#i think .... i'm going to do a dialogue sc in a bit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

minkshame · 10 months

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hiii! i really like your writing and i'm trying to write a lil myself so i was wondering do you have any tips on writing a story? like how to start, how to set the setting, pacing and stuff like that. also tips on how to do timeskips in the story?

Sure ! I can give you some of my process. This may be a little lengthy.

I haven't written many long form stories, a lot of ideas are small and fleeting, but the thing is you can find ways to incorporate tiny things into bigger ideas as you go. Never be afraid to add new threads as you go and return to old chapters and change things. A lot of people like to plan stories out completely before diving in, but having a few clear beats is enough to start writing as far as I'm concerned. It's always developing as it's in progress.

For things like Maxteroids and Spare Changes, I had big notes for the beginning and middle parts of the stories, and the endings less so. They came to me as I went along. I think starting with a few VERY strong visuals or scenes can be enough to push you along. You'll be excited to get there. I really wanted to reach the point in Maxteroids with Max on the rooftop. I really wanted to write SC chapter 9.

As for pacing, it all depends on what you're going for! Does breakneck speed suit the story? Does a slow and pondering tone fit better? Or maybe a mix of both! Having long introspective paragrpahs will slow things down. Having quick dialogue back and forths will make it feel fast. I like to have a good mix of a big paragraph broken up by

bits

of small

dialogue

and then back to the longer parts. It makes it visually easier to parse. Don't forget! Single spacing of text is too tight, and a new indent for whenever a new character is speaking!

As for timeskips, let the audience figure it out through context clues. I mean, you can start with "a few weeks later" but if the characters are in a new place and doing new things, if your readers are paying attention they'll realize there's been a change. Starting in the middle of events is called "in media res" ! think of how Danny Phantom doesn't begin with the ghost portal incident, Danny already has his powers! It's more interesting to jump in at some point shortly AFTER the start. You do NOT need to say "once upon a time" or whatever.

I also tend to use the line breaks for timeskips. also character POV shifts. If you end a scene and the next one is like... the next morning, do a lil line.

---------------------

Now we're in the next day!

------------

I think that's it! If you need more I can answer another ask.

#askbox

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jocosejoni · 2 years

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HI ok I love ur stuff and ur stories and ur style of making comics and im looking to start making comics in the near future, do you have any advice or tips???? I hope u have a good day :] !!

!!! Ooo!! Get ready this is gonna be a lot! Maybe I'll put in random art???? to separate it????

So for advice:

Before you draw any pages or anything, have the story written! It doesn't have to be a book it can even just be a word doc w/ bullet points of what you want to happen. For CoD I have a general 5 point story thing (beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and ending) with big things I want to happen under them that I end up building the chapters around.

Have your characters fully fleshed out too. Maybe your story doesn't have anyone get ice cream, but we all need to know what their favorite flavor is and why.

Find a style you like that's fast and easy and ideally doesn't do too much damage to your hands/wrists cause with comics you're gonna be drawing A LOT. Remember to take breaks to stretch your wrists/fingers/shoulders and to not look at a screen for a bit. And mental health breaks, they say "Comics will Break your Heart" and they mean it.

Lots of people say to start with short projects first and I think that's a good idea!!! you can always build on short stories if your heart desires, but also if you have a giant magnum opus idea that you think is perfect, just start it now! ALSO, also, if something happens and you gotta end it early its okay too, you can always reboot it! IF CARTOONS CAN HAVE A BILLION REBOOTS so can your comics.

Vintage 2013 Conner (technically CoD is a reboot of a comic I started in hs/early college that I had to end because a character I had based on a real person died in the comic and a few weeks after that page went up the real person died irl and I got SCARED.)

For Tips:

I love using all mediums. Sometimes its fun to experiment and use mediums specific to your story. Maybe you wanna do a mermaid comic, maybe try it in a watercolor style??? I normally use like a heavy ink style, but with CoD I wanted something sharper so I've been trying that.

