Advice for our Artists and Writers
I figure this is a much needed journal. I know a lot of people want to know how to get better and how to rank better in the judging. It's very tough to judge at all, believe us - there are so many great entries and it's hard to give out numbers that suggest "this one is better than this other one-" but I guess that's the reality of judging, huh?
Well, this group IS here to give people prompts about what to draw. We like seeing improvement, and there was a good amount of it from people who entered Mission 2 after having done Mission 1. I can only imagine how much more improvement we'll see with these next ones!
I suppose I ought to start at something that both the art and writing categories have in common:
Readability
For these two categories, readability means a separate but similar thing.
For art, ask yourself these questions...
1) Is my handwriting legible?
It's important that we can clearly and quickly read what you wrote! We're going through HUNDREDS of entries, if we cannot read it immediately it has a good chance of not being nominated!
2) Did I pick appropriate colors for the text and color behind the text?
i.e. is it black text on white, or black text on gray? The former is much more readable as there is much more contrast
3) Did I make sure the speech bubble isn't transparent?
Transparent speech bubbles decrease readability. They also don’t do justice for the section of the background you’re trying to show, so don’t bother with it at all. It’s better to make it easy for me to read than to try to both get some text in and part of a background I can barely discern through a transparent bubble.
4) Are my images sized properly on dA so that the font is a good size?
It’s really difficult for us when the image is really wide and the full size is gigantic. Make sure that the full view of your art has the images and text very easily readable, but not so big as to make us unable to see more than a panel or two at once.
5) If I didn’t handwrite it, did I pick a good font?
Normal speech is best in normal text. If, for instance, you’re writing out something for Devonshire and want to use a fancy font, PLEASE pick something that’s easily read quickly. It’s really awful when people pick a fancy font and leave it really small. Those are hard to read!
For writing, ask yourself these questions...
1) Have I spaced the paragraphs properly?
If you have more than a handful of sentences in your paragraph, it had better be for a reason. Most paragraphs over 10 sentences long could probably be broken up a bit better. Of course, this definitely varies, but please break up paragraphs.
2) Have I spaced dialogue properly?
Dialogue gets its own line usually. Actions around that dialog get its own line as well. Any new character talking gets its own line.
3) Have I spaced the whole writing so it’s easily readable and the paragraphs are discernible?
Here’s an example of something spaced improperly:
Shroomsworth lifted the tea cup and tipped it to his lips. He glanced over at his business partner. Then he tipped it ever so slightly and let a bit go into his mouth. The tipping stopped and the tea cup was upright fully and securely held in his hand. "There it is, Madam. Now you."
She shifted on the chair, licking her lips and looking down at the apparently foreboding tea cup, no doubt contemplating just taking the entire thing in her mouth. Again.
Like she had the last two times.
"Madam..."
"Fine. I'm thinking! This is hard!"
Here’s an example of something spaced properly:
Shroomsworth lifted the tea cup and tipped it to his lips. He glanced over at his business partner. Then he tipped it ever so slightly and let a bit go into his mouth. The tipping stopped and the tea cup was upright fully and securely held in his hand. "There it is, Madam. Now you."
She shifted on the chair, licking her lips and looking down at the apparently foreboding tea cup, no doubt contemplating just taking the entire thing in her mouth. Again.
Like she had the last two times.
"Madam..."
"Fine. I'm thinking! This is hard!"
--
As you can see, the improper one makes it really hard to keep your eyes in the right place. The properly spaced one is how I expect all stories to look. They don’t get much more than a glance if they aren’t spaced properly -- it’s the same with art I can’t read right away. Don’t let me miss out on some killer story because it’s formatted terribly!
That about does it for readability. If you improve these things in your works, you’re making it so more people won’t go, “oh this is too much effort to read, I’ll find something else.” That’s really what happens. People like to put in minimum effort to understand a story or an art or a comic. Do your best to make it readable so they’ll give it more than half a glance.
Next up is Organization.
We’ll go over it meaning a couple of different things depending on the category being art or writing.
For organization in art, ask yourself the following:
1) Does the placement of my speech make sense?
Poorly placed speech bubbles make the picture crowded and confused, contributing to a sense of messiness.
2) Are all of the characters clear in each panel?
