Two: Writing

Spell everything correctly. If you’re not sure, use a spell checker or a dictionary. Make sure your grammar is good, too. If you make a typo, fix it. You have absolutely no excuse to make mistakes. A sprite comic is not a chatroom or an IM client. You have all the time you need to make sure your comic is perfect.

Only have your characters say things that you would say in real life. Don’t have them speak as if they’re reading from a physics textbook (unless they actually are :p) And never, ever, use ‘l337’ or AOL-speak in your comic. Nobody talks like that in real life. (If you do, please, go get help. You need it.)

If you’re making a plot-based comic, try to avoid plotholes (places where the plot either makes absolutely no sense or blatantly contradicts itself). Depending on the severity (and your popularity :p), people will notice them, and make sure you notice, too. The moment the plot stops making sense is usually the moment people start losing interest. (Usually. For some reason, people enjoy looking for plotholes in Bob and George. I'm not entirely sure why.) One good example of this is Final Fantasy VIII. Many, many people were disappointed with that game, and not just because it was too easy (which it was :p). Toward the end of the game, a new villain was introduced as the ultimate mastermind, who had apparently been manipulating everything from far in the future. This was a huge turnaround in the plot that threw off many players and caused them to stop caring about the story. It was a betrayal of trust; the players of FFVIII trusted the developers to create an enjoyable, believable story. When they failed (in the players’ eyes, not the developers’; in the end, what your readers think is more important than what you think), they broke the players’ trust.

Your mission is to avoid breaking your readers’ trust in you. Make sure every thing that happens has a believable reason behind it; make sure your characters’ motivations are easy for the readers to relate with; make sure that you explain everything that needs to be explained, and show everything that needs to be shown. Remember that your readers will not know all that you know about your comic; if there is something that they need to know in order to understand, then you must tell them.

The other popular type of sprite comic is the humorous comic. These usually have plots as well, but the plot is a bit less important. (You should still make sure it’s at least somewhat believable and solid, though.) The best thing to do here, in my opinion, is to establish a few characters, give them decent personalities, make sure they oppose each other somehow, and them let them loose for wacky hijinks. Never use ‘random’ humor; it has no context, and no way to hook readers in and keep them reading. If you use too much, it stops being funny and starts being annoying. Don’t try to cram a joke into every comic; if you need a longer setup, go ahead and split it into two comics. Never break the fourth wall; it’s not original in any way. As I said before, don’t steal jokes from other places (popular comics, TV shows, video games, or books, to name a few examples). Even if it was funny the first time, it won’t be funny when you rehash it.

The writing will make or break your comic. In the end, if you can’t write well, your comic will not succeed. It doesn’t matter if you do everything else correctly. A sprite comic depends on its writing. If people don’t find your words, story, and humor interesting, they won’t read your comic.

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