Separate Yourself From Your Work

A great majority of the comics made are autobiographical (essays and short stories, too). While this is not a bad thing per se, it does end up being a difficult premise, with a difficult subject. I have come across a number of bad examples and have learned some of the problems that come with them.

Life isn't always funny. Every good comedian will tell you that the best material comes from life. It's true. Sometimes things happen that are so absurd that you could never come up with it. However, just because the best material comes from life doesn't mean all of them material from life is good. Simply repeating conversations that you had isn't inherently funny. There's a reason that we have the phrase, "you had to be there."

Separate yourself from your work. Unless you are writing the comics version of a diary, your goal is not to be accurate; it is to be funny. If a sentence sounds awkward, rewrite it. If a joke isn't that funny, don't tell it. If the real comedy wasn't what he said, but how he said it, then you better be able to reproduce how he said it. If you can't, then drop it. Not everything transitions to the medium very well.

Do something! The mark of a true amateur is copy/pasting your panels. That means that you draw a panel once, then use the exact same scene and position for characters, only changing facial expressions and maybe arm movement. This is so visually boring that it makes the comic less good. There is only one comic that has ever reused art and succeeded, and it is a very notable exception. If you are simply having a conversation for your comic, then you must either have your characters doing something or you need to change up your camera angles.

Go somewhere. This is very similar to doing something. Although we are creatures of habit and we often find ourselves in certain places, we should not be doing everything in the same place. If you find yourself about to draw the same scenery once again, ask yourself, ask yourself if the comic could take place elsewhere. Would it be better, worse, or the same? If it wouldn't be worse, then try putting it somewhere else, just to spice things up. Sometimes the audience needs to know that their favorite characters exist in a world that is larger than their apartment.