Writing novels vs Writing scripts for comic

[mimbele]

I'm not a writer myself so I want to ask this question from people who know more: Is writing a novel a very different skill from writing plot and scripts for a comic series?
in other words: If someone wants to be able to write the script of a comic series, should they be a good novel-writer to start with?

I ask this because I personally think that creating a plot for an idea and then making a script out of it, seems a very different experience from writing a novel. for the latter you have to write pages upon pages to describe something, where as in comic-script you can just write the conversations and events and general ideas and let the artist handle depicting the scenes and atmosphere.

If someone wants to be a better writer for plots and scripts of comics, how should they exercise and improve themselves? It's probably different from writing exercises for novel writers, right?

[CommandanteLemming]

I've not written Comics, but I'm a novelist who's (very briefly) tried my hand at screenplay format, and know what goes into dramatic scripts for stage plays. Those things are related, but entirely different. You can be good at both, and it probably helps, but fundamentally you need to know the tools you're working with. I love novel writing, but a few days writing in screenplay format burned me out on it.

For a novel, you need descriptive prose and narrative voice. You need to make the stuff in between the dialogue sound pretty and be part of the narrative (a common critique of my own stuff is that it's dialogue heavy and too script like, so I've worked a lot on my descriptions).

Screenplays are more dialogue focused, but you also have to think super-visually, because there are a lot of written directions about camera shots and what people see.

Stage plays are almost all dialogue, with minimal stage directions, so you're totally dependent on the strength of that dialogue,

I don't know how it works for comics, and I'd be really interested in how people answer - because comic/graphic novel writing is really intimidating to me due to how much is told visually and the relatively spartan text.

[gabriellabalagna]

Oh, I agree that they are two very different types of writing. For a comic, you need the script written a totally different way. For example, you should...

• describe actions/characters/backgrounds panel by panel.
• describe expressions/poses, rather than emotions.
• keep in mind how many panels there will be per episode/page.
• understand and note camera angles.
• make sure to limit how many words per episode/page.
• incorporate sound effects instead of describing sounds.

If someone wants to become a better comic script writer, I have a few ideas:

• script and draw a short comic (can be stick figures)
• read sample comic scripts
• read comics
• find a comic page you like, write down what you think the script would be like
• read how to write a comic script

[IndigoShirtProd]

I think the main difference is way in which things ate described. I think in both screenplays and comic scripts, descriptions are more about moving pieces and players rather than describing something to an audience. At least for comics, a script is more for the creator since it has notes on how to visually show what is going on to audience. With novels, things won't be seen, so the author has to take the time to describe things to the reader. I, personally don't think you need to be good at either to be good at the other.

Reading the content you want to create, whether that be comics or novels, is usually the best way toblearn how to be a better writer. Also just content consumption in general can be helpful.
I've written both a novella and comics, but I don't particularly like reading books. I do read comics though.

[TedGravesArt]

My experience is probably a bit different than most comic writers, since I'm also the artist. In my experience though, comics are easier for me to write than novels. You're right in that the main difference between the two is that novels require you to write decent prose, where comics are mainly dialog and story organization. You still have to write a fair amount of prose however, especially if you're working with an artist that's bringing the script to life.
I see a lot of comic writers falter in the pacing category however, which is much more important in comics. Writers need to lay out their script with pacing in mind, and if you're working with an artist, be sure to communicate how you envision the pacing of each scene. This is probably one of the main differences between how I work and how a team works. When I write my script I put in a line break when there's a new panel. I don't go so far as to organize the panels into pages when I'm writing, but envisioning exactly how each panel should look as I'm writing informs my future self with pacing cues when laying out the pages later. For example, this is a couple pages from the end of Heaven Hunters Issue 3 that were tricky to lay out:

Script:

