I think if I've learned anything over the last few months is that it's good not to be too rigid with where you're going, being spontaneous creatively not only helps you stay excited with your project, but it also means you're not doing crazytime rewrites when you think of something new and you want to plop that in. I've thus found storyboarding and doing 'pivotal scene' artwork good, and then working the story around them. I think with developing characters, it's important to know their motivation in life, because in relation to any scenario you put them in, their reaction to that scenario will be an interaction with their motivation. A problem I find writing for modern characters is the general malaise and apathy I've observed in the modern West, especially writing for superheroes, it was tough coming up with a scenario to develop heroes in an apathetic environment. With fleshing a story itself, I find setting the initial scene more important than anything, I think that's where most people get the block. I've opted for a 'just do it' attitude, otherwise you can find yourself in creative hell. Things should flow from there I guess. It's great reading your thought process bud, you seem to have a lot to teach us noobies.

I tend to think about the ending from the beginning, where I want to see my characters at. I know what they will have to suffer, the struggles they will have and all of those other juicy problems. That also goes for the characters, when I have them in mind. I usually write out there back story before anything else as I start the comic. Get everything out, what makes them special. What can they do to get better, or will they get worse. Do they want to be helped, saved, or suffer on there own as they build character. When your crafting out a story, the emotions of the characters are your own and how you bring them out makes or breaks the story.

Every little part is important, but you also need to know that this is your story. Do what you must to make it the way you envision it, don't fall prey to what others criticize you for. Keep moving forward, learn from your mistakes and get better as you go.

----New Creator, Neonkillas!

@dglisson You have a very genuine approach to world building, man, I respect that. It's awesome that you tried something new with your really complex point and managed to get some scenes for symbolism out of it. That's something incredible, definitely a success!

Personally, I love throwing symbols at my characters and attaching significance based on their reaction/s. Most of my stories build outward from my characters and... as I think this out, it makes sense then that my stories would end up character-driven. I focus on behaviour, personality, philosophy, letting the characters' view of the world imprint upon itself.

But I also find it productive to take from personal experience and perform a series of "what-ifs", unspooling yarn in all different directions in an "all possible outcome" scenario. Take from each the most interesting arcs, the more distinctive problems, and find them solved as a result of how the character would handle them.

Back to the symbolic image angle -- for my most recent comic story, I attributed plants to each character based on personality cues. It REALLY made the plot come to life for me. I'm still kind of struggling to tie some loose ends together (the ending isn't even on the horizon yet, hah!) but it's helped put a lot of cool stuff up on the table for the characters to start playing with!

Clearing out the living room floor, turning on my phone's music player, tucking my headphones into my ears, and walking around in circles in the living room while listening to tunes.

....

No seriously.

Just the other day I worked out the entire plot of the last book of Time Gate from start to finish in the span of an hour by doing this. I do my best thinking while listening to music. As for the walking, I feel like my brain is like a watermill lol It functions best when I'm moving, and I find I can't think clearly unless I'm in motion (yeah, weird, I know...) I can't just sit at my desk and think about a plot; if I want to think through a storyline or flesh something out, I have to be moving, otherwise the ideas just don't flow. The music helps a lot too.

@UzukiCheverie I tend to go outside and walk and when ideas strike me I type them into my phone for later, but yeah pacing or a meandering walk is a good way to let the mind float freely and come up with ideas and stories.

One think I've started doing now that my comic is done, is to move away from the computer and go back to analog. I was watching a video of a screenwriter putting together his stories via physical notecards and I wanted to try that. There was also the bit of wisdom from Trey Parker and Matt Stone about using "But" and "Therefore" to connect story scenes together. The "but" feels like a good way to motivate conflict and change which is just what a story needs.

I work on a satirical comedy /superhero strip.

For my comic Lento, I identify a current and common trend and I see if I can work around a hero/villain storyline around it. What is the trend or current event that's been going around and how can I satirize it? What objective can I introduce for Lento that circumnavigates or involves this trend? What are the villains I can work with that fit into this trend? Are there any other elements that can possibly reference that I can fit in this story?

