- Tedd seeing Mist in the mirror

Since the start of this comic, I've written things panel by panel, comic by comic, page by page. It felt like the most natural way to do things, and in many ways, it has been. 

What I've also found, however, is that it's absolutely terrible for writing ahead when dealing with stories (as opposed to standalone joke comics). I'd spend considerable time thinking of things like what note I want to end a page on, or what might fit into a specific panel, or when the next row of panels would start, etc.

It's a series of speedbumps and set stopping points. There's a feeling of "done!" when I think one comic has been written. That's not an insurmountable obstacle, but it can stop what might otherwise be the natural flow of writing.

Starting with this part of False Kings, the experiment has been writing without any regard for panels or pages. It is only when I do the page layouts that I edit what I've written to work in comic form.

Three finished pages in, and I'd say it's working very well. There's a lot more editing of the script at the layout stage than before, but that's by design. Things will naturally be added, removed, or changed to work better in comic form.

For example, Mist's rant in panel three. That didn't exist in the rough draft. It was only when it came time to figure out what would be on this page that Mist's rant came to be, and I could only really know there was a place for it because I was working on the layout at the same time.

I'll likely have more to say about the pros and cons of this approach later. For now, I can think of one con: I don't actually know how many pages I've written ahead. I know I've written plenty of stuff happening, but I won't know how many pages they really represent until later.