Tips for beginners! A community tip bar!

[Undertaildoof34]

Alright while im, not a beginner I keep seeing forums for tips and tricks from newcomers asking for them so I thought why don't we as a community come together and pool in a whole pot of tips and tricks that newcomers can go to!

[2_YuiAkane_2]

Hello there!

Your post is a spot on, what tips do you recommend when a novelist wants to make their novel into a comic? What are the stages that the two parts have to come up with, in order to help each other out?

I am building a community for authors to support each other and interact with their fans (from Tapas at the moment, but everybody is welcome!)

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[nostalgicroxas]

There was a great thread some time ago that was something like "things they never tell you about making comic/novel" and for the life of my, I've spent 30 minutes trying to find it so I can post it here. It was full of great one-liners that were just, chef kiss so spot on.

[darthmongoose]

what tips do you recommend when a novelist wants to make their novel into a comic? What are the stages that the two parts have to come up with, in order to help each other out?

Here's the checklist for that as I see it:

1. Make sure that the thing you're adapting will actually work well in comic form. It should be something where the story has a lot of visual interest, evoking atmospheric places, has expressive characters and most importantly, the characters do a lot of things so they won't just be sitting or standing and talking in the vast majority of panels. If most of your story takes place in the character's internal monologue, or the core concepts require loads and loads of exposition, it may be more suited to being a novel than a comic.

2. You're going to have to cut down the text significantly. Identify what the most important lines and actions are that definitely need to be kept, perhaps by highlighting them in the manuscript. The artist may be able to help you on this. Throw away anything that isn't vital to either understanding the story or the characters unless it's really, really entertaining.

3. Anything you can describe happening with "stage directions" instead of using dialogue, or even worse, internal monologue from the characters to describe what happened or how they were feeling in text, the better. You don't need to describe exactly what should be in each panel, the artist might be able to help you on panelling, so let them. What the artist needs from you is a clear understanding of where things are happening, the tone of the scene, who is there, how they're feeling and important continuity details like props.

4. Your partnership with your artist will be a long one. You may be working together for months, or more probably, years, so pick somebody you vibe with and you feel really "gets" your story as well as being in the right kind of style and budget.

[2_YuiAkane_2]

Thank you so much for this, it really helps me out!

Did you have a similar experience? If so, what did you learn from that?

[Undertaildoof34]

Alright, im going to dish out some tips!
Biggest question I've seen is
why aren't people reading my story?
Well typically people don't read it if they don't know it's there.
PROMOTION IS OK! But as long as you use diplomacy and respect straight off saying Read my book will come off as very rude and make a bad reputation for you.
ask more like this "Hey I really enjoyed your story! I have a story in the same genre do you want to check it out?"
Its ok if they say no take everything with a grain of salt and keep going.
I personally can attest that promotion is a huge help.
Another big one is constructive criticism account what people say but at the end of the day remember IT IS YOUR STORY!! YOU DECIDE.
Then a big one is a grammar. it makes a difference trust me. A great program is Grammarly and it's free.
Also something that can up the reading experience is music! This is for both comics and novels! If you go to the bottom of the add chapter page then you'll find a tab that adds music. Trust me I've experienced it both as a reader and a writer it's a great mechanic to exploit.

Stuff with plot say can you not figure out what kind of filler for in between youre biging and end alright i recommend looking at other story arcs and using them if they fit. Feel free to custom the arc to youre story. This is fine as long as you don't use the characters from the other work. JUST THE ARC. Like say example a bad to good arc for whatever character.
This arc could be like if youre character is brought up in a dysfunctional society and at first there a bad guys to the main characters until they come to the realization that there ways are flawed.Then go through how they meet up with the main characters.

Or for twists like revealing this character and this character are one and the same. I personally have this in my own story. You use a title in novels like The teacher and then when it's time for reveal it be like this.

The teacher smiles "I guess you figured it out. So then what are you going to do?"
MC "Im going to do what I should have years ago Sam. Im going to kill you."

It makes a great moment for the reader to be like AHHH I knew it! Which is fine. This can ad to re-read value witch is something I don't see some writers value. But you should. Think about the great stories you watched as a kid you probably watched them ten times and more.
these are just what i can think of right now.

[darthmongoose]

I haven't adapted a novel before, but I have worked with writers in the past in a professional capacity, and I have an English Literature degree, so I really enjoy carefully comparing graphic novel adaptations to the novels to see what works and what doesn't (a really good one is the graphic novel adaptation of Vampire Academy, drawn by Emma Vieceli, I actually thought it was a more enjoyable read than the novel; the cuts really streamline the story and make the heroine feel more strong and proactive) and on my own comics I'm usually a writer/artist, so that makes it easy to compare the pain points when working with writers compared to working alone.