Usually the flow with comics is Script, Thumbnails, Pencils at page size, inks, colors, and finally lettering. But after Scripting and Thumbnailing It can go in whatever order.

For lettering font choice is important! You want it to be legible and fit well with the tone of the story/dialogue. There's lots of good lettering info and free fonts for personal/self publishing use here: https://blambot.com/ They also have a scripting guide but there's been a newer guide floating around too that's trying to standardize scripts (cause if you start working with writers you'll find that EVERYONE is so different when they send you a script) https://www.oheysteenz.com/scs-template

I am inhumanly fast at comics usually, and that's because I like to cheat. I don't always do pencils. on digitally drawn comics I'll take a photo of the thumbnail and draw over it cause its just a general idea of where things need to go. On traditionally inked ones I do the same thing but I end up printing the thumbnail onto the Bristol paper.

Following sample is from apoppy chapter 2 and features traditional penciling which allows you to make fun notes like "less dick shapes" very accurate inks and to flesh out any drawing problems you might have.

For Drawing Print Comics:

In Clip Studio/photoshop/procreate, You want a canvas that's 300 DPI or higher sized appropriately for what size book you want to make. Regular size comics I make at 11x17 inches and size down for books to like 10 something by 6 something. Different printers have slightly different requirements and they all should have templates available. If you're coloring it export your image in CMYK, its gonna look weird on the webpage but don't worry.

For traditional drawing: 11x17 Bristol Board and ink. Some people swear by certain brands, I'm cheap and use a giant bottle of Speedball Ink and a brush or a set of fine tip pens like Faber Castell Pitt Pens or Microns. I like those because they're waterproof and I like to paint at random. Scanning should be done in full color at 300+ DPI but, that size is a challenge, I've had to scan in sections and piece it together digitally. It Sucks, but large flatbed scanners are hard to find. I haven't tried one of those kind that feeds the paper through tho.

I don't know much about the mobile format comics as far as pacing goes. I'm in the grandpa zone and think mobile format is making you do more work for nothin cause if a "normal" episode has like 60 panels you could equate that to print comics and say that it's 10, 6 panel pages or 6, 10 panel pages (which is a lot of panels you sorta don't wanna go over 10 if you don't have to but that's all up to you) and over the course of history webcomics have only ever posted like 1 page a week or more. anyone posting a page every day is wildin.

Oh oh oh also! Coloring!! everyone colors differently but i swear by making your own color palette. CoD started with a limited color palette and has been building over the years, and Apoppytheosis has a very very limited color palette and a rule for that comic was to not use any other colors. (any other colors seen were from another palette color doing something weird over the top of that layer) (This is the apoppytheosis color palette. Apoppy 2 is similar but more vibrant.)

Anyway I'm going rambly!! feel free to reach out if you got specific questions on pages or approaches to stuff!! I went to college for comics and I could talk about this all night.

#origamiyoda #ask response #my art #webcomic #how to webcomic

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wild-aloof-rebel · 5 years

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Hey, I often read that the timeline doesn't always makes sense in sc and now I'm curious! Do you have some examples??

oh absolutely. i’ve discussed it with various others in various posts across my blog, but let’s see if i can get most of the highlights in one post.

most of the confusion centers around the timeline of s4, including david’s birthday (and thus the start of his relationship with patrick), a couple throwaway comments about summer, and jocelyn’s pregnancy, so let’s start with that.

this discussion nearly always starts with david’s pin in “moira’s nudes” because he indicates that he uses his birthday as his pin. what he types into the atm is 1282, which would make his birthday either jan 2 1982 or feb 1 1982 depending on whether that’s month-day-year like in the u.s. or day-month-year like most of the rest of the world. HOWEVER, what he tells the teller is 7283, which would make his birthday either jul 2 1983 or feb 7 1983. she does tell him before that that he needs to pick a new pin, so you could assume that 7283 is the new pin and not his birthday, but after he says it out loud, johnny says “what about my birthday?” which implies that what david just said is indeed his own birthday. (plus, i trust a number written into the actual dialogue—and therefore officially part of the script—to be more accurate than whatever dan happened to punch into the machine while filming.) anyway, the point is that we’re already starting from a place of confusion, where we have four potential options for david’s birthdate. so which one is it?

