So you’ve decided that you’re going to start your first indie comic! You have a vision so great that it needs to be materialized for the world to see! Congratulations! This has the potential to be your purpose. This may be how you leave your mark on the world. You can be remembered this way!
Here’s a cold and brutal truth when it comes to achieving your goals. More often than not, it’s difficult and, especially in the beginning, you’ll fail more often than you win.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t make your indie comic. What I’m trying to say can be best summarized by a Friedrich Nietzsche quote: “I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
I have no doubt that your vision is amazing! The world always needs creative people. They can make art so fantastic that it can inspire us and change people’s minds.
Make no mistake, if you choose to go down this route, it will be difficult. You probably will not see a rate of return until a few months or years pass. I cannot even guarantee that you will be successful at this venture.
What I can do, is take control over the things I can control and help you as best I can. This newsletter includes advice and recommendations that that will make your indie comic as kick-ass as possible! Please note that I am not an expert. I have only had two moderately successful kickstarters. I still have a long way to go before bringing my vision to life! I can’t guarantee success for you. However, I know that if you follow this advice, it will make your life a hell of a lot less stressful!
This post will provide advice on how to get started on your script. Your script is the most important component! You’ll be much more organized with your vision and you’ll be able to communicate very effectively with your artist with a polished script!
Before we move onto the step-by-step guideline to creating your indie comic, please be sure to subscribe!
Write Your Script
This should seem obvious. Write a polished script before sending it to your artist. Otherwise, you’ll be going in circles.
I’ve went through so many revisions with my scripts. I takes a long time to make an awesome one. Yet, it can be done! I started out writing my script when I was 22 years-old. Eventually I was able to make a very polished one! Here’s a quick review that Wednesday Night Reviews did of the first issue of my graphic novel, Echoes of the Triumphant! Click the link below if you don’t believe me!
Not sure how to write a quality script? Don’t worry. Here are some simple tips and tricks to help.
The Character and Story Balance
Before writing, plan your character’s journey and the direction of the story. And make sure that there’s a great balance between character and story development.
Dan Harmon’s story circle is an excellent resource to help make sure that your story is achieving proper character and story development. For those of you who aren’t aware of Dan Harmon’s story circle, here’s a quick run-down.
When you’re starting your story, establish your protagonist in a zone of comfort. They have a want to fulfill. They embark on a journey and enter an unfamiliar situation to achieve that want. They fail in some way, then later adapt to the circumstances. After adapting, they gain what they want. Later, they pay a heavy price for getting what they want. Finally, they return to their zone of comfort having changed.
I’ll use my indie comic as an example. The main character, Adrian, is a young man who was close to becoming a professional boxer. Instead of achieving that glory, he becomes a forensic accountant to make ends meet. He wants more money and status to make up for the glory that he thinks is owed to him. His brother offers him a questionable way to take down a criminal that’s good at covering his tracks. He agrees and tries to take down the criminal. At first, he fails at getting evidence. He later levels up his skills and manages to find a way to get the forensic evidence on the criminal. Adrian gets what he wants. He now has a USB stick that includes all the information that his boss needs. Adrian can finally get a big promotion and get more money and status. Adrian pays the price as the criminal gets pissed off and captures his brother. Adrian returns to his familiar situation having changed. He reflects and realizes that his family is more important than getting more money and status. He changes by saving his brother and helping his city out.
It’s important to realize that there’s two ways to implement Dan Harmon’s story circle. I highly recommend applying this to the character’s external challenges and the character’s internal turmoil.
Again, I’ll use my indie comic as an example. Adrian’s external challenge is to get forensic evidence on a criminal to get a promotion. He leaves his zone of comfort to try and get what he wants. In his attempt to get the forensic evidence, he gets his ass handed to him. Later, he picks himself up, he adapts and levels up his skills to get the evidence. Eventually he gets what wants! After getting what he wants, pays a heavy as his brother gets captured. He reflects and reassess his wants at this point. He changes and saves his brother as oppose to getting his promotion.
It’s important to take into account your character’s inner turmoil. Adrian struggles with validation. He came from a broken household and never received proper love. To compensate, he craves fame, attention and glory. He thinks he wants money and status. Once he gets close to achieving this goal, he finds himself just as empty as he was before. He reflects and realizes that the love from what’s left of his family is what he needs.
