Chapter 5 Reflections: how to write a fantasy webcomic

January 26th, 2017 by jojo

ch5_reflections

The end of another chapter means another blog post reflecting on what parts of the story went well and what I need to work on! For Chapter 5, I went with a flashback story because I wanted to establish backstories and make the characters easier to empathize with. Within that, I had a few story goals and writing exercises set up for myself with this chapter.

  1. Build readers’ empathy for characters

    This was my main goal for Chapter 5. Prior to this, Herogirl characters haven’t had much chance to interact with each other or face challenges they react to in a personal way — they’ve mostly been along for the ride as other characters face some sort of challenge, and even then, problems get resolved in a very deus ex machina-like manner. The stories I love to read/watch/play through are stories I enjoy because I see characters that do what they can in the face of challenges, and I want to reflect that in my work too!

    That being said, not much got resolved in Chapter 5, but I sure as heck set up some unresolved problems that will need to be solved by the characters’ actions (I hope). The major conflict in this chapter was Jovian’s internal frustrations about what he wanted to do (help others) and what he was born/destined to do (fight). I’m happy that this conflict was clear, but I think I could have given it more weight. Nothing was really stopping Jovian from pursuing his dream as a doctor (except for when Lothar appears at the very end). Instead, family pressure could have had Jovian feeling like he needed to follow in his ancestors’ footsteps; teachers could have praised him for his talent; heck, even being explicitly offered a lot of money or cushy perks for being taken on as a patron could have helped make that potential way of life more realistically attractive. Expanding on any of these reasons might have also helped make Jovian’s Showcase opponent’s desperation to win more realistic.

    I think I only somewhat succeeded in building empathy for Vestris and Gear. I was able to get a good glimpse of their personalities in this chapter, but (again) they didn’t have a lot of conflict they faced directly which kept them from really showing off what they would do under duress (or when things go well)!

  2. Showcase Lothar’s villainy
    As part of establishing Jovian’s motivations as a character, I had to show why he’s working for Lothar. I’m pretty happy with the way Lothar’s actions interfered directly with Jovian’s ability to resolve his conflict.

    In the future, I’d like to showcase Lothar’s scariness more directly. His mad scientist personality has been great so far, but his dialogue alone isn’t going to carry much further into the story. So far, he’s hinted at some Very Bad Stuff he’s done and been vaguely threatening, but I haven’t actually shown him doing anything terrible. Maybe I’m subconsciously avoiding drawing scary things? I also worry about going overboard with the scariness and making him come off as creepy rather than calculating and selfish. Hm…

  3. Write according to a story arc

    A writing challenge I set for myself was to write according to a story arc and stick to it! (It sounds like an obvious thing to do but… well, writing is hard. :P) The overall emotional structure I was aiming for looked something like this:

    1. Slight downward slope as Jovian struggles with the current state of his world
    2. An opportunity for Jovian to make a change
    3. A moment of uncertainty regarding Jovian’s decision
    4. A positive change for Jovian
    5. A starkly negative change for Jovian

    This isn’t anything special — we’ve got rising action, a climax, and a resolution, but rather than a pattern of “problem, attempt to solve problem, overcome obstacle, hooray”, we have a “problem, attempt to solve problem, overcome obstacle, hit a brick wall” sort of pattern. I wanted to end the chapter at an emotional low so that the main story can work on wrapping up these problems and allow for later character growth.

    For the most part, I did manage to stick to that structure and I’m pretty happy about that! It was a very useful tool for making sure I didn’t randomly change up the story while drawing it (which is something I’m tempted to do more often than I like when I’m not feeling confident). This is definitely something I need to stick to doing while writing future chapters.

    The difficult part was figuring out exactly how these positive and negative changes were going to play out. I struggled a lot with how exactly Lothar was going to crush Jovian’s hopes and dreams… originally, Jovian was going to force himself to ask Lothar for help in becoming a Shield Sphere to help the Doctor who suddenly become sick/injured (unbeknownst to anyone, due to Lothar’s scheming). But I thought that was a bit complicated and would be difficult for even Lothar to pull off (and also, the Doctor or even another teacher would probably be able to help herself! :P).

