Panel 8: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Hey guys! Due to some technical difficulties I couldn't get a blog post up yesterday, so here I am with my cup of coffee and cigarette punching one up for you now. If it seems a little disjointed or not up to my usual standard, I apologize. I'm still a little foggy at this hour. This week I want to discuss panel descriptions and the relationship with your artist which... this may surprise you... tie in pretty intensely.

I'm going to be a little frank here, some of us comic writers, well, we're jerks. Not all, but quite more than makes me comfortable. I realize that we often are the originators of stories, but we often forget that the artists are the people who bring bring life to and enhance them.  I've been fortunate enough that every artist I've worked with, makes me look like a better writer than I am. Seriously. So many writers have the egos the size of Russia and forget, hey, it takes two of us (or more) to makes comics. And I'm writing because... dun dun dun... I can't draw them. Well, I can, but they wouldn't be very good. Trust me, I know, I used to draw comics too.

So honestly, it's important to trust your artists and have an open dialogue with them when it comes to panel composition, pacing, and, well, the entire process. Giles and I discuss character designs, location designs, panel and page composition, pacing, characterization, and pretty much every aspect of Igor. He and I know so many tiny bits of information about the series that will probably never even see the light of day. But this kind of dialogue is essential, particularly on a mini-series or long-running title.

Here are a couple examples of script versus pencils where Giles had an idea, discussed it with me, and ran with it. This is from Igor: Occult Detective #1 and reflects a pacing choice Giles made that seriously improves the issue.

PAGE 16 (5 Panels)

Panel 1: One of the tentacles knocks Mr. Frank back.

Panel 2: Close shot of Igor. He yells to Mr. Frank.

IGOR:
Mr. Frank, keep him distracted!  I need to send it back!

Panel 3: Igor starts rifling through the books on the ground.

Panel 4: Mr. Frank clenches his teeth.

MR. FRANK:
Godamnit.

Panel 5: Mr. Frank stretches out and levitates into the air and electrical energy surges out of his body, striking the monster.

SFX: Kraka-THOOM!

MONSTER:
SKRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Giles decided that the electrical energy attack should be a full splash page because, frankly, it's a pretty bad-ass cool moment and deserved that kind of focus. So he took what was one page of script and made it into two comic pages. Obviously, we had to find a moment to trim back on and Giles easily found a moment to do that with. See the following.

PAGE 20 (6 Panels)

Panel 1: Shot of Igor and Mr. Frank’s townhouse. Lightning is crashing in the sky again. It is raining heavily. There is a silhouette on the roof.

CAPTION:
November 14, 1923 – Greenwich Village, NY

Panel 2: Igor is on the roof with Mr. Frank who is strapped to some sort of table, he is not wearing a shirt. There is a lightning rod near the table.

Panel 3: Igor attaches cables to the bolts on Mr. Frank’s neck.

Panel 4: Show that the cables connect to the lightning rod.

Panel 5: Lightning cracks in the sky.

Panel 6: Igor looks up at the sky.

IGOR:
I hate this crap.

PAGE 21 (1 Panels)

Panel 1: Splash page. Lightning strikes the rod and electricity flows through Mr. Frank’s body. He arches beneath the straps. Igor is in the foreground covering his eyes with his forearm.

How he crammed all of the necessary information into one page, utterly eludes me here, but he totally nails it. And Igor #1 is better for it! And it's not that we're incapable as writers, but sometimes artists just have ideas that are better. A lot of Giles' pages are exactly what I've written, down to panel size, angles, and everything but he always has that freedom to come to me and say, "Hey, can I tweak this? I think it'll improve the story for this reason." And you know often I've told him no? Never.

The other important bit I need to discuss is trusting your artist when it comes to panel composition. As writers we tend to think that we need to describe every last solitary detail of a panel. This could not be any less true. Give the artist what he or she needs to work with and that's it. As writers we tend to be control freaks... I know I am. But we have to kick those inclinations to the curb if we want to have a good relationship with our artists. I'm not saying we need to give bare-bones panel descriptions but don't go overboard. Here's an establishing panel from an Igor short. It has the essential bits and couple little things that I really wanted in there but I give the artist enough freedom to do what we he wants with it.


