Comics School: Making Comics - Outlining Your Story

In this video I talk about how stories get formalized into an outline.

How do you keep your information clear and organized? How much information should you include? I show two examples on either end of this - a Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight story with a very lean and simple outline and the extensive full outline I wrote for Rick and Morty VS Dungeons & Dragons II: Painscape.

Free How-To Articles on my main website:

The first part of the How To Pitch series of tutorial articles I put together:

An archive of over 250 scripts and pitches on my Patreon page, plus the chance to ask more questions that might show up here in a future video:

[rfernandez]

Jim has become the prince that was promised when it comes to teaching us how to write for comics

[murewaayodele]

I was outlining a comic book story when I got notification for this. Talk about some positive vibes.

[billdagrasshawking]

I’m like hours into this video series and just realizing I own original comic book art by Mr.Zub. I think I was stoned at con when I found his table, he was selling the Rick an morty D an D crossover at the time…..being naturally chaotic neutral I got the author to draw me a custom cover.

TLDR met famous author, asked him to draw me a picture.

[ompibompiboebompi]

I LOVE the way you smack your lips!! Such a good character mannerism I'm going to use that somehow

[ricardomiranda]

I paused to read the write ups and they were delightful to read. With Batman: The Diagnosis, you can immediately see the contrast between Batman and Harley Quinn and how you used those character opposites to create some witty dialogue and a scenario to match. Yes, batman is totally destroyed on the inside and Harley is happy and always smiling. But Batman is as logical and calculating as Harley is crazy and that's how he was able to beat her in this game of deception.

With Rick and Morty, I love the description of Rick and you totally captured his essence.

Love it! Thank you for sharing this.

[lisamona]

Wow! Thanks so much for giving me such great lesssons!!! ❤❤❤
I was looking for hours on YouTube of how to outline a story, but I always had mixed results- and I realized my problem, I was always writing and outlining in the regular novel format or the movie screenplay format- both of which gave me not great results especially for a action comic stories that are meant to have a grand opening where every page counts
This format helped me a TON on how to organize myself not just for me but for professional projects to editors or publishers keep on teaching ❤

[monstermister]

Thanks for sharing several examples of your outlines. That was really informative.

[erikv]

Just stumbled upon your video and was like huh where’d I’d see this guys name you wrote the first Conan comic I ever read.

[malosprime]

A productive outline. Simple, I'll try this with my superhero novella series WIP.

[anarkyink]

Holy crap! I have that Rick and Morty comic :) Since I also got the Dnd Starter Set (Rick and Morty version)! :D Love that comic!