"I know we don't always get along.
Marut sticks his head out the left side of the pallet truck and sprays bullets at the hunters' car.
"I want missions to go according to plan, but even I can't plan around your level of mayhem.
The hunters throw their arms up as at least 20 bullets come through the windshield into the car, sending broken glass and shrapnel through the air.
The buildings are getting smaller now, with more seemingly residential buildings. Ori slams on the brakes and yanks the stick to the left. Car: "Brakes applied 100 percent."
The car turns 90 degrees and the top of the car tips toward Marut's vehicle. The far side skids and sparks along the ground. Marut continues to fire backward at the car, and a messy line of two inch dents appear on the inside roof of the hunters' car.
The computer continues. "Now let's try steering."
The truck lurches to the right, smashing sideways into a produce truck, tossing vegetables that look like cabbages everywhere. The computer responds, "Good job."
"I know I can be judgmental at times. I can be envious, and controlling, and bitter, and stubborn, and self-centered, and I'm sure you could list ten more pages of my character flaws.
Rolly shrieks from the back of the truck, "I'm a data collector, not a field agent! I shouldn't be here!"
Ori looks excited. "Hey, I think I'm doing ok!"
They've lost sight of the other car, and Nira squints through the buildings, which are becoming more and more destroyed. "Rolly, track them!"
Rolly squints at his map again. "They're heading out to the Dead Waste!"
Wide shot, nearly sunset. Two hover trucks thunder through a flat desert, plumes of dust kick up behind them, gnarled looking red glowing trees and brush zip past. On either side of the cars are hollowed out ruins of long destroyed skyscrapers, blown up and buried by sand and time, occasionally marred by the thick black goopy webbing of the giant crab spiders that live near bomb craters.

That turned into these pages:

Notice that the prose is hot garbage. I don't need it to be pretty, I just need it to be functional. If jotting down quick ideas communicates better with future me, perfect. If you're sending the script off to an artist though you might want to be a bit more thorough. For example, there are parts of Issue 5 where I wrote things like "her dress is made from space time" which is very easy to write, but impossible to draw. I can do that because I'm working on my own and I knew I'd just workshop it when I drew the pages, but if I received a script like that from a writer I'd be confused and probably frustrated.
Communicating mood is also important, because that informs color choices and camera angles and whatnot. Honestly the more you communicate with your artist about what's happening in the story the better. When I was drawing a comic with a writer a few years ago, I had to redraw several of my panels because he didn't communicate with me properly through the script, and nobody wants to redraw panels. Comic art takes many many many times longer than comic scripts, and is a much much harder task imo, so you want to avoid any repeat work at all costs.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I think it's also possible for novel writing to be in some ways easier than working on a script or comic.

Some novel styles don't do detailed descriptions of, for example, a room or an outdoor setting. But some novelists turn that into the bulk of the story, too. However, you can leave a good deal of the physical surroundings to the imagination of the reader, whereas with a comic or play one needs to define all that because the medium is about showing stuff to the consumer. Something like the difference between listening to a radio play & seeing the same play as a movie.

[Llyrel]

Novelist and comic author/artist here. I think there is some overlap between the two, in which for both novels and comics you'll need to:

• Know how to build a plot;
• Create compelling characters;
• Do research (LOTS of research);
• Work on the worldbuilding, character relationships, character arcs and so on and so forth;

However, the application is very different. There are many different ways to write a novel, some authors like to go what I call "the Tolkien way" and write uber long descriptions of places and landscapes while others will prefer a more direct approach with less descriptions and more actions. No matter what your preference is, however, most novels are NOT solely made of dialogues, though. Since you're only relying on words, you have to make sure that your readers can still see/imagine what you're talking about. If a character is pacing around the room because they're nervous, you've got to let the reader know somehow, though your words. With a comic, instead, you can simply DRAW your character pacing around the room with a frown on their face, rather than just writing in a caption that they're nervously pacing around.

Which brings us to the next difference: comics are WAY less wordy. And I'm not talking just about the fact that you don't need to describe actions in a comic and you can just show them through your drawings. Dialogues should also be shorter and faster. You DON'T want to cram a whole essay into a single panel, and you'll soon find out that the longer the word, the more difficult it will be to fit it into a balloon XD novels can easily get away with more formal speech and it's actually expected of you to write grammatically correct dialogues all the time, even if that's not really how people talk in real life. With comics, you can get away with stuff that sounds closer to spoken language like slang and abbreviations to make your character sound more "real" and less "stiff". Granted, this doesn't mean that you can completely overlook grammar rules, but overall, comic language should be easier to understand and more immediate.

