March 22, 2020

004: Story Is King (Part 1 of 6): The Importance of Putting Story First

49 minutes

Before Mayke Entertainment, we were Arclight Comics! Tune into the re-release of The Arclight Podcast and get insightful tips, info, and advice on how we make comics. We shared everything we learned from 2009 to 2016. Learn how we branded our company, handled legal issues, character design, story development, and more!

Inside Episode 004: In this first part of our 6-part series, we dive into the importance of putting story first in your comic project. We also talk about the dangers of world-building and briefly run down the basic story structure cycle so that you can get started writing immediately after this episode.

Key Takeaways

Without a story, you don’t have a product. You just have a book of highly polished thoughts, ideas, and concepts.

Early world-building and character development are fine (it’s all part of the fun), but having a story in place will let you know long you need to keep those things in development. If the story doesn’t call for fleshing out the character’s history, then that development can be saved for later.

A story brings focus. You aren’t creating into the ether once you have it in place.

You need to know when to stop world-building. The story isn’t going to write itself.

Just starting writing. Don’t worry about story structure, story theory, etc. at the beginning. Get something written, then come back and refine what you’ve written through the lens of story structure, story theory, etc.

If you haven’t written it yet, you can’t perfect it. You have to actually put pencil to paper or open a Word document and have living text in a physical space to start getting towards the perfect story that lived in your head.

...more