Ask a friend to tell you what’s going on in your illustrations before you tell them. See if they understand it easily and clearly, and ask for honest advice about if it made sense or not. You might have a harder time discerning this because you’re the one who came up with the idea so of course you’ll understand each panel. Getting someone who doesn’t know your story/comic to look is a much better way to check.
3) Are the panels arranged so that anyone can tell which one to read next?
This is especially pertinent to those making comics right to left. If you’re not a native speaker of a language that writes right to left traditionally, we’re not going to expect that. It’s embarrassing, but there were a good handful of comics that all three of us judges got 10+ pages into reading it backwards from how the artist intended it. No, we don’t read the artist comments on every page. No, we didn’t see that we were supposed to read it the “manga style”- if it’s not apparent that we’re supposed to do that, we won’t.
We got really confused about story in the comics we read backwards... If you don’t know how to panel something when it’s normal left-to-right, then you’re definitely not going to understand how to panel something doing it backwards. It just makes it more confusing for everyone.
Of course, in the end, it is up to each individual artist which way to draw panels.
4) Do I have too many panels on my page?
We don’t want to limit your creativity or the way you do panels, no, but we do want to be able to fully enjoy each page. If you have 100 panels in a square grid, that’s going to be a lot harder to read than a long comic horizontally or vertically. Think of all the scrolling we’d have to do in each direction! (Yes, we got some comics kinda like what I just described...)
For organization in writing... ask yourself:
1) Are my paragraphs split into topics appropriately?
Make sure that you’re not trying to cover many different actions or topics in a single paragraph. Each paragraph should be along a similar idea or thought. It gets confusing to suddenly shift topic without shifting a paragraph.
2) Are my chapters broken up appropriately?
We really don’t enjoy seeing 5 different chapters of a story that’s only 2000 words total. If you have a short story, make sure it’s not broken up at all. Chapters should be a pretty big divide, usually around 5000 words is what I’ve seen a lot of. Just make sure each chapter is a separate idea. Chapters are like paragraphs, but bigger.
A good spacing of chapters would be:
-Meet the guild leader, accept the mission
-A bit of prepwork before actually doing the mission, maybe introducing some conflict
-Attempting the mission itself, the actual task
-Getting past the main conflict, resolving the mission via success or failure
Of course, it’s not like it has to be broken up this way. Any way of breaking it up so each chapter is specifically focused on a certain part of the story is great!
3) Is the way I’m presenting the dialogue and actions acceptable?
Okay, this one is a little less about organization than it is about something we don’t want to see at all... I’m talking about dialogue-only stories. Ones with no descriptors at all as far as actions. Those are no good. We don’t want to see faux-scripts, that does not constitute good writing and I would bet a whole cake that no one could pull that off to make an entertaining story in this group.
Next, let’s cover... PLOT.
This is relevant to both art AND writing!
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Does my story have any conflict at all?
In order to capture our attention, there needs to be some sort of problem or conflict to be resolved. If you draw out a mission and it’s lovely art, it will only be helped by a good story. If the story is about your characters easily doing the mission, that isn’t going to be as exciting as if your characters THOUGHT they were easily doing the mission, but messed up somehow. Doing small unexpected things that introduce a small (or large) problem is important to capturing interest.
Generally we try to set up missions so that a conflict or an obstacle is built in. For instance,
Mission 2’s main missions each had a major obstacle (Merlot or Slasher) and then a possible solution (help from another guild). By default, that made the main mission easier to make interesting than a couple of the side missions (i.e. PK’s cake delivery - no conflict or obstacle was built in. It had to be fabricated by users to make the story interesting. Was there a problem delivering the cake? Was it more than a simple fetching mission?)
Despite us trying to make missions have a built in obstacle, it’s still important to try your best to resolve conflicts in an interesting way. Make us surprised. That’s what leaves a lasting impression and makes a good story.
2) Are certain characters of mine “too overpowered”?
It’s reasonable that basic Pokemon could take on other basic Pokemon, but it’s highly unreasonable to think that a couple of basic forms could take on a legendary Pokemon by itself. This makes your characters really unbelievable. If you have a Skitty and a Pikachu taking down Merlot the Lugia by themselves while Mike cowers in a corner, you’re probably not going to really draw us into the story that well. It’s hard to suspend disbelief at something absurd like that. It takes cunning and planning (and maybe a bit of luck) to take down powerful opponents when you’re at a disadvantage. Please keep that in mind.
3) Do the characters interact in a believable way?
