Episode to Episode: Planning a Webcomic Series

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. I'm Miss Mark and welcome to another skill share class. In this class, we're going to be discussing how to create episodes for your webcomic. How to take your overall story and break it down into nice little chunks that flow from one to another. My webcomic is called Daser and Eleanor, which you can read over on web tunes just over 70 episodes and just over 5,000 subscribers. When I first started doing my comic, I just wanted to dive into it to see if I could draw a comic book. And so I didn't really plan very much. I didn't outline very much, I didn't script anything. I just went straight to like drawing pages for those early stages, trying to figure out how comic making worked. I think that's fine. But now that my comic is growing, now that I actually have an audience, and I've been doing it for a while now, I have been trying to refine my creative process and make it a little bit more consistent, a little bit more smooth and predictable. For myself, I have learned the importance of having a good formula to create episodes. And that's what I want to share with you today. This formula that I use is very simple, but it really does ensure that, one, your episodes flow nicely from one to another. You don't have weird pacing. And then two, it ensures that your episodes are engaging. And there's always something in the episode to entice your readers to come back. That's really what you need a good episode to do. This formula works great for me, as is. And I'm going to present to you how I use this formula. However, the formula is simple enough that I think you could probably customize it. If your story doesn't, it doesn't quite work for your story or your format whatever. It's very flexible. You can customize it. So if it doesn't, 100% work for you don't. But the main goal in this class is just to establish a clear plan for your comic in terms of episodes. So that again, your story can flow smoothly. Your readers follow along naturally and they just are left wanting to read the next episode. The way I've structured this class is I'm going to really quickly go through the steps of the formula. At the end, I'll do a project walk through, so you can actually see how I used this formula to take a story idea from start to finish, like literally to the finished comp pages. I recommend that you watch all the lessons kind of at once. I'm purposely making them a little bit shorter. And then you can slowly go back and reference parts that you need to as you work on your project. All right? I think that's it. I hope you're ready to get started. I know I am. And with all that out of the way, let's talk about what you're going to need for this class. 2. Before we get started...: Okay, so let's talk about story prep. This class is all about kind of the planning and the writing, so you don't need a bunch of fancy tools, don't worry. However, I just want to make sure that we're kind of all on the same page. This class is about episodes. It's not really about how to create compelling characters or plot or like overall story line. I'm going to teach this as if you already have those things. If you don't, that's okay. You'll still gain a lot from this for sure. But I just want you to know in this class, we're not going to cover those things. Here are the three things that I think are kind of essential to make episodes work. One, a protagonist who changes over time. If your protagonist doesn't go on some kind of journey, whether it's external or internal, it's going to be a boring comic. Now, this is assuming you know you're making a narrative comic that has an overall story. It's a little bit different if you're doing like a daily comic strip type of thing, that's very different. But in general, if you're doing a web comic series, if you're doing a graphic novel, you have to have a protagonist who is actually going to accomplish things. The second thing is a clear setting, kind of the context for your story. Just so let you know if an episode is taking place in a farm town, in a castle, in a city. You know which episodes change locations like you realize that you've had ten episodes in the same location. I would just have a good idea of who the story is about, where it takes place. And the third thing, the third thing I think is actually the most essential, a page limit, or if you're doing webcomics, a panel limit. This means you should know when you start, how long your episodes are in the digital world. With digital software, it's easy to feel like there's no such thing as page limits. There's no such thing as like a certain number of panels per episode. And that's D true. But what I discovered when I gave myself an actual panel limit, for me, it's around 30 panels per episode, was I suddenly had a much better idea of how to pace the comic. If I know there's 30 panels, I can start to divide it up like, okay, I need like three panels for this tiny conversation. And then I know I need like ten panels for this longer conversation. I need a couple panels to transition. You know, all that kind of stuff. If you don't know how long the episode is going to be, you're open to all kinds of obstacles, like realizing that