So a few people asked me a while back how to write or prepare a webcomic/manga. They found my tips useful, so I thought I should write 'em up and stick them here.

Note: this is for fully developed/developing stories, if you just want a few chapters or know exactly what you want to do go for it before you lose your motivation or muse. also since I work on manga, instead of writing webcomic/manga all the time I'll just go with 'manga'

Step 1: story concept
In a paragraph write what your manga is about. No need to fill in arc or character development in this area, just a paragraph. a good way to do it is to imagine you are reading the back of your manga where they put the summary, at times this description can help you remain on track for plot and characterization. afterall if you describe your character as a regular modern female - at least until-!!! you couldn't really have her as a blue alien with orange hair, could you? because in that situation she wouldn't have been 'normal' to begin with.

Step 2: volume/arc planning
if your story is in arcs, write a summary of what happens in that arc. for a story that involves multiple arcs this is the stage that you write highlights or moments of particular importance to plot and/or character as - by the time you get to writing the last arc, you'll have probably forgotten some of these moments.

Aside from my gigantic story I'm putting off til I've finished my other ideas, my ideas are typically 1-3 volumes long. Make sure you separate the story so that OMGWTFBBQ cliffhangers are at the end, to make them buy the next volume, in which it then gets resolved early on. It's better to have 120 pages with that moment, than 150 pages where it's resolved and no overwhelming desire to buy the next one.

Step 3:chapter plans
This has always been my most helpful part of the planning. Using the information for the above figure out roughly how many pages your volume will wind up being, and how many pages you usually use to create a chapter (I'm usually 15-20) this'll tell you how many chapters you have to work with.
an example of the layout would be something like this:
Chapter 1
MF (main female if you don't have a name yet) wakes up after startling prophetic dream, realises she slept in and rushes downstairs to grab her toast and run to school. The day is typical class day but she wonders what her life would be like if something interesting happened.

Some chapter summaries can be squished together to form a bigger chapter, especially if you have less pages than usual. If there is a scene from a novel early or later on that has 'too many' chapters and that's not important CHRONOLOGICALLY you can put that in to buff up a volume.

Some information in this step will be a duplication of information in step 2. Don't be worried about this as it can help when you're reading it through that this idea is what you want to use, and will help you avoid inconsistencies. Also you will find yourself using chapter summaries more than reading whole volume summaries at the time of page planning so it's important to have that duplicated information in case you can't remember or miss something.

Step 4: page planning
when I get an example of this scanned I'll stick it here but essentially you use roughly 7-8 lines of a page and sketch a box to the left of the page, inside that box you then draw small stick figures of the characters you wish to use on that page and how. you'll find that doing 15 of these at once for a chapter that the page layout will become roughly the same for every page, but this is to mainly plan out who you want in a panel when, or what expressions you wish for them to display, more than the dynamics of perspective and pose. write your dialogue in the remaining space to the right of your image, for each speech bubble you plan on having, and number it. eg.
1) I guess...
2) I had always wondered...
3) what would happen...
4) if life wasn't so ordinary.
on the page you've just set out write the number in the panel/spot the text would go and circle it. When you're doing the actual paes you can just stick the corresponding number into a circle of your edited panels and, as long as all the text stays on the one page, even if your page layout changes you'll know where what text goes!

Extra note: doing it smaller means you can cross out a whole page if you don't like it, and it also means you can draw multiple pages in a relatively short time without forgetting what was supposed to happen.

Step 5: actual pages!!!

wow, it took a while getting getting here but at least now if you're not feeling motivated, or are in a situation where distractions are all around you (eg. school, tv, etc.) you don't have to dedicate your complete focus into working out what's going to happen next, as you already have it!!

I find working in blue mechanical pencil is the best, followed by - as neatly as I can - dark grey mechanical pencil lines - as when I scan it I only need to up the brightness/contrast to get some semi-neat lineart I can then fix up on the computer, rather than drawing it in, painstakingly inking it, and having to deal with the scanner making things blurry, splotchy, or having ink mistakes to fix >.<;;

so I hope these tips helped, they always help me as I don't often have time to sit down and dedicate hours to pages, however this simple planning technique allows me to write and plan the first 100 pages + of my webcomic and -if a page only takes me 20 minutes - I don't have to spend 40 figuring out what happens next! what a time saver!

next tips: resource folders!