I'm trying to write a graphic novel (a fantasy-mystery, to put it simply)that has a sort of "episodic" feel with one or two chapters dedicated to a mystery, while it all follows one bigger plot concerning the main character(s). Given the nature of what I want to do and how elaborate I tend to get, each chapter would be about 30-50 pages long. Maybe more. I have all these ideas for different mysteries, but am having a hard time deciding what order they should go in. Either it's something I want to save when I have more established, or if I were to put it in too early it would require too much explaining to keep the reader interested. Is there any way to figure out a good way to organize something like this? I've watched/read similar things in other media, but it's still proving to be rather difficult. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any suggestions.
I've done the exact same thing already. I had a series of 7 stories that were all individually mysteries on their own (although the last two were basically the same mystery... so we'll say 6 mysteries, 7 stories). But the overall story-arch was about a guy that hadn't been a detective or done anything like that in his life... yet he suddenly finds himself doing that and meeting new people and there are overarching plotlines that keep going throughout the series (I obviously don't want to get into specifics). And the story kind of ends with all the plotlines coming together in the last mystery. Some things end up changing, some stay somewhat the same, and there is some kind of ending to everything. But I never "organized" the episodes necessarily. Although the one thing I tended to do was the more "serious" plotlines/mysteries were toward the end and the simpler ones were toward the beginning. I don't exactly understand what you mean by "organize".
Well, "organize" probably wasn't the best word. What I mean is how to decide what stories should go before others. For example, I have the first one finished, and it's a simple "find the thing that got stolen" type of story since it's more of an introduction to the main characters and letting the readers get a taste of them. Now I don't know what to do. Explain more about the universe and its lore? Go more in-depth about the assistant to the main investigator? How much should I expose? Things like that are getting me frustrated.
