Minimum Viable Story skeletons + webcomic tutorial lists

Revision of this doing this for myself to analyse the steps, more notes.

I'm assuming who's reading this is writing commercial entertainment, if you're doing something literary works, I can't help you here. We are dealing with audience/market expectations.

That also means understanding genre.

• These are structures; armatures; guidelines. 

Or to put it more simply, to Quote this 53 min video by Patrick (H) Williams

"Observations on storytelling approaches that were reverse-engineered from movies that are widely considered to be satisfying and enjoyable."

• I don't think one needs permission from a famous art school to start. All these calls to action to create a huge publishing viral hits don't exist or are lying.

There are plenty of writing reverse-engineering self-help books that have multiple interpretations of plot for storytelling, what's most important though is for your own point of view to shine through. It's what writers call a theme, or the controlling idea.

• Let's look back again at the steps. This is all short-story writing.

Single panel panels with captions/word balloons

'Gag' strip formats, linear small comics.

Single page comic, of telling a story.

More pages.

Comic Issue

Graphic Novel. (Or a serial series)

Once is ready to take the leap.

Can you fill a Foolscap a story summary on the page then fill in the gaps?

• What are your casting choices? (This is according to the arch-plot, Protagonist, Antagonist, and an ally, That's a small cast according to Ernie Bushmiller and Hirohiki.) Design from that small constraint, with extras made to order. Then, eventually, you can add to the character with his character sheet to see how they respond/react to scenes.

Roger Ebert's economy of characters applies here.

The casting choices can be more abstract if you're doing a mini-plot, or a literary anti-plot.

Illustrators wanting to be storytellers need to be able to tell a story, even the shortest ones. One needs to feel the genres of time.

If they cannot illustrate a simple story beat (captioned panel), Or a gag (Comic strip gag, or comic page.) Then they have no business jumping into an epic graphic novel saga, hoping for it to be serialized.

14 min video by Tim, responsible for the commercial endeavour that is the Story Grid. With the free stuff, it's worth it to study.

I don't think there's an optimal way for writing a story and expressing it. Once you've written a script from Writersolo, you will have to jump in, possibly with a developmental editor to help save time. Then jump in, seeking feedback.

From Tozo

Just write? nah, Merely write it and ship it.

• It's a lot of work, so no wonder those hire those and art-direct, standardize and measure project scope accordingly.
• (Oh, if all else fails, you could always explore the exploitation of means of storytelling. If you design a character for a tease such as superficial pin-ups and porn, design it for that, this is for more romantic or other story genres.)

That's it, all of this meta reverse engineering has its limit. Other than Read a lot/write a lot. Study Masterworks (good and bad)/Deliberately Practice Skills. The axiom still applies.

• Developmental editing is a thing you're going to deal with making, either by yourself or by others, know when to turn it off at times. As Shawn Coyne says, though, the first rule of editing is that to do no harm.
  
  

Appendix:

Two tutorial lists involving webcomics!

Vampbytes csp Tutorial list set
Hakai's Tutorial on Webtoon drawing within CSP
DarkChibi's 18+ tutorial on self-publishing webcomics and review of hosting sites.