the episode is unusually short. Or realizing that in order to have this whole scene play out the way you envision it, you're going to need like 60 panels or something crazy. You might end up trying to squeeze in too many things to one episode or too few, whatever it is. I have discovered it sounds like a limitation because it kind of is. But I have discovered that establishing a page limit or a panel limit, it just gives you clarity around boundaries and it's so much easier. The other bonus is that because I have a goal of like 30 panels per episode, I actually am getting a really good idea of how long an episode takes to create. That's also huge. As I said in the introduction, this class is all about creating clarity. And that means eliminating as much unknown as possible. That being said, the writing process tends to be a bit more like a cycle, like you go through the stages a few times before your product is really ready to go. So it's okay if you don't have everything figured out. These are just the things that I recommend having somewhat established before you get going. But it's okay if they're not all there. You'll get to it. You'll get there once you know who the story is about, once you know where it takes place, and once you know how long it's going to be, we can move on to the next step. 3. What does an episode need?: All right, it is time to grab your readers and keep them. When it comes to web comics, each episode really has two main objectives that they need to accomplish, besides being entertaining and pleasing and all that stuff. Step one, move the plot forward. Step two, leave the reader wanting more. If your episodes do both of these things, you're in really good shape. How do you actually plan the structure into your comic? I'm going to refer to a formula that I have seen like a good Gillan writers use. But they use it because it's a good formula. So let's go. The formula is like sort of three steps. Every day was like this. Fill in the blank, until one day fill in the blank. And ever since then, fill in the blank. These are like the most basic fundamental kindergarten level building blocks of storytelling. And it might seem almost like too simple. The world that you're building in your story, with its characters and its history, that is unique and complex, the way that you share it should be as simple and streamlined as possible. You want your readers to get this from day one. You don't want to make it hard for your readers to understand your story. But these are episodes, right? So while this formula, you know, works for an overall story, I'm going to show you how you can make it work for episodes. How you like link them up, like train cars, you know, like Brio. Is it the magnets? How do we make magnets to stick them together? Don't worry, it's still actually very simple. All right, so we're going to use this formula. I'm going to make up a really simple story just as an example. And then at the end, again, when I do my project walk through, you can see it in a more in depth example. All right, so every day in the little town was happy and peaceful until one day dragons arrived. And ever since then, people lived in fear of the dragons. Episode one. Okay, so episode two, we're going to open with the last part of episode one. Episode two. Every day the people lived in fear of dragons until one day they discovered a sword that could kill the dragons. Ever since then, people have looked for the sword. Episode three. Every day the people were looking for the dragon killing sword until one day they found the sword in a cave. Ever since then, they've been preparing to fight the dragons. Episode four. Every day the people are preparing to fight the dragons until one day they find an incredible warrior stronger than anyone who can wield the sword, and then that warrior goes to fight the dragons. This is a very silly little, tiny story, but do you see how they link up? Every episode after episode one starts with the context established in the previous episode. Again, this is a little bit abstract. I hope my example helped a little bit, but I promise when we do the project, walk through at the end and you see a concrete example of this, it will make oodles of sense. Just a side note, the language that I'm using, this like every day the village was happy until one day. This is language purely for the sake of planning. This is not how like the tone that you need to have in your comic. You don't need to write this in your comic. Your readers don't need to see this. This is building blocks for you, so don't worry if the language sounds corny or cheesy, or trite, or cringy. This is planning. This is planning. Okay, so this is how we make sure in each episode the plot moves forward. And there's like a little bit of a cliff hanger, something that the reader wants to know more about. In the next lesson, I'm going to go over how I take this and I break it down into a panel by panel or page by page outline. So let's keep on moving. 