  4. Contrast two different worldviews between characters

    A secondary conflict I wanted to explore in this chapter was one between Gear and Jovian. My original intent was to set up a kind of friends-but-also-rivals-relationship-gone-sour, but somehow that got lost while writing the story. Gear was supposed to represent an attitude of “doing what suits you best” and “it’s okay to be selfish”, while Jovian was supposed to represent an attitude of “never abandon your responsibilities”. That conflict was set up when Jovian and Gear go out to the music festival, and I’m happy with the hint of friendship that arose there, but I wasn’t able to get these two characters to clash as cleanly as I liked. Sure, they fought in the end, but the motivations for the fight were only vaguely related to their attitudes toward life.

    I think this is partially due to the chapter having focused way more on Jovian than on Gear, when originally I imagined this chapter as focusing on their relationship and interactions. Gear’s struggle stayed mostly hidden except for a few hints, and that made the ending conflict very one-sided and not as painful as it could have been.

  5. Miscellaneous regrets
    • At the end of the music festival scene, Jovian says he comes up with some ideas for his strategy in the Showcase. I really wish I had remembered to incorporate something about that in the Showcase fight scenes! I think that would have been a great way to show some friendship and Jovian’s capacity to change as a character.
    • I’m really sad about Gear’s motivations and backstory getting dropped in the writing. I may do a Chapter 5b that’s a few pages long to clarify Gear’s motivations and to show what happens to him at the end of this flashback.
    • I’m still being really vague about how Sphere’s work! Also, I wish I had made it more clear that Lothar is eating Jovian’s Sphere at the end and shown why he’s doing that. Maybe I’ll roll this loose thread into Chapter 5b as well.

Overall, I thought Chapter 5 started out stronger than it ended. However, I definitely thought that writing with a pre-written story arc in mind helped a lot in keeping the emotional tone of the story on track. And while not entirely successful, I got a lot of practice writing stories in terms of conflict and opposing forces. The key is to make the stakes of conflict appropriately heavy!

Goals for moving forward:

  • Make Auto and Gear more active in the main storyline by incorporating some of these lessons about writing around conflict in future chapters!
  • Brainstorm more clearly about rules for Sphere powers! I need to get creative about different types of abilities that might exist and how they affect daily life.
  • Netheria is the country that Elysia is at war with, but they haven’t appeared in the comic at all (and neither have the consequences of this war). I need to show this soon and figure out how to tie it into the main story!
  • On a more practical level: I found myself worrying a lot of page economy during this chapters (and previous chapters as well, now that I think about it), and I think that made me rush pages and panels because I thought the story was getting too long. For the next chapter, I think I’m going to try and thumbnail the whole chapter before drawing anything to give myself a chance to check and revise the pacing and story before committing to anything, and see if that helps!
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Chapter 4 Reflections: how to write a fantasy webcomic

June 9th, 2016 by jojo

While working on Chapter 4, I called it “band-aid” chapter. Basically, with all the exploration I had been doing with the previous chapters, a lot of important setup for characters’ motivations got lost in the cracks. I felt I needed to resolve this before moving further, so my goal with this chapter was to try and make it more obvious as to why people were doing what they were doing in Herogirl, so they can enjoy the comic as they enjoy other things such as they enjoy games like WoW, getting gold for this online, click here for more.

So instead of laying out reflections in terms of lessons learned, I’ll lay out what my goals were for Chapter 4, and talk about whether or not I thought I achieved them.

  1. Resolve why Auto has been travelling with Gear.This was one of my major goals because the fact that Auto has been travelling with Gear really bothered me! She doesn’t even know the guy — it’d be different if I had the foresight to establish trust between them somehow, but I never did. So with Chapter 4, there were two choices I thought of: either this would be the trust-building chapter, or I would steel Auto’s resolve to continue on her mission. I went with the latter choice by getting Auto and Gear into a fight of sorts. By doing this, I wanted to show some conflict between them (Gear is OK with stealing, Auto is not) which would also hopefully set up a contrast between their characters I could draw on later, but I didn’t get the chance to really explore this more. To set up this fight, Auto needed to doubt why she was even travelling with him, and there needed to be mistrust. In the end, she realizes she needs his help, which was my solution to this problem, though I wish I had gone with an ending that was less practical and more character-driven.
  2. Make Auto an active character.This was my main goal for Chapter 4. I’ve been increasingly happy with the story arcs contained with the chapters I’ve written so far, but as far as the overall story goes, Auto hasn’t done much. She’s mostly been dragged around by Gear, and as a result, we know little about her. Who is she? What is she good at? What does she personally bring to the Gear-Auto partnership? What makes her tick? Part of this problem comes from the fact that she was a self-insert character I created when I was, like, 13, so she is naturally very passive. Ideally, I would have tackled this problem head on with her from Chapter 0, but now that she’s been around for a while, I have to adjust her character a little slowly. It’s a complicated problem.