When the idea is in place, I start to flesh out the story on Microsoft Word, breaking sections of text for each proposed episode that I would illustrate out.

I guess I have a similar process... sort of? Normally a story sparks from a conflict I want to work with, and me tending to make my stuff character driven, I work them through various scenarios before building the story from what I get. During this I go cycle though questions like "how would this character react compared to the other one?", "how did this scenario come up, and why is it affecting the characters this way?", "what type of person is this character, and how does their personality affect the decisions they make in their day to day life?". As well as "what would happen to this character if everything were taken from them?", "what would they need for a better quality of life, and how would they achieve it and why?", "how did they become who they are now? What kind of afflictions (if any)do they have due to their past/upbringing?", "what are they passionate about?". And "what kind of environment do these characters live in? How does it affect them and their actions?", "why are they here, and how did they get here?", "how do they react to society, and how does society react to them?".
Most of the things I ask myself are character centric, but it helps since that's what gives me a better idea of how I want to shape the story. Sometimes they also come from an interesting concept, such as an epic fantasy I came up with that started with me wanting to develop a multi-cultured world/universe with it's own mythos, different languages and conflicting beliefs.

As far as deep stuff, or symbolism, I've never been good and catching that sort of stuff as a consumer. I'm not sure if I have anything of that nature in my stuff, but I do tend to enjoy keeping certain things left to the reader's interpretation. As far as the physical process of story buliding, I sleep on it... like, literally. I get the spark for a story, then at night I go to bed and play it out in my head like an animation. When I feel good about a certain scene I scratch it down real quick in a notepad for memory purposes.
Sometimes this process can take forever depending on how large the story is, and how much difficulty I'm having getting it to feel right. The fantasy one I mentioned has taken me about 11 years to get to a point I like, but that's because it not only requires a lot of research on different cultures and religions, but it also crosses over into other stories going on within the same timeline. So in a way it's not just one story, but several, which has been an enjoyable process so I certainly don't mind how long it's taken. It'll certainly make it more satisfying once I watch the story materialize.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there!

But yeah! In short my way of fleshing out is to get an idea, sleep on it, jot it down. Rinse and repeat the last two until I'm satisfied, then begin the thumbnailing and drawing process... after I've drawn out character concepts and all that jazz... of course.

I do a lot of talking to myself.

Character and story tend to be very closely linked for me. I can't just make up a plot and then slot characters into it - I need to create them both side by side, because they feed off each other - so I talk myself through my stories a lot, by telling it to myself first. If something sounds off - say, the dialogue is stiff - or if a scene just isn't working because it doesn't fit into the flow of the story, I know that before I have to sit down and write/draw it all.

I also do a lot of reading on things that are related to the story - both as part of the focused research stage, and as part of what made the inspiration spark in the first place. And it isn't always the most obvious things, either.

Say I'm doing a comic about a space colony - well, then, I probably read stuff about people surviving in hostile environments, but also stuff about our world's colonial past, to see how colonies were organised and operated, and what political and social impact they had/have on the people involved. I probably read about historical examples of different cultures and religions meeting and combining into something new, with aspects of the original.

For Grassblades, a lot of my research has been visual, looking for a visual atmosphere that fits the tone of what I'm trying to tell, but I've also read up on ghost stories, phantom sensations in amputated limbs and selective mutism.

And all the while, I talk. I tell myself parts of the story over and over again, trying out new things, scrapping what doesn't work, and sometimes re-telling the same scene - or the same line of dialogue - over and over with a different emphasis every time, to see which one I should go for.

