So, I figured out that I can only actually write this thing if I draw it simultaneously. I'm of the firm belief that comics should be a fully integrated media - the  pictures and words are not separate entities, but part of one combined language that is used to tell the story. Also  included in this language is the arrangement and layout of panels and borders. So, every time I try to simply script out the words, typing on the computer, nothing comes out, or at least nothing good.  

The most I can usually do is general plot outlines - set my goals for the chapter and let the narrative wind its way towards those goals. There are little touchstone events that I am working towards. In chapter two that touchstone was the moment Serp. revealed that Felix had encouraged her to kill. Other goals for the chapter were to end with her on a roof, and to reveal that all of Serp's old contacts were going to be unavailable due to Felix's defection.

If you really don't want spoilers, I'm putting chapter three goals under this cut - you have been warned.

( spoilerific )
Spoilers over.

Anyway, so now when I script, it looks something like this: (I don't consider this a spoiler by the way, it's hard to tell what it means without context)


(I've already done the first panel in inks as you can tell)  but mostly all of my writing is done via really crappy stick figures, and panel descriptions, but written inside the panels. I did about 10 pages of chapter three this way in a flurry of writing, after which I had to carefully go back and re write all the panel descriptions in  so that later, I would know what the hell I was getting at when I drew a circle with an arrow on it.

This has mostly taught me that dialouge is not supremely important, as I used to think it was. The first chapter was written with an eye towards stuffing as much of that dialouge int there as possible. Chapter two was less so, and chapter three, I hope, even less than that.

Unfortunately for me, (or fortunately, depending on your point of veiw) the chapter I'm working on right now (chapter 2) has a bucketload of narration. I really hope that this will be the only really narration heavy chapter, but the fact that we have one only two chapters in does worry me a wee little bit. SO although I get pages where the only drawing is this man on my right, it also means that the entire left side of the page is filled up with text. Oh the words are alright, full of usefull plot background info ( of course, none of the important stuff) but I'll be damned If I know how to make it look good. When you open up a webcomic, presumably you want to read a comic, not a novel, and god knows I love to skip over heavy narration sections.

But practicality rears it's ugly head. To add more illustration means that there is less room to  put that lovely text that needs to get in there, which means more pages, which throughs the balance of the scene out of whack. I'm a total sucker for symetry, so when I've got this image of Lewis Wong, I have to balance it out with another similar one of his rival. If the Wong family gets a narration free page, then their rival the Walters must also.

What does this mean? I'll be damned if I do, except that somehow avoiding work gets me more work in the end . ALso, that I can't draw debonair housecoats worth a damn.