writing scripts for webcomics?

[Surlyben]

OK, I'm going to do a long form non-improvisational comic, and I intend to put it up on the web.

My question for the author/artists among you is this: how much scripting do you do beforehand? Do you have the whole thing written out, complete with panel descriptions and layout notes before you ever draw and/or publish your first page? Just the dialog? Just a synopsis? The first ten pages, and you hope you'll think of something when the time comes? Just an idea in your head?

Obviously dialog and plot are easier to edit while they are still just text.

I'm guessing that people who do a gag strip write it as they go. For people with a contuing strip with story arcs, I expect they have an idea of where the current story is going at the very least, and possibly they write it before they draw it. I know from experience that short comics can be written and drawn as you go, but what about fairly long stories that are expected to have an end?

Surlyben

[Jack Masters]

I only have an idea in my head, but I often wish I had something written down. As it goes, I just think about what exactly should happen while I put off drawing the comic, and usually I end up with something I like. But I hope to work with an artist at some point in the future, and they'll need a script...

So I'll make sure to watch this thread as well.

[InkAddict]

I've never actually finished a long story before, but I'm working on it.

Best is to start with a general synopsis and then to flesh out parts of the story as you draw them (make it rather big blocks though). That way you still won't have the problem of having to work through an entire story drawing and no longer creating...which is the part of writing I suppose you'd like to enjoy.

That's what a French comic artist (forgot who) told about his way of working. He had about ten pages of storyboard ready before he started to draw.

But of course you can always continueto keep a ten-page storyboard while drawing

[Surlyben]

Well, my concern is that if I just do it a bit at a time I'll get pretty far in, and suddenly I'll wish I had included something back at the beginning, or the story will start to suck, and I'll have to go back and do major editing, and throw out page after page of perfectly acceptable drawing because it no longer works with the story.

On the other hand if I try and script it beforehand, I may get bored and wander off before I ever get to the drawing part. And the drawing may be less fun, because I've already planned everything out. And the script won't include bits that I would only have noticed if I started drawing...

My current plan is a sort of compromise. I already have a synopsis, so I'll outline the plot for however many pages at, say, one sentence per page. Then I'll work out the details as I go and hope not to screw things up too badly.

Ben

[InkAddict]

The one sentence per page routine should be a good average I guess, as you can still have a reasonable control on the pace, and still have an overall view. When I detail too much myself, even in short stories, i tend to slow the story down, while if I set myself a limit of things to tell per page, and a limit of pages per thing to tell, I set the pace beforehand, and use the power of comics (i.e. not having to show everything that happens, asking the reader to fill in the gaps) to the fullest

[Jack Masters]

One way you could do it is write say two or three paragraphs that encompass the entire story, then two or three paragraphs about just the first half of the story, then two or three paragraphs about the first half of THAT, and so on untill you're down to detailling out the very first panel. Then of course if you feel there are areas that didn't get enough attention, you could go back and define them some more.

[ragtag]

I like to plan quite a lot ahead before I start drawing final pages. I like to go through the process I described in the Inventivity and Genres thread http://www.zwol.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=496 (scroll down to my post, ragtag).

Then I like to do a graphic script, which is simply a very roughly put together version of the comics. Last time I did this I used small A5 pages, and did VERY rough drawings (a circle and a box for a character, maybe with something very simple to indicate attitude). This way I could figure out the layout and flow of the story, before investing much time in actually drawing the pages in detail. Last time I did this, I had a written script ready. But this time I think I'll skip the script, and go straight from the column process, to story parts, to graphic script.

Just yesterday, I was sitting down and planning out how I would do my next comics. And the work process came down to something like this (it is from memory, as I don't have my notes in front of me).

1. Idea - what the story is about, main characters and so on (this I've done).
2. Skeleton - a basic skeleton of the story. First this will happen, then this, and then this, and it all ends with that. Plus a little better idea of who the characters are (this I'm working on).
3. Character descriptions - reasonably detailed background and personality descriptions for the characters
4. Time columns - as I described in the Inventivity and Genres thread.
5. Sort scene - go through the time columns and pick out the scenes I want to include. Write on small index cards what I want with each scene (why it's there, what info is revealed, what the characters want and some idea of dialog). And then sort them in the order I want them in my comics.
6. Graphic script - draw a very rough version of the comics.
7. Draw it - actually sit down and draw the thing.
8. Finish it - lettering, clean up, whatever remains.
9. Publish it -

All through parts 1 to 7, I'll be doing sketches of characters, locations and whatever else I find interesting. Also, I don't set anything in stone. If I later don't like something I've written earlier, I'll just change it (even big things, such as removing previously important characters or adding new ones...or changing the entire setting of the story).