we know from “grad night” that david’s birthday is on the same day as alexis’s high school graduation. in canada, the school year ends in late june, so it would then make sense for “grad night” to take place in late june/very early july. three of the options for david’s birthday are in january and february, which leaves us with july 2 as the only birthday option that makes sense to be on the same night as alexis’s graduation. okay, cool. that means david’s birthday–and thus david and patrick’s first date–is on july 2. we’re getting somewhere.

in “pregnancy test” jocelyn finds out she’s pregnant. it’s clearly been long enough for her to have noticed and thought she was maybe going through menopause instead. david and patrick have presumably been dating for at least a week or two at this point, though possibly a bit longer. either way, this is most likely still in july (or possibly very early august), and jocelyn is likely about 2 months pregnant at this point.

in “asbestos fest” alexis says “is this the number? it’s the middle of summer.” middle might be a stretch, but feasibly yes, this can certainly still be summer.

in “open mic” jocelyn and roland find out the sex of the baby, which typically happens around 4 to 5 months. that puts us about 2 to 3 months after “pregnancy test” which would mean that the open mic night is taking place in probably late september or into october. so far so good.

“the barbecue” rolls around, and it’s david and patrick’s four month anniversary. that makes it november. weird time of year for a barbecue, and they’re clearly having unseasonably warm weather, but alright, climate change etc etc. we can make this work at a very long stretch.

stevie says david waited “a full week to forgive [patrick]” which means “the olive branch” is a week after rachel shows up. however, stevie also says “you’re wearing a leather sweater in the dead of summer,” which… what?? that can’t be anywhere close to true.

after that is jocelyn’s baby shower, which is typically around the 6 to 8 month mark of a pregnancy. if she was 4 to 5 months in open mic, that puts us somewhere between november and january for the shower.

“singles week” rolls around and jocelyn goes into labor “a few days early” according to johnny. therefore it’s been pretty much a full nine months now. if “pregnancy test” was in july, that puts jocelyn giving birth in about february. which would be fine except…

roland jr. is clearly no more than a few months old in “merry christmas johnny rose.” this definitely can’t be the following christmas or he’d be closer to 10 months old (there’s no way the baby in the carrier is that old). but it also can’t be the preceding christmas because there’s no way he was born then.

since that doesn’t work, let’s say we shift everything back to david having a january birthday instead, which pushes everything up by six months. that means roland jr. is born in august, which makes the christmas stuff work out a bit better. it also makes stevie’s comment about the leather sweater in the dead of summer better because now it would be taking place in may, when it could theoretically be hot enough out to be considered summer. but then you’ve got the issue of alexis somehow graduating in january, which doesn’t work at all, and you’ve got asbestos fest taking place in february or so, which is by no means “the middle of summer” as alexis says.

the only way that both asbestos fest and david’s olive branch can both take place in summer is if one is at the start of the summer and the other is at the end. if we say then that “the olive branch” takes place in august, that puts david’s birthday and his first date with patrick in april. that gives us roland jr being born around november, which works with the christmas special sort of okay. this is probably the timeline that works best, but it only works if you completely ignore the whole pin situation because NONE of those indicate that david’s birthday could be in april.

everything about the timeline works like this. you have to pick and choose what aspects of it to ignore to make the rest work. david can be born in july if you ignore stevie’s comment about summer in “the olive branch” and roland jr. somehow being born before christmas. david can be be born in january if you ignore asbestos fest taking place in summer and the timing of alexis’s graduation. david can be born in april if you ignore alexis’s graduation and “moira’s nudes” which means ofc assuming that he doesn’t know his own damn birthdate.

