A comic strip has three or four panels in which to deliver its punchline. That’s not a lot of space. In fact, many novice comic strip writers stumble because they’re trying to do too many things in the limited time they have with their reader. If you’re releasing a humorous longform comic on the Web, you may have more panels, but the core concept is the same. Your gag is going to land more solidly if you focus on one concept built around your punchline. Here’s a case study. We’ll take an existing comic strip draft and workshop it to a better version.

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