Before writing script, it’s important to lay these foundations for your character arcs and story. This will save you the headache of doing several re-writes.
The Plot Comes Second
Make sure that your characters are making choices! Nobody wants to read a story that’s driven by the plot. Most people love to see characters make choices that drive the plot. Most of the time, plot driven stories are not received well. Character driven stories do an amazing job at peeling back the layers of a character. Each choice that they make reveals their flaws, needs, wants and much more.
If your character isn’t making any choices, they’re nothing more than a device. They’re nothing more boring than a one-dimensional creature that’s just there.
Using my indie comic as an example, at the end of the story, Adrian is given the choice between saving his captured brother or handing in the forensic evidence to his boss to get a promotion. The reason why the character choice is so important in this scenario, is that it shows us the change in Adrian’s character. Adrian ends up choosing to save what’s left of his family as oppose to getting more money and status. This character choice shows us Adrian’s character growth. This shows us that Adrian is more concerned about the needs of others as oppose to his own selfish desires.
Some people may argue that plot-driven stories can be made well. I do not 100% agree with that. Star Wars Episode 9 and Avengers: Age of Ultron are some of the worst received movies in their respective franchises. The main criticisms stem from the fact that it’s more plot, than character driven. I’m not saying that a plot driven story can’t be well made. What I am saying is that, when you’re starting out, it’s better to place more emphasis on character. It’s much harder to achieve high quality plot driven stories, than character driven stories.
Make your Character Flawed
Now that we know it’s better to make a character-driven story as oppose to a plot-driven story, think about the starting off point for your character. Think about his or her flaws and weaknesses. Then think about what that characters thinks they need to achieve in order to fix themselves.
A really important thing to remember is that nobody has to agree with the character’s actions. It is however important to make sure that you and your audience can either sympathize, empathize or, at least, know where your character is coming from. Breaking Bad is probably the best example. The main character, Walter White, becomes a worse version of himself as the series progresses. He lies to his friends and family, he cooks meth, gets a former student to sell it for him and he kills everyone who gets in his way. He justifies his lack of moral integrity by saying that he’s doing this to provide and protect his family. Since he’s a high school teacher with a low salary living cancer, he wants to leave money behind for his family in case he dies. SPOILERS FOR BREAKING BAD IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED! At the end of the series, Walter reveals that he didn’t actually become a drug kingpin for his family. He did it for himself. He wanted to build an empire. He wanted status, wealth, respect and fear to compensate for his lack of accomplishments throughout his life. He simply wanted to satisfy his ego.
I think we can all agree that myself and no one reading this agrees with any of Walter White’s actions. But that’s the beauty of storytelling. You don’t have to agree with the main character. As an author, you must show the main character’s pain and how it affects the character’s personality and behavior.
It’s also important to not make the character perfect. If the character’s perfect, where is the room for growth? Using She-Hulk as an example, Jennifer Walters sucks as a character because as soon as she gets Hulk powers, she’s instantaneously amazing at being a Hulk. There’s no point watching past the first episode because all of her character growth is over. Instead of learning how to fight supervillains through mistakes and failures, she’s automatically amazing and wins every fight that comes her way. If a character’s perfect, then the story gets a lot less interesting. If she didn’t know how to use her Hulk powers at first, the story would be better. The audience wouldn’t know where the story was going. If she came across a supervillain for instance, she might win the fight, lose the fight, have someone save her, have someone help her out or win the fight through dumb luck. When a character’s flawed, there’s a lot more story directions open. When there’s more story directions open, the audience is more invested. Suddenly the audience can’t predict what’s going to happen to She-Hulk. They can’t tell if she’s going to win, fail, progress or make mistakes.
And even though you shouldn’t make your character perfect, make sure that you give your character at least one redemptive quality. Or at least, don’t make the character completely irredeemable. In Daredevil for instance, Matt Murdock lies to his friends and beats up people on the street. He does this because he feels as though he must sacrifice his moral integrity to get justice. He knows that the legal system is rigged because the Kingpin has leverage on the judges and juries of New York. He does these terrible things because he knows that it’s the only way to get justice to victims in Hell’s Kitchen. What I love about Matt Murdock is that he’s not truly good, yet he’s not truly evil. He’s shown a lot of love, care and compassion to his friends, yet he’s repeatedly shown the violence that he’s capable of. You should take this into consideration when you’re building your character. In the real world, people are messy and complex like Matt Murdock. To put it simply, if your character is flawed, the character will have a real and grounded vibe. People are more likely to invest in a character that’s as imperfect as they are.
