I’ve been spending a good deal of time lately crafting a rigid structure for my current comic book project. This structure applies not only to the story I am telling, but also the logistics of how many pages it would be, and deadlines for when different pieces of the story have to be done to produce it the way I wanted, by when I want it.

I’ve written the overall plot at least 3 different times, moving from bullet point ideas to concept elaboration paragraphs to one draft design specifically to calculate page count estimates. Each time through I have enhanced, refined, and better applied the teachings I learned from Ty Templeton’s writing courses. It behooves me to understand and internalize the lessons I have available to me from the wonderful resources I have had made available to me. This project, while significantly lengthier, is built upon my understanding of his lessons which I have already put into practice by creating a spec script for his class. That experience taught me to trust his structures for telling engaging and exciting stories. It excites me to move through the five act structure and plot out the exact story beats and then build out, expanding to fill in the minutiae, the things that get you lost in the excitement so that the story doesn’t feel too obvious. It’s like a game, a puzzle I am solving, where my only goal is to one up myself and do a better job at hitting the targets I have in sight.

It’s not the easiest thing to do, and it almost works better when you are telling small stories with compact page counts. But that’s most likely my inexperience talking. I’ve many lessons to teach myself by practicing these skills, but I have recognized the benefit. I recognized the potential back when I first took part in my first class with Ty, but it wasn’t until I had completed my first script under his tutelage and gotten his feed back at the end of my third set of classes with him that I recognized how much his lessons had benefited me.

It’s late and I’ve had little sleep, but I am excited by the future I see for this project, and I am looking forward to hitting each milestone as I plan it out and execute it with clear understanding of my direction. It’s an evolving organism, a story at the phase before you have panels described and dialogue delicately drafted. I know that by the end of June I want every broad stroke planned and the prologue and first act penned to the very last word of dialogue. I have the tools to chase this down, organize it, and successfully execute it in a marketable fashion because of Ty.

If you’ve ever been interested in writing for a living, and you are in the Greater Toronto Area, I would highly recommend you take classes with Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Boot Camp. He helped me to reach over the threshold and really understand how to write a well-structured, exciting story.

Do you have any advice or questions? Please leave a comment here.

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