4. From outline to panels: Okay, so let's talk about panels, pages, and pasting. This is also sometimes known as a script, but it doesn't look like a script when I do it. So we have a general idea of what happens in each episode. Hopefully you use that formula in the previous lesson to write a few episodes, so you know that your story is flowing nicely. So here's how I go from a very general outline to specifics. The goal for this outline really is to make sure that you have the correct amount of space for the amount of story that needs to happen. You don't want to have too many panels. And then you realize that like a lot of those panels are sort of like dead space, where nothing happens or things are just moving really slowly and like, that's not what you're going for. Or you have like not enough panels and you want to do like a big action sequence or a big monologue or something like that, and you're cramming it into two few pages. You want to avoid that. So in this planning stage, this is where we avoid that. What I do is I just do a number list, each number representing a panel. So panels one through 30 in my case. So I'll go back to the previous lesson where it was like every day until one day and ever since then. And I'll just drop those three things in first. So like first few panels probably, I'm showing what every day looks like. Every day the town was happy. And then kind of towards the last, like, I don't know. Third, I'll put in until dragons attacked. Oh no. Then the last few panels should be what life is like after the dragons attacked. I'll drop in those. As you can see now I just have some filling in the blanks to do. I'll go through and what the main character is doing, what their life is like, Maybe a couple relationships they have with family or friends or whatever, and you get an idea of what their life is like. Then something changes, like the dragons attack. I'll put in a few panels about how that change affects their protagonist. And then the last few panels is like, this is what the town is now dealing with. This is your new ever since then, cluster panels. I know this is really abstract. Trust me. When we get to the project, walk through at the end, everything will make sense, I promise. Okay, so then when I take this method and I want to use it for a comic book or a graphic novel, or even just any page by page comic format, I still use the numbering system, but I have indented numbers for panels. I think right now, the comic book that I'm working on, I'm aiming for like 22 pages per chapter. So I'll just do like page one through 22. So it's pretty much the same thing, but I'll have like page one is this overall conversation, and then underneath that, it's like a subheading. I'll have like panel one, page one, this piece of dialogue. Panel two, panel three, panel four. And then page two, panel one, panel two, panel three, panel four. Okay, I'm running through this super quick. I know again, project walk through, it's coming in a couple of videos, it'll make sense. But my goal was in creating this formula was just to have something that is like filling the blank. Something that doesn't require me to invent everything from scratch. Creating the story is complicated. Creating characters, creating the world, the history, the magic, the technology, all of that stuff. Creating your fictional world is difficult communicating. It should be as simple as possible so that people can understand it. In these numbered lists, I will include things like dialogue, any notes about setting or setting changes, weather, lighting, time of day, atmosphere, whatever. Any visual notes that I think are really important to the episode will be included in these numbered lists. I do recommend going through this for several episodes, like doing them in batches because that is how you make sure that they're like cohesive and they stick together. You don't want to like draw an entire episode and then find out that you need to restructure it. Want to do that? So in the next video, I'm going to go over some concluding thoughts, a couple notes about it. And then we will get to the project, walk through, and you'll get to see all these things come together into a finished comic chapter. Well, let's keep on tricking. 5. Final thoughts: Did that seem pretty simple? I hope it did. That was my goal was to make it all as simple as humanly possible. Like I've said a couple of times now, the simpler the process, the better. Let your story do the complicated, heart wrenching, mind blowing, magic tricks. Let your story do that by sharing it in the most sustainable method possible. You don't want your readers to be lost, confused, bored, any of that stuff. And you creating the project, whether you're the writer or the writer and the artist, you don't want to be lost or confused with your story. All right, so before I do my project walk through, I have a couple of final thoughts to share with you. One, as I think I mentioned earlier, the writing process isn't really linear. You tend to go through all the steps several times until you have something that you're satisfied with. So if you find yourself hitting road bumps or having to revise over and over, that's fine. Two, I don't think this structure is necessarily bulletproof. It's not like if you follow these steps you're going to go viral, but I think it's solid and I think it's reliable. And if you feel like something could be tweaked, the nest adjusted, whatever to work better for you, do it. Don't feel like you