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Writing for comics

 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
18:59 / 29.03.03
ok, so im getting ready to begin work on a script for a comic, and i was looking for pointers.
Layout--how does one block it out, like a movie script but each panal is a scene?

also, do you write dialogue like in a regular script? what to you do to signify that what your writing goes into one of those little yellow "meanwhile..." style boxes?

i know these are silly, but brain is not functional at work...
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
19:31 / 29.03.03
There's been lots of books about this lately -- formal styleguides, examples of scripts. Bendis's script for Powers is published. Ask your local comic retailer. There seem to be lots of different ways of doing it, unlike screenwriting which is very formal.

In the very broad strokes: One page of the script is one page of the comic. Instead of writing the dialogue out, just number the balloons. Example:

Panel One: Birdseye view of a college campus in the middle of the night. The dorms are on the upper left, a modern sculpture in the center, and a security car is cruising the walkway down the right-hand side. A strong wind blows from upper right to lower left.

1.
2.

Panel Two: &c.

And then you have a separate sheet with all the dialogue and captions, like this:

Page 1, panel 1:
1. CAP: State University, midnight. The wind howls...
2: SFX: Wooosh

And so on. But there's a lot of variation.
 
 
Jack Fear
19:35 / 29.03.03
Never heard of using seperate pages for script and descriptions, Qalyn...

Here's how I do it, and what it looked like drawn.

(And no, it hasn't been published yet. Don't ask me why...)
 
  
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