I just wrote my first comic strip
script! Nothing fancy, just an adaptation of my short E’steem: No Good Deed. I
figured before I tackle a full Graphic novel adaptaion of an Isis series story
or an original story for another character in the format I decided to see if I
could get my style to work within the medium.
I chose E’steem: No Good Deed because
it was one of my shorter works. (only three pages) And since it was short, it
would be a good test to assess my style.
I found it interesting how only three
pages of prose and dialogue story turned into nine pages of comic panels.
The big challenge with comic writing was
trying to create single images only using words. I thought I could use some
techniques I picked up from screenwritng, such as creating images using a
limited amount of words, however in comic writing a writer has to use even
fewer words to create their pictures.
The big difference is while the
images are moving in a screenplay, in comics a writer has to tell a story using
a series of static soilitary pictures. So writing for the medium is a lot trickier.
Trying to get the thousand words down to four or five that effectively tell a
story in one picture is quite the challenge.
I’ve been studying comic scripts for
a few years but it’s a major challenge to actually sit down and write one. The
formatting is completely different from novels or screenplays. Each page has
its own set of panels and that really limits how much story a writer can put on
a single page. While I could easily put an intro and go right into story on a
novel or a short or just start writing action for a scene in a screenplay after
FADE IN, for a comic I have to have to create an inciting incident with a
single solitary image for the splash page. Then that has to followed up with
panels that transition the action and move the story forward in pictures. Not
easy. Not easy at all.
No Good Deed worked fairly well for a
comic script. The action flowed smoothly from panel to panel. While it only it
took a day for me to write the original story, it took a week to write the
script for the comic. Maybe that’s because I was learning the ins and outs of
formatting, but I’d like to think I could produce a script at the speed I write
many of my Isis series stories.
I wrote the E’steem: No Good Deed
script kind of loose; I wanted to leave it a little rough in case I ever got to
work with an artist on it. Working on comics is different from the novel or the
screenplay. The novel is a solitary project where the writer works alone. And
the screenplay is where a writer works alone. On the other hand, a comic is a
collaborative effort and a writer has to be open to changing things when working
with an artist to tell the right story in pictures. When you work on a comic
the artist is just as important as the writer and their input is just as
valuable to the finished product. They may have some ideas to add during the
revision process that make the final story the best it can be.
This is my first script and it’s a really rough first draft. And I’m hoping to trim it from the nine pages to
about six or eight or possibly even four. A simple story about a hero foiling a
stick-up doesn’t have to be that long. The original E’steem: No Good Deed was
just a basic story to introduce the character to readers and establish her new
direction; and that’s what I’d like the comic to be when I get a chance to
publish it.
I’d love to learn more about comic
writing. I believe the techniques used could help me with the novel the same
way screenwriting helped me become a better novelist. Now that I’m starting to
write comic scripts I’ll be working on more projects in the medium in the
future.
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