I'm beginning a new project and want to try fully scripting out a few chapters before I draw them to see if it will make the process easier for me. How do you all write your scripts, at least format-wise? I'm unsure of where to start and would love some help.

for example: if a panel's dialogue runs for 20 words, should those 20 words be in the same bubble, or should I divide it? if the latter, by what criteria?

I'm unsure whether these details are relevant or not. firstly, I use the nine-panel grid; secondly, my limit for one panel is 20 words; thirdly, I don't use thought bubbles.

my thanks.

I have written a short 6 page comic as part of a collection of stories, but I want to elaborate on it.

I'm a big fan of movies about fictional pop stars, such as Vox Lux, Velvet Goldmine, and most recently, Smile 2.

I'm looking forward to any advice you all may provide.

I don't understand, cause we read manga for free (literally) anime are free to watch too.

How can we make money with our indie short comic ? Or it's just hobby ?

Hi all, a published short story writer here, with no scripting experience. I have a short story on my hands which I'm working on turning into a script.

The comic is inherently a different medium from creative writing, and I'm often stumped by the translation, even though readers found my story to be very visually evoking and cinematic.

For example, I'm floundering with the pace and matching paneling to content. I have 16 scenes (two of them are bookending small blips)—should I strive to convert every scene into a page? Or should it be a bit per page? Or there's no hard and fast rule here except trying to make every page end so the reader wants to see the next one? How many pages do you usually do per scene?

Another one: what is the content limit of one panel? Is it one action, one key thought, or something else?

Please dump all your thoughts and considerations on me.

I'm a write and the cost probably just about paying artist.

20 panels. Colored. Simple illustrations style. How much should i expect to pay ? I don't have a big budget so.....

I've been looking around at submission guidelines at various publishers and I am finding that most publishers don't accept scripts or project proposals from writers only. I was wondering how folks have found the artists that they have worked alongside since I am from a small town that doesn't have much of an arts scene. Any and all advice is appreciated and thank you in advance!

We all know that longform comics are a marathon, not a sprint....but they can devolve into agonizing slogs, too.

I've been struggling with creating a longform webtoon/ webcomic because of my limited attention span, so for the longest time I concentrated on shorts, portfolio samples, and pitch packets. None of them really landed.

Recently I reopened an abandoned graphic novel script from three years ago. It was like coming home. Suddenly the plot holes from three years ago were easily resolved; I could finally see the shape of the book, the grand pattern. Now I plan to draw the whole thing as a webtoon/ webcomic.

However, the thought of drawing 300+ pages is daunting, even though I've drawn my own short comics and 200+-page gn's already (but not gn's I've written). I'm envious of creators who seem to dash off work so easily, page after page, for years. They develop a following and community that I want, too.

Creators, how do you maintain your dedication and inspiration while working on something as lengthy, slow, and time-consuming as a longform comic?

Thanks!

I'm working on a series of one off comics for practice. I've finished the first issue's rough/1st draft. But I'm trying to figure out how to make the into more interesting.

The series premise is a modern/fantasy city plagued by various apocalypse scenarios. The first one is zombies. In a retail store in a mall, it's a slow day, and then zombies happen.

So far I've got a 2 page intro that I'll do variations on for every issue. Where it's an eagle eye view of the city, that then zooms into where in the city shit's going down. Then it's each character getting a page introducing them through just showing what they're doing at the moment.

Manger is yelling for folks to get off their phones, while looking at weird or funny shit on his.

Two employees at the counter, one is telling a boring/bad story, the other is throwing out "that's crazy" and "oh dang"s.

Then the two friends shopping some records, giving each other shit.

And finally the District Manager shows up to kinda round out the group/collect them all at the front counter.

I'm just having trouble figuring out mundane dialogue, or interesting art stuff that won't make a reader lose interest. The entire point of the comic is just to practice art and writing. But I still want it to be the best I can do. And maybe turn it into something bigger by bringing the survivors from each one off together.

So how do you make something boring interesting?

I am an artist first and a writer second, I decided to pick comics because I want to use my art to tell stories. I have a clear idea of the setting and protagonist but what I am struggling with is the actual writing. I am confused about how to start it; I know a bit about writing, mostly short stories and a bit about film, but I'm not sure about comics. It seems like it might be similar to film because a lot of it is visual, I'm just wondering what guidelines are there for writing comics? I've tried looking up different methods but most are far more vague than they would be for film or short story writing.

