I thought I might as well start a thread on comics writing - I'm not a pro (and may never get a penny from comics) but am at the point where I've had to give the whole process a lot of thought.
First is the writing - not the actually formatting of the script (you need only look at some of the sample scripts* to pick up the formatting) but story pacing and the general mechanics. The medium brings with it a number of unique features like the page turn, which can be used to change a scene or you can keep a reveal for the next page (so the reader's eye isn't drawn to something that gives away a story element. You can pick up some of this through books (I've got
Alan Moore's Writing for Comics but more to have a nose at the way he does things) but one of your best sources are the comics themselves and you already have the best teachers - the writers in
2000 AD, who are the best in their field (especially handy for learning from as they have to get a slab of story into 5 pages. Pat Mills' early ABC Warriors are great examples of writing a team comic story, which is difficult to do with only 5 pages (only Gordon Rennie has given it a proper shot in
2000 AD). You can also look to TV as 30 minutes can be a tricky length of time and, sticking with teams, you can also learn a lot from
Dad's Army (the first major team sitcom and one of the few successful ones).
One thing I found... interesting was the Screenwipe special (season 5, episode 3) where Charlie Brooker interviewed various leading TV writers. Its in three parts here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifQsLMQhBrghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkdN02axkE0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY03pHxWeMQI thought it was a fascinating insight into the range of approaches to the process of script writing (and quite a bit of the advice/comments transfer over to comics), some of which sound like torture. The one I liked the best was Graham Linehan's and you know it can be just like having a poo. You need to feed things in one end, let everything break down and digest, then it needs to bake a while and when it is ready to come out it will - there is no point sitting on the can straining (it gives a whole new meaning to "staring at a blank sheet of paper").
I think the most important thing to bear in mind that finishing the script is just the start of a process. Obviously, the editor may want some changes or have some clever ideas (or not so clever ideas
), but it is also the artist's job to tell the story visually. It may be you bump into the occasional artist who is just lazy or a bit rubbish (so they dump the background or details to make their life easier) but I've never encountered anyone like that myself. Artists can come up with a different way of telling the story visually or it may be you have added too much detail to sensibly fit in the panel (you need to keep this in mind and make sure you flag anything that is vital for the story so it doesn't get lost). I found it interesting reading TPO where it describes how the artists deal with Alan Moore's scripts (which are probably the most detailed in the business) - Ian Gibson just focused on the important things and Dave Gibbons drew pretty much everything he was asked, which made the latter the best choice for Watchmen as it required a lot of the detail to be as it was described. I often try and include what I was thinking of and similar cultural works (TV, books, paintings, etc.) as it is often useful to give the artist the general feeling of what you are aiming for and they can work out the details themselves. It may also be useful to give a quick run down of the characters at the start (note Russell T. Davies' ideas about providing quick thumbnail character descriptions) along with describing scenes in one place. This lets the artist get a much better grasp of the character/location than if you were to it piecemeal which could lead to confusion (if someone can get a view of the room in their head then they can figure out the details on any particular angle).
I've also found myself thinking about the process of writing as I've committed to writing more, soI need to get more efficient. I'm sure no advice will fit everyone, just analyse what you are doing - what works and what doesn't (dicking around on the Internet is a great way to waste time). As the "poo metaphor" works for me I try and have different stories at different stages of my "alimentary canal" so you can switch to one story, if you are fed up with another, which can keep everything moving along. It can also help you get passed the trickier stages, like giving the script the last final polish (in the metaphor this wouldn't be the turd you are polishing, but presumably your ringpiece) and you can use cracking on with a new script (or doing some research - whichever is best for you) as the carrot to get this done (although carrots near your ringpiece can be dangerous). I also find that Notepad can be your best friend - dump snippets, thoughts or lines in a file and you'll build up a solid body of ideas (also a paper notebook is handy too for those unconnected moments). I also now write the first draft in Notepad, as you can just hammer it out without any distractions (like dicking around with text formatting), then when you transfer it over into a word processing document it pretty much forces you to do an intensive run through on your second draft ( which is where I often spot any problems which might need a solid rewrite), print it out and go through it all again - each change of format can force you to re-engage with the script. However, that is just me, I'm sure you'll be different - you just need to keep an objective eye on what you do.
Anyway just a few thoughts, I've thrown some other in over here:
http://downthetubes.ning.com/forum/topics/writing-comics-useful-linksand John Freeman has prepared this:
www.downthetubes.net/writing_comics/index.htmlI'll have a think about this and see if I can come up with anything specific but this'll do for now.
So over to you.
*The script archive at Barney has quite a few:
http://2000ad.org/?zone=droid&page=scriptindexYou can find some on the submissions page here:
www.2000adonline.com/subs.php
There are some recommendations for freeware writing tools here:
www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,29011.msg523464.html#msg523464
