A Hopefully Helpful Thread

I had a Hollywood friend ask me this morning about how to format a comic book script. That's a big question. I'm going to answer it, and I thought it might be helpful to some of you who are aspiring to write comics yourself (the short answer is, everyone does it differently. The long answer is, here are some suggestions…).

Because I'm on the net and relatively available, I get about a bagillion questions about how to write, produce, and market comics and other stuff, just hundreds of questions about the art, craft, and business of writing. I can't possibly answer them all and I get a lot of duplication.

So, I thought I would start a thread here, and try to answer a few such questions as time permits.

If you have a particular question, go ahead and ask. I'll be as helpful and truthful as I can.

Let me make a few rules here, to head off anything that makes this uncomfortable.

1) Please don't give any details about your stories. I can't answer them, I can't read questions where your plot is discussed at all, for legal reasons. If I get questions about that, I will have to shut the thread down.

2) Please no fanfic questions, I'm doing this to try to help people who want to write for publication. Nothing against fanfic but there are lots of resources that can help you there better than I can.

3) Please try to make your question specific, and reasonable in scope. If you ask me, "How do I break into comics?" that is too big a question, AND I've already covered that at length on this very Tumblr. Try to narrow it down a little. Questions can be about style, marketing, craft, business, whatever. Some subjects I am not as knowledgeable about, if that's the case, I'll tell you. But smaller questions will get answered quicker.

4) Please only one question at a time from each poster.

5) Please be patient, I have to work these in as best I can when I have a free minute. If I don't answer your question right away, give it a bit of time.

6) It will help if you reblog when you ask your question, so I can simply reblog the answer. Just putting the question on the thread makes it hard to answer in Tumblr format.

I'm doing this to try to help, no other reason, so please be considerate and polite and succinct. I will give frank answers. If you disagree with them, that's fine, but the answers will be the truth as I know it.

Fair enough?

And we begin.  ;)