Panel 1: Large establishing interior panel of Grimm’s home. There ought to be piles of books, though they should be organized not just strewn about. On the walls there should be ghoulish paintings perhaps some references to Pickman’s paintings. The whole place ought to have the look of a well-kept library or study. There should be some furniture like plush couches or perhaps an arm chair. The guy does live there, but it should be very clear that he spends most of his time reading. Elsa stands near the doorway, still clutching her copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, as Grimm walks into an adjacent room.

Well, that pretty much covers this round, guys! See you next week!

Panel 7: The Long and Short of It

Hey, hey, welcome back! Today I'm going to discuss something a little less cut and dry than usual... Pacing. Because of that you guys are getting a particularly long post, so bear with me. I've read a lot of comics that are just all over the place, or boring, or everything is crammed into one issue or too few pages and these are all pacing issues. Anyway... let's slow down a moment and really hash this out. 

The Basics

What is pacing you ask? Well, essentially, pacing is the rate and speed at which events occur in a story. And while some pacing does come down to preference, bad pacing can truly wreck an otherwise good comic. So here's a basic break down. Your story should have a set-up, a conflict, what I call the struggle, and then a resolution.

The set-up essentially sets the stage, introduces your characters, the setting, the world they exist in, all that jazz. This can be really boring sometimes because you're essentially throwing a lot of essential information at the reader with very little happening. However, it's also important to not gloss over this information because it's what helps develop your characters and really we're not going to care about a story if we don't have some sort of attachment to the characters or the world. Depending on the kind of story you're doing there are a few ways of doing this well.

If you're doing a short (something less than a single issue) I'm a big fan of the pulpy splash page with captions to catch the reader up. Essentially, have a one page panel that's right in the middle of the action with some short captions to explain how we got there. This was really common in a lot of war comics back in the 40's - 70's, and it still works great today! I employed this with great success on my first FUBAR story "Severed," and it's still one of my favorite pages I've written to this day.

If you're doing a one-shot story, it can be a bit trickier because you're limited to 22 - 24 pages and you've got a lot to tell in such a short time span. So, opposed to just throwing dialogue, captions, and what-have-you at the reader, I recommend having them in the middle of a situation that explains them. Are they a street level superhero? Have them stopping a mugger, showing off their powers or abilities. Are they an occult detective? Start the story with them finishing their previous case. Are they an intergalactic warrior? Show them winning (or losing) a cosmic battle! (This totally ties into the bit in my last post about showing over telling.)

Finally, if you're writing a mini-series or long-run series you have a lot more freedom to spell out your universe, usually across the first issue or two (depending on your proposed length.) But again, I recommend doing this via actual actions as opposed to dialogue and captions. Essentially, it's an expanded version of the solution in the previous paragraph.

Okay, on to the conflict. This is pretty self-explanatory. The conflict will present whatever problem the character or characters have to overcome. This is generally pretty easy to keep interesting because it's what piques our interest about the story. So if you're struggling with making this gripping, you probably need to come up with a better conflict. I know that's kind of mean, but people aren't going to buy in to a story with a boring conflict.

The struggle is essentially where the protagonist figures out how to overcome whatever they're facing. Whether it's through research, training, or past knowledge, this is the bit where the reader should be going, "Oh crap! How are they going to figure this out?" This one is kind of a grey area because there are so many ways this can be handled and it totally depends on your story. With Igor: Occult Detective I tend to lean toward research, past knowledge, or quick thinking due to the nature of the comic. Research is the toughest to make interesting because, generally, it boils down to someone reading. Heh. The best way to do this is to have time-lapses, keep the panels small, and generally emphasize the conclusion. Example:

PAGE 15 (4 Panels)

Panel 1: Igor is pouring over a tome, sitting at the desk in his study. He is smoking a cigarette. There ought to be a couple books, an empty ashtray, and a cup of steaming coffee on the table.

Panel 2: Igor is  still at the desk, but reading a different book (different color cover/binding is a great way to distinguish this fact) there are a few books piled up next to him. The ashtray has a couple cigarette butts in it and his coffee is no longer steaming.

CAPTION:
An hour later...
 
Panel 3: Igor still at the desk but reading yet another book, his cigarette has burned down nearly to the filter. The ashtray is now over-flowing with cigarette butts and the table is littered with coffee mugs. There ought to be a tall pile of books beside him, implying that he has already read them all.

