So today in the Making Manga series I wanted to talk about planning. I am in the process of writing book 3 of graphic noiz the yaoi novella series. Book 1 of the graphic noiz manga took place between book 1 and book 2 of the novella series and the final chapter of the manga ended with the last scene in book 2. When I wrote and illustrated the first volume of the manga I just winged it going along with no real plot in mind just drawing. This made the process easy from a drawing standpoint but when it came time to do the dialogue it had to be made on the fly to match the images on each page. At least I had an idea of where I wanted the story to go and I knew that the manga would end with the art gallery scene which was already written for the novellas so I just had to fit it in to the manga.

But for volume 2 of the manga I want to take a different approach. Part of this is because I will be using different size paper which I have to get used to and I don’t want to have to worry about that, the story, the artwork, the paper size and the plot all at the same time.

So how do you start planning your manga? Well, I am going to tell you.

Planning Your Manga

Most writers do research for their books and some called “plotters” plan out the entire plot and maybe even write an outline. A “pantser” just flys by the seat of their pants and dives in just writing. I took the pantser approach for book 1 of the graphic noiz manga. We will take the plotter approach for the second volume. Before you even start drawing anything you want to determine your characters and what they look like. It is good to do character sheets so you can get a feel for the characters and their likes and dislikes. Get all this down and various angles for the characters and you will have intimate knowledge of them.

Making a character sheet

So below is the character sheet for Noiz. This was just thrown together. You want to have the character at different angles and a full body pose to do it correctly. These are images of Noiz. Things like his hair colour and his face are important. As you can tell I am still a newbie at this so Noiz sometimes looks a little different across panels. If you do a proper character sheet which includes his expressions and proportions then you can get that right after practicing a couple of times.

Planning the plot of your manga

Now you might plan chapter by chapter or you might plan the whole book by doing an outline. Remember a story has a beginning, middle and an end so you want to ensure that you story follows that model. Since graphic noiz manga book 1 was a cliffhanger ending at the scene at the gallery that means I have to open book 2 with the continuation of that scene. I am in the process of writing book 3 and getting my thoughts down so we can see where the character Shiro Ijima is going to go since he has a little bit of a breakdown in book 3. Noiz has become himself a little more grown up through the process of book 2 and the mutual feelings between the characters are coming out. I will need to heed that for the plot of book 2 of the manga.

You can use a computer program to jot down your plot notes or even index cards or however you want. The index card idea means that you can shuffle around ideas into a cohesive story so that might work for you.

Sometimes dialogue can be planned as well. These may be snippets of sayings that you will want to get down in the planning stage. You don’t want to be writing final dialogue at this point this is just for your ideas.

If you want to write an outline of each chapter you can do that as well.

Planning the dialogue and writing a script

The next step once you know what you want to write about is either storyboarding or writing a script. Lets start with the script. Once you know the basic plot you want to go scene by scene and write what I call a chapter summary/script. I usually write a few lines about each of the characters and their names, a paragraph about the locations in the chapter, a summary of the chapter and the action that should take place and then the dialogue with camera moves and narration.

I do this in a word processing program since it is easy enough and I can just write out the entire chapter. Camera Moves are based on how you want the scene to look and what to highlight on for that particular angle. Is it a closeup? Is it a long shot from a distance? All this can be described in the camera moves for a scene. The dialogue goes back and forth between the characters. Just put the character name and the words they will speak. If it is narration list that as well. You may need narration to setup the scene if you don’t have a lot of backgrounds. I personally have minimal backgrounds in my work because sometimes they are hard to render so I use narration at times to help set the scene before the dialogue takes place.

If you are working with another artist these scripts can help tremendously when the artist is working on the illustrations for your comic book or manga. The scene blocking for the script with locations and dialogue can help guide the artist to the writer’s overall vision.

Planning the illustrations – storyboarding

Some manga artists do something called a “Name” which I have talked about before in the Making Manga series. Or you can call it a storyboard. Either way you call it, it is a basic scene blocking out of the illustrations in the manga. The storyboard can be rough or as detailed as you like it. Sometimes when you are working as writer with an artist the art director has both the artist and the writer do a storyboard for a chapter. This way each person can see the vision of the other. The writer storyboard is usually really rough. Some manga artists are really detailed with their storyboards. It is all based on how indepth you want to go into it.

I might do some storyboarding for graphic noiz manga 2. I know I did do a storyboard for the scenes in chapter 1 of the manga and the redrew them. The initial storyboard was slightly different than the final artwork.

Diving Right In

Now that you have your character sheets, the dialogue and script and the storyboard, do you feel ready to start work on your manga? I hope you do.

Telling a sequential story can be challenging sometimes. I know for me since I am a writer first before I am a manga artist that I know how to tell a story. I have been writing novels for 7 years so what I find the most difficult is the drawing. I sometimes have something in my head that I am not able to execute. Don’t give up. That is my advice to new artists and writers. Your story is worth it and there is someone maybe many people out there that are just dying to see what you have to share. So keep trying and if it gets frustrating, then take a step back and try at a different angle or take a break for a moment and come back to it. I know with graphic noiz manga book 1, I had tried to start at least 2 times before I actually got down to drawing. I had trouble initially at the character sheet for Shiro Ijima the famous writer in the story. Once I gave up doing the character sheet I was able to put that behind me and dive into the story. I started out with the Noiz character still a little unsure of Shiro’s look but since Shiro came up in page 2 I was ready to tackle him once I had the artist look down from page 1.

Your story needs to see the light of day. Sure it may take you more than a month and a half like it took me to do the graphic noiz manga book 1 but you will feel success once your first chapter is written.

Sharing your story with the world

So with the graphic noiz manga I have it up on Amazon Kindle as an ebook and I am working on a paperback on Amazon as well. I also had copies printed so that I can take them to ComicCon when I go. This gives me options. I also will be putting graphic noiz the manga book 1 on a webcomic online site so others can see it. I did not do that for some of my other manga which I have 3 at this moment. I felt like sharing graphic noiz so I put it up for people to see. Sure I may not get any kudo points for my art or win awards but I am sharing my work and it took a lot of effort to do. Sure I need practice and sometimes the characters look different across panels but this is my art and my story and I should be proud of it like you should be proud of your creations.

Click to read graphic noiz manga – chapter 1

I hope you enjoyed a little bit of the planning process. I will start work on graphic noiz manga book 2 shortly and will keep you appraised of my progress on the blog. Happy manga.