Good Afternoon Deviant Art,

So this last few weeks, I've been putting my money where my mouth is.  I mentioned in my last update that I was going to shut down all of my convention plans, free time illustrations, fan art, business building etc. in favor of giving a true effort in developing my next comic book.  Well I can report, that is exactly what I've been doing.  At least an hour a day (after a full day of work), I break out the pen and paper and start working out the details to the story.  This is definitely the most difficult part of the process for me.  I have MANY ideas that are big picture kind of ideas but getting the details between each big idea is taxing.  I've been studying a lot of writing techniques like asking questions of yourself, working through beginning middle and end, and making an extensive timeline with giant whiteboards and sticky notes.  All techniques have been effective but I hunger for more.

Do any of you know any good story development techniques out there?  I would really appreciate all ideas.

Working this way so far has been successful but of course there is a twist.  This isn't a book for reading, this is a comic book.  So really, what I am trying to accomplish is getting the whole story flushed out event after event.  Once that is done, then there is dialogue, character development, story-boarding and revision, all before actually drawing the thing.  Comic books are proving to be a devil's mix between story-boarding for movies and writing a novel.  The hardest is that there is a large mystery aspect to this story and I know how it ends but I can't let the reader know that.  I have to give clues and examples without revealing the end mystery.  What is very important to me is that the story develops and reads very organically.  I want to give the reader enough of the puzzle to keep guessing without revealing the end.  I don't want this to be an episode of Castle where they give you the facts you needed to solve the mystery at the very end so you couldn't solve it to begin with.  

Do any of you know any good mystery story techniques?

Any way, I just wanted to check in and say, I'm still here and I haven't given up on my one year hiatus of conventions and fan art and so forth.  I plan to have The Black Flame ready for its debut at ECCC 2013.  It'll be a long comic novella but it has the ability to be a stand alone so no waiting for next issues like Artemis.

Any further thoughts or votes of confidence are greatly appreciated!

Have a great weekend

~TheSpaceCowboy

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