CAPTION:
Four hours later...

Panel 4: Close panel - Igor points to a specific page in the book with a spell on it.

IGOR:
I've got it!

Now that's not actually from an Igor story but I've written at least one page pretty damn similar to that before. Really, no one wants to read four pages of someone else reading. It's key to keep these pages concise, so that you don't bore the reader while still conveying that the protagonist did a lot of work to find a solution.

The conclusion, again is pretty easy to keep interesting because it's the show down, the big fight, the resolution to your story. It's the hero overcoming the villain. Whatever. This is good stuff!  You can also use this part of the story to reveal the struggle via flashback which if you've ever read any of the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories he really loved to do this. Holmes would solve a case, then explain how he did it. You see this sometimes in espionage/spy/crime-thriller type films sometimes too.

EDIT: Here's a really interesting article about plot without conflict that is definitely worth checking out from still eating oranges.

* * * * *

Since I've covered pacing of your overall story, I'm going to discuss smaller-scale pacing and how it can help your stories as well.

Event/Scene Pacing

Events within your story should have pacing all of their own. Usually this starts with an establishing panel, to tell the reader where they are, what time of day it is, that sort of thing. After you've done this, you can really get to the meat of the scene. Once you've gotten through the main point of your scene, it's good to segue into the next one with either a sort of final line of dialogue or final action to signify that this part of the story is over.

Pacing for Dramatic Effect

Within a scene, pacing can also be used to create tension or suspense or to emphasize a certain point without spelling it out for the reader. For example, if you want to have a big reveal of a character, you can have multiple panels of them walking forward (or having the reader's point of view moving closer) in multiple panels until we see who it actually is. Start off with the character far away and in silhouette, and then as you get closer and closer reveal more and more of the character until BOOM! It's WHOEVER! Another way to do this is start with a focus on their feet, then in multiple panels move up their body to reveal their face. 

You can also emphasize something via your pacing. Say, if you're trying to show that a character is dreading having to do something like going to work. You can take multiple panels or even pages to show them getting ready to leave for the day. Of course, the character shouldn't look happy about it either (but that's pretty obvious, right?) Make it feel like just getting ready is a chore.  Or in a horror story if a character hears a noise in the other room and has to go investigate and is scared. Have multiple panels of them reaching for the door knob, their hand getting closer and closer with each panel. This will give the impression that not only is it taking the character a long while to actually perform the action, but it'll build tension within the reader who is waiting for the reveal.

Page Pacing

Okay, finally, we've come down to page pacing. This is a biggy that a lot of folks who nail the rest often neglect. It's also something that took me a long time to figure out and even now I still haven't quite mastered it. Each page of your comic should essentially have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A lot of this comes down to one question, "What is the purpose of this page?" Because your scene/event can generally be broken down into multiple smaller events you should try to get these smaller events to coincide with your page breaks. This can be tricky and sometimes you will have to accept the fact that you can't make this work without forcing in filler or snipping out crucial bits from another scene. But when this can be adhered to, it should be.

Okay, I think I've covered everything I intended to here. This was a doozie of a post and I apologize for the length, but I really didn't want to split it up into multiple posts. Have a good week and I'll see you next time!

Panel 6: Caption This!

Hello my evil minions! Welcome back to How NOT to Write Comics. I can't believe we're already on our sixth installment of this bugger. But I've still got more to share with you guys so this week I'm going to talk about captions, their over-use, and the importance of actually showing things in your scripts.

Reading this post you're going to think I hate captions and words, but I don't, really. They're a great tool for comics but only if they're used properly. I've seen a great many scripts that use captions in all of the wrong ways... and in some of my earlier work I was just as guilty. I'm going to break down this post by use and the right and wrong ways to use captions in each case.

Date/Time/Location
Honestly, this one is pretty hard to mess up for the most part. The really important thing is to make sure your dialogue and dates match. On November 6th don't have someone say, "We'll see you tomorrow," then have their meeting say November 11th. I know it sounds stupid and obvious, but I've seen it, hell, I've done it myself accidentally... and more recently than I'd like to admit. The same thing goes for time of day.

