Comic Design Training Tidbits, or, The Goal of CWP2013

Neirai the Forgiven

Christian Guilds List Manager
After a (lengthy and fun) conversation with Kendrik, I figured I should point this out.

My goal, the goal for the entire Creative Writing forum, is to train and equip you to, as a Christian, produce great pop art.

Again,

The Creative Writing Forum at CGA seeks to be a medium for equipping Christian gamers to be great artist who create splashes in our pop culture world.

Looks great in italics, says I.

So, to that end I will be posting short blurbs of training for the purposes of empowering you to create great comics (and other things!)

Let me mention here, as well, that while the objective of CWP2013 is to create a single collaborative comic concept, the goal of CWP2013 is to get you all so fired up that you branch of to create your own awesome comic ideas aand to give you some tools to make that process possible, easy, and awesome. So do not feel that CWP2013 is the only project coming out of CGA this year, nor that if you decide at some point to make another project that we will be hurt.

Without much more ado, on to some Training Tidbits!
 
Tip #1: You know the answers, you just don't know that you know the answers
When I was in college (Lit degree,) one of my professors said that the key to his teaching style was that he assumed that you know the answers. He saw it as his job to bring those answers out of you.

If you're like me, you've been steeped in popular culture and literature your entire life. Even if all you did was watch TV, you've consumed tons of stories and art. It's just a matter of training yourself to reverse the process.

Oh, and channel it into something useful that avoids obvious pitfalls.


Tip #2: When designing anything, keep it simple.
As a general rule, design the minimum you can. Create the smallest number of characters possible. Make those characters as simple as possible, defining them with broad strokes and as variants on a rule (I will talk more on this when I start talking about setting-driven characters.)

When designing settings, be as brief as possible. If you can't explain the setting in two minutes or less, it's too complex. People like cool settings, but they don't want to become scholars in order to understand them.

When designing plots, use a very simple structure: Story == Desire + Obstacle. Don't iron out the details until you're ironing out the details.

The reason I say all this, which will become painfully clear, is that characters, settings, and plots snowball very quickly. Every piece of your work will end up being much, much more complex than you first thought.


Tip #3: Know your target audience
Knowing your target audience helps you define your story. Are you writing for Christian Gamers? Are you writing for the unsaved? Those audiences are totally different.

Let's say you're writing a story about forensic detectives. Are you writing for people who know nothing about forensics? People who know everything about forensics? CSI fans? Again, these are totally different audiences. And, this means that the kind of story you can write for them are different. CSI fans expect a particular kind of forensics action, whereas people who don't know anything about forensics can have a wider range of forensic action but also need to be eased into it -- forensics by itself isn't interesting enough per se, and they don't know what you're talking about so you need some sort of forensics lite. Forensic junkies will want very serious, realistic forensics and probably not CSI forensics, but they will want specific details and the details will be your plot.

Also, be aware when your audience changes without you seeing it. For example, if you're writing a romance for teens, but it ends up having a lot of nitty-gritty forensics content, you're no longer writing for teens -- you're writing for teens that like forensics. That's a lot smaller of a segment (but still not bad.)

On the flip side, if you're writing a story about Christian Gamers, and you're aiming for Christian Gamers as a target, but your story is all about World of Warcraft, then you're really writing to Christian Gamers who like MMOs. Again, smaller. A lot smaller.


Tip #4: Make sure that your premise isn't your plot.
Quick definitions: A premise is a premise, that is, an interesting idea that drives your story. A plot is your storyline.

I know, too quick.

Many stories have a cool premise, like Psychic schoolgirls battle ninja apes or In the future, the only prophet God can trust is a robot. These premises make you want to read the story, but they aren't enough. Often, a story has a premise and that's about it, and the plot becomes identical to the premise. In the future, the only prophet God can trust is a robot. The End.

What?

If you've ever read a cool story that stops before going anywhere or where every episode seems to be a variant on the same story, it's because the premise took over the plot and what you're left with is just examples of how the premise can play out.

In the future, the only prophet God can trust is a robot... This robot is being delivered to the scrapyard because it's obsolete when God gives it a message... It now has a mission to deliver a message to the ruler of all humans... Before time runs out.

More of a plot, but you notice something: there's not much story yet. Story is, again, Desire + Obstacle. What does our robot desire, and what's the obstacle?

It's somewhat the point that answering that question creates story but it needs to go somewhere before it's worth reading. We need more obstacles and ways to get past them, and that's when we have a plot.

Before then, there's nothing worth reading, even if it's interesting.


Tip: Numbers are bad.
Although it looks like we aren't writing a Shonen Battle-Manga, it's important to point out the biggest pit-fall of battle-mangas: numbers.

Unless you're prepared to play with the numbers and keep them unpredictable, numbers are bad. By which I mean:

In many stories you have a squad of numbered bad guys (1-7) or a set of numbered goals (find 8 necklaces.) This creates a major problem: the reader can gauge the length of the story. And they can gauge if you're stalling. In any case, your story is dated, and your readers can feel it dying.

Don't do this.

The only exception to this rule is if you monkey with the numbers a lot. If those seven bad guys are becoming less numerous, or more numerous, or it's obvious that we can't count, we're good.
 
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