Whats your comic writing method?

I'm first and foremost a writer, so I like to have my story fleshed out first in writing form. It also helps me and my partner envision how we want the comic to look (my partner is amazing at visualizing my writing) Sometimes I can include how I want a particular panel to look like, like where the setting of a dialogue line will be or what expression the character has, and add it as a side note for my art partner. Then as I include the lettering to speech bubbles, I can alter the dialogue line to fit better with the visuals (I've altered quite a few dialogue texts once I had the page all set out for me)

TLDR: I write a story, add notes of how I want a panel to look if applicable, and alter the dialogue when doing lettering if I see fit to

I tend to start with a really broad idea and add details the more I think about the story. I go on walks everyday and just pick an aspect of the story I want to elaborate in my head and just think about the various interactions, dialogues, events that could happen. Then I write it all down.

Before I started my comic, I have a great majority of my story figured out, and all major events written down. But then there is some parts that I just leave for myself to figure out later. So I may write that an interaction between two characters has to happen(say a date for example) but not specify the type of date or location or anything like that. But then some scenes are really specific because I want to make sure certain dialogues touch on certain things, so I'll write out the exact dialogue I want for the scene, but again I may not decide details like location, or names of characters till closer to the finishline.

The two main female characters in my story, the main one is Gwen, the best friend of Gwen is Fiona. I didn't have a name for either for the longest time, I used "G" for Girl, and "F" for friend... I practically wrote out the whole thing before I decided to just look up names starting with G and F for them XD.

I usually like to heavily outline the plot so I don't start writing and end up making a mistake that's hard to fix. I'll have the majority of the plot figured out but leave myself room to change things if I need to.

When it comes to working on the panels I try to get down to specifics and utilize panel placement in an interesting way. Then I'll have dialogue written out but I'm open to changing it. Seeing the lines so much sometimes leads me to find a better way to phrase something and I'll change it.

I typically just write out all the dialogue, location, and actions of the characters, but don't really plan how anything looks.

I'm currently reading "On Writing" by Stephen King, and he whole heartily embraces this technique (though he advocates from some deep tissue editing after). But, I always found that the journey of writing is much more enjoyable when you, the author, are also along for the ride
After all, as King puts it, you are the first reader of your own work.

I totally agree with the sentiment of small, back-yard stories. I can't say that Stephen King inspired me to write that style, but I do think that it is one of the truest styles of writing. We all grow up in small towns in our own way. And they're all weird.
Though I'm currently writing a fantasy epic, I try to weave that philosophy into every fantasy I do. It's something I've come to call "Backyard fantasy", for the sense that your backyard is a wondrous and mysterious place, and weird and fantastical things can happen there.

Exactly. I hate to plug my work, but the short comic I'm currently running is at the root of that philosophy.

I like to think of my novels as pearls. They start with an ending, which sits in my head and grows through constant irritation.

My method is usually

AHHHH I FORGOT TO DRAW MY COMIC FOR TOMORROW!!!!!

Case in point - tomorrow's comic.

For my long-form story, I plan by arcs (or acts to some people). I've made 12-14 arcs for the whole story, and for each arc, there's an enemy or struggle the protagonist/s has/have to overcome. Each arc is somewhat thematically different from the rest, but everything connects leading up to the final one. As for planning the events that will happen on each arc and how each arc ends, that's what I leave out open to future ideas - or rather, I have some of the events for each arc planned out, but of course, I can always add better ones in the future as I learn IRL.

I'd say the first thing I do is figure out the plot and then split it into chapters..... Then after that I write the script around this structure.
I write my scripts similarly to screen scripts since that was the form of script I was initially trained in and it's my comfortable method. It helps if I visualise it as if I were planning to film/animate it, so I can get key frames in mind.
The script is then split up into pages, by highlighting in google docs. Once I know how many pages there are I can start thumbnailing.
I have a seperate sketchbook for thumbnails, and essentially it's just sketching out a tiny version of the page to get an idea of what panels to use and what to put in the panel visually.
After my thumbnails are done, I recreate the panels digitally, and create a rough sketch.
The lineart comes next, then colour if I'm making a coloured page... after that I include my shading and lighting.