One of the biggest problems working with a writer on a comic is when they love their words too much. They want their words all crammed in all over the page, so a panel that would best be served with an image of the character expressing intense sadness in their face and posture and the way it's coloured you'll instead get like... an image of their clenched fist with a teardrop landing on it and a paragraph of text going "I was devastated, such a deep sadness like I had been swallowed by a sea of grief and I was drowning in it. I cannot express how sad I felt".
You have to trust your artist, and to do that, you have to work with an artist you trust to express the same level of feeling with their drawings as you do with your prose, whether it's emotion, action or atmosphere. There'll be plenty of room in the dialogue and the action of the script for your writerly talents to come through, so that's the best advice I can give; let your artist turn as many of your words into images as possible instead of having some pictures for decoration and as many of your words as you can put in there.

[2_YuiAkane_2]

@darthmongoose
Thank you, reading your comment was really informative.

Regarding job payment, what's the rule out there? How much a comic artist should get paid if they have to adapt to the novel? What's a good deal for both of the artists? How should they organise and split any income that is coming?

For example, if they post it on tapas, I guess they will split any income that they will get. But what about if the comic artist post the comic somewhere else without telling the other (like webtoon) and claim that the work is theirs anyway, as they created it? How do you "control and manage" these kinds of situations? Or better, what will you do to make it work?

[Undertaildoof34]

I have personally done this for a coemption i am an artist and and a writer but i didn't win but i did learn a lot from the experience. But if youre the writer and someone else is the artist i seriously recommend good communication. First stage is character designs both party's must be happy with this and reused backgrounds TRUST ME WHEN I SAY you don't want to be stuck re drawing the same background over and over and over. If you're the writer you need to communicate if some things the artist can change and others that have to be very specific.

[2_YuiAkane_2]

I do use Grammarly as anyway, English is not my mother language, but even though I upgraded it to premium, it still doesn't correct the tense of all the verbs. I always find it useful, but I just need the practice to improve my grammar and read a lot.

About the promotion, I agree. Even if I am one of the supporters of sub4sub so that I can support many other artists and help them make some money when they can unlock the support button, I still think that people should take their time to read what they subscribe for.

I have a thing for BL novels/comics, and no matter what, I will always unconsciously prioritise them. But I get that, to be a better writer, I should also include different genres that are not still BL, for example.

What do you think about the narrators perspective? I've seen that many novelists that I follow often use a Limited Third-Person Narrator. I am using that as my current narrator in my novel, but I am a bit tired of the pattern that the story goes because you reveal most of the story, even though it gives a "full" vibe and idea of what's going on. I bet and envy the novelists who use a First-Person Narrator because I guess it takes time to reveal all the things and plots in the story.

I imagine that my choice of a limited third-person narrator is because "I write how I would like to see the story in a series or a movie" if it does make sense? Do you agree?

[Undertaildoof34]

Narrators perspective i personally write this way because i felt it would be best for my story because some of the characters are only going to open up to other characters that aren't the main. I've seen a lot in the first person that to get around this they have to have the main character eavesdrop.
But yes I do agree

[darthmongoose]

Regarding job payment, what's the rule out there? How much a comic artist should get paid if they have to adapt to the novel? What's a good deal for both of the artists? How should they organise and split any income that is coming?

For paying the artist up front (then you take all the profits) expect to easily be needing to pay in the region of $25+ per panel for somebody of professional quality. You can get cheaper if you take a chance on somebody less experienced, but it's not without risk. People with no comics experience charging low rates may ghost on you or flake out later, or they might proceed slowly due to needing to have a part time job or being in college, they may turn out to have a limited drawing range due to inexperience and struggle to draw certain things or they may not deal well with criticism. That isn't to say that it's possible none of these bad things will happen and you'll stumble on a diamond in the rough and a beautiful friendship, it's just good to be aware that the reason people pay for seasoned comics pros is generally trustworthiness. I can't ghost on a client because I have a public profile and reputation that would make it hard for me to start over from scratch. A total newbie could easily do that though, just vanish and start afresh.