Pacing is also another very important issue, as mentioned above. With novels, it's not considered much of an issue if you spend multiple pages describing a landscape or two characters going out for shopping or basically if you include a somewhat "slow" scene. With comics, however, and especially with webcomics, you want things to go faster.

Let's take Les Misérables, for example (picking an extremely long-winded novel as my example, I know, but I'm reading that one right now and I also found out that we apparently have a Tapas premium comic based on the book, so please bear with me ): the original book starts with an UBER LONG description of a bishop. We're told about his personality, his family, where he lives, what he does, how he became a priest, how he became a bishop, what he did after he moved to a new town, what his relationship with his family is and so on and so forth. The whole thing goes on for a whopping 14 chapters before we can actually figure out what the bishop's role is supposed to be in the story. You can't do that with a comic: readers would leave after episode 3 XD

And now, for comparison, here's the Tapas premium comic I mentioned (no worries, the episodes I'm referring to are free to read): aside from starting with a very different scene (one that doesn't happen until... I think it's book 3 in the original novel? °°), the whole thing with the bishop is reduced to its key event, which is "the bishop meets the protagonist and helps him". That's it. You don't need to read about the life, struggles and miracles of the bishop to know that he's a good person who helps others. The comics manages to show it through his actions.

So yep, different format, different pacing

[Swamp]

The rules of "Show Don't Tell" change a lot.

For example, let's say a character is angry.
Most writers know "I am angry" won't cut it. Perhaps sensory info ("I can feel my nails digging into my palms, but I can't seem to relax my fists") or less direct thoughts ("I picture myself smashing the stupid vase, turning around, and slamming the door on my way out").

In writing, these would still be 'telling'. A lot of elements of writing are universal, but going from novels to comics means letting the art do what you're used to doing with prose. A lot of novelists moving to comics tend to over-rely on thought bubbles or information in boxes instead of letting the scene do the work. It ends up a bit like trying to watch a movie with a narrator who keeps telling you the interesting parts instead of letting you watch the move or, worse, tells you what you're already seeing on screen.

ex:
Setting Box: It was six AM when the monster crawled out of the sewer
Image: Monster crawling out

When it could be:
Setting Box: 6 A.M.
Image: Monster crawling out of the sewer

Moving to comics means losing some chance to vivid description and internal monologue, but, in return, you gain the nuance that can be communicated with color and light and paneling. How do you show the reader a character is furious when their body language is calm? How can you use panels to make a reader feel unbalanced? You can use the framing to show us what they notice (do the panels show the lovely art in the wall, or the dirty dishes in the sink), angles to show power dynamics, etc.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Is writing a novel a very different skill from writing plot and scripts for a comic series?

As someone who spends most of her time working on various comic scripts and novels, I'm gonna say no. It's a different skill, but not a VERY different skill. The fundamentals of storytelling are still in play in both media; the most significant difference is that a comic script often functions more like an instruction manual (as it should, because it's only one part of a whole that does not yet exist), while a novel has to be self-sufficient.

in other words: If someone wants to be able to write the script of a comic series, should they be a good novel-writer to start with?

I'm gonna say no here too...mostly because writing a script is a lot faster and easier than writing a novel, especially if you're writing it for yourself (so you can use shorthand and inside jokes to get your point across). ^^;
I mean, you basically explained it yourself: "for the latter you have to write pages upon pages to describe something, where as in comic-script you can just write the conversations and events and general ideas and let the artist handle depicting the scenes and atmosphere."

If someone wants to be a better writer for plots and scripts of comics, how should they exercise and improve themselves? It's probably different from writing exercises for novel writers, right?

Okay, yes. * cracks knuckles* And here's what I think you should do:

I think the most integral part of learning to write good scripts is figuring out what kind of comic you or your artist wants to create. What are the strengths of the art, what kind of atmosphere do you want the finished product to have? You need to make sure your script is not only good, but encourages and plays to those strengths.