OMG YES STORY TALKIN TIME~! (Sorry y'all story just gets me so pumped!!!)

Okay so when it comes to writing comic scripts I'm a wierdo and use the screenwriting method to get my stories finished. Sorta like what you do @snyorf. Blake Snyder's Save the Cat has a good template, and it's a good place to find the bones of your story - so srsly everyone give that a look over.

I think GRRM had this thing he said once that there are two kinds of writers: Architects and Gardeners. Gardeners write and see where the story takes them. Architects plan everything out and know where they're going once they hit the ground running. There's also a mix of the two as well, where you have a person who plans to a point and then wings it.

I'm a hardcore architect. I love knowing where I'm going, so that means every comic 'book' I write is actually written out in FULL before my team starts putting pencil to page. Along the way I'll tweak things here and there, but not much. Here's the process I go through:

When I have the basic idea of what my story is I break it down into beats. Beats are an event, decision, or discovery that alters the way the protagonist pursues his or her goal. I use this awesome site called Trello to help me take my beats and arrange them into acts like so ->

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Trello is amazing because it allows you to move cards around, label stuff, write additional ideas, add images, collaborators can comment and share things with you. It's so helpful you guise! Please use it! \o/

Once I have my acts laid out, then I start working on my scenes. Now, multiple beats can happen in a single scene, or they can be a scene to themselves. It just depends on what you want to do. Using my breakdown of the script in Trello I start writing in the most bare bones way possible...

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It's so devoid of any formatting bells and whistles that I can't get caught up in making it "look nice." It's supposed to be ugly, which gives me the freedom to focus on JUST the writing. I'll write out each scene piece by piece. The cool thing about planning your work out in the beats and scenes method is that you can literally start ANYWHERE in your story. You can write the end first, or the climax. You can start in the middle and then hop around to the beginning. It's really freeing!

Once I've got all of my scenes written out I take each of these little pieces and throw them into a program called Final Draft. This program is what I use in my daily writing on other gigs, so know you don't HAVE to use this specific screenwriting software if you don't want to. There's free screenwriting software out there like Celtx and more that are perfectly find to use.

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Once everything is plugged into Final Draft I print out everything and revise the hell out of it, until I have something I like. Then it goes over to my hubby who's my first editor. He'll give me feedback and I'll revise again. From there it just keeps going until I have a draft I'm more or less happy with. Then I send it to my second editor Rachelle. She gives me hardcore feed back that is always helpful.

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Then I take each script and compile all the notes into my master draft. And then it's time to chip away at the final revisions.

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And then finally...the script is finished! From there I'll sit down and break out the whole script into segments of comic pages. This 'translation' process is probably my favorite part! I work from the master script and usually the corgi is there to cheer me on.

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Once my pages are blocked out for comics, I pull them back into the old text document and write each pages script into comic format like so ->

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And that's where we go from comic script, through the art process and to final page!
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...whew! It's a long process, but I think it makes a big difference in my comics storytelling. If any of y'all wanna see the results feel free to check out my comic and let me know what you think of the writing! <3

I plan the big happenings in the story, how they will happen and when they will happen. And then I kind of wingthe stuff in between.

It's a mixture of planning and winging it. I have key elements written down in my notebook, but a majority of the time I'm pretty much winging it. My first comic for the most part I'm winging it but like I said there are key moments that I have plan before hand, which won't be in the comic till later.

I have the general plot in my head, but how I get from point A to point B is not very clear to me before I start sketching out thumbnails. I work with pen and paper for the idea generation and page layouts, first then do I move to digital. For My thumbnails I either write out the dialogue if that's important, or I work from images that I think would be cool and then add as I see fit.

Here's an example of working out the dialogue and then adding it to images.

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