How should I format and present my graphic memoir?

September 22, 2021 11:16 AM

I'm writing/drawing a memoir, and want to plan out the format now. Don't know what I'm doing.

This is a sample page.

However, I've done much more writing and there are longer stories (I'm going to have the equivalent of over 50 8" x 11" typed pages (12-point font) of text). I'm doing this on an iPad Pro, 11" diagonal screen, using an app called Paper, which I love. I also love the iPad pencil. Finally I feel free! (from little unwanted marks on the page).

But, now that there is so much text, the screen seems so small -- especially since I am handwriting the text --(I asked a previous question about this, and tried to post the link, but it would simply not paste the url for that here, although I tried 3 times. Anyway the prior question is not that relevant.)

I think that, first of all, I need to figure out where I'm going to put all these pages up for people to see. I could make a website for this purpose ( I have somebody who could do this for me, but if there is a readymade platform for this sort of thing I'd love to know about it). And keep the pages their current size, and just have a lot of them without pictures, or with e.g. a tiny picture in the corner? I wonder, if I had some pages that are just text, and some with a picture surrounded by text, etc etc (vary the pages), IF there is some way to display them on a website where the viewer just keep scrolling down and down and down so it looks more like a continuous document? Or side-to-side? (so that the extensive text could span more than one page without "seams") (but I REALLY want to keep using the Paper app. It's just perfect for my needs and i already have about 40 pictures done with it so I would like the uniformity of style).

I realize I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, and that's because I don't. I am utterly new to this. Well not utterly - I (horribly) scanned some crappy pencil drawings I did and put them on a Blogger thing:

So one problem would be having multiple pages of just text (because the format is just too small to continue with a few sentences and a large drawing per page), and another is: where should I put this graphic memoir when I'm done that will make my Paper-app pages look the best and make it easy for people to flip from page to page or scroll down a document, or -- Something.

Here are a couple more pages, just to show you different amounts of text, my style, etc.:

Here and (pre-colored) Here

Any ideas welcome. thank you

posted by DMelanogaster to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Response by poster: ugh the link to blogger didn't work. Here it is:

I don't want my graphic memoir to look like this mess!
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:20 AM on September 22, 2021

I think you should look at Lynda Barry, a cartoonist/memoirist who uses lots of handwritten text and also drawings. Mostly she publishes books, but her Tumblr features some pages from her works and they look just fine!
posted by xo at 11:42 AM on September 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I am familiar with Lynda Barry (and Roz Chast, and Crumb-Kominski, etc). I'm not seeing a lot of text. I'm seeing classic panels on one page, so, when you look at each panel separately, it's actually a drawing with a little bit of text. Also, I"d like my graphic memoir to be one document. Barry's tumbler is more like a diary (a "blog," or whatever), with "entries." That's not what I'm going for. But thanks!
posted by DMelanogaster at 12:00 PM on September 22, 2021

Look at the "webtoon" format - here's a good looking breakdown comparing "webtoons" to traditional comic book formats
posted by muddgirl at 1:12 PM on September 22, 2021

Best answer: Issuu can publish a digital page-turning book/magazine. Have a look at some of the graphic novels published there to see if the page turning and full-screen options would work for your idea. Issuu allows any page size, and you can upload standard formats. I don't know what file types Paper exports to, but assuming it can export to PDF, that'd be fine.
posted by xo at 2:10 PM on September 22, 2021

Best answer: I don't have answers to all these questions but I bet you could get a lot of answers from the Sequential Artists Workshop's Graphic Memoir Working Group. They have a two week free trial period.
posted by hungrytiger at 1:37 AM on September 23, 2021