I constantly doddle my ideas on a sheet of paper. What I'm presently working on is Mychal's dilemma with her wings and long mane. Mychal's trapped in a hole and has to use his wings to fly for the first time, but has great difficulty.

Here's my doddle page with the wrap-around solution (misspellings and all).

My working method is to list out each thing I want to convey to the reader, then devote either one page to each...or combine several onto one page.

After making a script, I may have an idea for a layout when I go into working on a page, but I do a LOT of playing around with the layout/roughs until I'm satisfied. XD I don't even usually make small thumbnails first. Maybe I should, I dunno, but the way I do it seems to work well enough for me.

When it comes to deciding how much content to put into a page, there's a lot of guess work and zooming out to look at the overall layout involved. If it's looking too crowded or a panel seems out of place, I may decide to cut some things and save them for the next page. I also have to consider when pages would be better off with only 1-3ish bigger panels for drama.

I tend to read through my written material (a book chapter normally) and then decide what part of the scene needs to be on the page.

From there I sketch out the basic frames and poses, hand write in dialogue, and then scan it. Often times I'll see that I've forgotten an important point, or I think it needs another cell to balance out what's going on and add it (usually digitally).

Additionally I tend to resize and rearrange portions of my inks in order to make it fit the page better or fit the flow of the action/dialogue.

I guess while I'm writing the script, and do most of the figuring out in the thumbnail stage. I did very detailed scripts, panel by panel, all through Volume I - but then I kept changing things when I got to thumbnails anyhow, so what I've got now is more of a detailed outline with dialogue.

Sometimes I realise I have to change stuff around when I'm in the pencilling phase, but that's pretty rare now (it happened a lot in the first couple of chapters I did).

I figure all of that out when doing the thumbnails. While I might have some ideas when writing or even before, thumbnails bring it all to life.

I can double check if the action flows, if pages feel overcrowded or if a scene is taking too long (I mean just two additional pages mean half a month at my update schedule).

There have been times when I haven't been feeling my thumbnail anymore, though. Sometimes there is more than half a year between the making of the thumbnails and starting on the actual page and by then I might've found better footing in the visuals of a chapter. They are great as safety net in case I can't find a better solution nonetheless :P

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Geez, so many of you put way more thought into this than I do. My page layouts are shaped by a combination of "what fits on the paper" and "how to make it end on a punchline."

(That's the full-page BICP, anyway. Leif & Thorn, unless I have a specific reason to break the formula, is always "4 panels' worth of stuff with a punchline at the end.")

1) story outline, 2) flesh it out with specific actions and dialogue, 3) split into what can happen in a single panel, 4) group those into what feels right for a page, with no more than 8 panels (usually around 4-6) and cut/add content to fit, 5) thumbnail, 6) sketch and draw.

Though dialogue and panel composition can change up to last minute if I come up with a better idea as I'm drawing.

My method is as haphazard as everything else I do; since I only update once every two weeks I try to jam as much story onto one page as I can, and if it doesn't all fit I shave off some. I try to approach each page as its own story with a beginning, middle, and end but sometimes it gets awkward.

Personally, I'm just writing down the script for the dialogue and imagine how the characters change expressions while they're saying that, added to the reactions, environment, surrounding characters and how they influence the conversation. This kind of influences how many panels I draw on each page and how many background details will be present if they're relevant.
I try and make an effort to make each page reveal something or leave a cliffhanger to have readers come back for more.

My pages have on average 6-7 panels.