On Writing Comics, Part 2 (Patreon)

 Hey guys! Welcome back to my On Writing Comics series! If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

Now that we have our script planned and drafted, we can bring our words to life!

From Script to Comic

Sometimes -- often, to my shame -- I can't quite figure out enough of the story to write the WHOLE script before I start a chapter, so I script the first couple of scenes and then jump in.

This is less ideal because it's harder to adjust groundwork for later scenes, but I decided before I started Tamberlane that it wouldn't be perfect and would in fact be full of rookie mistakes, because this is my first time writing my own comic in any professional capacity. 

Now that I have a script, however much of it I've got, I'll start working on the comic. As far as process goes, it varies wildly depending how I feel like working that day or week. Still, I've found that the best way to grease the wheels and speed up production is to have a whole bunch of pages thumbnailed at once.

Thumbnailing is the process of taking the script and quickly jotting down layout, text placement, and character acting in a scribbly imitation of the final page.  During this stage, I'll try to vary up angles, panel sizes, and layouts from page to page. It's very easy to fall into the same page layouts over and over, because writing has a cadence, and certain panel types fit certain moments particularly well.

A General Guide for Panel Types: 

(This is for comics that read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Manga and other similar comics have different but similar rules.)

Time and Panel Width

The length of time a moment occupies corresponds to the horizontal width of the panel. Want a longer pause? Make the panel longer. It takes the eye a longer time to travel the page. 

Jason takes the time to set the scene, awing his kids with stories. Because of the horizontal space, it gives the sense that he's really drawing out the wonder in these locations. But when he switches to spooking them, the panels are more abrupt. Their reaction is the narrower panel in the row because their fear is more sudden. 

Movement and Panel Height

You can get certain ideas across through panel height, usually having to do with verticality. If a character is falling, or if you're showing height or growth, a tall panel is good. For example, Belfry falling into the ravine, or the first panel of Tamberlane in chapter 3, showing that she's grown. 

Even the inset panels are tall and skinny, to show that they take place concurrently with Belfry's fall. The reader's sense of time is connected with Belfry's descent.

Progress and Character Orientation

You can also get across the ideas of progress or a lack of progress by the direction your character is moving or facing. If a character is moving from right to left on a longer panel, it shows progress halting. Our eyes naturally follow where characters are looking (though you can alter this with a few other tricks, but that's for another post), so you've halted the eye's forward progress on the page. Similarly, if the character is moving left to right, it speeds our reading progress and we don't have to backtrack. 

If I want to show that a character is REALLY regressing - either in a conflict or in their actual movement - I'll move their physical space in the panel to leave a lot of empty space to the right of them. The reverse is true for progress + the left.

In this page, Tamberlane is turned to the left in the first panel to show her "forward progress" has been halted by disaster. But by the end of the page, she's in the right-hand side of the panels to show she's moved on.

And Then Some

And of course, all of this has to be balanced out with having enough room for your word balloons, to show all of the characters comfortably, and to give group scenes some breathing room.

And that's only scraping the surface of what you can do with comic panels!

Back to Writing Comics

When I'm working on thumbnails, probably 6 times out of 10 I'm changing things as I go. Tweaking dialogue, adjusting moments that don't feel right, even adding or condensing pages. I try to keep an eye out for moments that feel flabby and uninteresting, or things that I love but which clutter up the narrative for no reason. (I just had to nix something in Chapter 4 that I've wanted to have since the beginning but which serves no narrative purpose and will never be called on again. It happens!)

And then, as I move from thumbnail to actually finishing the pages, I tweak even more. Sometimes when I'm working on a page it's like pulling teeth, and that usually signals to me that something is wrong with it fundamentally. So I will step back and figure out what I need.

That happened with the beginning of Timmothy's speech scene in Chapter 3. The MEGAPAGE didn't exist and the end of Tess & Belfry's conversation went straight to the council talking after. 

It feels rushed and awkward, doesn't it?

It didn't give you a full moment to process the bombs from the previous conversation. It also didn't really give you a sense of place. The cameos were originally going to in that little tiny panel 2, barely a glance - but I really wanted to get across how BIG this event is, and how crowded their little amphitheater is.

So I concocted the MEGAPAGE as a way to really get that enormity across ... and also to try and get more patrons on the page. I love drawing you guys! Your characters are great. 

The "CLANG CLANG" really helps bring the two pages together as well.

That helped smooth the transition, giving your brain some time to digest the previous information by giving you a bunch of non-verbal pictures to enjoy and process. And then it moved smoothly into the council's discussion without pressure.

Oops, I Made a Mistake

I have made so many mistakes! I fix what I can before print, but there are just some things that can't be fixed. And that's okay. Like I said, Tamberlane is a project where I am really trying hard to let it go. It's an experiment, a project, a place to grow my skills. If I were to do Tamberlane over again, I'd fix the following things:

• Nix the last names and the barter system. It's so overly complex for no reason except "but worldbuilding!" And readers get hung up on it, for justifiable reasons.
• The About blurb wouldn't have focused on Belfry so much. It sets up reader expectations for a different story. (This is getting changed, but it won't alter the perceptions that already got set up.)
• I would have grounded the mystery of Abroad a bit differently. It's evolved a lot over time, so that's just how it goes.

And a few others, but I can't get into those without ~spoilers~.

Either way, the story is what the story is. And I'm immensely proud of Tamberlane, and how far it's come and how far I've come! I think that even with its flaws it's a great story that folks are going to enjoy.

I hope you enjoyed this peek at my process! If you enjoyed this, please let me know! And if there's any sort of topic you'd like me to cover in a blog like this, I'm all ears. 

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a notebook calling my name...