Backstage Pass #1 (Patreon)

Welcome to Backstage Pass, a new segment I plan to do every Thursday (and I totally didn't mess up scheduling the correct dates on Thursday and Friday's posts hghkghk) where I pretty much ramble about the behind-the-scenes that goes on while I write On Borrowed Time! These little segments are mostly just ramblings that I think about sometimes, and general advice I might have for people who want to try telling a story. If there's a topic that Patrons would be interested in seeing, feel free to ask in one of the comment sections for one of these segments, or otherwise PM me! There's a wide array of things I like to talk about. That said, this is only my personal thoughts, I'm not really a professional in webcomics and only am speaking from my own experiences, and there's more than one way to approach a story! With that aside, I'll move on to the actual content for this:  

When comicking, there's a sort of process that I go through in order to get pages to flow well between one another. The process usually goes as follows:  

Outline
Script
Thumbnail
Sketch
Render  

While outlining ideas is certainly helpful, my first line of defense when it comes to making the story flow as well as possible is actually the script! After all, it's quicker to delete and retype words than it is to delete and redraw art, or jump through hoops to find out how to retcon something. I try to create scripts for an entire chapter before beginning to work on it, and once I complete drawing a chapter, I usually take a break to review the script for the following chapter before I begin on production for it. The script usually takes me several passes to get right, and the help of a beta reader who can review and critique it. The first pass helps me get the general flow of events going, the second tweaks dialogue, and further revisions are made to keep everything as coherent as possible, to give a smooth reading experience to the reader.  

This is all very basic storytelling stuff, but it's still stuff I have trouble with sometimes! There have been occasions where I completely forget an important part of character dialogue and have to make up for it later so the audience doesn't get completely lost. It helps for me to have a small list of things that need to be established for readers and to also keep a document of what the reader should know at the current point of the story. It's easy for me to get stuck in my own head while telling a story, so providing sweet sweet context for readers is vital! If I have to explain something in an author comment for a reader to understand something, I've neglected an important aspect of storytelling.