Obligatory Angst Comment:
(I am SOOOO rusty at this. No, like REALLY. The last time I did this sh*t, I was 25 years old. Imposter syndrome is real.
F*** my brain for popping me an idea for a “5-page short comic-book story for a class project” that has now insisted in taking on a whole life of its own. No, I’m NOT going to publish the short completed piece just yet. It might need a bit of revision to fit into the… (drumroll)… Graphic Novel.)
With that out of the way: The following is my handy-dandy how-to guide to creating a plot/character/dialog driven Graphic Novel (especially as a solo creator.)
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WELCOME TO YOUR PERSONAL TRUDGE THROUGH MORDOR.
Hope you brought snacks, an iPod, and a fresh prescription refill of your antidepressants; this is going to take you a looooong time. 
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PART 1: WRITING
1) Essentially, you are writing a screenplay.
You are now a writer.
2) Go back and cut all scenes and dialog down to just the essential info you want to impart – somehow without sacrificing meaning, nuance, and intent.
You are now an editor.
(And without sacrificing characterization, though of course the visuals will tell a hella lot about the characters; body language, facial expressions, etc.)
3) Corollary to Step 2: Make sure that if the planned visuals can tell the story, you DON’T repeat that in either dialog balloons or narration boxes. Show, Don’t Tell, if and when you can – including via the use of flashbacks. Remember: it’s “Graphic” as well as “Novel“.
4) Repeat step 2 several times. When you think you are done, *do it again*. You will need to feature ART, not walls of text.
5) SPEAKING OF ART: Although you are not yet at the official “drawing the book” stage, start designing and sketching/drawing your characters, if you haven’t already been doing so. Keep the designs and costumes simple enough, because you will be drawing them over and over. Create turnaround pose sheets, draw facial expressions, body language, relative height charts, etc. Write character profile sheets as well.
Seeing the characters you plan to draw will help with visual consistency later, and if you decide to make changes to their look, this is a great time to revise.
You are now both a casting director, and a costuming/wardrobe department.
6) Before I forget: Organize your research. Keep files of any and all info you collect as reference, whether it be text files of data you found on the internet or in print, or even from conversations, etc., or art and photos of anything from cool poses to fabric draping to photos of cool settings you might hope to use for reference.
You are now a recorder / secretary / archivist.
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PART 2: LAYOUT
6.5) ETA: actually, before you break your scenes into panel format, feel free to create a free-form standard storyboard version of art for scenes you may want to see in panels along with your dialog sections. Some (or all) of it can be adapted to your final panel format later.
7) Start breaking your scenes into page and panel format. This is where you can start making lots of notes on proposed image composition.
You are now a storyboardist.
8) Pay attention to the pacing, including how using more or fewer panels for a given scene can change the whole feeling of the scene.
You are now a director, and you’d also better start thinking like a cinematographer.
9) Break longer dialog portions into sections within a panel, and even across separate panels. Put the dialog into word balloons on your panel mockup to check for fit and how much space is available for the all-important art. The space needed for the dialog will often dictate the image composition.
10) Re-visit step 2 as needed; too long a talking sequence, especially without varying the visual interest, will bore the reader. “Talking heads” are worse on a comic page than on TV.
11) ESSENTIAL: If you have a big reveal, it needs to come right after a page turn, or it won’t have impact.
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PART 3: DRAWING
12) Start making sketches for your panel art. Sometimes your ideas won’t look as good as you envisioned, or fit well in the space, and you will then need to rethink and recompose your design, adjust your panel breakdown, adjust your dialog (step 2!!), or all three.
13) Vary the art so it’s not boring, AND so it helps tell the story. Remember that a closeup, an object zoom, a mid shot, a far shot, a voice-over, a birds eye or worm’s eye view, etc. all lend a different “feel”, and often different emotional cues to a panel.
14) Redraw your sketches in more final format, place the art inside the panels, resize as needed. Tweak the dialog balloon locations and line breaks as needed.
Thank all the freaking gods for digital art tools.
15) Yay, you now have characters and dialog, but make sure you also have remembered to draw backgrounds, which many (not all) panels will need. (My absolute least favorite part of this process: drawing backgrounds. By the way, if you have a splash panel, the background was part of the main composition in the first place.)
16) Maintain consistency and good visual balance. Each individual panel can be seen as an art piece, but so can each page as a whole, as well as each 2-page spread.
17) Spend forever editing the final product. In fact, you should definitely have been editing as you go, don’t just start now. You will need to check for continuity of art details, action, and dialog more than you think.
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PART 4: MOUNT DOOM IS IN SIGHT, DON’T FORGET TO TOSS THE RING
18) Oh yeah, at some point you eventually do go on to publishing, whether you are releasing it in parts serially on the web for the benefit of Patreon subscribers, or as a whole finished graphic novel, possibly even in print.
I haven’t done this since I was 25, when the Internet didn’t yet exist, and when self-published Indie comics were not so hard to get picked up by distributors , so I will need to discover and navigate the current procedures.
19) Agonize over whether your exhausting labor of obsession – I mean love – is actually any good.
Congratulations, you are a graphic novelist!
Go take your antidepressants and please avoid cutting off your ear (Van Gogh did not actually do that to himself. Remove spaces for link – https : // starrynightplay. com / vincent-van-gogh-ear/). I bet you might already be thinking of your next project.
20) Profit! (Hahahahahahahahaha – No; best advice I have is: unless your work ever really takes off in sales, HAVE A DAY JOB.)
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So, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
Because you can’t not. That’s just what being a creative person is.
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(All text above (c) Karisu. I wrote this thing in Notes on my Android phone.)