One thing that helps me out a lot is once I've gotten a bunch of my ducks in a row - the protagonists and antagonists, some general idea of the overall story, some solid worldbuilding for them all to stand on - is to examine what I have very closely, and try to figure out what it's really about. To use Grassblades as an example again; on the surface, it's the story of a very grumpy man with some magical anger-issues being forced to take care of a child that isn't is, as he searches for some way to stop this weird magical disease thing he's got. But beneath that, it's also a story about recovering from trauma, and re-learning what it is to be human (in the emotional sense; I promise my protagonist isn't secretly an alien) - it's a story about trust, about parenthood, about making up for our mistakes, etc., etc.

I'm not setting out to write some Big Message (tm), but I find it's useful to have those themes in mind when I plot out the story, because it helps me set the tone and frame the scenes in a way that ties into this, and it also helps me come up with secondary characters and subplots that reinforce and/or mirror the protagonist's experience with those themes.

I haven't really laid down a technique for fleshing out a story but I always try to remember the action-reaction rule. For instance if I want a character driven story that is all about a character's development I first think of how they are at the start of the story, and who they end up at the conclusion . This makes you think of what should happen to the character during the course of your story to bring about those changes, the events that shape the plot and the characters and I just go from there.
Same for world building. When you imagine a fantasy world, I tend to first think of the things that would form the pillars of a society. Politics, economics, religion, etc. and how those affect the society and the lives of those the story focuses on. Having them as building blocks helps make it more believable.
And everytime I come up with a" piece" that I want to add to the story I think of how and where it fits and how the others pieces are influenced and changed by it's addition.

Stories form in my mind, scenes develop on their own, and then I start putting them together, repeating them over and over again still in my mind, and finally thumbnailing them before I forget them. As I go along, I build the story world and develop my characters by putting them through a whole host of situations which may or may not end up in the comic, just to understand who they are and how they think and react. And even when I get to the actual drawing stage, I might change a scene or a dialog here and there!

That's roughly how it goes for me, at least

For the most part I just start writing and then refine what I like and edit out what I don't need. I also talk to myself a lot if I can't write it down, like if I were on a walk or something I'd try to keep the idea in my head until I got back.

... to be honest I hardly do this at all, I don't ever have a lot of stories planned out...

aside from story mapping, I have a hard time explaining how I write. I along the way I tweak things. ad things remove things. when I look at the over all story. I see how one event can and will link to another.one event mentions in issue one, when we don't know anything about the character, will be brought back up again in issue 3 and 4. when we've learned more about her.. one thing from her past haunts her throughout the story fueling her motive... yet we don't learn what that is until way down line, but I'm hoping can be gathered from the mild clips seen. I can't explain how i write without using examples. lol i like putting the characters in uncontrollable situations..."do they have the upper hand? maybe....oh shit ...nope! "
I do tons of research on stuff, especially if I don't understand something for example making bombs, she's a terrorist, pilot of a star ship...so...provided I don't get arrested or put on a list I do loads of research on making bombs, weapons, factions of the military. She's crazy for a reason, so I research mental disorders from trauma and serial killers etc. and my references folder specifically for weapons and fighting is huge and only getting bigger.

I star with a basic scenario and expand form there. Usually one idea leads to another. Evening after i finish I sometime get new ideas and see if I can and them to what's already been written.

Well, the first thing I do before I create anything is I generally get the idea for the story from different thoughts in my head. I create the characters, the content, backgrounds etc. before I write the complete story. I have a general idea of what I want the story to be like and how I want it to end, it just grows a bit more dimension when I get to writing it down.

As far as my flexibility with the story's script, generally I like to stick to the script of the story. I do however tend to add additional scenes to the story if I feel it's necessary, but I typically don't like to make major plot changes that can effect the way the story is told and how it ends xD!

I just think about what I would like to play out in my mind n then create new characters since I'm aiming to get at least 100 characters that are into combat and then find a way to make it relevant to the story and fill up reveals and other back stories and theories into the story to make it worth thinking about, plus I also like adding a badass scene for each story in order to hype a character I plan to use for the future and don't want people to forget about him or her.
THE LAST SAMURAI