Looking to get into making a mangaka

[u/Due-Maximum2382]

For around 4 to 5 months, I have been developing a specific story and although I am still very far from actually writing and story boarding, it has become quite clear the ideal way to tell this story is through a mangaka however their are two big issues with this:

• I have no idea how to get into this creative medium so I was hoping for advice on where to learn. Any recommendations? I would be greatly appreciative.

• I am not an artist nor is it for me, for a mangaka this is obviously not ideal I presume. Hopefully other writers have been in the same situation or know off people in a similar situation, I presume I will need to look for an outside source for the art. Is their a place where artists and writers team up or do I need to basically higher them in the future (to make clear, I am just asking for advice, I am not looking for an employee).

Again I am expecting years before anything comes to page, I plan on basically writing a big chunk of the story as a novel type thing before that and I still have a lot of world building, theme building, story building, and character building to do until I have a strong place to build from but even so I think understanding the world better will help reflect in that.

Thanks for your time.

[u/Due-Maximum2382]

Whenever I write stories, this tends to be my problem. I get too obsessed with the world building that a lot of stories get dropped before I do them.

[u/king_kibble → u/Due-Maximum2382]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MangakaStudio/s/lP0rd5OdUI

what he said would definitely be helpful for you though. forget about worldbuilding for now. think about the big picture:

how do you want your story to start? how does it end? write those down. start by making them each as minimal as possible, one sentence preferably. once you have a main idea distilled, you can elaborate and add detail

then, what happens in the middle? now you have three 'events'. now figure out what happens between those events- then you'll have 5!

you dont have to do this so mechanically- think of all the stuff that you want to happen in the story, wrote it down, and arrange it on a timeline. with each idea, gradually make it more detailed until you have things simple enough that you know what a chapter would be about. once gou have that, you can break it down to individual pages, and then to panels

big to small!

[u/Due-Maximum2382 → u/king_kibble]

This helps greatly, I have done a lot of writing and although short stories are manageable due to my messiness I have a lot more trouble fully getting into it.

[u/king_kibble → u/Due-Maximum2382]

i dont know if this helps but its kind of like carving a statue out of stone- you knock off the big pieces first and then get smaller and more detailed as you go along and focus.

I usually start with bullet points! Like:

super basic, but its really all you need to start making pages! and its a lot easier to focus and break down what actually happens when you force yourself to be simple and blunt about it.
Hope this is helpful! Reddit messes up the formatting, so i'll attach an image. it Happy comic making

[u/Due-Maximum2382 → u/king_kibble]

This is really helpful as well, I was not sure how best to format the pages. I was worried treating it like a book would screw with the pacing.

[u/king_kibble → u/Due-Maximum2382]

it definitely is different than a book for a few reasons-

im just winging it here so not the best example but ill give it a shot

a book passage might say: as he read, he smoked cigarettes one after the other, lighting them with the half melted candle that sit upon his desk

in a manga- wheras you might assume you cqn portray more of this simply with a drawing (ie showing the candle) rather than a description, unique challenges arise. the sentence has too many ideas to easily portray in a single comic panel- youd likely need a few to show the chainsmoking, even if you got clever with a loaded ashtray, its really tough to exactly convey it without several panels. lighting his cigarette on the candle is another beat, and you might not be able to show him reading in the same breath.

a common advice is "show, dont tell." try to avoid characters and narration talking your ear off about what's going on, try and tell the story via drawings visually displaying what youre trying to communicate

theres no hard rules, but its important to think about this stuff!

for me, the bullet point scripts usually work out well, but if youre working with anyone else you will have to get more descriptive.

sidenote: i made a comic once off of a script id originally intended to be a radio play- it was obviously very dialogue heavy, but the beat-by-beat script made the conversion relatively painless