i think we’ve collectively mostly decided from that to stick with july 2 even though it causes issues (as all options do) because a) it’s the pin that david actually says aloud, b) it really is the only one that works with “grad night," and c) since it’s the one he actually says aloud, that means it’s [presumably] what was written into the script

that same principle applies elsewhere too. like moira’s career.

she says in “ronnie’s party” that she had a 6 ½ season television career.

in “wine and roses” johnny mentions her being on seasons 3, 4, and 5. that puts her on the show somewhere between seasons 1 and 9. if she started in s1, she was on it through part of s7; if she started in s3, she was on it through part of s9. (all of that is presuming that her seasons were consecutive, of course.)

in “rock on!” we see a training video that was clearly made in the 80s where moira is looking for a tape from s21 of sunrise bay. if we say the training video was made in ‘89 at the latest with s21 having aired that same year, that puts s1 as taking place in 1968 and thus moira having acted on the show somewhere between 1968 and 1977.

in “a whisper of desire” moira says she was cast in cabaret in 1979 at the age of 17 (david says she was not actually 17, and therefore she was probably at least a few years older). either way, this seems to be her first acting job (or at least before she hits it big in any way) as she says she was working at a gas station at the time. but if her big break came in 1979, she definitely couldn’t have been on sunrise bay prior to that. to compound on that, even if she was a few years older than 17 at that point, that would still make her a teenager during at least part of 1968 - 1977 and from what she’s said about the plots on sunrise bay, it seems unlikely that she was a teenager when she was filming it (she played her own father, for instance). that means she must have been on sunrise bay sometime after 1979, but then there’s no way that s21 would have happened sometime in 1989 or earlier OR moira was not on s3, s4, and s5.

just to throw an extra wrench into all of it, in “rip moira rose” they also indicate that she was projected to be nominated for 12 daytime emmys, which doesn’t really work with only having been on the show for 6 ½ seasons. (some of those could be for guest star work on other shows perhaps, but that’s a whole lot of guest roles to be nominated for, especially since nothing else she’s ever said about her career indicates that she did that at all)

just like with all the stuff with david’s birthday and roland jr., you can make some of that work together, but you’re gonna have to pick and choose what to ignore in order to get there. that’s the kind of stuff we mean when we say the timeline is a mess. in the broadest of strokes, if you squint, it all kinda comes together. but when you start looking at the details of it, you can’t get all of it to fit neatly into place

#anon #replies #timeline #every show has timeline problems to some degree #because it's not real life #and even if it were people's memories are fuzzy and they say things that aren't totally true #but this show just has a lot of those details that don't work #and it makes it hard to put together any kind of logical timeline #and i didn't even touch the open mic posters in this one #which i know really bug some people #i'm sure i'm also missing things for both of the discussions i did highlight here #i want to see this board where they supposedly have it all mapped out #show me the timeline daniel #sunrise bay

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hongism · 2 years

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Hi, welcome back!!

I never write long asks in response to fics (mostly bc my brain is usually mush and can only go "very good, thank you") but holy moly that was a DOOZY of a chapter of Blood Masquerade and my brain is WHIRRING. Where do i even BEGIN??

First of all i LOVE this mc's personality. She feels very gaslight gatekeep girlboss in the BEST of ways. The way she's almost puppeteering the boys in this chapter to bend them to her will, and the subtle mindgames she has all of them engaged in has me SO drawn in and on the edge of my seat.

And as much as i was expecting San to continue to make veiled threats, i DIDN'T expect him to come in with a physical threat to her life, weapon and all??? That scene was so well executed, the subtle but constant presence of the dagger to her back, the grip she had on the back of his head, the BACKSTORY oh my. I didn't know his visceral disdain for her country was going to be quite that personal, but i suppose looking back, it does make sense. I don't think he'd be quite so worked up over mere politics.

The humanising and sobering moment she had with Hideyoshi after that little altercation was nice to see too. I like the little moments of fear and panic we get to see when she (pun not intended) lets her mask slip, or is given a moment to mull over her situation by herself. She's not quite as untouchable and unflappable as she likes to make people think.

