Paper Wings and More on Character and Story

If you make comics (like I do) and really care about engaging your audience and making the most compelling characters you can, allow me to make a couple of recommendations.

First, you should listen to the Paper Wings Podcast that covers the topic. This episode I will link you to is called, “How to Write Comics That Engage Your Audience.” And the people on this podcast know what they are doing: Chris Oatley has worked for Disney and now runs his own art academy, and Lora Innes started and is still making her fabulous comic, “The Dreamer.”

Here it is, for your listening pleasure.

Second, I think you should, at the very least, read “Ink Spots” by Brian McDonald.

“Ink Spots” collects the essays he wrote on his blog “Invisible Ink” (I think you should read the book of the same title. I’ve heard good things about that one, too).

Not only did this book motivate me into writing again, but his advice on how to write characters kicked me in the proverbial pants and made me energized to work with my characters in “The Legend of Jamie Roberts” again.

This guy KNOWS what he is doing, and what he’s talking about. For Pete’s sake, he worked with Pixar on their stories!

To get your copy, you can go to Amazon. I receive no commission for this. I just think you should read it because it’s THAT important that you do.

Third, if you would like to try some new character-making exercises that don’t involve long cheat sheets to fill out with questions like what their favorite food is….

You should look at this and this. The first link is to a blog post about how you can use Character Allignments (a la Dungeons and Dragons) to create a variety of morals for characters. The second link is an in depth look at Jungian theory (remember those tests that say “You’re an ISTJ type”? Yeah. It’s that), how it’s partially inaccurate, and how to actually use it when developing characters.

These last two links I found exceptionally useful, and helped me to flesh out my characters even further.

Good luck, and Don’t Forget to Be Awesome. :D

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