How to Instantly Improve Your Storytelling - Yes, Really
I’m passionate about creating comics and writing fiction, but I also work with students who are interested in animation, film, theatre, children’s books, and many other areas. The thing is, storytelling is storytelling, whatever your chosen medium. Storytelling is the beating heart of so much narrative media, and I consider it an essential skill for illustrators to master. But how do you master it?
We all know (hopefully!) that practice makes perfect. This is also true for storytelling. Whatever your chosen medium - comics, animation, fiction - absolutely put a lot of time into practicing. Write bad stories until, suddenly, one day, they are actually ok. Then keep writing ok stories. Practice, practice, practice.
My writing improves so much each year that I even celebrated the tenth anniversary of one of my early novel drafts by critiquing the first chatper of it in zine format
However, there’s an underutilized method for improving your storytelling, and I’m not being hyperbolic in my title when I say it can instantly enhance your storytelling. What am I possibly talking about?
Study Stories
Say it louder for people in the back - study stories! Study the masters but also the flops. Don’t read comics like a reader, read comics like a creator. Look at the panel size and placement, the framing, and the amount of dialogue or narration. Watch and rewatch your favourite animation scenes. Watch them on half speed, then double speed. Talk about them. Take your ten favourite books off your shelf and read the first page of each, critically and slowly. Go to a library and pull twenty random children’s books and open them each to a random page. Study the differences in art style, composition, text, and story.
Exercises to Get Started
If the switch from reading like a reader vs reading like a creator feels daunting, here are some easy exercises to help you get started:
Focus on one aspect of storytelling at a time: There are so many different puzzle pieces that go together to create a story, including plot, character, conflict, dialogue, etc. If you are stuck on what aspect to focus on, my post on the Essential Ingredients for Story may help!
Find a media critic you enjoy: There are so many review blogs, videos, personalities, TikToks, etc out there, you might feel like either overconsuming or ignoring all of them. It’s just too much to take in. And in the age of Generative AI, I guarantee the internet will eventually be saturated with generated reviews. That’s why I recommend you find someone who talks about story (in your medium or outside of it) that you enjoy and resonate with and focus on them. You’ll learn a lot without getting bogged down in the many, many different ways to tell, analyze, and critique stories. Personally, I like Nick Diramio on YouTube (spicy language warning!)
Treat your analysis like a report: Imagine you had to present to a class the panel structure of Akira Toriyama’s comics. What would you want them to know? How would you demonstrate his panelling techniques? If you weren’t allowed to show any pages from his comics, what would you do to communicate instead? In this example, I would probably examine factors such as the average number of panels per page and various panel shapes, and present thumbnails I’ve drawn of the panel layouts for some sample pages. Take this work as seriously as if you were being graded on it or paid for it! After all, the goal might be that one day you are paid for the results of this research when you apply it to your own work.
Once you’ve spent enough time analyzing the work of the masters (and flops) you’ll be ready to start analyzing your own work through a more critical lens.
