Day twelve of NaGraNoWriMo, and we’re bringing in some fresh voices to add their expertise. First up is David Alan Mack<\/a>, <\/strong>the national bestselling author of nearly twenty books, including Wildfire<\/em>, Harbinger<\/em>, Reap the Whirlwind<\/em>, Road of Bones<\/em>, and the Star Trek Destiny<\/em> trilogy (Gods of Night<\/em>, Mere Mortals<\/em>, and Lost Souls<\/em>) as well as a writer for television and– most important for our work today– the writer of the Farscape: Scorpius<\/em> comic for BOOM!<\/strong> My first training as a scriptwriter was a screenwriting A lot of scriptwriters make the mistake of thinking that The first key difference is how the two formats break up A comic-book script needs to break up its story into pages<\/strong>, and those are further broken up The second major difference between film\/TV scripts and When describing a scene in a film\/TV script, one can Comic-book scripts are not blueprints of moving action PAGE FOUR<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Panel One<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n With his left hand, Porter is \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Panel Two<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Same angle as Panel One. Resnick \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Panel Three<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Same angle. Porter has swung the \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Panel Four<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Same angle. Resnick lies in a \u00a0<\/p>\n PORTER:<\/strong> It\u2019s for you.<\/p>\n As you can see, a comic-book script can take a lot more One more difference is the way the comic-book medium In film and television, the only way to express internal The one bit of good news for those who have been trained As long as you remember a few basic rules, you\u2019ll be So, as you embark upon your own graphic-novel-writing FADE OUT.<\/p>\n Follow David on Twitter @DavidAlanMack<\/a>. And remember: you can follow all the NaGraNoWriMo posts here<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n Jump to comments (1) <\/a><\/p>\n
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\n101 course I took more than 25 years ago. In that class I learned the
\nfundamentals of writing for motion pictures and television, and I refined my
\nunderstanding of those forms a few years later during my studies at NYU\u2019s film
\nschool. Nearly a decade later, after three sales to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/em> and Star
\nTrek Voyager<\/em> television series, I had to unlearn most of what I knew about
\nscriptwriting when I got a chance to write for the Star Trek<\/em> comic books, then produced by the now-shuttered
\nWildStorm.<\/p>\n
\nif one knows how to write teleplays or screenplays, that comic books are just
\nthe same thing without the constraints of a limited budget or an overworked
\nvisual-effects department. After all, they both describe stories pared down to
\nimages, sounds, and dialogue. However, the two forms differ on a few very
\nimportant points.<\/p>\n
\nthe narrative. A screenplay or teleplay simply has scenes<\/strong>, which might or might not be subdivided into shots<\/strong>. Scenes can start or end anywhere
\non the page. It\u2019s a minimalist format intended to serve as the blueprint for a
\nstory while affording the production team great latitude for interpretation.<\/p>\n
\ninto panels<\/strong>. As a general rule, a
\npage should be treated as a discrete storytelling unit, which is a fancy way of
\nsaying don\u2019t start or end a scene in the middle of a page. It\u2019s also important
\nnot to clutter a page with too many panels, or to crowd a panel with too many
\nlines of caption or dialogue text.<\/p>\n
\ncomic-book scripts is how the action is described on the page.<\/p>\n
\ndescribe continuous actions with great economy. For instance, a line of action
\nin a screenplay might read, \u201cPorter gets up from the table, picks up the phone,
\nand uses it to smash in Resnick\u2019s skull.\u201d The reason this direction works in a
\nscreenplay is that it\u2019s a blueprint for a motion picture\u2014emphasis on motion<\/em>. That one sentence might end up
\nbeing depicted with a half-dozen different shots edited together in a film, but
\nin the script, one needs to describe only the continuous series of actions.<\/p>\n
\nbut instructions from which an artist will render sequences<\/strong> of static images that imply<\/em>
\nmovement by breaking down an action into decisive images across any number of
\npanels. For instance, the simple moment described above might be rendered
\nthusly in a comic-book script:<\/p>\n
\npushing himself back from the table and is half-risen to a standing position;
\nwith his right hand he is reaching toward the old-fashioned rotary-dial phone
\nin the middle of the table. Resnick sits on the other side of the table, facing
\naway from Porter and ignoring him while smoking a cigarette.<\/p>\n
\nis in the same pose, oblivious. Porter is standing and holding the phone high
\noverhead in his right hand, poised to strike.<\/p>\n
\nphone and clobbered Resnick. A motion trail shows us the arc of the swung
\nphone, and a burst highlights its point of impact. Resnick is in free fall,
\nknocked from his chair, arms limp at his side, a few bloody teeth flying free
\naway from his slack jaw.<\/p>\n
\nheap on the floor, a puddle of blood beneath his face. Porter is walking away
\nto panel right. He is not looking at Resnick. The phone lies on the floor
\nbeside Resnick\u2019s head, the bulky cradle fractured, the dial busted and half-off
\nthe cradle, the receiver a foot or so away at the end of its tangled cord.<\/p>\n
\nspace to convey the same idea that a screenplay expresses in a single sentence.
\nIn that respect, it\u2019s a more difficult form to master because it\u2019s not as
\nimmediately intuitive as film writing. One can\u2019t simply describe the series of
\nevents that constitute a scene. It is the responsibility of the scriptwriter to
\npre-visualize the story and decide which images best convey the moment he or
\nshe wishes to describe.<\/p>\n
\nhandles something known as \u201cinternal monologue,\u201d which are a character\u2019s inner
\nthoughts. Comic books make frequent use of internal monologue in the form of
\nnarrative captions written in the first-person style\u2014i.e., \u201cI smell the
\ndespair rising from the line of artists waiting in vain for a chance to have
\ntheir portfolios reviewed. I breathe in the schadenfreude like the perfume of a
\nflower that blooms only at night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nmonologue is the voice-over, which falls in and out of fashion from one
\nseason\/year\/decade to the next. In a screenplay, the voice-over is treated as a
\nform of dialogue; in the graphic novel format, it is treated as caption-box
\ncontent.<\/p>\n
\nin the rigid and unforgiving ways of screenplay\/teleplay format is that there is
\nno such thing as \u201cgraphic novel\/comic-book format.\u201d In my experience, no two
\ncomic-book scriptwriters ever format their scripts exactly alike. Unlike
\nscreenplay format, which makes unyielding demands regarding font, type size,
\nmargins, indents, and punctuation, a graphic-novel script simply needs to be
\nclear enough for the editor and artist to follow and understand the writer\u2019s
\nintentions.<\/p>\n
\nfine:<\/p>\n\n
\nwhich means that two-page spreads should always fall across even-odd page
\npairs, such as 8-9, 10-11, etc.; <\/li>\n
\nbecause comic-book lettering doesn\u2019t usually use lowercase characters; <\/li>\n
\nwhether it is an EDITORIAL CAPTION or a CHARACTER CAPTION for internal
\nmonologue, or a CHARACTER DIALOGUE CAPTION that will contain a character\u2019s
\noff-panel dialogue in quotation marks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nadventure, tell yourself as often as is necessary: \u201cI\u2019m not writing a movie,
\nI\u2019m writing a graphic novel.\u201d Then write like it.<\/p>\n