have to do it the way that I do it or the way that other writers do it. Do what works for you. These are just like handy little tools that I'm trying to give you. The third thing is if you have never used a formula before, or if you try to avoid having too much of a formula, it might feel like outlining and stuff. Outlining and scripting kind of take the magic out of the creative process. But what I've experienced is that certain formulas actually allow, like your magic, to flourish. If you've ever been hesitant to use outlines or formulas, or scripts, I encourage you to look at them as stepping stones towards building something much more magnificent. The last thing, again, I would encourage you to share your project. If you feel so inclined, you can get feedback on it, you can continue to improve your skills. And I would be happy to provide any feedback. Any all feedback. And I wish you the best of luck. Comics are a very daunting medium to get into, and they seem to only get more and more daunting the further you get in for a while. But I promise if you stick with comics, if you can build up the creative muscle to draw comics, it's so immensely rewarding. It's so gratifying to build up that relationship with your audience as you release your episodes. And there's just something really special about having a story that grows over time, grows with you, grows with your readers. And yeah, it's just, it's an extremely unique medium that I'm very passionate about. And I hope the tools I'm providing in this class help you also discover that passion or help you find a way for that passion to grow. So thank you for watching. The last video is going to be a longer one. It's going to be an in depth walk through of my webcomic project. Third, print is the charm. So thank you for watching. Enjoy the final video. 6. Episode walkthrough: Okay, so you guys have made it through all the lessons. My goal with this class was to make the process seem as easy and approachable as possible. That being said, the reality is that when you're doing anything creative, even the most simple, straightforward formula, it's not going to look that clean and crisp u because you're doing something creative. You are making something out of nothing. It just, it won't look that clean and crisp in real life. So don't feel like if you don't have a super nice, neat outline that you're somehow failing, it's going to be messy. So I want to show you like the reality behind everything that I just said because it's a bit chaotic and random. So third print is the charm is currently being published. I kind of publish it in batches and you can read the episodes for free over on web tunes. So I started off, I knew I wanted to be a shorter series. So this is nine chapters and I did kind of a brain dump. After I got the main events out of my brain. I went through and started to outline the chapters. So this is chapter one. And then I realized they weren't quite working. I redid the chapter summaries here and I cut it down to seven chapters. I cut out a couple extra chapters that you weren't really helping, they didn't really move the series along. So I cut it down to seven. And these three columns you see here, I labeled them Status, the Change in Question. This could also be called a cliffhanger. Every chapter has a how things were. This is what we talked about every day. And then the change is until one day. And then the question of Cliff Hanger is what is, what is the hook that's going to keep the reader coming back for the next episode. After I did this, I rewrote chapter one and the following chapters. And then after I did this and I thought I was ready to go, I drew chapter one. And I actually realized that chapter two no longer works. And so I had to rewrite that, which meant that I also had to rewrite chapter three and probably the following chapters. Anyway, this is, well, I would say that this does not follow exactly what I taught in the class, but what I showed you in the class is sort of the starting point for this. So I branched off from a little bit and customize it to fit what I want to do. For this particular comic. I was aiming for around 22 pages per chapter. And so I would do an outline like this where it's one through 22. And then I would actually do the script in the thumbnailing stage. I combined my little numbered list with my drawing in my thumbnailing stage. Like it's just stick figures, like it's not even real drawing. Yeah, I just wanted to share this. This is what it looks like in real life. It's messy. It changes. I'm going to have to rewrite several of these, which is fine writing isn't something that you just sit down, you do once and then it's done. You edit it. It adapts to what you as the writer or artist can do. What your readers react to, what you learn. Like, don't let it just become this rigid, unbreakable, you know, oppressive force. Let your outline evolve as needed. It's your grow right along with you. I just wanted to show the reality of what it looks like. And now I can walk through kind of a little bit more of a cookie cutter, clean version so that you guys can have a super clear look at how it works, but you can know in the back of your mind that your outline may or may not look like my demonstration. So