Recently I decided to cancel and reboot a comic, NOT because the script was bad or it didn't make sense, but because it was too wordy and slow-moving for the story. I always envisioned the comic as something awe-inspiring with energetic, fantastic visuals, but by following the script I had I ended up drawing conversations, conversations, and more conversations, with maybe one or two action shots in between.
It was actively preventing me from doing the type of art I wanted, so it had to be rewritten. =/

On the other hand, one of my few remaining ongoing comics is almost nothing but conversations...but that's fine, because THAT comic is supposed to be that way. I have fun drawing the characters' expressions and the wounds on their bodies and the way their appearances subtly change as the emotion-driven plot progresses. It's a concept that was built on those qualities, even back when the mood was more comedic. So for it, a comic script that's just lots of talking with the occasional action shot works just fine. In fact, previous drafts of its script had to be rewritten for having too much action.

And I feel like this is an issue that's kind of unique to script writing: You have to write with the eventual performance/visuals in mind; there's no way around it. If you don't, you risk dragging down the whole by ignoring the qualities of the other parts.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Is writing a novel a very different skill from writing plot and scripts for a comic series?

I have nothing more to add wrt the novel vs script discussion, but let me just say writing plot for a comic is also different to writing script As someone who does both writing and art for my comic, I don't really write 'script' per se; as in the bulk of my writing is words that will be in the final comic (e.g. dialogue) and minimal 'stage direction'. This is because I don't have an artist I need to communicate to, so why not skip the middleman of instructions and just go straight to thumbnailing the stuff I visualise?

But obviously I'm still writing the plot, so I consider myself a reasonably good plot-writer but a not-so-great script writer. So I consider them to be different skills (or maybe plot writing is a subset of both prose writing and script writing and lies in the intersection of the two if you draw them in a Venn diagram :D)

[kwestlake99]

I've written in both novel and comic script format. I've ultimately chosen to following the comic path because I discovered webcomics and became enamored with it. When describing what you want to see in a comic, panel by panel, you do have to provide enough visualization for yourself and your artist. Writing for book, from my experience, it's really on you how much you want to describe what a character sees and thinks, and I think that's just as hard when it comes to comic writers and artists collaborating. One thing that I think it really boils down to is the author's writing style. It takes some really fluid writing to flesh out a story, in both books and comics.

[fleurravenbooks]

They are different, for example while writing script for comic you can write characters talking like this

A: says something
B: says something

You still need to explain things , but it doesn't need to be in detail since artist will do that ( picture is worth a thousand words)

While in novels you can't (i mean no one is stopping you but...) just write:
A: says
B: says
or even
A said
B said.
END
You need to explain things in detail because readers won't see drawing, they only see what you wrote.

Comments above me, explained wayy better than i did, but the point is, script and novel writing is different

edit: this is for dialogue, not whole script

[mimbele]

A huge thanks to everyone that has put aside time and energy to answer my question.
I've learned A LOT through reading your replies, I got my answer and more.

so now I know that what I wanna improve as an artist who also wants to become the writer of her story, is basically "story telling" and "plot writing" (which includes character development, etc...)

I have a few follow-up questions though, and I'd be very grateful if anyone can answer.

As someone who spends most of her time working on various comic scripts and novels, I'm gonna say no. It's a different skill, but not a VERY different skill. The fundamentals of storytelling are still in play in both media

Now my question is: how does one write a plot? aside from technicalities of writing the script and managing the panels and dialogues, do you build the plot as you're creating the story or do you first write the plot completely and then move on to how to tell the story? which approach is best?
how can one become better at plot writing?

I have a lot of ideas and sometimes little short events and characters for a plot pops onto my mind and I write them down, but I don't know how to connect them together, as @kwestlake99 said, "It takes some really fluid writing to flesh out a story", so how can I learn to do that?

I consider myself a reasonably good plot-writer but a not-so-great script writer.

and that's exacly what i want to know: how to be a good plot-writer? since I'm also the artist like @TedGravesArt (although I'm not yet as cool and advanced ( •︠ ᴗ ︡•) he he... ) I don't really need to be a great script writer

I think there is some overlap between the two, in which for both novels and comics you'll need to:

Know how to build a plot;
Create compelling characters;
Do research (LOTS of research);
Work on the worldbuilding, character relationships, character arcs and so on and so forth;

actually I think this list itself is a helping guide and I can research more about each of them, but where should I start? can you recommend a tutorial/book/guide, or some kind of approach in practicing?

