For those of you keeping up with my in-progress, on-going, graphic novel web-comic (I haven’t thought up a more concise word or phrase with which to classify the work), you may have noticed a seemingly sudden jump in the amount of pages on chadhiyana.com this week. Currently, I am posting one new page every week, and yet page 10 posted last week whilst page 15 posted yesterday (with 11 through 14 suddenly appearing between). In truth, only one new page posted since last week, however, I decided to change the numbering system for the pages, and no, it wasn’t to give the impression of there being more pages.

That said, there are more pages up than the former page 10 would lead readers to believe (or 11, had the old numbering system continued through yesterday). Before the change, the two introduction pages were counted separately, whilst the title page for the prologue went unnumbered. Thus, page 1 started on the first page of the prologue, following the title page. This was because I originally decided to number the first page of each chapter as page 1 and count up from there, restarting the numbers with each chapter. Another idea was to number all of the actual comic pages, but not the chapter title pages. I know many of you might be questioning my sanity at this point, and I must say I don’t blame you.

The first problem with this plan (and there were many) was that the former numbers did not reflect the page numbers as they exist in my script for the graphic novel (which numbers each page successively–including chapter title pages–through the entire graphic novel). Thus it had been adding a small level of confusion to the task of organising the pages and computer files which likely would only have built upon itself until it reached a near unmanageable and maddening level of chaos.

What’s more, the former numbering system is not the typical manner in which pages are numbered in books or web-comics. (Don’t ask me why I thought this was a sensible idea.) So, I decided to make the first page of the introduction page 1 proper (as it is in my script) and number all pages after that in cumulative succession (including chapter title pages). However, as with all plans, even this solution is an imperfect one.

As it is (and not to deceive the reader), I will need to number each title page as two pages. This is not because they are intended to be some sort of double-page spread (quite the contrary as it would be impossible based on where they fall). Rather this is because in my script all chapter titles fall on odd numbered pages, followed by a blank even numbered page and then the first page of the new chapter on the very next odd numbered page. After much consideration and internal debate (which is why I had not changed the numbering system before this week), I decided this was the best way to maintain the page numbers as they exist in the script, despite adding an “extra”, non-extant page to the count with every new chapter. Again, imperfect, but it’s the best solution I can find for my purposes.

And there it is. So much for focusing on updating galleries and adding an excerpt from the graphic novel script to the writing section over the next few weeks, but I felt this change needed to happen sooner rather than later, and it gave me something to write about (and another chance to remind any and all visitors that my graphic novel is publishing on chadhiyana.com). Check it out if you haven’t. The story is getting interesting, though it’s only just begun.

Cheers!