Graphic Story Telling in the Classroom

Last week I decided to put our class discussion on graphic literacy into practice and assigned my creative writing students to write and design a 12 panel comic strip. They were allowed to hand-draw them or use an online generator (I suggested www.stripgenerator.com and www.pixton.com). The results proved that graphic story telling is an advanced skill, but still fun for all who attempt.

The twenty students in the class are all seniors and had to have an A or B in junior English to take this class. We had already studied and wrote non-fiction essays and short stories, and I purposely waited until after the short story unit to give this assignment. I wanted them to have a full understanding of how to develop plot structure, characterization, setting, and dialog before they attempted to write a comic strip in which all of those elements would have to be detailed in limited space. I passed out the assignment guidelines towards the end of the class period and then gave them opportunity to ask questions and brainstorm. They then had two full hours in the computer lab the following days to complete the comic that had to be emailed to me by the third day.

To say the kids had a blast would be an understatement. For the first time all semester, none of them procrastinated or tried to work on other assignments. Seventeen of the students opted to use Pixton, two used Strip Generator, and one drew her own (with fabulous results). They quickly figured out how to create their panels and characters while I answered the few questions that they had. They also were constantly checking out each other’s work and offering suggestions or showing different techniques of how to manipulate the characters’ movements or props. Then on the day they were due, we had a fun hour of presenting the comics to the class.

As I watched them work and graded their final projects, I saw as I had predicted that the ones who were better story writers were better comic strip writers. Those who struggle with plot development and characterization had nonsensical stories and flat characters. However, my more skilled writers managed to convey a variety of emotions and full plots. Two students’ work did catch my eye. One girl is a fantastic writer, however, she is lazy and her stories always end up lacking in their resolution because she ends them so abruptly. The boy is also a great writer, but he’s a slow starter who always ends up with overdrawn plots that are turned in a day or two late. They turned in two of the best comic strips in the class and I think they both benefited from the 12 panel restriction. She had to keep the story going until its resolution in the 12^th panel while he had to keep his story focused to also reach its resolution.

In my opinion, the assignment didn’t help struggling writers by giving them a new format for storytelling. However, it did present an exciting new challenge for the entire class that they all enjoyed and strongly recommended that I assign to future classes.

One final note for anyone planning on doing this assignment—Pixton charges for school accounts. The students can create “Pixton for Fun” accounts on their own, but if they are under 18, they have to put in the email address of a parent, who is then e-mailed for approval.