Reading the content you want to create, whether that be comics or novels, is usually the best way to learn how to be a better writer.

But is reading enough?

p.s: sorry if I don't thank you guys one by one, I'd love to do that, but I also want to keep this topic clean and to-the-point for anyone who has the same question as me.
I'll probably check out some of your creations later, since I think I can learn from you all a lot (ɔ◔‿◔)ɔ

[darthmongoose]

Wow, great insights in this thread!

Regarding plotting for comics, a big thing to be aware of is that generally, you can't fit in as much dialogue or exposition, and stuff will generally take more pages to happen and the pages will take considerably more hours to create than a page of a novel, so comics tend to be paced much more like a movie or a TV show than a novel.

There are certain things that are faster in comics, for example, you don't need to spend the time describing appearances or expressions, and a detailed description of a busy marketplace can go from a paragraph to a single panel. This is where having a good artist really pays dividends, because a good artist can tell the reader a huge amount through just expression, bodylanguage, detail and tone with the art, or add so much nuance to a very simple bit of text, reducing the amount of writing needed to get the point across and improving the efficiency of the storytelling.

Personally a trick I find works (and bear in mind, this is writing for myself as the artist, I've always worked as either a writer/artist or an artist on comics, never as a writer for another artist) is even if I'm making a webcomic where there are no required page limits to try to impose page limits on myself. "I want to hit this plot point within 20 pages", "I want my chapters to be around 30-40 pages long", in order to force myself to cut superfluous detail and focus on efficient storytelling. It doesn't always work perfectly (looking at you, 54 page chapter 3 of Errant....) but it does at least improve my pacing by forcing me to always be working towards the climax and end of the chapter and what needs setting up in order to make it happen.

[kwestlake99]

Responding to what you said about me, a lot of ideas can just come to you out of nowhere. Do you have any ideas at this time? An idea about genre you want to write about the most? DM me if you want.

[Kuma]

I have experience both in novels and comics.

They're different beasts, especially if you write in the paneling into the script.

Novel writing is when you allow your imagination to fly and you are very eloquent in your descriptions.

In comic-book writing, you need to have mostly a knack for the flow of the story.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Now my question is: how does one write a plot? aside from technicalities of writing the script and managing the panels and dialogues, do you build the plot as you're creating the story or do you first write the plot completely and then move on to how to tell the story?

Hmm...that's a very big question that kinda deserves its own topic. ^^; But I'll try to give a somewhat condensed answer here.

I don't know if I'd advise this to other people, but generally I do the first option: build the plot as I'm creating the story. It's just my writing style; even when I try to explicitly plan out plots and events from beginning to end, I always end up throwing in at least a few new ideas as I go. So why fight it? =T

As for which approach is best, that's up to you. What helps you tell your best stories? Which strategy makes you feel like you're doing a good job and making progress?
If you tend to get lost and confused while writing a story, maybe you should outline the plot first, then figure out how to tell it. If you get bored while following pre-written plans, or constantly feel the need to reconstruct them, maybe just do what I do and go with the flow. Or decide on some mix between the two. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to writing.

how can one become better at plot writing?

1, Write. 2, Analyze.
A lot of people just say 'write', and while practice IS important, it means a hell of a lot less if it's not accompanied by insight. If you just focus on writing without learning, you can very easily just continue to write garbage for years. Or decades. ^^; You have to take a close look at what you're doing and what you want to be able to do, and actively take steps to get yourself from the former to the latter.

Pay attention to key aspects: characters, scenes, themes. The flow of the story beats. The flow of the dialogue. The climaxes and the resting periods. The expositional periods. The mood, the tone. The conclusions of story arcs. The conclusion of the story as a whole.

Do you like how you created these things, do you think you did a good job with them? When other authors do a good job with them in their own stories, can you tell? When you feel that they don't, can you clearly articulate why?

If your answers to those 3 questions are a little murky, you probably still need to learn how to analyze stories and identify their strengths and weaknesses...and fortunately, there are TONS of places to get an education in that art. I mean thousands upon thousands. Literary/film analysis is big business these days. ^^;

Unfortunately, that means there are also a lot of people who pretend they know how to do it when they actually don't. =/ But if you are actually watching/reading to learn (and not just to have your biases confirmed about the show you love or love to hate...) it's fairly easy to distinguish a good reviewer from a bad one. Look for people who:

1) Have at least a few good things to say about works they didn't like, or a few bad things to say about works they liked a lot. This isn't a necessity (especially not in every review) but it shows that they are at least capable of having a nuanced opinion, which is something you really want.