Internal Monologue
This one gets tricky. Having your characters' thoughts appear as captions is a great way to get inside their heads without using those silly and out-dated "thought bubbles." This is particularly true of less cartoony styled comics. If you're going for that style, thought bubbles are totally acceptable, but I'm assuming you're writing something a little more serious in tone. The toughest thing about internal monologue is consistency and avoiding confusion. I am notorious for the first, I'll start off with some great captions then totally end up forgetting about them when I get caught up in the script. It's something I really struggled with when doing The Red Eye and if I ever get it relaunched, I plan on spending a lot of time reworking my captions. Another thing is, don't make them stupid. I know that sounds kind of harsh but it shouldn't read, "That makes me sad." Because holy hell is that dumb. Your characters internal thoughts should really reach into their soul/heart/root/whatever... they should reflect the core of your character. Finally, to avoid confusion, if you have multiple characters having internal thoughts, make sure you identify who is thinking what. I've seen scripts where I have no idea who is thinking what because the script just reads...

CAPTION:
I'm a friggin' moron who doesn't know what I'm doing.

CAPTION:
I wish he wasn't a friggin' moron and could figure out what to do.

I mean you can assume who is saying what from the dialogue, but it just makes things easier if you signify who's thinking what.

MICHAEL (CAP):
I'm a friggin' moron who doesn't know what I'm doing.

EVA (CAP):
I wish he wasn't a friggin' moron and could figure out what to do.

This is much, much better. It tells you all the info you need in a clear and concise matter.

Narration
Narration is probably one of the most complex things to deal with when it comes to captioning. It's really important to strike the right balance with it and it's really easy to mess up. The most common mistake I see is writers who tell their entire story via captions with only snippets of what's really going on in their panel descriptions. This can be okay when rehashing something... like if a character is telling a brief story or a flashback, but your entire comic should not be told this way. A lot of beginners and people who come from other media somehow seem to forget this... comics is a visual medium... we should always be showing first and telling after. I'm a firm believer that if a person can't tell what is going on in your story without captions and dialogue, you're not doing your job. Now I'm not talking about finer details, but if I can't get the gist of the story without your words there is a problem. You don't need a caption saying, "I met with the alien ambassador," when you can just show it. It's even more frustrating when you miss out on something cool like, "The Martians killed the entire Senate with their ray guns," because it was just glossed over in a caption. Man, I want to see the Martians shooting those guys! That would make for a damn cool panel!

Well, I think I've covered everything I wanted to talk about in this post, so have a nice week and I'll see you guys next time!

Panel 5: You Want Me to Do What Now?

Hey guys! Welcome back to our regularly scheduled programming! After two "delayed" holiday postings we're finally back on our normal Monday schedule.

Today we're going to talk about something I'm sure a lot of my artist friends will be very happy about... some of you writers... not so much. It's about realism in your panel descriptions. Now, I'm not talking about realism in art, I'm talking about realizing that some things that work in other mediums do not work in comics. You're probably scratching you head here a bit so let me explain.

Comics (as you well know) are a series of static images that are used to convey action. And from time to time that rules out certain things we can do in them. A wonderful example is nodding (for the most part.) Unless you want to dedicate three or four panels to a character nodding "yes" (trust me, you probably don't) or are dealing with a very cartoony style (in which case you can get away with the whole drawing multiple heads to convey movement thing), you just can't get away with nodding in comics. The same goes for shaking one's head "no." This was something that I, thankfully, discovered while I was still illustrating my own scripts... so I haven't made the mistake of putting that in my comics since.

We also forget that some things are really hard or impossible to draw. A great example I came across recently was someone described a truck coming to a screeching halt, kicking up dust, and having the truck shudder because it stopped so fast... all in one panel. (Sorry to make an example of you, Mike.) Now this would look great on film, but is nearly impossible to convey in one panel in comics. The biggest issue is the shuddering. Especially since the focus was on the wheels in the panel description. 

There are a few ways to handle this. First, you can simply do away with the shuddering. The sudden stop can easily be conveyed with the kicking up off the dust and sound effects. Secondly, you could do a second panel of the driver and/or the passengers jerking forward (maybe one hitting his head on the dash or something) to convey the stark stop as well. (This would actually be my preferred solution if the sudden stop was truly important.) Thirdly, change the focus from the wheels to the whole truck and show the passengers again, jerking forward along with the dust kicking and some nice screeching sound effects. This last one is less preferable mostly because depending on your artist and the size of your panel, those could be some very small people to have to draw.

