So I’ve been thinking of making a webcomic for a while.
I’m not sure what the story will be about yet. That’s why I’m brainstorming some schemes now and making a few sketches. Today I filled a sketchbook page with nothing but potential cast members of the new story (that’s the image above).
I’ve worked with the girl in the fedora and the girl with the braid on one side of her head before. They’re main characters in a mini-comic of mine, “The Messengers”, which I just finished the script for. The script was two years in the making, mostly because when I first started it the villain was of no interest to me, so I put it away for a while until I could approach it with new eyes. Now that I have it finished, I’m debating if I want to scrap the whole thing in favor of this new idea germinating in my head.
This idea, like I said, is still developing. Right now, there is a lot of thought concerning Muses, the Nine Art Forms as considered by the French, dreams, Egyptian and Greek mythology, and interconnected yet separate worlds a la Kingdom Hearts.
In other words, I have no idea what I’m doing yet.
So you know what I’m going to do?
Work on something else for a while.
I still need to finish the pencils for my submission to the IF-X anthology, and I’m making them extra nice because I intend to use them for a portfolio to send to some comic companies. So I think I’ll switch gears and work on them.
Usually, when I do that, ideas for other projects will whack me upside the head anyway. It’s funny when that happens: when you focus on one thing, your imagination goes off into the wilderness on its own and then finds an idea for you to use. It happens to me all the time.
If you have any suggestions or ideas of your own concerning the idea, please leave them in comments. I would love to hear from you.
I’m really not one to give advice on “good” story structure, but I can tell you what to avoid.
Whatever you do, DO NOT put story elements into a work just because they sound cool or interesting. If you try to make a story mostly from tropes and archetypes, you’ll just end up with an incohesive mess. Everything in a story must have its place, and be written to fit there.
@Jeff Laclede Thanks for that, actually. It helps to simplify things a little bit. I’ll see what to trim out to make it work.