NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 32

Without the pressure of a time limit and no distractions, I was able to sit down and go over the plan for the last few chapters.

I had gotten to a point in the story where I was satisfied with what I’d written, but it did have ramifications later on, ramifications that were not in the original plan.

That later on, of course, is now, so once I’d looked at the plan and read the previous two chapters to get my bearings, it was easier to write.

But…

Isn’t there always a but?

As I was writing, another thought came to mind. Some time ago, I realised there needed to be another action sequence arising out of an event that had sparked an impromptu and ill-fated attempted kidnapping.

That had to be avenged, but in the rough draft I had already written, it didn’t figure in the ending.

Now it does, and I have written it, and it’s great.

Even if I say so myself.

Tomorrow I will be covering the fallout from this event.

What I learned about writing – What Lies beneath

There is always something to see, especially when you are told, ‘nothing to see here, move along’.

That’s the question every thriller/mystery writer wants to get to the bottom of by the end of the story.

As a rule, it’s never really what you see or what you think you see, but it can be hiding in plain sight.

Someone once told me that we are trained to see what we want to see, often not what it is that’s there in front of us.

Like reading a story with spelling errors, gaps, and bad punctuation, our eyes gloss over those errors because we’re trained to read words quickly using only a few letters.

It’s why we sometimes misinterpret words and find ourselves up that proverbial garden path. I know I have done it myself. I know those apps that predict the word you want to use but invariably display the wrong one are as flawed as our eyes and brains can be at times, so I try not to use them.

A good detective looks beneath the surface to see what others don’t.

You look at a shop window and see several products on sale at ridiculously low prices.

A detective looks at the same store window and sees the third dress along on the rack of sale items had a blood stain on the bottom hemline, and deduces the dress was worn by the murderer of a bystander.

Someone in the shop, customer, or employee had a case to answer.

Then, sometimes, we can’t see the wood for the trees. It’s an interesting expression, but quite true.

Any time I visit a new place, I try to get as much visitor information as possible, and then, based on the description, go visit.

How many times have I been disappointed? A few. What they sometimes describe is the ambience, which may be there when there are fewer people about, but not when there are so many you cannot enjoy the view, the sidewalk cafes, and most of all the ambience.

This is translated into your writing, and I like the idea of depicting a place so that if you decide to go there, you see what I see, and not necessarily what the brochures tell you.

Then, of course, there is ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. That is not easy to convey in words, but I’m working on it.

One day!

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 105

Day 105 – Graphic novels

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Beyond the Comic Strip: A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Your Own Graphic Novel

For a long time, the term “graphic novel” was met with a shrug. People thought of them as “just comic books”—fleeting entertainment for kids. But today, the graphic novel stands as a respected, powerful medium of literature. From memoirs like Persepolis to genre-bending epics like Watchmen, graphic novels prove that when you combine visual language with the written word, you unlock a storytelling potential that prose alone just can’t touch.

If you’ve ever dreamed of telling a story through panels, splash pages, and speech bubbles, you’re in the right place. Let’s break down what graphic novels actually are and how you can start crafting your own.

What Exactly is a Graphic Novel?

At its core, a graphic novel is a book-length narrative told through sequential art.

Unlike a comic book, which is typically a serialised, thin pamphlet released monthly, a graphic novel is a complete, self-contained story (or a collected volume) bound in a book format. It uses the visual medium—panels, gutters, character design, and colour theory—to control the pacing of the reader’s experience in a way that text-only books cannot.

In a graphic novel, the art isn’t just an “illustration” of the story; the art is the story.

How to Create Your Own Graphic Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a graphic novel is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a labour of love that requires patience and a fair bit of planning. Here is your roadmap from concept to finished product.

1. Develop Your “Hook” and Script

Every great graphic novel starts with an idea. But before you pick up a pencil, you need a script.

The Synopsis: Summarise your story in a few paragraphs. What is the central conflict? Who is the protagonist?
The Script: Write it like a screenplay, but include descriptions of what is happening in each panel. Keep your dialogue tight—remember, you have limited space on the page!

2. Character and World Design

Before you draw the first page, spend time in your sketchbook.

Character Sheets: Draw your characters from different angles and with different expressions. If they aren’t consistent, the reader will get confused.
World-Building: What does your setting feel like? Create a “visual bible” for your world so the architectural style and atmosphere remain cohesive throughout the book.

3. Thumbnails: The Blueprint

This is the most crucial step. Thumbnails are tiny, rough sketches of every page in your book. They don’t need to look good; they just need to map out the flow.

Where does the reader’s eye go?
Are the panels too crowded?
Does the page turn reveal an exciting surprise?
Pro-tip: Don’t skip this! Fixing a mistake in a thumbnail takes seconds; fixing it in an inked final page takes hours.

4. Pencilling and Inking

Now it’s time to commit to the paper (or screen).

Pencilling: Draft the layout, body proportions, and backgrounds cleanly.
Inking: Use fine-tip pens or digital brushes to finalise the lines. This gives the drawings weight and definition, making them “pop” off the page.

5. Lettering: The Silent Storyteller

Bad lettering can ruin great art. Make sure your word balloons are placed in the order they should be read (top to bottom, left to right). Use clear, readable fonts, and ensure there is enough “breathing room” around the text so the page doesn’t look cluttered.

