What I Learned Scripting My First Graphic Novel
#SFWApro
Scott McCloud is a gifted comic book creator and arguably the field’s foremost theorist. Peter David and Alan Moore are acclaimed comic book writers. All three have authored insightful, accessible books full of advice invaluable to anyone who aspires to script a comic. (McCloud’s book is Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, David’s is Writing for Comics with Peter David, and Moore’s is Writing for Comics Volume 1.) If you’re such an aspirant, I recommend you read them.
Now me, I’m a novice who just finished his very first graphic novel script. My advice is less likely to prove essential. Still, I thought I’d share a couple things I learned in the process.
1. Writing to an exact page count is tricky. For this reason, I recommend creating a detailed outline even if you’ve never needed one when writing prose fiction.
My outline broke my 120-page story down into three acts, the first and third 30 pages and the middle one 60 pages. (I was following the template for a screenplay I found in a couple books on how to write those.) It also listed the specific scenes that made up each act. Once I worked out that much, simple arithmetic revealed how long, on average, each scene ought to be.
They weren’t all exactly that long, nor should they have been. Some contained more information, drama, or spectacle than others. But if I’d been writing consistently short or long, the outline would have made it easy to spot the problem early on.
2. The writer can only use a relatively small number of words per panel because he can’t bury the art under masses of text. I more or less knew this before I started, but I didn’t realize what a technical challenge it poses.
You cope partly by making sure you never say anything in words that the artist can convey visually.
You also keep dialogue spare and to the point while nonetheless using it to establish and reinforce characterization as in any piece of fiction. Lines that simultaneously handle exposition, problem solving, or similar plot issues and convey a sense of the speaker’s personality are not just optimal but virtually required.
3. Some action is too complicated for the reader to understand it if the script limits it to the one static image of a single panel. Yet it’s not sufficiently important to merit multiple panels.
When you realize you’ve depicted something like that, the solution is to substitute simpler action. The tough part is the realizing. You accomplish that by visualizing every panel you’re asking the artist to draw, but even that doesn’t always make it easy. My original script contained a couple confusing panels that I didn’t identify until I’d gone over it several times.
4. Spectacular moments deserve bigger panels. This results in fewer panels on a particular page.
5. A scene needs a certain number of panels to convey all the information required to propel the story forward.
6. It can be confusing to end a scene in the middle of a page.
7. Every page should end in a way that makes the reader eager to find out what happens next.
8. Now, here’s the catch to the above: Points 4-7 can all get in the way of one another. Opting for fewer panels, for example, can cause a page to end at a problematic point in the action. Conversely, making sure the scene ends where the page ends can shrink an important, dramatic moment down to just one panel among five or six.
I never found the magic answer to this problem, and I doubt there is one. I juggled and rearranged as best I could, and I can only recommend that others do the same. If you understand the underlying principles, you can at least make an intelligent decision as to which should take precedence at any given point in the story.
And those are my tips. My graphic novel should be out next year, at which point you can check it out and see how well I managed to follow my own advice. Meanwhile, if you’re curious about Basil and Moebius, the characters I wrote about, you can find more information here:
http://www.whoisthecollector.com
And here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Handshake-Ryan-Schifrin/dp/1932386769/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1372356641&sr=8-5&keywords=ryan+schifrin
Scott McCloud is a gifted comic book creator and arguably the field’s foremost theorist. Peter David and Alan Moore are acclaimed comic book writers. All three have authored insightful, accessible books full of advice invaluable to anyone who aspires to script a comic. (McCloud’s book is Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, David’s is Writing for Comics with Peter David, and Moore’s is Writing for Comics Volume 1.) If you’re such an aspirant, I recommend you read them.
Now me, I’m a novice who just finished his very first graphic novel script. My advice is less likely to prove essential. Still, I thought I’d share a couple things I learned in the process.
1. Writing to an exact page count is tricky. For this reason, I recommend creating a detailed outline even if you’ve never needed one when writing prose fiction.
My outline broke my 120-page story down into three acts, the first and third 30 pages and the middle one 60 pages. (I was following the template for a screenplay I found in a couple books on how to write those.) It also listed the specific scenes that made up each act. Once I worked out that much, simple arithmetic revealed how long, on average, each scene ought to be.
They weren’t all exactly that long, nor should they have been. Some contained more information, drama, or spectacle than others. But if I’d been writing consistently short or long, the outline would have made it easy to spot the problem early on.
2. The writer can only use a relatively small number of words per panel because he can’t bury the art under masses of text. I more or less knew this before I started, but I didn’t realize what a technical challenge it poses.
You cope partly by making sure you never say anything in words that the artist can convey visually.
You also keep dialogue spare and to the point while nonetheless using it to establish and reinforce characterization as in any piece of fiction. Lines that simultaneously handle exposition, problem solving, or similar plot issues and convey a sense of the speaker’s personality are not just optimal but virtually required.
3. Some action is too complicated for the reader to understand it if the script limits it to the one static image of a single panel. Yet it’s not sufficiently important to merit multiple panels.
When you realize you’ve depicted something like that, the solution is to substitute simpler action. The tough part is the realizing. You accomplish that by visualizing every panel you’re asking the artist to draw, but even that doesn’t always make it easy. My original script contained a couple confusing panels that I didn’t identify until I’d gone over it several times.
4. Spectacular moments deserve bigger panels. This results in fewer panels on a particular page.
5. A scene needs a certain number of panels to convey all the information required to propel the story forward.
6. It can be confusing to end a scene in the middle of a page.
7. Every page should end in a way that makes the reader eager to find out what happens next.
8. Now, here’s the catch to the above: Points 4-7 can all get in the way of one another. Opting for fewer panels, for example, can cause a page to end at a problematic point in the action. Conversely, making sure the scene ends where the page ends can shrink an important, dramatic moment down to just one panel among five or six.
I never found the magic answer to this problem, and I doubt there is one. I juggled and rearranged as best I could, and I can only recommend that others do the same. If you understand the underlying principles, you can at least make an intelligent decision as to which should take precedence at any given point in the story.
And those are my tips. My graphic novel should be out next year, at which point you can check it out and see how well I managed to follow my own advice. Meanwhile, if you’re curious about Basil and Moebius, the characters I wrote about, you can find more information here:
http://www.whoisthecollector.com
And here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Handshake-Ryan-Schifrin/dp/1932386769/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1372356641&sr=8-5&keywords=ryan+schifrin
No comments have been added yet.
