By D. Lynn Smith
When you are a television writer, you work hard on writing good dialog. The dialog can make or break a scene. When I started writing prose fiction again, people always commented on the quality of my dialog. So when I turned to comics, I thought, “I have this!”
Wrong.
Let me start by telling you a story of two friends of mine, both long-time comic book readers and good friends themselves: Shannon Pricket and Randy Chertkow. While we were all at Fogcon together, I asked them to read the first issue of Gates of Midnight and tell me what they thought. Shannon said, “I felt there was too much dialog, but it wouldn’t have stopped me from reading more.” Randy said, “I thought there wasn’t enough dialog, but it wouldn’t have stopped me from reading more.”
Not helpful, you say. Quite the contrary. I learned that there are no hard and fast rules as to how much dialog is too much or not enough. As you can see from Randy and Shannon’s reactions, it’s rather subjective. What isn’t subjective is that you have to tell the story in as few words as possible. Let’s face it, if you have a lot of dialog it’s exposition and exposition can get boring. I like to put things into exposition that shows character—maybe snarky remarks, or really intelligent observations—but if there’s a lot of information you need to get out there, these just end up taking space—space that is dedicated to art. Bottom line is that the more dialogue you have the more art it covers.
I had a problem in issue #3 where there was too much dialog for the panels. Jessica, our letterer, suggested shrinking the font to make it fit. I really didn’t want people straining to read tiny words in the dialog bubbles, so I went back into the scene and cut and slashed dialog. You don’t realize how much you don’t need until you are forced to really find the important point of the scene, and make it without all of the extras. There is still way too much dialog on the page, and I cut out at least 30 percent of it.
So I’m learning about the economy of writing when it comes to dialog. It’s not an easy lesson.
The other thing you may notice as you look at the finished pages of Gates is that I don’t use sound effects. In 2013, I attended the San Diego Comic Fest, where I met David Lloyd, the artist for V is for Vendetta. We had a conversation about comics today, and I discovered that he hated sound effects. Being new, I looked at him and said, “You mean I don’t have to use sound effects?” That started a 30-minute talk on how he felt about different aspects of comics that have become conventions.
This conversation was very exciting for me because I really, really, really, don’t like the use of sound effects. I think the artist can usually get across the sound with having to hit the reader over the head with it. When you go to Tumblr, you find a page that has the funeral of Eddy Moon. There’s a panel there where the rifles are firing a three-gun salute for the fallen Eddy. Amelia did a fantastic job with this panel. I don’t need the BAM or POW or POP in order to know those guns are being fired. As a matter of fact, I think having sound effects would ruin the sober feel of the scene.
There are instances, however, where sound effects are necessary. Raven, having been a combat medic in Afghanistan, is suffering from PTSD. I have a scene with thunder and lightning where she’s reacting to the sounds. The problem is, she’s inside, so the only hint that there is thunder and lightning is the change of light in the window, which colorist Mirana Reveiera did very well. But it wasn’t enough. So I had to add some sound effects to let the reader know what was happening.
Those are some of the issues that I faced when turning to writing comics. If you’re interested in learning to write comics, the most important resource you can have in your library is the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. You just have to read some of the comments on Amazon to know why.
Other sources that helped me:
You can find free comic book scripts at these links:
www.comicbookscriptarchive.com/archive/the-scripts/
www.scriptsandscribes.com/sample-comic-scripts/
http://dwaynemcduffie.com/scripts/
Dark Horse also provides a sample script that aspiring writers can use as a template
www.darkhorse.com/Help/FAQ/submissions
You can really learn a lot from critiques of other people’s scripts. Here is one place where you can find very helpful critiques.
www.comixtribe.com/category/the-proving-grounds/
The same site has an amazing wealth of articles on writing comics:
www.comixtribe.com/category/bolts-nuts/
Webinars:
Martin Shapiro’s webinar gave me the basics I needed to write comic book scripts. He also has a class on publishing and marketing your comic book.
www.graphicnovelcreator.com/classes/publishing-and-marketing
Finally, once you want to start marketing your work, Dan Blank offers some wonderful webinars on how to get started blogging, setting up a newsletter, building a writing platform and what to do if you’re feeling overwhelmed. His classes have been a gift…
Next week we move on to the job of the Penciller. Until then …
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