Buying In

I'm all in!
Poker reference.

We've all read comics that grab us and get us invested completely in what's going on. And we've read others that don't do it for us. Most are probably somewhere in between, with hits and misses. Such is life.

And of course we want our own stories/pages to be ones where people buy in, are emotionally invested and go along for the ride.

So I was thinking about some of the "make or break" elements that keep me reading, or make it more difficult to stick with a comic. Disclaimer: this is mostly theoretical, but still has some truth to it. There are lots of good comics I would be reading in a more dedicated way if I had the time.

But maybe this will be some useful food for thought…

What makes me keep "buying in"? There are probably several things, but I want to focus on what I think is the biggest one.

Understanding what's happening.

This is the biggest one by far, and everything else hangs on it. If I don't get what's going on, it's hard to stay with a story for very long.

Of course, in a long form story, not every page is going to explain everything we need to know. And some stories are structured in a mysterious way, where we're supposed to figure things out as we go. It's not a matter of getting a long explanation of the entire Universe of the story, either!

What we need to understand is 1. What the character wants (and maybe why), 2. What's in the way, and 3. Some kind of stakes. Meaning, what does the character lose if they don't get what they want, and what do they win if they do. This applies to stories as a whole, but also to individual scenes.

It rarely seems to happen, but in a perfect world, I would want every page to have a proper setup, conflict, and payoff like that.

If I read a comic for too many pages and can't hook in to what's going on, at least on some level, it's hard to stick around.

There are other aspects to this - Characters we can relate to (or are entertained by or something), questions we want answered, snappy dialogue and good art and such. But to me, making it clear what's going on is right at the top of the list.

Of course, the trick is that you can't just EXPLAIN everything that's going on. Therein lies the challenge, eh?

So what do you think? Am I way off on this? What helps you buy in and keeps you reading? What puts you off or makes you cash out? How do you try to keep readers engaged?

Shuffle up and deeeeeeeeal!

I'm not sure why I married this subject to poker. But I did.

Have a good one; see you next time!

-Banes