SIMKRAY
Hi, it’s Simkray here,
here is a video about how I plan my scripts for webcomics
My Method is split up into 3 parts that make up the Plot, Timeline, Chapters
How to Plan your Plot?
Now for this method to work, There are a total of 7 questions we need to answer about our story that will essentially make up the main plot points.
These questions are:
End Point - How does the Story End?
This is how your story will end.
Everything the Main Characters have gone through has been leading up to this moment.
You need to decide if they will achieve their goal or fail and how serious the consequences are if any.
Start Point - What is the MC normal routine life like?
This is your character’s starting point (but doesn't necessarily need to be the stories starting point if you want to change it later).
This should be the opposite of the End Point.
Establish what the MC’s Normal life is like. Do they have a boring routine that they follow every day, do they like their current life?
Depending on what kind of genre your story is, answering those questions will help the reader connect to the MC and understand what the MC is losing or gaining when the MC’s life is changed by the next point.
Turning Point -What Happens that changes the MC normal routine?
This is the point that sets everything in motion for your MC.
What kind of event will interrupt your MC’s daily routine enough to set them on the path towards your endpoint?
Is the event a positive or negative experience for the MC?
Pressure Point - Who is the enemy or antagonist?
Who is the enemy, antagonist or villain?
Do they have a connection to the event that affected your MC?
Tip: The enemy don’t necessarily need to come into contact with the protagonist early on, but you do need to establish their presence. Either through the result of their actions on the world or how other characters talk/gossip about them,
The Set up - What is the threat and/ or why does the antagonist need to be stopped?
What is the enemy’s goal?
Tip: The Enemy’s Goal should somehow be connected to the MC’s objective and should negatively affect them in some way. Ideally, you want the enemy’s goal to be the opposite of what the main character wants.
This is where we find out why the antagonist/villain is a threat, and why your protagonist decides they need to stop them.
Essentially you want to “Set up” something that relates to the Villian, their goal and the End Point.
Pressure point 2 -Destroy the MC’s hope.
This is your opportunity to allow your MC to overcome a personal challenge and grow from it. But to do that you first need to destroy all their hope and dreams. fun!
Your character needs to lose something that is important to them that the reader is also invested in so that they can move past and overcome it later.
Your villain/antagonist should be winning and close to completing their goal at this point to for extra flavour.
Basically, you need to slightly raise the stakes for the MC before the endpoint.
Last turning point. - Build that hope back up before the endpoint.
Remember how you destroyed your MC’s Hope, Well this is where you build that up again so that they can take their last stand and overcome their personal challenge from Pressure point 2.
Maybe they have some last-minute help from some allies or friends at the last minute, or they unlock a power that has been foreshadowed thought the story?
Basically, this is the lead up to your endpoint.
The reason why we need to start with the ending is so that we have something to constantly work towards. It can be as simple as, the main character saves the world, or ends up marring their love interest etc. Just make sure to keep it simple, to begin with, you’re not writing the script yet, so try to answer the questions in short snappy bullet points, we don’t need to get caught up in minor details yet.
Ok, so the next part is about planning your Timeline?
If you don’t have a straight forward timeline of events, I would strongly advise listing any important events in a timeline so you can keep track of them.
If you are creating your own fantasy world, make sure to include anything to do with the history of your world. It doesn’t need to only be related to the main character’s plot, if it’s important to the world’s history, you should include it.
Examples can be when certain wars took place, when certain towns were created, etc.
This will help you plan your character backstories and make your world feel more real.
How to plan your chapters?
Now once we have our rough plot and timeline of events figured out, The next thing to work on is separating the story’s plot points into chapters. If you don’t know what a plot point is, it’s basically any major event that will have an effect or change the direction of the story as a whole. This is why we started with answering those 7 questions from before. Personally, I like to separate my chapters up depending on what my character’s goal or motivation is for that chapter.
Anyway… let’s break down how to chapter structure real quick
Now again with the exemption of your first chapter which in my opinion should be used to introduce your characters and world, my basic structure is as follows:
Establish the character’s goal
This goal should be smaller than your endpoint and different.
Create an Interruption to temporarily stop your character from reaching their goal.
This interruption can either be positive or negative depending on the tone of your chapter. But I’ll be using my own comic as an example for how I do this later so just stick with me for a second here.
Have the character overcome the interruption and reach their goal in some way.
Extra: Set up the next goal for the following chapter
Now I’m going to show you how I follow this structure by using my own webcomic as an example obviously, I’m not going to be spoiling the ending of my own webcomic here, but if you haven’t read the first 4 chapters you should probably do that now because I will be spoiling them in this next part.
Ok… so For my own webcomic Not Another Cliche!
my chapters are split up like this:
Amateur: Introducing the main characters and establishing the world.
This is just about introducing the main characters, and establishing the world that the story takes place in, so that the reader can essentially understand the vibe before things get wild, but you should check out my video about how to write an intro for webcomics…. If you’d like more info about that...specifically
Moving on… next is the 2nd chapter...
DA Mascot: Defeat the Mascot
Here the main aim of the chapter is for the main characters to defeat the mascot … however its secondary purpose is to establish a friendship between the 2 main characters who have just met. With the mascot being taking in the role as the interruption here.
Enrolment: Sky to enrol as a full student.
The only real aim for that chapter was for Sky to enrol, however, there are a few positive interruptions that happen on her way. like her and Ackee walking through the market, which is on their way to their objective, them stopping to get some food, and meeting some other characters, and learning more about how the world works. All of these are what I like to call funteruptions.
But I think it’s important to keep in mind that if your interruption pushes your main character too far from the goal you already established for them, then that can sometimes be really annoying for the reader, like for example the dreaded beach episode in a lot of anime, where nothing really happens.
Reality: Complete the tutorial (and spoilers)
And that last chapter is about sky completing her tutorial and um…
I’m not 100% sure when I’ll be posting this video just yet… so I’m not gonna spoil the ending of this chapter .... but hopefully, you get the idea.
For me one of the most difficult parts of making a webcomic is the script, there’s just certain things I’m not able to do due to my disability, but instead of focusing on the things I can’t do, I choose to play to my strengths, since that is something I can actually control to a certain extent. So don’t let things you can’t help hold you back from creating something fun…
Anyway, that’s all I got for this video today,
and like with all of my videos, everything I’ve said here is only meant to be taken as advice, you and take and leave whatever you want as long as it works for you, this just so happened to be what worked for me, and I hope it’s useful to you in some way too!