How do you script/plan your comics?

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Because I feel like there's a normal way that most people do it, and I'm doing it some other way.

I wrote in the other thread about how writing for a comic is different to me than plain regular writing. Because of and due to this, when I do comic writing, it's important for me to keep the scripting process as visual as possible. I don't end up with a script that would be worth anything to anybody but myself (and sometimes not even that )

1. Over large span of time, daydream new ideas to use in plots.
2. Decide what needs to happen in upcoming chapter, in the great over-arcing plot of it.
3. Gather a bunch of tiny pieces of paper. On each paper, write down a plot point/event that needs to happen in this chapter.
4. Arrange the pieces of paper so that they correspond to a good storytelling/chronological order, making sure that loose ends are attended to and not left to flap in the wind.
5. Type up the notes in order in a word document. Now I have a multiple column piece of paper with things like "Cal home" and "Watch out" written on each line, representing a location/transaction.
6. Print out word document and begin drawing chapter. Refer to list to make sure that the events are unfolding in the agreed upon order.

Of course, at any time in the process, things from the beginning can be changed, moved, omitted entirely, if I deem it would be for the good of the story. So what about you guys? How do you plan out your work?

[Mastermind]

First comic: I used to plan the story ahead, write stuff down, serious business. It's currently on hiatus.

2nd comic: when I come up with a situation I note down the general idea like "throwing rocks at the giant mother in law","loitering by the police station" and I let the plot develop on its own. It's about bums, and the strips are small, so there's not much to plan.

Newest comic: Story, page format. How to make it work? Complicated writing tutorials seem extremely boring, so I've come to a conclusion that I should do it the way I like instead. I keep everything in my head, concentrating on the present, imagine how it would look like as a scene in a tv show and draw thumbnails of 2-3 pages.
So I guess total chaos is the best for me.

[McDuffies]

Actually I work very similar to you, Cuddly. A bit more organized.

1. I daydream about ideas, events that may occure, or just simply cool-looking scenes. I always write them down on piece of paper, as detailed as I can. Usually I get some form of dialogue in it too, essentially a crude version of the scene.
2. When I have a lot of pieces of paper, each with a single scene, I arrange them into a notebook in chronological order.
3. Then I retype them all in a program such as Anthemion Storylines, or anything that's available at the time. Those programs have cards with scenes, which I can rearange later as I see fit.
4. Now I have a chronological graph which I have derived from that program, and which helps me figure out what is missing, what additional scenes I should write, where I have to slow down pacing, etc.
5. I write all those additional scenes.
6. I export the entire script to Word and keep editing it until I'm happy.

[Cope]

1. I daydream up the ideas for the story and lay down the general path of the entire plot in my head.

2. I draw the comic's pages one after another, letting the finer details solidify as I go.

....not the most organised system in the world. I always know where I'm going, I just don't necessarily know how I'm getting there.

[Allroses]

For the comic I do almost all on my own, instead of using little pieces of paper I actually use an excel spreadsheet, and have as a basic outline events that I want to happen, "Like X and Y fight" "X gets kidnapped" or whatever. Next to those I write down snippets of dialogue or more in depth actions, and in another column the year they happen. As that chapter gets closer to being the current one, I flesh out the ideas completely. In other tabs in the same worksheet I keep notes, or far in the future events, and already completed events.

During the thumbnail process, I edit the "script" down, adjusting as I need to. Then I draw and ink the final pages, possibly editing the script more, and then maybe once again when I'm coloring on the computer.

For my second comic, my friend writes, but I still heavily edit. So we go back and forth on Google Docs, with a rough outline, slightly more detailed outline, and full script for each chapter.

[CMikeNIke]

First, like most everyone else, think, think and think some more on different points of the story. More detail and info than I am honestly comfortable with is only recorded in my head. If I am able to, I will jot a note, or some dialog, or a scene, anything I come up with, on my iPod Touch notepad, just because it loads quick and I don't need a great deal of formatting options, to be developed later. After a couple of days, I'll email the note to myself, and put it in a folder for backup, because I have lost so many things due to mishandling files.

