How To Start Your Manga and Comic an - In-depth Guide

Alright, Imagine this for a moment about the series for a manga that we have no clue about and just for that moment we begin in a world of nations where in each nation there are these groups called ninjas and they wage war on each other. They have these abilities called Jutsu. There are three types of justus  that are used  and ninjas use them in battle to fight each other to gain power. There are also forbidden Jutsu that are not to be used by anyone for any reason. In each village there are ranking systems for the ninjas to climb up the Shinobi ladder till they eventually become great enough to become ninja president. The ninjas are in an intense battle with this beast which has a certain number of tails that they must all fight against  called the nine tail fox. This right here is a weakness with a lot of beginning Mangka. But that also brings me into today's video talking about how should I start my manga and comic.

So Hey there everyone it's Vandel and today I'm kicking off this new Manga tips series.  Going over how to make a manga from start to finish. But, I want to start with this. YOU CAN START YOUR MANGA ANYWAY YOU WANT. However, this is the  way I think is best to get people to care and continue reading your manga. Now, let me explain what the earlier part was about. Now I will need you to read through to the end because the last part will elevate your manga game and make things so much easier. 

Now in writing what I did there in the beginning was called an exposition dump. I told you everything about the world, how things function, details on the power system, and even the bad villain and if all of you know what show I was talking about it was the manga Naruto. However, you can do this with any show just rattle on about the world and all the ways it works. This information all before  we actually start the story might be great for some but horrible to many and here's why. If we went back to Naruto’s inception in the early 2000’s no one cared about it and it wasn't the juggernaut that it is today. If the story started all those heavy details like that I promise you we would not have seen Boruto. That might be a good thing?  That said, what's the problem with exposition intense dumps at the start of your manga?

The problem with that is you are just telling me everything that's in the stories instead of showing me the things that are important and why they matter. Why do Jutsus matter ? Why does this nine tail fox matter?  Manga being a visual medium shows us it's important that we are showing our art and give meaning to what we introduce to our reader. It's like being on a dating site and the person you just met tells you all the things they can do and their skills. But now why does that even matter when I haven't taken the time to get to know who they are and why or how they are able to do the things they do. This is getting to know what a character is. Think of this as a character date… Ok hopefully you get the point.  Also exposition isn't a bad thing but, it is not something that needs so much detail in your beginning. What we need to start our story is  with building the characters. But how do we build up the characters ?

Great question. We need to start at ground zero before we get to the ninjas, the battles and the power systems we need to ask ourselves. Why am I telling this story and why does it matter? What do I want the reader to take away from this story? We have to gather the idea. Our main idea for our story. I have said this in another video but repetition it’s good for this sort of thing. The problem with the exposition dump we talked about earlier is the pitfall many writers get wrapped up in myself included. Basically it's all the cool stuff, the fights, the powers what arcs imma have, what's this gonna do and we can spend years in this place. But what we need to do is get that main idea to make all of that cool stuff matter.  What is the main idea you  want to tell the world? For example, is teamwork the key to playing basketball? Should hard work overcome talent and why? Should we empathize with those who are our enemy and how we can do so and why that's important?  Now what that main idea  is the thesis, whatever you want to yell to the world so everyone can learn we need someone to be the bearer of our message.  

Generally Shonen manga love big ideas that can apply to many people. However, I think that just about any idea can reach anyone if given the right character as the vehicle for that message. And what a perfect segue into the next point. Once we have an idea of what we want to say with our story we need to create a character that will learn the thing we want the reader to believe in. But what exactly do I mean? So in creating characters I think it's best to have the character believe in a lie. This lie can come from something in their childhood, something in their present life  but, something they have come to believe is true about the world. For a better look into this you can check more in depth on this in this book called Creating character arcs by K.M Weiland. It's really a good book to understand how to create really solid characters with personality and understanding their arcs of change. 

But back to the lie, have your character believe in that lie till an event in their life twists it to make them question it and their journey to see the error of their ways or show others that their way is something that might need changing. Now this is a gross oversimplification of this process. In addition to being our messenger we need them to have a motivation to aspire to through this new found truth or main idea of our story.  But to sum that up, create a character that is the vehicle of the message and have them be our truth but, there is something missing in that and this is what will drive the story through any and all arcs or even a short story and that is simply one word Conflict.

So I wanna take a minute to go over the conflict. This is what makes your story interesting. This is not just a clear cut conflict, of bad and good this is the more complicated  conflict that is something that has the reader not sure what side of the conflict is right. That I think makes for excellent storytelling.  That's where you the author have to make the artistic and authorly? Authorly is a word just go with it thank you. Choices to make the reader battle over this conflict. However this is only an external conflict where a main character and main villain have conflict. This the Main character having to fight with external forces that  are against what the character stands for remember that main idea from earlier and that lie we talked about. That lie should be the main conflict driving the story. Because that lie is the internal conflict  of our main character, this is all the things going on inside the character that they are battling with. This will make the story even more interesting to the reader. I think an amazing conflict that shows itself is in the  show avatar the last air-bender. I know Avatar again but the conflict is greatest with Zuko at the end of book 2 and his internal conflict  to help the avatar or capture him and take him back to his father for this honor and this comes right at a time when he has decided to give up chasing the avatar and  live  a good life. Spoilers He decides to take what he's always wanted for his honor from his father and from there we see how this eats away at him. It's soooo wonderful to watch unfold. 

I talked about conflict in my Heroes and Villains video but I’ll repeat you need to figure out conflict in its external form as well as the internal. What goes on inside people is way more interesting and see how it affects them during the course of their journey when done well makes for a great story. Now how do we use the conflict to drive the story. Most of you might know but the best way to have your story formatted is in the three act structure. Using the conflict whether internal or external is what we just talked  about but let's fit that into this structure using this template. If you look in the comment section there will be a link to a template. 

Ok you got it good now let's dive deeper. This template I got from Abbie Simmons she has a great channel on writing novels but this will work just as great for manga. So What I want to go through is this process  of how I filled this in and what each section is for. So this was used in the creation of the story Besieger using Bomo as the main protagonist for the conflict. So let's dive in and thats it friends we have our outline. In the next part we are going to go into a bit of character creation before we get into the script. But hopefully this document made things a bit easier. You can use this for other characters maybe a bit watered down as they wouldn't be the focus of the story but a good way to set up your story and keep them interesting. The way I used it here is definitely meant to be a for a short story but can totally be used in a long running story. Comment if you want to find out how.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE 3 ACT STRUCTURE PART OF THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!

But for now it seems we are at the end of our first steps in the creation of our manga making progress. If you have any questions about this first step let me know in the comment section down below. If anything was helpful in speeding up your projects production give it a like and share with those who also want to make manga. Thanks for those who made it to the end, you are amazing and don't forget to start  making manga now! But yeah guys if you made to the end of this Article you are amazing and thank you again.  Don't forget Let me know what you think about NOTE! Y0u can read it in the link below! Alright y'all I’ll catch you in the next one. Peace BYEEEEEEE.

FREE 3 ACT STRUCTURE TEMPLATE

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