The conversation with Seonghwa had me laughing so much. She's really not afraid to call the boys out on behaviour she finds unsavoury, calling him a "petulant child" and all, oh poor Seonghwa. Though i will say, that doesn't seem too far from the truth. Although seeming fairly knowledgeable, he does seem to have an air of innocence around him?? Although mc begins to doubt the validity of Seonghwa's descriptions of the personalities of the other boys, it doesn't seem like its come from a place of him being deceitful, but moreso of viewing his long time friends with rose tinted glasses, and a dash of empathy for their individual situations.

I also barked out loud with laughter when she straight up lied to Hongjoong and told him she was wearing the gift from the fox, just to rile him up and test her theory on how much the two remain butting heads. This mc is so cunning and puts so much meticulous thought into her every word and action, its fascinating to witness, especially through all of her internal dialogue.

I'm impressed by how confident in her own capabilities she is too. Seducing Yunho and taking off to go fuck him in private, all to test whether he's there to kill her or not? An entirely risky move, yet she seemed certain that she'd be able to worm her way out of any sticky situation that might arise. Either that, or her clear love of playing a risky game overtook her. Maybe both. Though i don't think that kind of confidence in winning the game could be baseless, so i have to wonder what she's capable of when it really comes down to it...

I do also love that throughout this game she's playing of having the boys court her, she's playing a secondary game, always having to look over her shoulder to work out just what Ryuunosuke's up to. I'm excited to continue to uncover exactly what's going on with him, and i'm excited to see how the boys play into it all.

I'm going to have to mull over the decision for a while this time, bc coming out of that chapter, i truely have NO clue who i want to see more from, and which pairing i want to choose.

ahhh please thank you first of all im happy to be back i missed getting to post for you guys sm T-T and thank you for taking the time to write such a lovely and detailed response to my fic wow im honored and v grateful 😭

i'm so glad you adore the mc's personality, i was a bit worried about her being off-putting or too much to some but you all are so sweet and kind and im !! so glad yall are on board with the idea of her being a boss bitch who gets shit done !!!

i truly had so much fun writing that san scene i won't lie it was giving me strong 'dancing with your enemy at a crowded ball' vibes and i was WHEW! excited for it! but truly he has VERY good reason to be so angry beyond mere politics, especially for a man who isn't in line to the throne 👀

as ,much as i adore a tough mc, i do love vulnerability as well and giving her that moment with hideyoshi was two fold for showing she can let her mask slip and that she does have those moments of fear and panic like anyone else would but also to show how deep her relationship with hideyoshi goes <3

poor seonghwa indeed she went for the jugular then and there didn't she 😭 of all the stances people have on seonghwa, i'd say yours is closest to the truth especially with the air of innocence and the rose-tinted glasses he views his friends with bc of course he wouldn't be an ass and talk about the worst qualities in his best friends even if it is somewhat of a competition!! i think we'll see his personality kinda fall apart a bit as we go as well, but he's definitely not intentionally being deceitful !

she's such a delight to write i won't lie i had so much fun writing her banter with hongjoong bc it's fun to write a back and forth with a cunning character vs one that gets riled up so easily ahhhh im so so glad it reads well too that's such a joy to hear as well T-T

and of course my personal highlight of the chapter that i fought to get in there bc i couldn't resist having it in this chapter! the whole interaction and scene with yunho wow it was such a thrill to write whew! that theme of her confidence vs her thrill of the game will be one that's reoccurring as well, and we'll see a lot of that internal struggle coming to light as well but you bring up a good point in saying that that confidence couldn't be baseless bc it would be plain stupid to go into such a dangerous situation if she couldn't genuinely defend herself on her own right? it does beg the question that if yunho wasn't the one there to kill her, what exactly was his intention and how did it involve ryuunosuke 🤔

but truly the game is heating up and now there are more pieces on the board and it's getting more complicated as that happens but it's exciting as well heh im so glad you enjoyed and im eager to know which pair you ended up going for and why!!

#fic; cnk:bm

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