I guess this is a very planned way of doing it, and spontenuity (spelling?) may suffer. I was working on a different project, which I've kind of given up on now, where nothing was planned beyond a basic idea and concept. I was doing it in 3D, which probably doesn't work too well with doing stuff straight ahead. I had tweaked and adjusted details on the main character so much, that I was going in circles...and with no clear story or goal to follow, the end of the project felt like it would be sometime next century (here's the latest incarnation of one of the lead characters for those interested http://www.ragtag.net/xternal/red/ ).

If I were to do a less planned comics than described in the workflow above, I would probably still make a graphic script before drawing it.

Ragnar


p.s. Another idea I had, and never executed (sigh), was to writa a simple set of rules, and then just start drawing the comics. The rules I had were stuff like:
- all important new characters entering the story should be designed (both look and background) before they're drawn into the story.
- all action taken in the story should be motivated by what the characters want or try to achieve.
- the story shall involve shoes (or whatever element, object or theme)
- I should not avoid sordid, psychotic or unoriginal material (idea from the book Impro, by Keith Johnston...great book).
- and so on....

[Tailsteak]

I just do a rough version of the comic in pencil-- showing who's standing where and what they're saying-- and then the actual comic is pretty much just a good copy of that. I suppose, if you could tolerate my horrible handwriting and sketchy art, you could just read my scripts and get the same story as you would reading my comic. In a few cases, better.

[Merlin]

Varies quite a bit. Most of the time, with the comics that actually make it to a properly finished stage, I just make it up as I go along. I often find if I plan too much of a story out on paper before I start, then I loose interest in the idea before I've had a chance to finish it.

That said, I'll sometimes plan a conversation based piece out on paper or in word before I go ahead and make the thing. I've even written full comic scripts out a few times, although that's mostly on projects where I hope someone else will end up doing the artwork. (Since I never actually find anyone else to do the artwork, these mostly sit unpublished on my hard drive).

If I'm ever in the mood to pre-script a story I actually intend to work on myself, I find thumbnail sketches are the best way to go. Large chunks of Sixgun were planned out that way, since in most cases I wanted a solid idea of what I was doing before I went off to construct the artwork.

[Craig J. Quack]

As a scripter, I've tried a number of different methods. In each case, I tried to make the method match the project.

When I had my first comic strip in college -- which someone else had to draw for me -- I scripted out every strip, panel by panel, in some cases months in advance so she could draw them on her own schedule. For this reason, we never worked "together" on any of the strips, but they still reflected both of out sensibilities.

Also in college, I did a three-page comic story with another artist friend. In this case, however, he took a comedy sketch that I had previously written in script format and adapted it for the comics page.

Later on, we tried to develop a long-form comic story together and decided, so as not to hinder the writing process, to write it in screenplay format. Of course, what we ended up with was a story that would work better as a film rather than a comic. I still plan on making that film someday.

More recently, I decided to start developing a comic story of my own, this time doing it in a hybrid screenplay/panel format. I haven't worked on that in a while, mostly because I feel like I need an artist on board to make sure I'm not going off the deep end with the story. (It's quite ambitious in scope.)

And lastly, there's Dada, for which I do as little pre-planning as possible. I have vague ideas of what's coming up in the near-to-distant future, but I try to improvise each individual strip as much as possible. Sometimes I'll scribble down a bit of dialogue or a piece of information that I want to get across, but that's it.

This probably hasn't helped you at all.

[InkAddict]

I've been looking into it, and have taken the first tome of "L'Art de la BD", ("The Art of Comics", a two-tome book on how to write comics, by a French comic artist (Duc). It's been really useful to uncover some of the principles of how comics work.

(I'm still looking for tome two,though, which is about the drawing, while the first one is more about the writing, screenplay,...)

The writer of this book proposes a 4-step system from which the author(s) can choose the steps that are most useful

First a synopsis or short description of the story, what is the mood, what happens,...(2 or 3 pages, with a start, a middle, and an ending)

Then, a 10 to 30 typed pages, with a full description of everything in the story, some foetal dialogues written out if useful, character description, etc...

