Five Essential Skills for Making a Graphic Novel

Written By Stephanie Broder

My favourite class to teach is The Graphic Novel. Often, my students are brand new to the craft. Maybe they are a writer, an illustrator, often both! But combining those skills into a graphic novel is a whole new beast.

A spread from the graphic novel Ducks by Kate Beaton, published by Drawn and Quarterly and critically acclaimed

You can expect many more posts about the skills for graphic novels coming up on the blog, including advice from beginner to advanced, but to start off, here are five essential skills you need to make a graphic novel:

  1. Storytelling: You need to be able to tell a story from start to finish. Think of the main plot, the characters, and how you want the story to make people feel. Beyond that, the story involves key aspects like conflict, motivation, and character arcs. Writing skills or experience feed into this, but as graphic novels are primarily a visual medium, you may also want to think about visual storytelling, such as what you see in films or animation.

  2. Drawing: You should be able to draw, even if it's simple. Graphic novels rely on visuals, so practice drawing people, places, and emotions to help your story come alive. Art style doesn’t have to be super complicated to tell a visual story. If you’re worried, you might want to check out my post about Three Comic Book Art Styles You May Not Know!

  3. Layout and Composition: Knowing how to arrange everything on the page. This is complicated in graphic novels because you must think of several levels of layout and composition. You must consider how things flow within the panels, between panels, over a page, and between pages.

  4. Writing Dialogue: Good dialogue makes characters sound authentic. Practice writing how people talk so your characters’ conversations are exciting and help tell the story. Since there’s typically no narration (or minimal narration) in a graphic novel, watch out for common pitfalls like having characters exposit or info dump through dialogue.

  5. Time Management: Making a graphic novel takes a lot of time and effort. My students are often surprised by how much work each page requires! You'll need to stay organized and stick with it to finish each part—writing, drawing, and putting it all together. Keeping notes, sketches, planning, and outlines will help you keep organized and focused on a goal. I always recommend going into a graphic novel with a solid plan!

A bonus point I’d add to this list is to read a bunch of graphic novels. Read across genres, but especially focus on the type of graphic novels you want to create. You can see how the pros apply these five skills to the craft.

If you need some recommendations, you can check out some of my favourites from major publishers:

Good luck and have fun!

Stephanie Broder
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