The last thing I want to discuss that is a major no no, is having characters perform multiple actions in one panel. I know this is a MASSIVE pet peeve of a lot of artists. As a writer I feel a lot of this stems from the fact that this is a fuzzy rule, because you can have a character do more than one action at once but you have to really think about what works and what doesn't. For example a character can bend over and pick something up in one panel. Those are two separate actions that can be easily conveyed in one panel. No problem. However, you cannot have someone walk over to someone and punch them in the face. The walking and the punching really have to be two separate panels.  Or at lot of times I'll see "He ran up and leaped through the air." Again, no dice. The running and leaping have to be two separate action.

The way I look at it, is this: If the character is not using the same appendages for the two actions, you're safe. Example, someone can walk and turn their head at the same time. Or walk and extend their arm/hand. Hell, they can do all three. Can they walk and jump at the same time? Nope. You need your legs for both. A lot of people don't understand why punching is off limits and it's actually really simple. It's because you use your feet and legs to stabilize yourself when punching. Anyone who's ever boxed, done martial arts, or even been in a fist fight can tell you this.

Well, that about covers it for this week. It's funny, I actually thought I was going to be reaching for things to talk about in those post, but it seems to have kind of run off on me. I hope this helps you guys out and I'm sure your artists will be relieved that you read this post. Have a nice week and we'll see you next time!

Panel 4: So Says the Bible...

Happy New Year to you all! Welcome to the first post of 2013! Let me apologize as I totally forgot to mention that I had planned on delaying this week's post due to the holiday like last week with next week's post being on Monday as per the usual schedule. So here we are...

This week I'm going to discuss the importance of characterization and character bibles, particularly in regards to mini-series and long running series. I've read so many comics where either someone else writing a character or even the creator writes something that just seems so out of place that essentially makes the character no longer the character we know and love. A recent example I can think of was during the Avengers vs. X-Men story arc when Captain America kicked Wolverine out of the Quinjet. Seriously? Cap is easily one of the most honorable and honest characters in comics. Does anyone really think he would betray a long time friend out of the blue like that? It's not like he has a history of shady behavior or backstabbing. That moment was so out of character that it essentially breaks the character.

So how do we avoid stupidity like this? It's actually pretty simple... albeit time consuming. Create a character bible. What is a character bible, you ask? Simple it's a document that you write out (type out) that contains imperative information regarding your characters. It can contain everything from
height, weight, and age to powers, weapons, defining personality traits, likes and dislikes. Creating a bible is actually one of my favorite parts of starting a new comic. Here's an example for you from Igor: Occult Detective. Here's the entry for Mr. Frank...

Mr. Frank 

Likes: Elsa Von Tod, Bourbon, Stout Beer, Steak, Sushi, Newspapers, Boxing, Fighting, Guns, Comic Strips, Movies, Animals

Dislikes: Fire, Zombies, Ghouls, Elder Gods, Things with Tentacles, Lightning, The Sea

Notes: Generally, pretty buttoned up, neat, for the most part pretty reserved, though he can lose his temper from time to time. Builds appallingly colored bird houses and hangs them in their backyard. Feeds the squirrels Igor’s less successful baked goods. They have the only squirrels in the country to suffer from heart disease.

I've omitted a bit of info that would certainly qualify as spoilers but you get the gist of it. I also left out his weapon, purely because the file just has an image of his pistol. But I digress, you should do this for every single one of your major players: heroes, villains, and even frequently recurring secondary characters. And here's the key, you need to actually use it. When you're writing your characters, constantly remind yourself of your bible. It will help you from having your characters not act like themselves. Sometimes, as writers we write ourselves into corners and it seems like our hero has break character to get out of it... but trust me, that's rarely the case, there's usually another way around it. If there absolutely isn't, then you need to rewrite your story. Sorry, but if you can't get your character out of a situation without ignoring your bible then you're story isn't good enough and needs to be reworked.

Well, that's about it for this week. See you next week with some more ornery advice!