Real life isn’t simple, there are lots of things all happening at once in a constant flow. Your story ideas for a comic may not be simple. You probably have a tangled mass of ideas about what happens, the relationships between characters and the story.
With a comic, it’s very important to try to weave these threads into a clear narrative so that the story can be told visually.
The Sequence is the heart of a comic. Everything happens snapshot-by snapshot.
This means that scenes involving action can turn out much longer than they would do in prose, a fight lasting three sentances can turn into more like three pages. It also means that events have to be meticulously ordered.
Writing a comic is writing sequences within sequences.
At the top level, if you’re writing a serial or epic, there’s the overarching plotline. This is the ‘big picture’, it’s what happens in your storyline.
ie. A knight goes to find a lost Princess. He meets two friends. They fight a dragon and save the Princess. Knight Marries Princess and all are happy.
It’s a big, simple sequence.
The next level down are the ’story arcs’. That’s where you take each of the parts listed above and turn them into sequences. So ‘A knight goes to find a lost princess’ can turn into:
Knight hears about lost princess. Decides to go and find her. Prepares for his journey. Gets advice from mentor. Sets off.

The next level down, and the first level if you’re writing a self-contained short, is the episode sequence. A self-contained story is pretty much the same as a single issue or episode or chapter of a serial comic, except you don’t have to worry about linking. You will always need a punchy start and ending, no matter which you’re writing. So first decide on the sequence. Let’s go for ‘Knight hears about lost Princess’.
Introduction of a young squire in the middle of a battle. He performs admirably and saves his mentor. Afterwards he is beknighted on the battlefield by the King. The King is so impressed with the young knight that he asks a personal favour. He explains about the Princess. The knight promises to find her.

See how once again, things are elaborated upon and broken down into smaller pieces. It’s like zooming in on a map and discovering more complexity the closer in you get. Even if you’re writing a part of a series, try to give each section a strong beginning and end . Imagine people may read your comic chapter by chapter as it’s released, it should be readable as sections. Like how chocolate comes in pieces! The chocolate lasts longer and is savoured more if you eat it a square at a time, right? It’s nice to have the chance to just dib in and eat one square when you want and then wrap up the bar nice and tidy for later. Oh man, now I really want some chocolate…
Er, anyway. The next stage down is breaking this sequence into pages and panels. If you didn’t know much about comics, you’d probably just think ‘oh, well, easy, a page for each of the sections you wrote above!’ you might be able to do this in an American comic or european comic, which have larger pages and more panels, but in a manga, you’ll need to stick in extra pages here or you’ll have a very rushed, simplistic story.
When putting panels to pages, there are some important things to consider. Firstly, each page should have a point. Whether the point is to move the story along, to introduce or develop a character or to tell a joke. A page with no point is a waste of time and energy. Secondly, think carefully about panel count. What’s the usual number of panels per page in a manga? Go on, get out some manga, let’s count… Well, from my count, a typical manga page is 3-6 panels. Four or five is most common. Yeah, that’s not an awful lot, compare to Ditko and Lee era Spider-man with it’s 9 panel pages and you really have to pull out the narrative because you have half as many panels. Mainly because your pages are half the size! The fewer panels you have, the more detail can fit into each panel, but the more panels you have, the more seperate moments of action you can fit onto the page. You’ll find that at seven or more panels, things get REALLY uncomfortable, unless some of those panels are really tiny!
Drawing fewer pages with more panels is not nessesarily faster or easier than drawing more pages with fewer panels! Don’t be fooled by page count! If you can’t fit your action sequence into one page comfortably, make it two or three. It really won’t take much longer and it’ll read much more comfortably.
How do you decide what should happen in one panel though? Well, imagine that you’ve got your favourite film and want to turn it into a comic by taking screen caps. Each screencap worthy moment is a panel. You need as many panels as it takes to make the action obvious. Then you should always consider an extra panel on the first page of a scene for an establishing scenery shot, and maybe some pacing and reaction shots in places. It’s a skill you’ll develop as you go. Try to break up the actions like this:
“The Monster leaps at the young knight, who, gritting his teeth, draws his sword and kills it’.
That is not one panel. If you draw that as one panel, it would come out more like “leaping monster is stabbed by grimacing knight”. Which doesn’t give the timing or importance of the action the original text implies. How you should do it is:
‘Monster leaps’-'Close up of Young knight, intense expression, grits teeth’-'Knight draws sword’-'Big panel of Knight with monster impaled on sword’. Now the monster fight becomes an important event, worthy of a page, rather than a minor event, which would be more suited if it was just one unimportant kill in the context of a big battle and only meriting one panel. If you want to show a character easily dispatching many opponents, make them one panel each, and it’ll look fast and effortless. Put several opponents being dispatched in one panel and suddenly the warrior looks like a superhuman killing machine, beating everybody in the blink of an eye! Time in manga is relative to the importance of the moment, not to the actual time taken!

