Here’s your new question: Do I have a story to tell?

You’d better or you’re wasting your time.

The story is the most integral part of your comic or graphic novel; without it, your characters will simply exist aimlessly with no room to evolve and little reason to want to see them evolve. You will definitely have a difficult time engaging anyone about your comic if you have no vision for where it is and where you’d want to take it.

This is why even if you did take the blue pill, you’d begin your adventure here.

Developing a story can be a daunting task for beginners, there are many things to consider and techniques you’ll want to at least have a working understanding of before you start trying to tackle anything beyond a few pages. As with any acquired skill or latent talent practice is a necessity.

Also implied with the mention of practice is the need to study.

Studying for something like story development may seem a bit strange at the surface. I know I’ve found myself thinking, “Psssh, I know how to tell a story.”  I have no doubt that you do as well but the qualifier here is do you know how to tell a good story?

Having a grip on the basics will help you to understand what a good story is in the first place.

It’s not so much about just finding a how to book on the subject but rather, finding a few of those good stories to read. Don’t limit yourself in this regard; while you are looking to attempt to put together your own comic / novel, there are plenty of examples of good stories that are not in that format.  As they say, read if you want to write.

Believe it or not another place to look for story development study is in the movie theatre. It nearly a spot on method to quickly recognize a well developed story versus a poorly developed story. It is also a good resource for learning a few tricks to hide the lack of development but that comes later. If you’re thinking of serialized comics / novels television is more of the place you’ll want to check out, there’s no shortage of shows from the past and present to choose from.

If you’re at the beginning stages of writing, then you’ve got to look at something more specific before entering into the phases of understanding story development I’ve touched on already. You’ve got to understand the elements of a story and the proper structure to put those elements into play.

There are plenty of resources for this information; I may even take the time out to provide you with insight behind my understanding of the art of story telling in the future. [Who knows, I might be able to get Mike C. unglued from his DVD sets of The Wire in that cabin in the woods of his to share some thoughts as well.]

In the meantime, at a glance [remember folks, for research purposes, Google is your friend.] I found a nice walk-through of story structure from Peder Hill: http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/MainElements.htm

That should be enough to get you thinking about your story and how you want to put your foundation in place.

Until next time, keep writing, eventually you’ll get it right.