The less expensive option is split profits. In terms of work hours, most people agree the artist should get about 70% and the writer around 30%, because typically a page might take a few hours to write (including research time and editing) and then about 7 to draw, ink, colour and letter. These numbers may change if you take on more duties, like say storyboarding, flatting, toning, lettering and speechbubbles etc. The problem with this approach is that it'll be hard to attract professional level talent for possible, not guaranteed future money unless your novel is already so big that it's almost certain to do well. If you're not either fairly well-known or with an absolutely excellent novel that's clearly going places, you're likely to get quite inexperienced and unpolished artists taking you up on this deal.

[Undertaildoof34]

this is just about what i was going to say

[2_YuiAkane_2]

You are so experienced! Where did you learn all these things?

What I am planning is to finish my novel, send it to a publishing company and see what they say. Either way, I know that my novel is being published - my goal is to make an e-book and later on a physical one-. My last stage is comic but wanted to get professionals to do it.

Is there a website or platform to contact comic artists, or you just surf on Twitter and Instagram and start to chat?

[rajillustration]

To add to what Darth mentioned, (which are all great points) I turned my novel into a comic and so I have some pointers, too (I'm an artist as well so I just drew my own). It's helpful to remember that there's many types of comics. There's page format, there's graphic novels, there's scroll format comics (which are the webtoon comics), and experimental, wild zine comics as well (also light novels! Which aren't comics, but absolutely a thing you can do if you don't want to buy as much art). Each has it's own vibe and so you want to find the right style of storytelling for the story that you're telling.

So Scroll works really well for slice of life and dialogue (especially right now, it's very popular) page format lends itself to action and sprawling scenery and world building, but it tends to suffer a bit with talking portions (although it can be done.) and Graphic Novels are expected to be...partly novels, so you can add a lot more words and get away with it (although speaking as someone who made one--I got mixed reviews from others posting it on a site like this where a lot of readers fear paragraphs) There's not one that's better than the other, you generally choose what works best for you. But certain formats are definitely more well loved on the app than others and will be more popular (so right now, that's scroll format).

But like Darth said, when you make a novel into a comic, you are essentially rewriting it, so if you're working with an artist, they'd prefer it to be in script format, and already paced out so you know exactly how many pages/episodes it will be. Depending on the artist, they may want more or less direction, but they won't even start if they don't know the length the story is from the outset.

[darthmongoose]

You are so experienced! Where did you learn all these things?

Well, I started out making webcomics waaay back in the early 00s on communities like Deviantart and some forums that sadly no longer exist like Hyper-Comics and The Sweatdrop forums (Sweatdrop studios still exist, they just don't have a forum any more, but back in the day, a lot of the UK's aspiring manga talent hung out there, including a lot of now fairly well-known creators in the industry and people with comics here on Tapas, like the creators of Buuza!!, Breaks, The Princess Beast, Firelight Isle, Cafe Suada, and Alien Heart are all people I know from my days on the Sweatdrop forums).
I developed my comics drawing skills, entered and placed in the Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga UK and Ireland, and the UK Japanese Embassy's Manga Jiman competitions, and published a bunch of my short comics (often competition entries that won or didn't win) in anthology books with a variety of UK small press manga artists I was friends with. I also made webcomics, particularly one called Fan Dan Go, which is kind of like a terrible early version of my comic here on Tapas, Errant.

After uni, I started picking up commissions as an illustrator, comic artist and later a games artist, and also started putting work into improving my writing skills by reading books and watching authortube videos.

Basically I just kept doing stuff for about 18 years and in doing so accumulated a lot of experience!

[ble]

Tips:

Threat your first series/comics just as a warm-up, to gain experience or learn techniques because your first comic, most of the time, will not have much success.

Don't get too hyped or married to an idea until you have numbers that could back that hype. I rebooted my first comic 3 TIMES (something that took me like a year or so, as i waited till i had more back pages), after I post it online, it got zero subs and comments. Now, if i want to launch a new series, I will post the first episode to see how well it perform.

[2_YuiAkane_2]

Like everything, it takes time to get the views. I know what most people say about "your first piece of work is shit" and so on, and it's totally normal because it is, indeed your FIRST.

But I get what you mean, people shouldn't get too hyped about their work and wait what the "comminity" thinks and react at your novel/comic.

[Undertaildoof34]

Yes one great way to do this i found personally is hosting a poll where you supply a rundown of what each series you would like to make has to offer. The audience will pick witch one is most appealing. Thus giving you you're best story to work on. i used this method myself and it works!

[Undertaildoof34]

ok so question...Should I update as the chapters are ready? typically I write a whole season out do editing as I upload them. But a lot of people are on track for the final season and really hyped. So I'm scared of losing that due to the wait. So I'm considering having more recent updates to update as the chapters are ready so there is less wait for the next part...