What to do if your comics tell a story from day to day?

[Arvo]

I often write strips that continue the storyline from the last strip, and can't be appreciated fully if you're just reading a one-shot.

For this reason I would rather have people read them in order. I don't know how many people go to your first strip and then read them in order. Probably most don't.

I'd like to find a way to group strips in a story, so that people will be prompted to read the whole story in order, instead of just clicking on random days on a calendar and ending up in the middle of a story.

I understand that Keenspace supports something called Storyline Dropdowns. From what I read, these sound like maybe they are the answer. Are they? And can anyone provide me links to some Keenspace comics that use these, so I can see how they work and maybe steal the code?

Or maybe it's easier to just have links to each story that aren't in a dropdown format but rather right there on the page?

Can you do this as an alternative to the calendar? Oh, but then maybe the Keenspace automation won't work! Well, maybe do them in addition to the calendar and locate them on the page so that they will be preferred to the calendar?

I don't have my site up yet, and am a newbie, that's why I ask so many questions.

[Dburkhead]

Storyline dropdowns might be what you need:

http://gear.keenspace.com/ensign/Dropdown.html

The Gear is your friend.

[Oualawouzou]

Storyline dropdowns might be what you need:

http://gear.keenspace.com/ensign/Dropdown.html

The Gear is your friend.

*whispers* He knows about dropdowns. He's asking if it's the right solution for him!


You can use dropdowns in addition to your calendar. They are not linked in any way, so one won't break the other.

I use a dropdown for navigation on my site (see signature if you're curious). Unlike the calendar, you decide which comics appear on the dropdown list and which don't. Downside is that you have to update it manually.

[Dutch!]

Downside is that you have to update it manually.

Upside is, once it's done, it's bloody easy to handle!

[Plothole]

Aye. And the dropdown's html itself is generated automatically (using the ***storyline*** keentag)

In addition to the dropdown, there's also a ***storylinestart*** which generates a link to the start of the current storyline (or ***storylinestarturl***, which simple generates the address), as well as ***next_day_arc*** ***last_day_arc*** (which aren't listed in the tagglossary). From what Risky mentioned, I guess these take you to the next and last (ie current) storylines, respectively. (I'm curious to know if there are first_day & previous_day versions of these tags as well? I assume there would be.)

[Dburkhead]

Storyline dropdowns might be what you need:

http://gear.keenspace.com/ensign/Dropdown.html

The Gear is your friend.

*whispers* He knows about dropdowns. He's asking if it's the right solution for him!

Sheesh. Somehow my eyes just went right past that paragraph. My bad.

[Arvo]

Thanks. Well, I read that Gear article, and I find that I still really need to see a good example of a site that works the way I want mine to work. I want readers to select a storyline, and be taken to the first strip in that storyline. Then I want there to be a "next" link that takes them to the next strip in the storyline. And so forth.

Is that possible?

I think I've seen some webcomics that, if you click on a date that takes you to the middle of a story, prompt you to go to the beginning. "You are in the middle of a storyline" one said (I don't remember if this was on Keenspace or not). I think it must have had a link to go to the beginning of the storyline, but don't remember.

[Arvo]

By the way, I know it's a bad habit to write storyline strips, and that the pros try not to do this, because they want every strip to be understandable to everyone without having read the preceding strip. Unfortunately, that results in "gag" comics that are usually pretty predictable.

I've seen some pros handle the storyline problem by putting a little explanation in a horizontal box at the top of the first frame: "Dodo and Ginza have just killed Dr. Diabolo" or whatever. I guess I could do that, but it can be rather awkward. Schulz used to do story strips and he didn't use those boxes. But you do lose the people who haven't been following the story.

[Oualawouzou]

You decide what goes on the dropdown menu and what doesn't. If you want only the first strip of every storyline to be on that menu, you can do this. The navigation buttons work only based on the comic dates, regardless of anything else. So you can use the dropdown to jump to a storyline, then use the "next" button to progress further into it.

There's one thing I'm starting to wonder: do you want to do storylines one at a time (i.e. you complete one before starting the next) or do you want to have several of them running at the same time? If that's the later, it won't work well with auto-keen I'm afraid.

ETA: about it being a bad idea... I say: meh. It all depends on how you handle it.