    My take on a solution in Chapter 4 was to give Auto a problem (in this case, Vestris stealing the Herald) and have her be the one to solve it (well, she tries, anyway). This also means that Gear had to temporarily be put out of the way and that Auto needed to show some sort of inner motivation for her actions. In addition, I tried to tell the story from her point-of-view, so the reader could get more of a sense of how she thinks and acts. The tricky part was to include all of this that made sense in the tiny package that is a comic chapter.

  3. Introduce the existence of Heraldic powers.As part of making Auto more of main character, I wanted her to be more practically useful as a character. The Heraldic powers was always part of the plan, but introducing them now made for a good plot device that could help Auto tackle a story problem by herself. I was originally going to have the Lion explain powers to Auto, but that seemed like a lot of telling, not showing. Instead, I went with Auto encountering it as part of a cultural event in the city she was in — a little better, and slightly more natural.
  4. Set up Gear’s backstory.Gear’s motivation has been hinted at in previous chapters, but I felt like it was high time for his story to be told straight out. Auto’s doubt in him seemed like a good segue, as she could ask what he’s all about, and he could tell her.
  5. Set up Jovian’s backstory, and set him apart from Lothar.Jovian has, so far, just been Lothar’s lackey, though it’s been hinted that he has plans of his own. I wanted to draw that out in the open as well, hence the small side-story at the end of Chapter 4. This time, Ana is the one asking the questions. I also wanted to set up a sense of Jovian operating under some risk, though I think I could have done a better job setting up how dangerous Lothar really is.
  6. Remind readers who Ana is.Finally, I wanted to remind readers that Ana is still captured (and thus, remind people of Auto’s goal). What is she up to? Is she in immediate danger? How is she handling capture? I actually do like her little section of the story the best out of Chapter 4, because it’s not so darn complicated.

Overall, I would say I definitely tried to tackle way too much in Chapter 4! If I could do it again, I would have created a chapter focusing on Auto and Gear building trust and learning more about each other (tackling the character development issue), and then written a separate chapter dedicated to more macro-story stuff (Heraldic powers, people’s backstories, etc.). I did an OK job folding all these goals into each other, but since each part of the story is tackling so much, I think this chapter came off as kind of rushed. I definitely have to remember to not to be so impatient and be wary of telling the story too fast.

That’s all for now! Hope this was interesting and helpful. Time to move on to Chapter 5!

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Chapter 3 Reflections: how to write a fantasy webcomic

October 1st, 2015 by jojo

I very recently finished Chapter 3 of Herogirl, and after following my own advice to commit to a page a week during my last reflection, I realized that I completed Chapter 3 in about half a year, compared to the two years it took me to finish Chapter 2! I think Chapter 3 had some of the best storytelling I’ve done so far, and I wanted to share some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t during the process!

  1. Plan the story beforehand

    I’ve been creating outlines for each chapter of Herogirl from since the beginning. But for the first time, I thumbnailed out every page of the chapter before starting on actual page work. These thumbnails included a very (very!) rough panel layout as well as a rough dialogue script for each page. By the end, I had a summary showing how the story was paced in both visually and plot-wise, which also made it very easy to revise the story at a high level and make sure I was happy with it before locking myself in with real pages (which was the primary barrier to me completing chapters in the past).

  2. Side stories make your world interesting

    I’ve had side stories for previous chapters — for Chapter 1, Ana and Auto are told the story of the Arcana at the same time by different people, and for Chapter 2, I had Warrick and his grand-daughters as side characters. However, these side stories weren’t really stories — they were merely plot devices to help the main storyline explain itself, and as a result, you didn’t really get to know any of the side characters very well.