2) Explain why. You don't want someone who just goes 'dislike, dislike, dislike' at everything that bothered them; you want someone who always explains why they didn't like something, why it didn't work, or why it wasn't needed. You also want them to explain why they DID like things, why they DID work, and why they WERE needed.
If they can't take the time to do that in their reviews, then they aren't worth your time. Like, how else do you expect to learn? ^^;

3) Aren't bigots, and don't attract bigots. This might sound obvious, but it's VERY easy to accidentally fall down a rabbit hole of dogwhistles if you don't know what to look for.
All critics know that bad reviews get more attention than good ones, and many take advantage of that to grow their audiences. This isn't wrong in and of itself-- you just need to know the difference between someone who is negative and someone who is incendiary and thrives on blind hatred towards whatever they're 'criticizing'.

Most obviously, bigotry is by definition illogical and cannot be trusted. It just can't. Someone who can arbitrarily decide to hate is not worth giving your attention, especially not when there are so many better options out there.
Now when it comes to someone who simply attracts bigots, things get a little more complicated. You might initially just think 'those people are just here for the wrong reasons/hearing what they want to hear, it's not an indictment of the reviewer'.

Are you sure about that though? ^^; Like, are you really sure??

The point of a 'dogwhistle' is that it sounds innocuous to people who aren't in the know: phrases like 'family values', or just 'political', for instance. But for those who ARE in the know, the meanings behind them ('cis heterosexuals only', 'anything a minority group cares about') are clear, and they allow them to spread and discuss their views while maintaining a veneer of good faith.

And if you spend enough time watching/reading reviews, you eventually learn when an entire way of looking at a topic is just a big dogwhistle, even if on the surface it seems like a 'civil question'. Like, if you ever see someone ask a question like "why is there so much LGBTQ+ in this series??" turn around and run in the other direction. RUN.
There is no good point that they might make or good question that they might raise that is worth sitting through all the garbage that's waiting for you inside that review. If they teach you anything, they will be teaching it to you from the POV of a bigot, and that's not a POV you want or need to write a good story.

[faisalhussein394]

I think the difference between a novel and a comic is that if you want to be a writer for a novel then you have to make sure the readers have the right image you expect them to have while reading. To me, It is less time-consuming than making comic pages but you have to spend time on re-editing and making sure everything is organized and understood just the way you want it. (Just don't take too long like Goerge R.R. Martin)

As for comic pages, you have to prepare a script, storyboard, and visualize for your own image on every panel but it is more time consuming and you always want to get it right and have a comic feel to it.

As for me, as someone who makes comic pages, believe it or not, I have never started a script or storyboard sketch. I just head straight for the pages, All the ideas are stuck in my head and I can't stop thinking.

My mind is filled with more than just stories, I'm having a lot of worldbuilding ideas, and lore, and soon I'm thinking to make a second comic published this year that is full of exposition, histories, factions, and it is related to my already published comic on Tapas; Mukhtar but not in the MC's timeline but the whole world and beyond.

[Lensing]

Write a summary of the story in a few sentences.
That´s always a good test and it also makes it easier for the artist to read the script later.
Show the summary to other people and ask them if they understand what the story is about.
When you think "you have to know the whole world I created and backstory of the characters
to understand the story" then that´s a sign for me that the story doesn´t work.
You will find a lot of examples for that on the internet.

For me a comic script is like a movie script and that´s one of the differences.
You give visual directions in a comic book script, close up on the face, fast scene,
slow scene etc
The sentences/dialogue are shorter. When I write for comics the sentences have 1-10 words.
The cut scenes are also different in a novel and in a comic book script or movie.

A good excercise is to read and analyze a lot. Comics, comic scripts, novels.
Study movie scenes

[Llyrel]

actually I think this list itself is a helping guide and I can research more about each of them, but where should I start? can you recommend a tutorial/book/guide, or some kind of approach in practicing?