[Plothole]

I think I've seen some webcomics that, if you click on a date that takes you to the middle of a story, prompt you to go to the beginning. "You are in the middle of a storyline" one said (I don't remember if this was on Keenspace or not). I think it must have had a link to go to the beginning of the storyline, but don't remember.

Keenspace allows you to post text/html comments along with your comic:
http://gear.keenspace.com/ensign/Text.html

If your referring to a popup prompt, that would require a little javascript.

By the way, I know it's a bad habit to write storyline strips, and that the pros try not to do this, because they want every strip to be understandable to everyone without having read the preceding strip. Unfortunately, that results in "gag" comics that are usually pretty predictable.

I've seen some pros handle the storyline problem by putting a little explanation in a horizontal box at the top of the first frame: "Dodo and Ginza have just killed Dr. Diabolo" or whatever. I guess I could do that, but it can be rather awkward. Schulz used to do story strips and he didn't use those boxes. But you do lose the people who haven't been following the story.

Why bother? This isn

[Dutch!]

Exactly. I go for a smile a day yet still tell a story without lots of reminders. I'm pretty sure most of my strips can stand alone to some extent if you come in the middle of something. Sometimes just a sentence of dialogue can be enough to give a reader an idea of what's just happened and then let them appreciate the joke at the end.

[Joel Fagin]

It needs to be done manually, but you may be interested in doing an archive page like this too.

I wouldn't worry about people coming in half way through, though. Most people would probably read the whole thing and you can always do a recap comic once a year, or notes under the comic saying "BTW, this character last turned up in this chapter", or something

- Joel Fagin

[Risky]

Narbonic did a joke about that not that long ago... there were two boxes in each frame saying "as seen during the summer 1995 arc" or the like.

As far as the dropdown, I use one, so you are welcome to check my page (theelven.com) and seem the "storyline" dropdown at the top. I also hand-code a "table of contents" type table above my "big_calendar" on my archive page. If you want a big shiny "click here to get to the start of this arc" link on every page of an arc, use the tags with a storyline data file, but I can't think of a comic offhand that uses them.

[Gengar003]

What I notice in the paper when storylines are going on, the first frame is quite often one character talking to another, explaining what's going on, so the readers find out but it doesn't stick out as being there for them... Or one character, having heard the explanation the day before, could repeat it back to another as if they don't believe it or something.... If this really concerns you, you could dig through your local paper's comics until you find a few examples of this.

However, as mentioned before, this is the internet and much simpler to navigate than a paper; confused visitors can just back up and read from the beginning.

I would suggest a storyline dropdown, though; that would make it easier for people to just get the whole story of the current storyline rather than having to hit "first day" and go allllllllll the way back if they don't want to.

When I find a strip that's story-based, and I'm in the middle, I usually go back to the beginning and read the whole archives...

Don't worry too much about it; your readers will be able to find something that works for them.

[Christwriter]

Two ideas, both dependant on exactly what it is you want.

1. If all you want is for readers at the main page (index page) to be able to jump from today's page to the first strip in the story line, edit the indextemplate to have a link to the first page under the strip for the day (something like "Lost? Storyline starts < a href="whateverthestripnameis > HERE. < /a >")

It SOUNDS like this is what you want, because the only time a reader WOULD be lost is if all they did was follow the main page. If they read from day one up there's no way that they could be lost unless their IQ was somewhat below their room tempreture. When you start a new story-line, all you would need to do is alter the "Lost?" link to the new beginning and resubmit the indextemplate.

2. Put a version of the "lost" link on every page. All you would need to do is drop in an HTML file consisting of the words " (whatever it is you want to say) Storyline Starts < (insert HTML here)> HERE <(ditto) > " in it and name it YYYYMMDDb.(picture extention). There's some kind of built in hirearchy in Autokeen, where it organizes everything alphabitaclly. My pages, for example, require two HTML files for every picture file I upload. To get them organized I name them YYYYMMDD, and then A, B and C respectively. My first page is 20040401a, 20040401b and 20040401c.

On YOUR pages, if you dropped in the HTML file with your Lost message and the link in, it would appear below the comic. The downside to this is you would have the link on EVERY SINGLE PAGE in that story, which is EXTREAMLY redundant. Nobody reading from the archives is going to hit strips out of order.

CW