Free-form Writing with Outlines

When I decided to create Sami's Dojo, I sat down and spent a whole day writing up a series outline, the first episode's outline, character sheets, and the second episode outline. The first episode, The Lantern, I had already had in my head for a while and had actually already written a hard outline for it in 2017. Writing the storyboards for The Lantern wasn't too hard until the last two parts.

Before I can draw the storyboards for my panels, I have to be able to see the story and characters in motion. Ever since I was little, I've always imagined my stories as short movies in my head. I have to be able to see how the characters are going to move, where they'll be in relation to each other, and how the camera will track or pan. It can be hard to write an outline for my comic because I have to focus on plot points that I need to hit. Instead of seeing what happens organically, I have to decide what needs to happen and what will be important for that episode.

Drawing the first episode, The Lantern, wasn't too hard, because I had already gotten the outline, the imaginary movie, and the storyboards written. Now that I've started the second episode, The Sword, I have moved into completely uncharted territory. As I mentioned earlier, I have an over-arching outline for the series with important plot points that need to be hit. I also have 'movie' snippets in my head of scenes I want to include and a scattering of ideas that I want to incorporate. Having all this floating around in my head ends up being pretty confusing and overwhelming.

For The Sword, I wrote 2 rough outlines, versions 1 and 2. After reading through both of them and my notes for this episode earlier this week, I decided to try a third outline to really hone in on what I needed to happen in the story. Unfortunately, outline versions 1, 2, and 3 of The Sword just weren't creating the little movies in my head that I need to see before I can draw the storyboards.

As you may or may not know, I work full-time in tech and so create my comics over lunch and breaks. I wrote my 3rd outline at work, then tried to puzzle out how it would look on my drive home. As I planned out the comic's 'movie' in my head, I kept getting hung up on my outlines and what I thought I needed to do to follow the formula. After a few minutes of trying, I gave up and just let everything that I thought I knew about the episode go. And that's when the magic happened.

Pretty much as soon as I gave up on my outlines, the characters started the show in my mind. The movie started rolling and I could hardly draw the storyboards fast enough when I got home. I discovered that the several scenes I had been playing around with in my head got smoothly incorporated into The Sword.

I was kind of not looking forward to The Sword, since I thought it might drag on too long when I really wanted to get the Great Evil and Blood Magic introduced ASAP. Letting go of the outlines gave me the freedom I needed to write the story I need to tell, but having them gave me the base ideas that I wanted to incorporate into the episode. So, even though I didn't really need it, I'll keep writing outlines for my episodes, but I won't let them hold me back from the actual story.