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Being a Writing Hero: Using Comics to Make Writing SUPER Fun

Helping students become confident writers can start with the stories they already love—comics. In this blog, readers will discover how comic writing builds essential skills like character development, conflict creation, dialogue, transitions, and crafting strong conclusions, all while boosting engagement and creativity. Guest writer Shannon Live, President and co-founder of Bat City Comic Professionals brings her expertise in using comics as a powerful educational tool to inspire young people to find their voice. Building on ideas from her recent webinar with RIF, she shares practical ways educators can harness the excitement around graphic storytelling to make writing truly super. 

Comic books are a unique medium that combine verbal and visual elements to capture their audience; however, the art of comic writing is nothing short of heroic in the way it harnesses the power of character development, conflict creation, and engaging conclusions to take characters on a grand adventure.  

Understanding Character Development 

When writing comics, students learn to develop well-rounded characters that undergo changes that impact not just them, but the world around them as well. When developing characters with students, ask them to focus on things like where their character is from, what powers and hobbies they have, and silly things like what their favorite color is. This reiterates that their character needs to be completely fleshed out before writing even begins.  

Creating Conflict That Makes Sense 

In comics, writers must keep readers engaged via the page turn, meaning every two or three pages must feature a scene change that pushes the character’s journey forward in an exciting way. Because of this, writing comics teaches the power of engaging readers using action and dialogue to generate a strong level of intrigue.  
 
When approaching conflict development, it’s good to focus on the five W’s:  

  • “What” is the huge problem we must solve (and the small/internal conflicts connected to it)?
  • “Who” is causing the conflict (an antagonist that mirrors the hero’s weaknesses, perhaps)?
  • “Where” are they causing the problem?
  • “When” must the problem be solved by?
  • And most importantly, “Why” is it significant that your character be the one to save the day?  

Having students ask these questions helps them generate their own connections between the internal and external problems of the character.  

Crafting Strong Conclusions  

Ensuring a conclusion aligns with the story is oftentimes a struggle for a writer of any age, but with comic writing we create a unique approach to the process with our secret superpower: the cliffhanger.  

Using cliffhangers as a writing tool helps students learn to be in control of where their story is going at all times. If you want to leave readers guessing what comes next while still feeling satisfied with your story, you have to learn to balance closing off portions of your story while building meaningful openings that can be added onto. Have students walk through their story conflict piece by piece answering the one missing question: “How?” How did your character get where they needed to go? How did they stop the villain? How did they save the day? How will the story continue?  

By asking these questions, students can begin to piece it all together and build a believable conclusion.  

Style Skills (Dialogue, Transitions, and Sequential Formatting)

It’s not just the journey, but the tools used that make comic writing so useful for students. Comics are written in script format, with art direction being used like stage direction in a play. The story a reader consumes, however, is primarily told through dialogue. This means that students must focus on the voice of each character and how that impacts the story. Plus, with a limited amount of words allowed in each panel (we try to stick to 21 or less), an emphasis on choosing the most impactful words becomes even more important, reminding young writers that word choice matters.  

Comics are heavily focused on transitions. This is generally done through the “gutters,” or gaps, between panels. This means writers need to learn how to go from panel to panel, scene to scene with wordless transitions. How do you convey what happened between two moments? Have students write their story within the panels, placing the words “Meanwhile…” when they want to switch to another character’s scene or “And then” for sequential actions into the gutter. Have them read the story aloud with the gutter words included to see if it makes sense when they go from one point to the next.  

Getting Started  

From Dog Man to Manga to DC’s Absolute universe, young readers are falling in love with the medium. Allowing them to create stories in the same universes, or simply just the same format, drives engagement while providing a deeper understanding of some core story telling concepts.  

Bring comics to life in your classroom in a variety of ways: 

  • Create one-page stories based on a character students create. Make sure there is a beginning, middle, and end that showcases growth for the character.
  • Have students create comic scripts. Later, have them swap their scripts with another student who will draw it to see how clear the art direction was.  

Creativity and technique come together in a magical way when students write comics. Give them the tools they need to leap tall buildings in a single bound as they travel the path to becoming stronger writers.  

 

Biography: 

A life-long adventurer of imaginary worlds, Shannon Live knew her path would someday include advocating for creativity. After working as a Reading and Writing Specialist creating pop culture curriculum for Title I schools, Live went on to co-found Bat City Comic Professionals, a 501(c)(3) non-profit comic bookstore that focuses on cultivating reading, writing, art, and imagination skills for young people. As President of Bat City, Live works to develop programming that inspires creative learning using comic books as the primary resource. Through workshops, content, and resource development, Live is hoping to inspire a new generation to find their voice.