Testing Whether it Works

Believe it or not, there is a way to test whether your COMICS-PROSE storytelling is working properly. It's the same test that people apply to traditional comics (or manga) to see whether your visual storytelling chops are up to par.

For people who are beginners at drawing comics, they often struggle at telling a visual story in a sequence of panels. There's no way to get good at sequential art storytelling except through constant and continual practice, but there is a tried and true way of testing a comic to see whether it makes sense.

By removing all the words in the comic.

This is the most common method used by beginner practioners of manga. The test is: if there are no words, can I still SORTA understand what's going on?

Believe it or not, COMICS-PROSE has the exact same test, so let's apply it!

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Here are the first four pages of [[CHAPTER 6]], but with no words! Panels only!

You can see that it kinda makes sense. Here's what you're seeing from this.

• PANEL 1-2 --> shows two dudes (one with a bow) yelling in excitement, and a tired-looking and unenthused girl waking up. They're standing on a cliffside.
• PANEL 3-8 --> The girl watches them for a while, and one of the dudes turn and give her a wink. She winks back but he doesn't see.
• PANEL 9-10 --> The dudes come back, and one of them says something to the girl with a smirk
• PANEL 11-15 --> The girl loses her temper and storms off, but immediately comes back to yell something at the guys. They reply.

The most interesting thing about this is that it's NOT enough to form a coherent TRADITIONAL comics narrative. It's missing a few panels, but the whole point is to give the reader the GIST of what's happening. It's definitely enough to show you who is who, what their relationships are like, where they are and roundabout what is happening - meaning that it satisfys the 3W's - WHO, WHAT and WHERE.  

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Now I apply it to the first 8 pages of [[CHAPTER 2]]

Again, the same thing applies. You can roundabout guess what is happening here, even if you don't know the exact details. Which is the point of using images in COMICS-PROSE.

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This concludes this part of the tutorial! I covered everything from the conception of an idea, to the final steps! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!