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Looking for tips and tricks to the art of writing for television? Welcome to the blog of experienced television writer Jane Espenson. Check it out regularly to learn about spec scripts, writing dos and don'ts, and what Jane had for lunch! (RSS:  ) |
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Home » Archives » March 2008 » I Hope Jenny Isn't a Worm
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03/24/2008: I Hope Jenny Isn't a Worm
A while back, I promised you, Gentle Readers, a little post about comic book writing. Have you ever seen a comic book script? They're fascinating. Different companies and different writers use different formats. Some, I'm told, describe only the action and put in dialogue after the pictures have been drawn. I've never written that kind.
The ones I've seen and written look surprisingly like television scripts. They're broken down by page and panel instead of act and scene. There are around 22-ish pages in a book, and from one to six-ish panels per page. The panels are described with some precision and the dialogue is given for each panel in script format.
Here's an example:
PAGE TEN
Panel One:
We are behind Jennifer, who has made herself comfortable in the giant bird's nest. Next to her an enormous egg cracks ominously.
SFX: krrrrk
Panel Two:
We're seeing Jennifer from the front now. She eyes the egg warily as a sharp bill punctures the shell from the inside.
SFX: Kek!
Jennifer
Nice birdy?
There. See how that works? Notice how visually precise it is. I find that when you write a comic book you have to think even more visually than usual because you're literally selecting the SHOT: the camera angle, composition, everything. Some writers also get very precise about the panel, specifying if it is square or horizontal, how big it is and whether it gets any special treatment like overlapping other panels or whatever.
Picking the number of panels per page is also crucial. Assuming every panel takes the same time to read, you'll notice that you can make events seem to happen quickly by giving them fewer panels, and slowly by giving them more panels. This can feel counter-intuitive since you may feel tempted to break down the complexity of a quick move by showing each step.
There is a also a neat little trick which is to treat the bottom of a page a little like an act break, by which I mean having something depicted there that draws the reader to the next page -- a suspenseful declaration, the start of a motion... Some writers do this with every page, others only with the odd-numbered pages, since those are the ones that require the reader to physically turn a page.
I've only written a few comic books, and all for one company, so you might find information that contradicts what I've written here. I can only tell you that this is (pretty darn near all of) what I know about comic book scripts!
Lunch: burger at In 'n' Out. Animal Style.
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