So for the last month I’ve been part of a Beta Test group for Chris Oatley’s and Lora Innes’ new course Oatley Academy Live (OALive, for short). It’s an online course that is meant for storytellers who want to create and launch their own serialized personal project, whether that be a webcomic, novel, an animated short, a kid’s book, or even a story-fied portfolio.

The course has been chock full of fantastic information, and one of our assignments was to do what’s called a Sketchbook Story. Basically, we had to crank out a fully finished, beginning to end story based on a prompt– but done in our sketchbooks. It was meant to let you feel the process of creating an entire story and, without polish, waffling, or endless hours spent trying to make it perfect, just get it out there. Just scribble in that sketchbook. Cross things out, tape in post-its, make mistakes.

It was a rather freeing experience. No one is perfect, and neither is any project, which was an incredibly meta takeaway for me, once you read my story.

UPDATE: I ended up turning this story into a fully completed comic! Check it out here!