    In Chapter 3, one of my goals was to create a mini-story that could stand on its own. Again, I needed side characters to help Auto and Gear resolve a problem they couldn’t solve on the own, but I also wanted to be able to explain why these side characters were special. Why them? What about their situation made them the right people at the right time for the story? And what are their lives like right now because of what happened to them in the past? I committed a lot of time towards thinking about giving these side characters a problem that could evolve along with the larger plot.

  3. Sync up major problems and resolutions

    Chapter 3 starts out with a problem: Auto and Gear arrive at the next area known to have a Herald’s shrine, but the shrine has disappeared into the sea! Enter Tortu and Korall, who also have a problem: the Herald stole something that was precious to both of them, but they can’t find the Herald. Now, anyone can see that this aligns Auto/Gear’s and Tortu/Korall’s goals, which is required for them to be willing to help each other. But that’s not enough!

    While I was writing this chapter, one of my friends mentioned to me that they had read in a writing book that suggested that significant plot points should be tied to something physical. For example, in a story where a child ends up lying to his mother about a misplaced stuffed bear, the finding of the bear and the child’s confession to the mother should go hand-in-hand. You could write an ending that just consists of one or the other happening, but the impact is weaker because the resolution seems to come out of nowhere. A physical item often can act as a very tangible cause of situations that progress the plot.

    This conversation led me to revise Chapter 3 a bit to include a physical item — a wedding ring — that’s presence and absence goes hand-in-hand with Tortu and Korall’s emotional scars. I also had to explain the item, so I included a flashback explaining Tortu and Korall’s backstory and to establish the item’s importance. By the end of the story, Tortu and Korall are able to mend their relationship over the lost precious item, and this resolution actually leads to them getting the precious item back. It’s hard to explain, but I found this ending very satisfying. Chapter 3’s ending was originally going to be about Auto and Gear finding the Herald (straightforward and very boring), but now, it’s about two characters coming to terms with the past (much less boring), which happens to also cause the main story to progress (finding the Herald) as a side effect. Much better!

  4. Stress out your characters

    One high-level problem I’ve been struggling with in Herogirl is the lack of urgency in the story. Sure, Auto is on a quest to save her sister, but there really isn’t a time limit. They could come back to King Lother with the Heralds 10 years later and for all we know (as readers) things would turn out totally fine. So, I tried to think hard about stories I like and how they create an environment that keeps characters moving. For example, one of my favorite stories, Avatar: The Last Airbender, created a sense of urgency by establishing that the characters needed to accomplish their quest before the arrival of a comet that would give their enemy superpowers (a time limit); in addition, they were constantly reminded of the enemy’s effect on the people they met and they town’s they visited during their travels (an emotional limit).

    I decided to go with a time limit (sort of). The most important objective for Auto and Gear are to find the Heralds. One thing that could get in the way of that goal is someone stealing the Heralds from them! So at the end of Chapter 3, I introduced Vestris, who was tasked with capturing the Heralds before Auto and Gear do. I also tried to throw in a bit of mortal danger by having Jovian tell Vestris that stopping Auto and Gear by any means necessary was acceptable, but we’ll see how that works out in later chapters!

  5. Drawing two pages a week is a good idea

    In my last reflections post, I talked about how doing two pages a week helped me build up a backlog of comics that could allow me to continue posting one page a week, even on weeks where I was travelling or busy with work. I am still doing this, and it is still very, very convenient. I’m finding I’m also faster at drawing pages in general, partly because I’m building up those drawing muscles by doing more per week and partly because I have a more solid plan in place for each chapter so I don’t spend a lot of time second-guessing myself!

  6. Promote yourself: Take 2

    I mentioned before that I use advertising services like Project Wonderful and Google Adwords to boost the visibility of my comic to new people. I’ve also begun to advertise myself on social media much more diligently — as part of my ritual of scheduling pages for each week, I also make sure to schedule a corresponding post on my Tumblr and Facebook pages. I’ve built up different audiences on these pages (as a result of my other art activities), and this is a great way to connect people who are already interested in my art to other stuff I do (like Herogirl!).

