Comics are often a collaborative effort with a team of people. You don’t have to look far to find disagreements over the importance of each role for a book, and writers are no different. However, writers including the late Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, and Neil Gaiman have proved that strong storytelling is a vital piece of the puzzle.
Should you want to try your hand at writing a script, you will need an idea. Break out that old idea where the hero is both a ninja AND a pirate. Let’s call it Ninja Pirate: Kung Fu on the High Seas. Before you start attacking the script, there’s a couple things that will help guide you as you work.
An outline will help keep you on track. It’s a bullet pointed list that breaks down the plot points of your tale. This helps to identify large sections like chapters in a book. An outline will arrange your hero’s journey and help you know where your character ends up at the end of each chapter. You know that Ninja Pirate is going to fight Cowboy Robot at the end, but what are the lessons he/she will learn. What friends will they make along the way and when do you introduce them? If Ninja Pirate turns out to be the son of Cowboy Robot, the outline will help you know to tell the audience that Ninja Pirate is an orphan in the beginning.
A character bible is also helpful. The character bible is a list of characteristics for each individual in your story. This may sound burdensome, but consider having fourteen characters all named Garth, the character bible will help you identify why Garth Mangrove is a vegetarian and Garth Orsnike is afraid of snakes. Perhaps a look at baby names from the country your characters are from will help you vary the names.
It’s time to get to the script. The panel description is the basic direction for the artist and not meant for the audience. Like a director, you must tell the artist where you want the camera. Like anything else, there is a limited amount of jargon including close up (usually meant to capture a facial expression), medium shot (shot from the chest up), birds eye view (shot from overhead), worm’s eye view (from ground-up, usually used to make things look bigger), and an establishing shot (used to establish place. Think “restaurant” from Seinfeld).
Here’s an example:
PAGE 1
Panel 1 – Medium shot – Pirate ninja is wearing a pirate hat and eye patch, but also a karate gee. He is crouching behind a wall while guards approach.
PIRATE NINJA: ARGH. My peg leg sure makes being stealthy difficult.
Here are a few tips. Increasing the number of panels will speed up the pace of a story. In contrast, a splash page is a one page illustration meant to stop time typically used during a big reveal. You must maintain consistency. If your character is handed a sword by his sidekick, the sidekick must be in the room in the previous panel.
If you are interested in learning more, might I recommend Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics or Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics Volume 1. When you win the Eisner award for Best New Series for Ninja Pirate, remember tgive the Columbus Scribbler a shout out!