Hey all! I’m writing this week’s blog a week ahead of time. I actually just posted last week’s blog before starting.
So I said last (this) week that I’d talk about how the current storyline evolved the way it did, so let’s get right to it.
I believe I’ve mentioned before that the idea for Zoë to meet a chipmunk and then embark on a quest to find him again actually came to me back in 2011. The original plan was for the quest to be my big summer storyline but since I’m not very good at estimating how much time stories are going to take, it was already the end of August before the first strip of the Search for Skitter was even posted.
The plan was always for Zoë to forget Skitter when her cast was removed. There’d be a few strips of Zoë trying to remember something important punctuated with a panel of Skitter waiting faithfully for her to come back until finally, Nektara (later changed to Todrick because Nektara is too smart for this to happen) would ask her where Skitter was. That would start the Search for Skitter. As we now know, Skitter’s and Tomaw’s departures are related, so obviously the Tomaw storyline had to conclude before the Search for Skitter could begin. Because I wanted a little bit of time to pass between the two, I couldn’t start the Search for Skitter until the tail end of August. So much for a summer storyline.
When I started late, I decided that it’d be nice to have the story conclude at Crismustime. I had an idea for the returning heroes’ arrival in mind that I liked. That gave me 17 weeks or 34 strips to tell the story of how Zoë finally remembered about Skitter, went to find him and came home.
34 strips seems like a lot, but it’s not. It took 16 strips before Zoë even left Bree. There was NO way that I was going to fit the whole quest into 18 strips. Not without gutting the story. I would have to forget the Crismustime reunion.
Or would I? Time is fluid in the strip. If Zoë and the others left Bree on October 17th (the day the strip of their departure was posted), then two months of in-world time would pass before Crismus’s birthday came around. It occurred to me in early November that come Crismustime, I could skip ahead to tell the homecoming storyline the way I wanted (and WHEN I wanted) and then go back and continue with the rest as something that had already happened (told as a story to the friends back home) instead of something that was taking place, taking as much time as necessary to tell the story.
I sat down and I put down the important plot points I knew I wanted to hit and the rough order they should occur. If I’m perfectly honest with myself, I should have done this much sooner. For over a year I knew I had this big story I wanted to tell, I had a number of gags and absolutely no idea how to fit them all together. I’d like to say I’ve learned from this. I won’t know for sure until I try another storyline this big and who knows when that will be? I have to finish this one first, right? At least at that point I got things together.
But where would I cut the story? I thought the point where Red Rich finds Tomaw and Skitter would be a good place. The storyline was called The Search for Skitter and at that point Skitter is found right? It sounded good to me so I had my plan. 10 strips to get to a point where Red Rich meets Tomaw and Skitter. Anything that wasn’t essential to getting to that point could be told after the homecoming storyline. I just needed to get to that encounter.
It didn’t fit. Nope. I shifted everything that takes place in the bandit camp to after the break (I’m just now starting to draw that actually) and focused on just Red Rich’s story and still I was a few strips short. That’s when I considered moving up to three strips a week. I calculated and it was tight but I could make it work.
As you can now see, I made it. Red Rich met Tomaw and Skitter on December 17th and on December 24th I started the Crismustime storyline. That was interesting to write in itself, but that’s a story for another time. I’ve rambled on enough for now. Have a good week y’all!
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