Writing, whether it be for a story, an essay, or even a webcomic, is not easy. Well, let me rephrase that - good writing is not easy. You could be the warrior of the English language, wielding correct spelling like a sword and proper grammar as your shield, but that doesn't mean you can string words together and make them interesting. Similarly, you could have the hardest working imagination this side of a tripped-out hippy, but it doesn't mean you can structure your words properly.

While I can't add anything to your imagination and I don't want to discuss the technicalities of the English language here, I can and will offer some advice that should make your webcomic writing a tad easier. However, the caveat is two-fold. One, everything I tell you is something that I've tried and has worked for me, but may not work for you (and that's okay, as I'll explain later). Two, this is mostly aimed at long-form webcomics or gag-driven comics that run short storylines.

The Pondering Phase: One of my favorite writers, Terry Brooks, offered up a suggestion in regards to writing, and I've found that it works well. Take some time ruminate about a storyline. Not just think, but ponder, daydream, analyze, etc. Go over it in your head again and again and again, but don't write anything down yet. This is sort of like a filtering process - the good ideas will get caught in your brain and the rest will wash away down the drain. When you've had some time to let the things come to a boil in your head - for me it's usually when the excitement builds to a point where I can't contain it anymore - write it all down, but don't structure it just yet. That's the next part.

The Outlining Phase: This is where you'll give a bit of structure to your story, but still keep it loose. Outline the story as if it's a script, with back-and-forth between characters and action parentheticals. Don't worry about panel or page restrictions, just write. Get it all down on paper (or on the word processing program of your choice, but I prefer to do this stuff on paper; it's more organic that way). Now you have your storyline in a readable and, most importantly, reviewable format. Go over it a couple of times and make edits - trim the dialogue, switch words around, add some lines, whatever you need to do. Just don't become married to it yet. Once you've got that done, we move onto the harder part.

The Portioning Phase: Now you have to take what you've written, break it up, and fit it into whatever format your webcomic is - three panel, four panel, six panel, full pages, etc. The tricky part is not to compromise what you've written in your outline for the sake of fitting things into your format. Once you've tried this process a few times, though, you'll find that as you're writing the outline, you subconciously create the dialogue to eventually fit into the format you use. Remember what I said about keeping things loose? This was for a good reason. You won't always be able to transplant things directly from your outline into the format. Sometimes you'll have to add a punchline that you didn't think of earlier, or sacrifice a line of dialogue for pacing's sake. In the end, if you play your cards right, you'll end up with well-written scripts for an entire batch of strips/pages. But we're not done yet.

The Roughing Phase: Sketch out your strips/pages on scrap paper or in a sketch pad. Don't worry about perfection, this is just preliminary. Sometimes when you can see visuals accompanying what you wrote, it can prompt new ideas for dialogue or move the direction of the story somewhere better. Plus it's just a good idea to think things out before you finalize anything. Speaking of which...

The Finalizing Phase: This is where you take pencils and pens to paper (or stylus to tablet). By this point, because of the steps you've taken, you should be confident that what you've written is solid. There should be no doubts in your mind. But if there is, fix it before you realize you have to scrap the whole thing and start over.

And there you have it! This is a process that I've developed and it works for me. Try it. It may work for you, or it may not. Maybe you'll take some of what I said but do your own thing. This is totally understandable. No two people have the same processes for writing because we all operate differently. Find what works for you and stick with it. At the end of the day we're all heading towards the same goal even if we're wearing different running shoes.