Then I write in a multi-subject notebook the more world-building stuff, character bios, themes to aim for, and first drafts of scripts. I also have a section devoted to very general ideas for other stories to come up with.

For the final part of the planning/scripting, I put and adjust all my stuff into yWriter, which is meant for novels, but works well enough for comic scripting. This includes character bios, locations, and separating it into chapters and scenes, notes and whatnot. Then I just copy/paste the script and panel direction into a layer in Photoshop so I don't have to go back and forth between programs.

[DLM X-13]

Newest comic: Story, page format. How to make it work? Complicated writing tutorials seem extremely boring, so I've come to a conclusion that I should do it the way I like instead. I keep everything in my head, concentrating on the present, imagine how it would look like as a scene in a tv show and draw thumbnails of 2-3 pages.
So I guess total chaos is the best for me.

This is pretty much how I work. Total chaos. I have had my story in my head for quite some time and I basically know how the whole thing goes, although things have still changed here and there (and I'm now resisting the urge to go back and change bits of chapters 1 & 2 - Noooo!!! Arrrgghh!!!) I write about 2-5 page scenes at a time as I go. Then I draw them. Then I write the next scene. Seriously. I've tried writing a bunch of script at once, but that never worked very well. I estimate I've written around 100 pages of script I will never use.

See, I figured if I waited until the entire script was "finished," I would never actually get around to drawing a single page. (I can also use the argument that my story is very chaotic by its nature, so there's nothing really wrong with working in such a chaotic way! Muwahahaha!!! ...or not. )

[robotthepirate]

When I started RTP I had the design for Robot and Professor Pigstein. It made sense that the Prof should be Robot's creator so I wrote an intro for them like that the way I always script, which i'll get to. At the end of the prologue I simply brainstormed the next part of the storyline and wrote that. When I'd finished the rough planning of Chapter 1 I started to wonder what was going to happen in Chapter 2 until I had a rough plan for that so now, even though Chapter 2 hasn't even started I have (very) rough drafts of Chapters 3 + 4. I have full confidence that by the time I come to draws these the plans will have be solidified, because that's just how my mind works. At some point my mind will be triggered to ponder on "that bit that's coming up" and I will dwell on it in a little more detail.

Usually everything will stay in my head for a bit then I'll jot it down on my PDAs notepad. I have loads of notes on there listing plans for computers games I'll never make or songs I'll never perform or stories I hopefully will write at somepoint, as well as songs I've heard on the radio and must remember to look up or little references to things I'll never remember but need to research. It's all very messy like the inside of my head. Dyslexia for the win.

Eventually I'll come to write the actual script, also usually on my PDA, usually on the bus or on my break on a night shift. It comes out like this:

Monty and Pup in metal room
P:Where are we?
M:I'm not sure, but at least we're still alive
---
*rumble* walls shake, M+P turn
M: The walls!
---
walls closing in, P angry, turns to M
P: I told you we should't have trusted that robot!
---
M: I'm sorry, but his betrayal at the end of Chapter 3 was completely unpredictable.

Something like that. But not.

I'll picture it in my head as I write and the the prompts should be enough to remember what I had in mind when I comes to actually drawing.

Usually I'll change the script slightly when I read it through to draw it and then again when I'm working on it on the computer.

If things ever need rearranging I don't have any fancy programs for it so I use the tried and tested method of copy and paste.

[Dutch!]

Cope's process is pretty well spot on with mine.

Think of where I want the 'story' to move to, or at least, where I want certain characters' stories to move to, and keep in mind the end of that theme. How I want the final strip or two to end.

Now it's just a matter of filling in the rest of them between the first strip and the tenth (I usually work in storylines of ten strips, purely to make numbering easier).



For some of my longer, or what I consider my more important plot lines, I might quickly scribble down the list of strip jokes in short note form and shuffle them around, but only once or twice have I ever properly typed them out. Otherwise it's pretty well stored in the head until I get a chance to sit down and draw them.