That’s all for now! Looking forward to Chapter 4! 🙂

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Chapter 2 Reflections: how to keep writing a fantasy webcomic

January 10th, 2015 by jojo

Two years after finishing Chapter 1 of Herogirl, I’ve finally finished the second chapter! When I finished Chapter 1, I wrote up some reflections on problems I ran into and lessons learned, and I’d like to do it again here.

  1. Just do it & stick to your deadline

    I told myself this last time, and I’m telling myself this again. This, by far, was probably the most important thing in helping me complete another chapter. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still a beginner at all of this, but completing 1.5 chapters of Herogirl did not make it easier to make pages. I still balked and second guessed myself about pretty much every page. However, no one can tell you what to do. It’s your story. A more experienced person can jump in and give you tips of dialogue here and camera angles there, but they can’t tell you how to write your story (otherwise, it wouldn’t be yours!). So, the only thing you can do is keep going and learn by doing — not just through sketches and scripts but also by forcing yourself to commit to plot and character by posting the stuff you make.

  2. Build your world around simple concepts

    This one is another throwback to Chapter 1 reflections. There, I talked about I used the idea of Spheres to come up other storytelling elements — for example, to explain why Auto is “the chosen one” and why Lothar is after her.

    In Chapter 2, we start to learn a little more about the Heralds. I knew in the beginning I wanted some sort of pantheon for the heroes to interact with in some way (a la Okami), but just throwing giant magical animals into the story seemed kinda boring (and totally out of nowhere). After doodling a drawing of Auto holding a banner, I thought about heraldry and realized I could use various ideas relating to heraldry (such as the animals and attitudes/positions and history of design) that I could use to give the Heralds a bit more dimension. The results of using this as inspiration hasn’t really cropped up yet, but it’s nice to have a solid place to draw ideas from.

  3. Know your storytelling strengths and preferences

    A big reason I had such a huge break in Chapter 2 was because I was unsure about what should happen between Gear and Auto leaving the Citadel and arriving at Martencrown. I had this rough script where they run into some corrupt Herald monster things, but I kept putting off drawing the pages for that fight because I reallllly didn’t want to draw fight scenes! Eventually, I realized that I’d much rather draw Gear and Auto solving mysteries and interacting with people, and re-wrote the story a bit to showcase them doing that.I also had to think about the purpose of including or excluding scenes — I originally had written in a fight scene to showcase how awesome Gear is at fighting, but it turned out it wasn’t that important to show (at least at this point in the story). It didn’t advance the plot, so I had to throw it out the window. Instead, we get to jump straight to some scenes where Gear is explaining some stuff about the Heralds, which advances the plot and shows that he knows quite a bit about what is going on. As Robert McKee would say, scenes should perform double duty!

  4. Write in arcs

    If there was one thing I think went well with Chapter 2, I think it would be that I successfully wrote the chapter in a self-contained arc. We have a central cast of characters related to the arc that meet Auto and Gear, a setting where all the action takes place, and a problem (super scary Winter Lion) that is resolved by the end of the chapter (Winter Lion goes away) which also advances the overall plot (Auto and Gear’s quest to find all the Heralds). Having these mini-stories per chapter, I think, keep the story interesting, allow for a fresh set of faces and characters with each arc, and make it easier for me, as the writer, to not freak out about the larger plot so much — I have a smaller story to focus on.

  5. Think about page-level stories, too

    Another thing I think I got better at this time around was having miniature stories on each “page”. I think this is really important, especially for webcomics, because potential new readers will see one page before they decide to read any more of your comic. For this chapter, I tried to create pages that a) posed a question, b) advances either the plot or knowledge of the world, and c) ended with a response to the initial question, which could be another question.

    This page is an example of how I tried to do this. The beginning of the page sets up a question that followed from the previous page (the characters unsure or anxious about potential danger Gear had mentioned). The middle of the page provides us with some information that gives us a little information about Martencrown and Warrick. Finally, the end of the page “answers” the question of potential danger by upping the stakes a bit — Mina has disappeared, presumably having gone to the place of danger.

  6. Have character sheets and location references

    A practical note — have something that show full body designs of your characters! Do the same with locations — draw rough maps and layouts of places the characters are going to be. I did not do this (and still haven’t because I’m terrible) and I spent a lot of time flipping through past pages to remember whether Auto was wearing boots or regular shoes or how the shrine area was laid out. Not a good use of time, and helps with the balking problem, because you’ve already thought about how to draw the setting and characters before you start on any pages.