This one is a bit harder to define, but it’s still a question you should be asking yourself. Show us the thought behind actions via body language and actions. If we can’t tell why they’re saying what they’re saying or how they actually feel, that’s no good. Several panels to show change of expression is sometimes necessary to show the true thoughts behind words. The same goes for describing subtle actions when writing a story.
When in doubt, go by the words, ”SHOW, don’t TELL.”
For instance, this is an example of TELLING:
Her hand shook and some tea spilled. Her eyes looked as if full of rage
How boring! How can we tell she’s angry?! Just because it’s stated plainly?
Here’s a better way of going about it, SHOWING us that she’s angry:
Her hand shook and some tea spilled. A flicker of rage burned in her black eyes.
Here’s another example of TELLING:
“Yeah, they just might. I don't know. Gotta go into town for some stuff.” She opened the cash register and counted coins she pulled out. Several times she glanced back over at him suspiciously during counting.
Here’s another example of SHOWING:
“Yeah, they just might. I don't know. Gotta go into town for some stuff.” She opened the cash register and seemed to be counting while she shifted and pulled out coins. Several times she glanced back over at him with a narrow look, then resumed counting.
Notice the gist is the same, but the second one gives us the idea of the actions that invoke the feeling of being suspicious. That helps us get a better mental image of the story and is much more stimulating to read.
The way of showing this in art is to take proper time to allow for enough panels to adequately express a thought. If a character is talking for ten pages about how hungry we is, that’s not really going to be as expressive as showing him with pangs of hunger making him reel over.
Next we’re going to cover MESSINESS vs CLEANLINESS
This means two different things for art and writing. For art, you’ll want to ask yourself the following:
1) If my painting is messy, are there at least clean borders to distinguish separate parts of the illustration/comic?
It’s fine if you have a messy way of working, but if I literally can’t tell the characters apart or what’s going on because of how you’ve drawn them, then I’m sorry, but it’s probably not going to really get consideration! Messiness in art is fine as long as you can pull it together in such a way that there’s some organization behind it, something coherent tying it all together. It’s the same for if we can’t read the comic: if we can’t tell what’s going on, we’re likely to skip it.
For writing, you’d ask something slightly different:
1) Have I PROOFREAD AT ALL? No, seriously? Spellchecked? Gotten anyone AT ALL to look at it? Fixed any past tense/future tense problems?
ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS make for messy writing. Using bad grammar, spelling things incorrectly, messing up future/past tense while writing... all of it makes the writing overall look very sloppy. I won’t even want to bother reading the rest if you can’t take a little pride in your work. The top winners of Mission 2 for writing had very, very few errors. Anything that was an error I noticed they didn’t repeat, so I knew it was a typo they didn’t catch.
The entries I immediately discarded for consideration were the ones with more than four spelling or grammatical issues in the first paragraph. Come on! I don’t want to play English teacher here, honestly, and tell each story where they messed up. That’s the reason I didn’t consider 90% of the stories; they seemed like they would have failed an English writing assignment.
Please, please don’t submit something you and at least two other people haven’t proofread. You’ll be wasting my time and yours in doing so because it’s likely I won’t be considering your entry. Over 50% of the writing entries were disqualified due to gigantic mistakes in formatting, spelling, grammar, tense, and punctuation within the first half a dozen paragraphs.
Before feeling sad over that, consider that the same thing happens with art. Only 160ish of the nearly 300 art entries got nominated. The rest had gigantic flaws like being unreadable or illegible! It’s the same with writing. I’m not going to spend more than a minute trying to read through your story if it continually throws me off with errors.
By the way, I really hate seeing people mess up tenses and I won’t consider a story at all that’s messed this up.
This is NOT CORRECT:
He walked around the corner and then asks her what’s wrong.
This is CORRECT:
He walked around the corner and then asked her what was wrong.
I think this is mostly it. I just wanted to cover general story advice that was relevant to both our artists and our writers -- things to keep in mind to do well next time.
I am by no means a well-versed writer, but I do my best to make sure things I’m writing are coherent and easily read. It should be apparent that I’m a little more specialized in art...
In any case, I’ll be asking my sister to help out with writing things, so maybe she’ll have some advice or helpful links for writers soon. I’d like to make an art-exclusive advice journal soon, so I’ll likely want to her her to make a writing-exclusive advice journal soon!
