Comic books and graphic novels are nothing new but, in today's publishing world, they've become a fantastic way to get your story out there. In fact, graphic novels have seen phenomenal growth – a sales surge of up to 15% -- in the last four or five years. Even better? You can write a graphic novel and still write a book or movie or TV show or….

What you’ll learn

• The difference between a graphic novel and a comic book
• Graphic novel structure
• Character development
• Dialogue
• How to guide an illustrator, if you aren't an artist yourself
• Creating a graphic story board
• To get used to thinking in pictures

Who should take this course

• Anyone who wants to write a compelling, believable story
• Anyone who wants to tell their story in an innovative way
• Anyone ready to take their writing to the next level

Lesson Plan

Lesson One:

• Introduction to the graphic novel and comic
• What's the difference?
  • Between graphic novel and comic book
  • Between graphic novel and narrative book
• Different types of graphic novels
• How to determine if your story will fit into a graphic novel format

Lesson Two:

• Deal with structure
• Characterization
• Create emotional power

Lesson Three:

• Story boarding and plot

Lesson Four:

• Basics of illustration, even if you don't do it yourself

Lesson Five:

• Layers of creating the graphic novel

Every lesson comes with reference material and homework assignments.

Teacher

Sarah (Sally) Hamer is eternally fascinated by people and how they ‘tick’ and works hard to incorporate individual idiosyncrasies to create living, breathing characters in her many works of fiction. She writes in many genres – mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – and has won awards at both local and national levels, including two Golden Heart finals.

A teacher of beginning and advanced creative fiction writing and screenwriting at Louisiana State University – S for over ten years, she also is a book coach, with many of her students and critique partners becoming successful, award-winning authors.

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Reviews

Start with an idea

Rated 5 out of 5

February 27, 2022

I started with just an idea and as class is coming to an end I have my frames all planned out for my graphic novel. You don't need to know everything, Sally will guide you through it.

Megan Ganesh

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