Then a detailed plan of what will be rendered: full dialogue and sketches of how certain actions are portrayed, often on pages split in two, with images to the left, and text to the right.

Then a fullblown sketch of each page, with dialogues in balloons and sketches of everything in each square,...



Of course that's how a lot of pro European artists do it, but it doesn't have to be this way. It is though one of the best ways of cooperation between an artist and a writer, because it leaves a liberty, as to when the writer leaves the script and hands it to the artist, and when the artist starts work based on the script, without having to go through all details with the writer.

hope this helps?

[alschroeder]

Currently I do it this way:
I write down the outline of the story.
I do crudely drawn storyboards first of the next few pages of the story.
Then I do better drawings, usually using google or ditto for picture references, of the next page of the sequence.
Then I ink it.
Then I script in the dialogue.
Then I color the panels and put in the dialogue and upload 'em.
---Of course, mine isn't a gag-a-day strip but actual comic book-type story arcs, so it's a little different from many.---Al

[catgarza]

script? you mean we need to script stuff out first? oh, um, heh...

[chrisSturhann]

I think that it would be helpful to look at in two ways. Writing for yourself as the artist and writing for someone else as the artist.

Writing for yourself. A lot of my stuff tends to be based on anecdotes of things that happen to me. In that case, I usually write it out as it happened and then break it into panels (with one or two sentences per panel, which will ultimately become captions/dialog balloons) with the occasional two or three word note thrown in about what I want to draw, especially when I think of a gag I don't want to forget. Still most of the story is in my head until I start drawing. I will occasionally do rough layouts, but I tend to do that more if I'm worried about trying to do print pages. For "infinite canvas" style comics, I use roughs mainly on individual panels to work out composition and sticky drawing problems (how do I draw ...; here, I also use google searches for reference material). Sometimes, I do stuff that is really just an extended gag. Here, I usually just start drawing the most important panels and fill in the rest as I go. My story

Energy

that I just posted this morning worked this way.

Writing for someone else. Here, I tend to do structured scripts, mainly because I'm kind of a control freak. If it is a print project, my script would layout each panel and page, often using things like, Panel 1 (upper third of page). If it was an Infinite Canvas type of thing I would be less worried about size and shape of panels since the demands of the panel could determine the size and shape. Here, I would be more worried about things like trails, suggesting animated gifs where appropriate, etc. To be honest I've never done a comic script this way, but I'd be willing to rework existing print scripts to work better online.

[Tim Mallos]

Howdy!
For what it's worth, I enjoyed The DC Comic Guide to Writing Comics.
( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823010279/ qid=1022616516/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-2768926-5952608 ) $13.97 at Amazon.

It provides general information to scripting and planning approaches, but stresses throoughout that whatever works for the people involved is the right way to do it.

I'm currently doing a full script for an epic comic. Epic means I may never finish it, but I'm having a lot of fun. I'm planning to put in many hours of effort over, realistically, years and I want to have deep characters, sub plots, and foreshadowing - a really rich piece. A full script ( currently on plot revision #4 ) is for me the best way to plan the whole thing. So, when it comes time to ink and color, my right brain can just take over.

Tim

[InkAddict]

A handy thing I saw once was a guy who kept his notes in an atoma booklet (you know: those you can add and remove pages from). Whenever he wanted to revise a page, he redrew the sketches and added them inbetween so he got a complete storyboard with all the writings, notes, sources and photo's he needed. Saw that one on TV

[Murak]

Admittidly, I'm a little new at this, but the way I've been working so far is to make a basic script (kind of like a screenplay in appearance), do the artwork, then revise the script to fit the panels. I can't count the number of times I've written one thing, then have the panels and the characters suggest (or demand) that the scene take a different direction! There will always be 'pivotal' plot points on which I am inflexible, but otherwise I let the characters do what they need to and try to keep up the best I can.

Mind you, one of the reasons I've always been so afraid of posting comics on the web is that once it's out there, you've kind of got to stick to what you've put out, or else the readers suspension of disbelief becomes strained (which always reduces my enjoyment of a good story). We'll just have to see how it turns out, I guess. Sigh.

[alschroeder]

My (current) process is this:
Storyboard for each page.
Drawing each page.
Scripting the page.
Inking the page.
Scanning and coloring and lettering the page, by computer.
I DO find scripting helps, at least to keep words to a minimum, and on a comic page the more concise, the better. ---Al