Guide · 5 min read
How to write a 6-page comic from one sentence
You don't need a script to make a comic. A one-sentence moment, one concrete detail and a simple six-beat structure produce a page that reads like a real comic.
Start with a moment, not a plot
Plots are for novels. Comics, short ones especially, run on moments: a thing that happened, in one place, with a beginning and an end you can picture. “We got locked in the museum overnight and the exhibits started moving” is a moment. “A story about our friendship” is not.
The six-beat structure
Almost every short comic fits the same shape. If you write one line per beat, you have a six-page comic.
- 1. Where we are, the setting, one detail (the rain, the broken van, the cake).
- 2. What we want, the small goal (get home dry, make the train, hide the ring).
- 3. What goes wrong, the twist that makes it a story.
- 4. The scramble, how the characters react, ideally differently from each other.
- 5. The turn, the moment it resolves, or gets worse in a funny way.
- 6. The button, the last line, usually a joke or a quiet callback to beat 1.
Give each person one trait
Dialogue writes itself when characters differ. One is calm, one panics. One plans, one improvises. You don't have to state it, just let the reactions in beat 4 show it, but decide it before you write.
Let the drawing do the describing
Don't describe what people look like, the reference photo handles that. Do name concrete objects and places, because panels are built from them. “The blue umbrella” gives an artist something; “a nice day” doesn't.
In Comikaze, the story box takes one to three sentences. The page structure, panel layout and speech bubbles are generated from them, and every page can be redrawn with a note.
Example
“Two strangers grab the same umbrella outside the station on the worst rainy day of the year. Neither admits they have somewhere to be. By the time it stops raining, one of them has missed their train on purpose.”, that's three sentences, and it's a full six-page comic.