Parallel Narrative

This is an exercise by Liz Macfarlane that I absolutely adore.

You will need:

paper
something to draw with
some Post-It Notes.

Instructions:

1. Think of a few distinctly positive, negative, or interesting memories from childhood.

2. Pick one and write about it for five to ten minutes.

3. Put that writing away and brainstorm a few everyday activites or situations, keep them mundane and relatable.

4. Pick one and turn it into a six panel comic using Post-It Notes.

5. Stick the Post-It Note panels down (in order) on a piece of paper, leaving a bit of space above each panel to use later.

6. Read back over the writing you did earlier about a childhood memory and then write six (or fewer) sentences that clearly capture the most important parts of the memory.

7. Apply your six (or fewer) sentences to your comic, writing the lines on the paper above each comic panel.

8. Read it. Does it make sense? Ideally the two narratives should create or imply some new meaning.
Rejig, rewrite, redraw as needed.

Example:

Thoughts:

This is the first exercise I run when I am teaching a comics class because it so clearly illustrates the forgiving and flexible relationship between text and image in comics. When I first started making comics, I had a tendency to work very literally, and often the text and images would be doing the same story work rather than working additively and complimenting each other. When this exercise works, you can really feel the text and images connecting and becoming more than the sum of their parts. I think that this happens because the images begin to act as visual metaphor for the text, and/or the text begins to add a subtext to the images, implying a new meaning. This only really works if the text is adding something new to what is visually depicted. It doesn’t work if the text just tells us what we’re seeing.

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