;DR: don't listen to me, I have no idea how to divide the story in a reasonable way and do it almost randomly.

[Coati]

I don't count pages, because the panel format. In the script I split in chapters that belong to arcs. The chapter are splited in parts that I'm posting 2 times a week. You can consider it the comic episodes

Example:

About Courage and Rebellion
The Bridge
Rendevouz

Three chapters, splited in smaller episodes and all of 3 belong to the Introduction arc

[MK_Wizard]

I usually don't go beyond four books/seasons. Each book/season is divided into at least six chapters and one epilogue.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Traditionally, I use a chaptered format, with the content of each chapter equating to roughly one 22-min episode of a show. Chapters are (or rather, will be) consolidated into 'books' 5 or 6 at a time.

However, since I started on Webtoons (writing shorter stories) I've been formatting a little differently. My current WT comic is slice-of-life and written like a mini-series, with one little 4-5 page cute interaction per episode. Future WT comics will be a bit more drama-heavy, but the focus will still be on starting and finishing one character interaction per episode.

[TheFalseVyper]

I'm also using a chapter format for my comic! My story started out as a book, so it kind of made more sense in my head transitioning over to chapters for the comic.