[spoonyliger]

1. Imagine how I want the series to end.
2. Find a way to introduce characters.
3. Write the script by hand on a textbook.
*note: I have no idea where my script is going. I just write it as it comes out of my brain. All I'm worried about is that the series will end the way I want it.
4. Create rough sketches of pages.
5. Create actual pages.
6. Photoshop.
7. ???
8. Profit.

[Risky]

I use a stock of card-stock I bought when I started my comic a million years ago.
Every few chapters I write up a page or two of notes about what cool stuff should happen before the story ends and maybe how that should break down into chapters. Every chapter I thumbnail the pages out depending on how I think that should progress. Usually I end up combining a few pages or panels to kind of speed things along.

This is the only time I've had all the remaining chapters defined... if I get a move on this story might actually end sometime this century.

[peterabnny]

I think I'm the only one here who does his comics in a single gag, newspaper format, so I'm probably guaranteed to do things differently than everyone else. Sometimes I get an idea for a strip out of nowhere and I'll roll it around in my head a while until I have a chance to draw it out. What sucks is when I have to go fishing and come up with an idea; that takes about twice as long to get worked out. If I come up with an idea that I can't get to right away, I'll write it down so I don't forget it. It's usually just a phrase that only makes sense to me - "Peter sees April; finds her doing hair" - but it's enough to trigger the memory of what it was. Then I'll do a pencil thumbnail. I try to think visually as well as textually as to what I want. You know, try different camera angles, etc. I edit text as I go along.

I don't usually do serials (although I'll be starting one this month), but for me, given my glacier-slow production schedule, I usually have enough time between cartoons to figure out what the next ep. is going to have happen. Or, if the idea really hits me, I'll have enough time to REALLY polish it up before I go to draw it. That's when cartooning is easy and fun.

[Ti-Phil]

Step 1. Work, read, life in general, when that happens a part of my brain writes the story.
Step 2. Sunday evening, I sit in front of the cartoons and draw the ideas of the weeks, usually between one to three pages in pale blue.
Step 3. Monday evening, inking the Volet time, draw in H4 wednesday's EOU
Step 4. Do wednesday's EOU in shade, start colouring the Volet.
Step 5. Finish the Volet on wednesday.
Step 6. Thursday, make the saturday EOU in pale blue
Step7. Colour the saturday EOU on friday evening.

[Terotrous]

I almost never just sit down and try to come up with ideas, they usually come to me at random times (often while I'm supposed to be doing something else) and I write them down for future use. Then at some point or another I'll go over those ideas and I'll usually end up fleshing them out a bit more, and then when I finally go to use them they'll get refined one last time into whatever I end up going with. I'm always way ahead in scripts, for example I probably have the next 3 years of Comic Creatorz already written, and most of those strips were written at least 2-3 years ago. Actually, one of the upcoming comics is the first Comic Creatorz strip that was ever written (in 2004!), I hope it's still a hilarious as I initially intended it to be.

Of course, this type of unfocused plot development works best for single gags or short comedic arcs that don't really tie into anything. I'm also currently working on something that's a bit more serious, and I've had to make much more of an effort to plan it so it will actually make some sense. It's still pretty much the same outline / fleshed out / put to paper process as above, but it's a bit slower because the ideas now have to mesh with each other in a way that makes sense, so the idea generation process is more constrained.

[Warren]

Script?

I usually stare at the paper and watch the shapes form.

[Phact0rri]

I tend to come up with an idea...

Then I write an outline...

I draw thumbnails based on outline...

Then I script it out in proper Panel to panel...

then I draw it and realize my script sucked and it was unnecessary step.

Ink/Photoshop.

Curse my lack of skill.

Post it on the interwebs anyways.

[Risky]

↑ This

[Bookwyrms2]

1. I have notes and several rough outlines of how the series as a whole should develop.
2. The story is broken down into issues of about 28 pages each and I write the script to each issue along with rough sketches of the panel layout before I start drawing.
3. As I work on individual pages I may tweak the script as necessary to make the story flow.