Young Writers Society

So, I'm writing an American manga series. How does one write a tv/comic book series? It's quite a puzzler for me.
I ended up stretching classic, three point structure (beginning, middle, end) over three parts, so it's basically like how you would do a novel but longer, and each part has its own arc.
But then I looked at it and realized that a traditional, three point plot isn't going to work, I needed another act/part.
So, now I have 4 parts, each with an individual beginning-middle-end arc, and I have no idea if I'm doing this right.
Advice, tips, helpful or hurtful comments, rhetorical statements, philosophical remarks, anything is appreciated.

I've been learning to trust my initial response to things, and my initial response here was something to the gist of, "Forget the stinking 'rules' and write the darn thing!" And also, "Tell Tradition to take a hike." As well as, " 'Right' doesn't exist in art/writing, unless we're talking about the opposite of 'left'."

And finally, my typical advice, "You'll never know unless you write it." So write it and find out.

But in case you wanted something else to go from, I found this in a quick Google search. It might not be my instinctual response to your predicament, but you might find it interesting.

http://mscherer.wordpress.com/2008/06/2 ... structure/

What is this "right thing" you speak of? I have no idea what that is in writing. (Ie- Seconding Rach. Forget the rules.)

The thing about manga is, the structure is inherently different. Japanese storytelling is much different from western (more idealistic, more focus on being "the best", to reflect cultural norms and values), and you need a good chunk of study to figure out how. If you are looking to do any sort of emulation to traditional manga style, prepare to read with your brain instead of for entertainment.

Graphic novels in general require an inordinate attention to detail, because you're directing an illustrator. This illustrator requires said inordinate amount of details to get an idea what the scene looks like. That frustration you feel when you can't write out a scene the way it plays in your head? While you get rid of the "description needs to be natural" aspect, you have to make it so the scene is visible in somebody else's mind, enough they can draw it. (Part of this is finding a good illustrator, but a lot of it is the kinds of instructions you can give)

The structure also has to work with a general omnipotent narrator. Because you can't just "hide" things like a regular novel through constricting the viewpoint. In fact, you can take advantage of multiple PoVs much easier, with much smoother transitions, in comics. Just have multiple people in a room, the old view point character leaves and the camera stays behind, learning new things.

A good study of plot structure, I find, is the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. If you are going to write that medium, read any particular thing in the genre (from the not so good to the amazing). If you already know the plot of FMA, even better. Read it again and pick out what makes it so interesting from chapter to chapter. What keeps the plot going? Regardless of whether or not you like it, the manga has a giant following. Something kept their interest. Find out what.

In general, just read manga. One of the things that makes the translated stuff so good is it needs to be wildly popular to get translated. Which means it cut through the clutter of a country with a 100% literacy rate and one of the most vibrant print industries in the world (the top five most read newspapers in the world are all Japanese), which usually means there's something special about it. While some genres do get formulaic, they are formulas for the genre and each genre has different ones.

One of my large draws to the genre is its differentness. There's a certain flair to each story, and while you can see some similarities between stories, the premises have a certain distinctness. To take the two most iconic Magical Girl mangas, Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon, you'd really never mistake one for the other unless you were completely unaware of the premises and just saw them both under "magical girl" (then you'd say they were both the same based on that alone).