okay, let's get into the nice, clean, orderly project. Walk through, here we go. Okay, so here is a typed up version of what was in my notebook. Now I can more easily show you how the concepts we've talked about in the lessons come into play in an actual episode. Now this is just by page. This comic. I did not break down by panel for this demonstration just because it's so much, this particular web comic is just a lot longer. I kept it to pages just so that I don't have to go through like a 30 page document with you. We're just keeping it to basic pages and not individual panels. In terms of how to break a script down into panels. I think that could be its own class. Maybe I'll get to that eventually. But for right now, we're just dealing with this basic outline. Remember, your two goals for an episode is to get the reader's attention and then make them want to know more. Those are your two goals and how do you accomplish that? You provide an engaging context or setting. This is the every day life was like this. And then you provide some kind of twist that's very interesting and you leave them wanting to know how the characters are going to function in that little plot twist. These first pages in yellow is every day, every day the princes, the two older ones, are going about their royal duties. The third one doesn't like having to meet the new people. And then I also included Evelyn, the Duchess. She also doesn't like having to meet new people. So this is the every day right here. Then down here we have the until moment. And it's all of it's really all of this. It's all of this because this is them meeting and realizing that there's something interesting about the other person. Then we have ever since then, we've got our first five pages, are setting the scene, they are introducing the characters, introducing a couple of side characters and how those characters relate to our protagonists. And then we have this big long section which is the catalyst for like the change that's about to occur. I've taken two characters who insist they don't like meeting new people, and then I introduced them to each other and they are interested. So that my readers are saying like, how do these two intense introverts work things out? Like I've set it up to be a romance, like I have set that expectation. Now my readers are saying, okay, you got these two introverts who are borderline anti social. How do things possibly work out between them? And that is the question that I'm posing down here in this last section, again, in terms of how to break this down even further into panels, that goes a lot into the visuals and the actual drawing of the episode, which could be its own entire class. So I can't, I don't feel like I can't quite take it that far. But this is the formula that I will repeat for every single episode, every single one. Remember your formulas. They're not going to make your work stale. They're not going to like rope you into a rigid box. They're going to give you a fundamental u underlying structure that is going to guide all of your work. Don't be afraid of using a formula. Don't be afraid of repeating the same formula. If it works, use it. Your story will be diverse and we'll take the reader to new places. But the way you structure your chapters and your episodes, that should have a rhythm. It really, it just helps your readers to know where things are going and accuses them on like where to be interested, where to be invested, where to ask questions. And it just kind of gains their trust because they know that you're slowly going to lead them on this journey instead of just randomly throwing plot points at them. So this is the outline that I would use and I'm going to show you real quick what the final product looked like. Looks like this is the final version of the comic. Again, you can read it over on web tunes, but I thought I'd show you kind of how it evolved. In the course of drawing, I realized certain things that I assigned like one panel to didn't work quite as well. Like I realized the castle should have its own like spread basically for a full page instead of just a panel. So, I broke that down into one page. A lot of this did stay the same. I think one thing was just like I added this character for Amelia, because I felt like it helped the conversation flow better to have her there with them. So I added a character and this conversation took a little bit longer in terms of pages than I thought it would. And again, this is why I tell you, don't feel like your script or your outline is going to contain all your creativity. It's just another piece of the puzzle. So it's okay to be flexible. It's okay to let your comic evolve from the script point. Hopefully this class gave you the tools that you need to take your grand massive story and organize it into nice bite sized chunks that are still a cohesive series. Like that was my goal. Create episodes that tell a cohesive story. Engage your readers. Keep them locked in and waiting for more. Thank you guys so much for watching it, and I look forward to seeing what you work on. Definitely feel free to post any questions or comments or suggestions. I would love to hear from you. Thank you again and best of luck with your comic project.