Oh my, I’m afraid I’m not the best person to ask for guides/tutorials about writing since… I have to confess that I’ve never read any I did read a bunch of random interviews to my favorite authors about writing (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman mostly; also, although I'm not exactly his #1 fan, I think George Martin has some good points about fantasy worldbuilding).

Other than that, I can share some titles/names that have been recommended to me!

Books about writing:
-On writing by Stephen King
-Get that novel written! By Donna Levin
Worldbuilding:
-Brandon Sanderson's lectures (very useful if you’re writing fantasy and science fiction!)

Also, not exactly a “guide”, but still one of my favorite channels about how (NOT) to write (warning: contains high levels of sarcasm):

Terrible Writing Advice

As for the rest of the list, here are my suggestions (BEWARE, IT'S LONG):

• Building a plot: read. A LOT. Start with books in the genre that you like the most, but don’t just stop there. Read classics, read best-sellers, read trashy popular novels, read non-fiction, read anything that catches your interest. Try to figure out what you liked and what you didn’t like about each book, its characters and its plot. Analize the style of your favorite writers: what is it that makes them recognizable? You can also make practice by trying to imitate it. One of my first writing experiences as a writer was “tributes”: basically, writing an original short novel in the style of this or that famous author. This was incredibly helpful to learn how this or that author used language and created a story.
  As for the plot building process itself, the method that works best for me is to make a bullet point list of the things I’d like to include in a story. Sometimes I’ll have a base idea, but won’t know how to progress from there. So I’ll start by listing all the elements I DO know that are going to be in there, in chronological order. And then I start filling in the details. More often than not, reordering plot points will give me more ideas on how to connect one piece to another. It doesn’t stop there, of course, the bullet list is going to be edited and updated hundreds of times after that, but I find that bullet points really help sorting out my thoughts.

• Create compelling characters/relationships: okay, there are a lot of ways to go about this, since writers are apparently divided in two different categories, which would be “plotters” and “pantsers”. The former would be those who plan everything about their story and their characters, the latter would be those who just kinda make it up on the go XD Personally speaking, I’m a hardcore plotter, the kind who keeps hundreds of files with biographies, timelines and filled character memes about each and every character in order to know them better :’D
  My approach is probably… a liiiiiitle too much, but it’s also true that a lot of this stuff was originally made for fun/role-playing purposes and then eventually came in handy for the comic (speaking of which, roleplaying also helps A LOT, since you have to write AS your character and, if you're doing it in real time, you have to come up with ideas very quickly).
  Either way, I DO definitely think that having some kind of basic info about your character (name, age, description, short bio, likes and dislikes) can help. Another litte exercise I think could be fun and useful to build your character’s personality is this one suggested by the developers of The Arcana: https://thearcanagame.tumblr.com/post/165135808669/any-tips-for-writing-the-characters-personalities
  Writing prompts, OC questions and stuff like that can also help you flesh out your characters (Tumblr has plenty of them :D)

• Do research: alright, this REALLY depends on the kind of story you want to write, so giving specific suggestions is a little harder, but still… unless you’re speaking from personal experience, don’t just assume you know everything about a certain topic and make sure to check that what you're saying is true. Yes, not all readers may realize that there's no way your character can play a piano in 1456 when it had yet to be invented, but SOME will know and will NOT forgive you for it (hi there, name's Llyrel, part-time History nerd and professional nitpicker ).
  If you’re writing a historical novel, you want to make sure to know enough about the time during which your story is set: culture, politics, historical events, clothing styles, technology, materials that were/weren’t available (you’ll be surprised to know how much stuff that is taken for granted today was NOT there back then), what people used to eat and how they cooked it, language that was specific to that era and so on and so forth.
  Even if your story is set in modern times, research still needs to be done. For example, my comic is an urban fantasy set in the US. I’m not from the US, so my research included stuff like: how criminal justice works in the US, getting a citizenship in the US, what are some laws that are specific to Pennsylvania and if concealed carry is allowed, how long does it take for a driving license to expire, how to get from Milford PA to New York/the closest hospital/Philadelphia/WHATEVER… and these are just SOME of the things I had to research about the setting only.