So in summary, start big and then zoom in. Make each portion count, then make each portion of that portion count. Don’t be afraid to increase the pagecount and to trim stuff that’s irrelevant or dragging the pace.
Good Luck! Ganbatte!
-Kate

This is Manga From Scratch. A tutorial column I guess I’ll add to regularly on how to make your own doujinshi (which is a name we use for a self-published printed comic. It’s pronounced ‘Doh-jin-shee’). This is the very first one, so we’re starting at the very beginning!

The first stage in making any manga is preparation!

So, you’ve had a flash of inspiration and you want to draw a comic! Good for you! But wait! Stop! Put the pencil down a second! Don’t start drawing the pages just yet, because if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll usually give up as soon as you run out of steam and hit a snag because you haven’t thought it through enough, usually after about 6 pages. Knowing your characters well, where your plot is going and how long it will be, what the setting is and making sure you have all the materials beforehand is a really good idea. Believe me, I am talking from experience of making the exact mistake of not planning enough in the past.

So, what do you need to know?

I’ll be going into greater detail on all of the following topics in later columns…

Plot: If you’re writing a short story that’s all one arc, like a competition entry, you should ideally have the entire plot planned out. For a series, you have a little more leeway, but you should at very least know roughly how the overarching main plot will work out, and know what happens in the first storyarc fairly well, and have a very clear idea about the fist chapter or two.

If it’s a short, you should have at least a vague idea of the page count. If you plan from the start, rather than making up as you go along, it’s much easier to pace and you can foreshadow plot twists because you know about them in advance.

Characters: Design everybody who appears in the first chapter, or if it’s a short, design everybody. Make sure you note down details like their name, a basic bio and physical details such as height, handedness, build and any important quirks like accents or body language as well as how they feel about other characters.

Setting: Design major plot items beforehand, and think about how plot-important buildings and places will look. If it’s fantasy/ sci-fi, try to come up with a decent level of detail on the look and feel of the world, who lives there and the level of technology. If it’s a historical setting or a specific real location, ie. London, do your research beforehand!

Materials:Make sure you have enough paper and all the tools you’ll need before you start. Oh, and always test them before using them on the actual comic. It’s a bad idea to make your first page the very first time you use a material. It’s less important for a webcomic, where people may expect the art to change over time, but for a short the style and media should remain consistent right through, and for a printed series, you should at least keep all the pages of a chapter consistent. If you know your materials before you start, there’s less risk of starting a comic with new media and finding you hate them and want to change to another method five pages in!

Technical Specs:It is VITAL when working for print to know what dimensions you’re working to. If you’re not 100% sure at least give yourself a big bleed, so you have plenty of leeway when resizing the page. Most doujinshi here are drawn on A4 and printed at A5, due to the UK not having a traditional small ‘comics’ size like America or Japan (Traditionally, comics here have generally been magazine, newspaper or a4 in size) printers may charge more or get shirty if you want to print at B5 or something! For competitions, be aware of the specs. Tokyopop in particular, have very detailed specifications for the Rising Stars of Manga competition!

If you’re working on a book with friends, try to make sure you’re all working to the same specs or everything could get messy! Be sure you have the files at a nice high DPI like 300 or 600 if you want to print.

Oh, and if you’re working on a webcomic, you want a lowish DPI, like 75 and you pages under 800 pixels wide.

I know that sounds like a lot, but if you prepare all that before you start, the comic will be a breeze! You won’t run into unforeseen problems if you think ahead before you start. Plus the result will be better. You’ll end up with a tighter plot, better pacing, more consistent art and good print quality, so really there’s no good reason not to plan!

Good luck! Seeya next time!

-DM