I’m going to start with a quick confession: I’m have never written anything correctly.
That is to say, I’m a very impatient artist. I work out story ideas in my head up to a point and then I get so excited about drawing it that I jump the gun. I get bored and frustrated and throw up my arms and say “screw it. I’ve done enough. I’m going to start drawing and I’ll figure out the rest as I go.”
I think that this has been a product of the way I distribute my content: daily, episodic posts. Every day I’m not posting new content is a day I feel like I’m dropping the ball, failing. If I start now and figure out the story as I go I buy myself the time to write WHILE posting new content every day. But in the end, I feel like I end up with an inferior project. I didn’t work out the problems with my story first. I didn’t allow myself the time to edit and get fresh ideas or run it past an editor. Nobody’s complained so far, but I know I can do better.
So this time, I’m not going to do that. For the first time in my career, I’m going to work out the story, outline, and script it before I touch pencil to paper on a single page of finished art. This puts me in some uncharted territory because I know how to wing it. But I don’t really know how to do it “correctly.”
Thus, I sought out the wisdom of the Oracle Google. I climbed to the top of mount browser window and shouted into the URL chasm “HOW DO I WRITE A GRAPHIC NOVEL???” And this is what I found out:
There are as many methods for writing as there are writers. And obviously, nobody’s figured out the one TRUE way to go about things. There are a TON of great ideas out there on how to approach writing a graphic novel (or any story), so I’ve kind of adopted a couple of them to help me with this new project. I’ll share them with you here.
The snowflake method of story writing has really helped me in writing my outline. It seems very simple, but it’s incredibly effective. You start with one sentence to describe your story. then you turn that sentence into a paragraph. then you turn each sentence in your paragraph into its own paragraph. Then you turn that into a page, etc, etc, etc. Fractally growing your story bigger and bigger until it’s finished. As you work your way from one sentence to a full page, you figure stuff out, go back, change that starting sentence to begin again. Each time you do this, your story gets better and better.
Dan Harmon’s Story Circle has helped me with my character arcs. It’s a brilliant way of approaching a story and it’s really helped me with School Days. It’s taught me that to really have a great story, your characters have to experience some kind of change. And that’s been HUGE in making this new story feel real and important.
The third thing that really helped me is a quote from Stephen King: ” Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” Now you have to be careful about this one, but it’s incredibly important to get a second and third set of eyes on your story at the APPROPRIATE time. When I sit down to write, I’m writing just for me. I’m putting down my ideas without thinking about anyone else ever reading it. I’m messy, I talk to myself on the page. I skip entire sections of the story and leave behind notes like “something has to happen here, but we’ll figure it out later.” I add and trim and sculpt the story until I have something I like. Something resembling a first draft.
That’s when I show it to my wife, to Cory, and to other people who’s opinions I trust and value. And when I get back notes, I immediately start re-writing while everything is fresh in my mind.
Finally, I’ve learned to take my time with this. I don’t have to write the whole thing in a day. In fact, I think it’s important to let your story sit and think about it before you return to re-write and edit. It helps to stop and consume other media as well. Games, movies, comics, TV…it all gets the story juices flowing. The more I read, the better I write. Not sure why that is, but it’s true.
Being patient with myself and this process has made all the difference. And I’m looking forward to sharing more of it with you. Next time I’ll talk a little about a couple of programs I’m using to write my story that is incredibly useful.
Are you working on anything right now? Maybe you’re also writing a story or creating art. What are your methods, tips, and tricks? Share them in the comments below.