This is an idea for an experiment which works best if you already have a successful webcomic, as it would require a group of people, preferrably people who know your comic, to pull it off.
But this is what you do:
First, you put up a notice on your website which says something like this:
On Weekday MMM DD, YYYY, I will publish a WEBCOMIC-NAME strip where the first and last sentence will be picked from a pool of random sentences. To do that, I need your help coming up with sentences to pick from!
Do you have a good idea for a sentence that would be perfect to open a strip of WEBCOMIC-NAME? Or the perfect sentence to end a strip of WEBCOMIC-NAME? Send your sentences to email@thewebcomic.com by Weekday MMM DD, YYYY!
… and then, you wait for the suggestions to pour in. Obviously, a comment field, a forum thread or any kind of script would work just as good as collecting sentences on e-mail. It would obviously also be possible to create an open sentence pool, but the advantage of doing it this way is that you get sentences written by people who know your webcomic.
When you have tons of contributions, sort them in opening sentences and end sentences, and use a script of some kind to pick a random first sentence, and a random last sentence. This should be completely randomized – just picking your favorite is cheating. The entire point of this challenge is that the two sentences should be random.
Now you have a first sentence and a last sentence – most likely from two different contributors. Come up with the rest of the dialogue, and draw the comic. I imagine that connecting two random sentences can be pretty fun.
And to put down a couple of ground rules you can follow:
- The sentences you pick out must be used as the very first and the very last sentence in your comic strip. No dialogue before the first line, no dialogue after the last line. Signs and other written texts are okay.
- Even though your readers send you the sentences, they have no say in who speaks them. So you have a chance of playing around with that.
- Obviously, there may be some kinds of sentences you wish to avoid. But if that’s the case, write the rules beforehand. If it’s a possibility that you’ll discard a submitted sentence because it contains swears, tell your readers before you begin that swear words aren’t allowed. If you hate really long sentences, set a maximum number of words. The important thing is that you make these rules before you begin.
- You are allowed to proofread the sentences you use, but you can’t change them in other ways than fixing grammar and typos.
Obviously, this is not the greatest way to make an awesome comic. It can, however, be an amusing experiment, as you have to connect two points with your creativity as your only tool. Imagine that your script tells you to make a comic strip where the first sentence should be “Your doctor told you what?!?“, and the last sentence should be “Diet coke.” Your job would be to connect those two sentences, and I can’t really imagine any way that’s not a fun challenge.
Are you interested in trying this with your webcomic, and want some kind of tool to help you pick random sentences? Let me know in a comment, and I’ll try making something. I imagine that if enough people are interested, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a website where your visitors could submit their sentences to a database and you would then be able to press a button to get two random sentences. But let’s talk about that if anyone shows any interest in it.
28 ideas down, only 72 to go! Awlrite!