Try to make as many of your characters flawed. This approach shouldn’t just be used for your main character. You never know! A supporting character could steal the show. And everyone loves a good villain.
Project Your Honesty
When you’re writing you script, you’re going to need something that separates your work from everyone else. The easiest way to do that is by projecting your own honesty into your work. (At least that’s my opinion). One of the reasons why the Rocky franchise is so amazing, is that Sylvester Stallone projected so much of his honesty into the story. Like Rocky, Sylvester Stallone felt like a guy who was down on his luck in his early twenties. He was struggling to make ends meet. He wasn’t getting any gigs. No one was paying any attention to him. He didn’t feel heard. He didn’t feel like he was amounting to his true potential. Eventually, Sylvester Stallone projected these feelings into his first Rocky script. I have to say, this approach paid off. When we see Rocky, he’s poor, he’s getting rejected by his peers, people are calling him a loser and he’s not amounting to his full potential. Had it not been for Stallone to project his honesty into the script, we would not get a protagonist that we want to root for. Rocky has a heart of gold despite his circumstances. He perseveres despite the ridicule and lack of encouragement he gets from everyone around him. And that’s what makes his victory so sweet.
The big takeaway from this is that writing should be like your own personal form of therapy. Project your troubles, anxieties and issues into the script and chances are that you’ll have a great story. Alternatively, you can project your gratitude and positive vibes into the script as well! As long as you’re being honest in your script, chances are this will add to your story.
Dialogue
I’ll admit I struggled a lot with dialogue. I have the habit of writing too technically. It’s hard to write informally. I did a bachelor’s and master’s in economics, so I couldn’t use too much jargon in my analysis! And it is not wise to write informally in my day-to-day job as a statistician.
Getting better at writing dialogue takes practice. You have to take a lot of things into consideration. You have to know each character and why they talk the way that they do. For example, if a character has been ridiculed his whole life, it’s unlikely that he’d be open, enthusiastic and grateful. Everything including their socio-economic status, age, gender, authority and life circumstances will affect the way that your character talks to others.
Subtext is an extremely useful tool when writing your dialogue. Often times, it’s what your characters does not say that gets people engaged. It’s much more grounded to write this way. An uncomfortable truth is that most people are kinda dishonest. For instance, if a person comes across someone that they don’t like, it’s unlikely that they’ll say that they hate a person. It’s more common for that person to either be silent or give passive aggressive comments. There’s no subtext when a person says, “I hate you!”. There’s a lot more subtext when a character says, “You’re such a princess.”
Like I said earlier, it’s also important to note that not everyone talks formally. When people aren’t in front of their bosses, they tend to be more laid back with the way that they talk. Think about how you talk to your friends and family when you’re not at work. Picking up on the small details of informal talking can really add to the quality of your script.
And note that dialogue is not your only tool. Often times, it’s better to show a character’s actions and reactions to get a sense of the character. For example, if one character hates another, it’s often times more entertaining to show that character scheming against their nemesis as oppose to saying verbatim what’s on their mind. I’d even advise to use dialogue only when absolutely needed. It’s really cool to see sequences without dialogue. So much can be said from a character’s facial reaction and actions as oppose to their words.
Get Ready for Revisions
If this is your first script, the likelihood that your first draft is amazing is low. Like really low. You’re going to have to sit down after your first draft and make many fixes. After making your revisions, I highly recommend that you hire an editor to take a look at your script to offer feedback. You’ll probably have some tunnel vision. Some things won’t seem obvious to you. Hiring an editor will offer you much needed feedback that probably never crossed your mind. If you’re looking for an editor, I highly recommend checking out UpWork, Fiverr and Freelanced.com.
That’s All Folks!
I want to make a quick disclaimer before ending this post. Like I said earlier, I can’t guarantee that you’ll get a rate of return on your project. I can’t even promise that this will be a successful venture. What I can do is take control of the things that I can take control over and give you some tips and tricks that I’ve learned when writing my indie comic script.
I highly recommend that you follow this advice. It will save you a lot of headache and confusion, especially when you’re starting out.
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