  7. Take some time to build up a backlog

    In November, I decided to draw two pages a week. THIS WAS A GODSEND FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON. By doubling my work for a little while, I had a small backlog built up that kept the comic going while I was travelling around. I didn’t plan it that way, but I now know the value of having a sort of comic “emergency fund” that I can draw into in case stuff comes up during the weekends (which is my usual comic-making time).

  8. Promote yo’self

    I had already started doing this during Chapter 1, but it’s a really good idea to promote yourself! Not only to get new readers, but because seeing new readers come and stick around is really motivating for posting pages on time! I’d feel bad if I skimped on comic-making time each week because of all the nice people that commented on Herogirl saying they enjoyed the comic. So, thanks, readers!

    Currently, I promote myself through Project Wonderful and Google Adwords. These cost money, but you can get a pretty good audience boost just by spending $10 a week. Google Adwords also occasionally has coupon promotions that give you a free $100 in credit if you’re a new user, which can last a long time if you set up caps in how much you want your ad to spend each day. I also listed my comic on The Webcomic List and Top Web Comics because why not? It’s free to list yourself, and a great place to find other comics to read. 🙂

That’s all my thoughts this time around! I hope this was helpful… on to Chapter 3!

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Late comic!

August 27th, 2013 by jojo

Because I’m moving this week and because color is hard! But it is being drawn as we speak 🙂

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No comic this week

May 16th, 2013 by jojo

Kinda goes without saying as it’s already Thursday, but no comic this week! I’ve been working on a research paper like crazy, trying to catch up on homework, and also being at Google I/O (which is going to result in some comics).

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No comic this week

March 20th, 2013 by jojo

Last week was missing a comic too. Bleh! Grad school is crazy. Spring break is going to be awesome for comic making time :<

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No comic this week

February 27th, 2013 by jojo

Sad! Sorry to skip out on the update, but I’ve been working on another comic project for my Korean course at school. You can view a really brief preview and some more information about it on my tumblr.

I probably got all sorts of cultural things wrong (especially the clothes!). Fun fact though — it’ll be in both Korean and English, and I hope I don’t botch the text for the Korean version.

I’m actually not sure where I’ll post it when I’m done. Maybe as a photoset on Tumblr, or maybe I’ll post it one by one on Herogirl as an intermission after chapter 2 ends?

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Chapter 1 Reflections: how to write a fantasy webcomic

December 14th, 2012 by jojo

Welp, so I wrote my first chapter of a fantasy adventure comic. It’s not great — I wrote it as I went and it definitely shows! Here’s a couple of things I’ve learned/am musing about in the aftermath:

1. Just do it

I really don’t have any idea what Elysia holds. What I found was that trying to think out the world and the people in text or scribbles via a notebook (at least, for me) just resulted in me going back and forth about ideas that I liked then disliked then liked again. At this point, I just said “Screw this” and started drawing a comic. I’m really glad I did this, because it forced me to draw out details and these details ended up inspiring important parts of the world. For example, in the first page of Chapter 1, Gear uses a spirit ball thingy to lead the way out of the forest. We now know these are in-world things called Spheres, but when I drew that page I just kind of had a vague idea that Gear had magic powers of some kind and that’s the form his magic took. It later occurred to me that this would have to be explained or Auto would ask about it, so I had to make up something that rationalized the existing of a magic ball thing. So I came up with the idea of Spheres. It’s an example of thinking through doing, I guess.

I kept balking on starting this comic because I was continually worried it wouldn’t be good enough. Well, an OK comic that’s drawn is better than a comic that isn’t drawn. And, hopefully, I’ll get better at this storytelling thing as I keep doing it.

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Missing a couple weeks of comics

November 28th, 2012 by jojo

Probably noticed I haven’t updated in a while now 🙁 School is (still) kicking my butt! It’s over around Dec 7th though, so I will be back to my regular updating schedule after that week. Thanks so much for your patience!

(I’ve got a couple random doodle/sketch updates over at my tumblr, in case that will tide people over until then!)

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