6. Coloring (or Shading)

If you aren’t doing the book in black and white, this is where you solidify the mood. Colour is a powerful tool—cool blues can signal sadness, while jarring reds can indicate danger. If you’re sticking to black and white, focus on value—using shadows and hatching to create depth and contrast.

Final Thoughts: Just Start

The biggest hurdle isn’t the technical skill—it’s the daunting nature of the project. A graphic novel is a mountain of work, but you climb it one panel at a time.

Don’t aim for perfection on your first attempt. Aim for completion. Whether you’re using traditional pencils and ink or an iPad with Procreate, the most important tool you have is your voice.

So, what story are you going to draw first?

The 2 am Rant: Life’s little experiences seem to have disappeared

I’m on a riverboat, sailing slowly down the Nile, ahead of us the Pyramids, a sight, I’m told, to behold despite the ravages of time.

There are others, a curious bunch of people, drawn from all over the globe, and from different classes, in a time when that seemed to matter.

Of course, it’s 1935.

And it’s all in my head. Something I’d seen somewhere, or read perhaps, and now that I come to think of it, it was an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Even now, nearly a hundred years later, it may have been possible to replicate it; only a world war, British Empire aspirations and later abandonment, and civil strife made it difficult, but not impossible.

And then, closing off travel anywhere, COVID-19 finished the job.

For someone who likes to travel the world, looking for locations and inspiration for my stories, that had made life far more unbearable than just having to remain locked up for fear of catching it. And, even though it is gone, we now seem to have was popping up everywhere, closing off things that we just took for granted would be there forever.

Not any more. Nationalism, greed, and in some cases, utter stupidity, are closing off countries that are no longer safe to visit. Even the United States was once thought to be the safest place on earth.

Gone are those treasured moments…

Like sitting at an outside cafe overlooking the main piazza in San Gimignano, having a pizza, an authentic pizza, and a bottle of Moretti beer.

Like wandering the narrow cobbled streets of Florence, staying in what was once a 12th-century monastery, having wild boar pasta, and just a short distance away, a gelato.

Like wandering around similarly narrow and cobbled laneways in Montmartre, stopping at a corner crepe restaurant, where the crepes are to die for.

Taking that away is like taking away a hand or a leg.

How long will it be before the world returns to normal, or will it?

In my conspiracy theory mind, it seems to me there is more going on than just viruses and greed; it has overtones of world domination, or worse, watching the destruction of the world economy, and capitalism for want of a better word, at the same pace that climate change is changing the planet.

Neither occurrence is new; it’s happened time and time again over many millennia, and it’s just that we don’t seem to learn from it.

Well, maybe not in my lifetime.

Let’s hope generations to come do.

Searching for Locations: Venice, Italy

Venice is definitely a city to explore. It has an incredible number of canals and walkways, and each time we would start our exploration at St Marks square when it’s not underwater

Everyone I have spoken to about exploring Venice has told me how easy it is to get lost. It has not happened to me, but with the infinite number of ways you can go, I guess it is possible.

We started our exploration of Venice in St Marks square, where, on one side there was the Museo di Palazzo Ducale and, next door, the Basilica di San Marco. Early morning and/or at high tide, water can be seen bubbling up from under the square, partially flooding it. I have seen this happen several times. Each morning as we walked from the hotel (the time we stayed in the Savoia and Jolanda) we passed the Bridge of Sighs.

Around the other three sides of the square are archways and shops. We have bought both confectionary and souvenirs from some of these stores, albeit relatively expensive. Prices are cheaper in stores that are away from the square and we found some of these when we walked from St Marks square to the Railway station, through many walkways, and crossing many bridges, and passing through a number of small piazzas.

That day, after the trek, we caught the waterbus back to San Marco, and then went on the tour of the Museo di Palazzo Du which included the dungeons and the Bridge of Sighs from the inside. It took a few hours, longer than I’d anticipated because there was so much to see.

The next day, we caught the waterbus from San Marco to the Ponte di Rialto bridge. Just upstream from the wharf there was a very large passenger ship, and I noticed there were a number of passengers from the ship on the waterbus, one of whom spoke to us about visiting Venice. I didn’t realize we looked like professional tourists who knew where we were going.

After a pleasant conversation, and taking in the views up and down the Grand Canal, we disembarked and headed for the bridge, looking at the shops, mostly selling upmarket and expensive gifts, and eventually crossing to the other side where there was a lot of small market type stalls selling souvenirs as well as clothes, and most importantly, it being a hot day, cold Limonata. This was my first taste of Limonata and I was hooked.

Continuing on from there was a wide street at the end and a number of restaurants where we had lunch. We had a map of Venice and I was going to plot a course back to the hotel, taking what would be a large circular route that would come out at the Accademia Bridge, and further on to the Terminal Fusina Venezia where there was another church to explore, the Santa Maria del Rosario.

This is a photo of the Hilton Hotel from the other side of the canal.

It was useful knowledge for the second time we visited Venice because the waterbus from the Hilton hotel made its first stop, before San Marco, there. We also discovered on that second visit a number of restaurants on the way from the terminal and church to the Accademia Bridge.

This is looking back towards San Marco from the Accademia Bridge:

And this, looking towards the docks:

Items to note:

Restaurants off the beaten track were much cheaper and the food a lot different to that in the middle of the tourist areas.

There are a lot of churches, big and small, tucked away in interesting spots where there are small piazza’s. You can look in all of them, though some asked for a small fee.

Souvenirs, coffee, and confectionary are very expensive in St Marks square.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 105

Day 105 – Graphic novels

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