Softies is a farcical space-adventure about Kay, the last human kid in the galaxy, and Arizona, the alien space-waste collector who finds her adrift after the sudden and unceremonious explosion of the planet Earth. It's about aliens, alienation, doing chores, and breaking stuff.
I've been posting it as a webcomic since 2015, and you can buy the first volume of the comic as a graphic novel! It's split up into episodic chapters that take the characters to different planets, with different aliens and different forms of bureaucracy.
It would mean a lot to me if you gave it a read, left some comments on the site, left a review for the physical book on Amazon if you've got it, stuff like that!
i've been drawing comics but not a lot of random drawings which is what i generally collect here. the random drawings i have are all deadlock. get ready
Hello! I’m not really sure how to phrase this, but do you think it’s a good idea to start working on the script for a comic before the entire plot is finished? I just wanted to ask because I’m currently working on a longer form comic and I already have a good chunk of the outline done and a general idea of where I want the story to go, and I would like to begin to work on and eventually publish the first chapter while I’m still finishing the outline. The last thing I wanna do is end up writing myself into a corner and ruining the whole story though. I ask because I wanted to get some feedback from somebody who’s already started working on a comic and therefore might have some experience with this
this answer is going to be specifically informed by my own experiences, and I'm only one person! I've plopped in some screencaps when I think other people have said it better. It's also going to be long and wander off topic because I have a lot of thoughts!
TL;DR: The general idea is enough, and if part of you wants to move on from outlining and start writing-- do it! 📣🥂🎊
I understand the fear of writing yourself into a corner, but I'd also caution against plotting your route so rigidly as to write yourself into a narrow tunnel! If your comic takes years to complete, you may find yourself beholden to a rigid story that you "finished" in your mind long ago, and now just have to laboriously draw into existence-- it can be demoralizing, and it's one reason webcomics can fizzle out.
Some recent relevant thoughts from the prolific webcomic artist Evan Dahm over on Bluesky, about his own earlier work Rice Boy:
The good news is that webcomics are an arena where ideas are expected to evolve and shift and change. Watching an artist's talent evolve is one of the most rewarding parts of being a webcomic reader. Falling in love with a character you didn't intend to do much with, discovering new themes in your own work that you didn't even notice were there, deciding to totally upend your plan based on a crazy new idea-- these are the most rewarding parts of being a webcomic writer (imo).
That doesn't mean planning ahead is a bad thing at all, to be clear! Having the general idea will help prevent you from getting paralyzed or stuck, and can keep your storytelling focused. But I think planning ahead is a tool, not a requirement. It works out the best for me when I think of it as plotting important waypoints on a map, rather than planning every step of my path. And, if I find myself wanting to change a waypoint or even a destination later on, I can and do!
I'm gonna talk about my own comic here for second--
I set up Softies to be episodic, in part as a solution to this conundrum. I plot out the broad strokes of the book, then chart out a handful of episodes that fit along that path, and then, once I've reached that episode, I sit down and actually write the nitty gritty of how the scenes flow. And sometimes they change! I often insert short, mini episodes when I need to refresh my creative juices or do something low-key for a few weeks. At least once, I've combined two episodes to form a new, denser story. And I've definitely changed endings before!
For a concrete example, a recent episode of my comic opens by introducing this guidebook that Arizona is using to take care of Kay, and introducing the ocean planet they're flying towards...
... and ends with her tossing the book into the ocean.
So the book was planted there at the beginning to get tossed in the ocean at the end, right? Nope! That idea came to me as I was approaching the end, long after the beginning of the episode had been published. But because I had placed all the elements in this episode that "felt right" together, it was easy to play around with them and improvise something that felt natural.
You might have a less episodic, more forward-momentum comic in mind, but the general idea can still be the same. Batshaped, a fellow webcomic artist who creates the more free-flowing, forwardly-rolling Hello from Halo Head, phrases it well:
IMO, the most important thing is to start. If you're like me, you can spend a thousand years just rearranging bullet points on an outline and have no comic to show for it. The best way to discover where you want to go is to just start making it!
Other stray advice:
There will, probably, be moments where you kick yourself, thinking "Damn it, if I had thought of this sooner I could have introduced it sooner!" Don't worry about it-- it happens to everyone and it bothers you more than it bothers your audience. Throw it in now.
Retcons are not the grave sin that online media criticism have made them out to be. Respect the audience, don't just disregard random key information, but if some pesky detail established in dialogue in chapter 2 is preventing you from telling a better story, just change it. Make it a plot twist, or a character telling a lie if you need to. Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker's dad until they decided that he didn't. It's fine.
"Writing yourself into a corner" is, phrased another way, "writing a story with stakes so interesting that it isn't immediately clear how to resolve them". If you're a good enough writer to do that, you'll be a good enough writer to invent some way out.
Draw it way worse than you think you should. The devil is going to tell you to make it look cleaner. Go look up some sloppy panels from artists your respect and drink some water and finish the page.*
*this one is for me