So, art school entrance tests in my country consists of drawing a short comic based on a prompt they give, and I'm having trouble coming up with a satisfying story that I can put in a 20 panel comic while practicing for that. Main piece of advice I've heard is to structure it like a joke; clear setup and then punchline - but while that sounds true, I can't quite grasp how to come up with an interesting 'punchline' with a clear message, and also make it surprising. Any help appreciated

To elaborate, I already have a full story outline with some pages of various scenes written. But I've been in the process of reworking my comic into a strict 22-24 page format and the scope of the project is getting too overwhelming to handle all by myself. So what I really need is a collaborator to write the issues; break down the outline into scenes in a full script by-the-issue, as well as be frank about what works & what doesn't, what should happen instead of this plot line etc. This is a lot of work and I'm not sure what rates typically are for this, so I'd like to know if anyone here has experience with hiring a writer/being hired as a writer and if you can share any advice.

So its nothing very serious, but I'm currently writing my first chapter for a comic sort of like a pilot, just to get the idea out there since I'm back logged on other projects, but I've focused more of my life on the writing portion of comics rather on the drawing portion so I was wondering how I'm able to get a professional artists? I already have some sketches laid out for it that give out the main idea of what each panel would look like but where I would look for other artists?

Do the story or each act in the story end on an even or odd number? Also how many pages per act usually?

Thanks in advance

Possibly my favorite part of story writing is the world, character arcs, plot arc, etc., and I like to incorporate that into everything I do. However, now that I want to make something NSFW, adding actual story seems to be uncharted territory. This personally really annoys me, just cause p*rn is thought of as shameful by society doesn't mean some of it can't have as much or more plot than a kid's cartoon. I'm going to try to stray away from harmful tropes and stuff obviously (such as lesbian sex targeted towards men rather than actual lesbians, which is gross and reprehensible) but any tips on how I can do this? So far, best allegory for what I'm trying to do is 50 Shades of Grey, and oh my god I do not want to end up anything like that awful book. Any advice? Thanks.

For context, it will be Sci-Fi, and probably targeted towards cis men and amab trans/nonbinary people for the most part, who like girls.

Hi All,

I am a brand new comic writer who just completed my first script. I am currently working with an artist to bring the script to life, and am very excited to see the finished product.

As I was looking ahead towards the completion of this comic, I was contemplating the best way to document it in my portfolio. Do I just post the finished product as is? Do I include a few pages of my script along with the finished pages so viewers can compare the two? Would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this subject.

Also, if anyone has any recommendations on a portfolio website (Behance, DeviantArt, etc.) I would love to hear those as wells.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post!

I am working on starting a..I guess series of one off stories that, story-wise, is about a city plagued by various apocalypse. So basically, a bunch of one off stories that has potential to tie together. If I want to make something out of it. Also one setting because it's easier.

Function-wise, is really only meant to be practice. So I can learn and get some practice in the art and writing sides of creating comics. And use what I learn to make the actual series I'd like to work on.

Well, I've finished the first draft of the scrip. And it absolutely needs re-working. It takes place over maybe 30 minutes. Employees of a retail store in a modern/fantasy shopping mall have to deal with zombies. Simple.

The dialogue needs a redo. The intro segment needs re-working to make it interesting. Lots to do.

But at what point do I ask friends (not a lot, just those i feel could give solid feedback) if they'd be willing to look at it?

I have basically no social media following. I'll be honest, I don't really love mist social media or trying to chase clout, but it's an unfortunate reality of the world we live in.

I'm very far into a project right now. Somehwere between 1/2 and 2/3rds done with page art.(approximately 80 pages of story total)

At that point I want to try and release and print it but I don't really know how to go about that. I have some ideas but I would love some advice from people whove successfully managed to get a comic out there.

My general plan has been the following: Continue to post sketches/other art i produce aside from comic. This is difficult as I don't have tons of time to draw nonpaid work outside my comic. I'm working a full-time job as well.

Build out a Kickstarter with a small goal as the Kickstarter is only for printing costs. As I'm writing and drawing I don't have any costs associated with production. I would then try and get as much support as possible through my existing networks(handful of Twitter artists friends who would probably signal boost me a few times if I asked)

Try to identify different blogs or yt channels that review comics and give them free digital copies of the book.

Once I have physical books table at local cons if possible. Talk directly to local LCS shops to see if they might stock copies in their indie sections if they exist.

Submit to one of the publishers with open submissions. I don't think they'd help with printing costs, but I'm hopeful they could at least help me get listed in diamond or some distributor? I'm hoping that having the project completed in its entirety might help my odds getting picked up. Many only require a handful of completed pages. Is this assessment offense?

I could try uploading the comic page by page to a dedicated webcomic platform, but this really inst a webcomic. It's structured in pages and is intended to be read more like a traditional comic/manga

If anyone has any other ideas for promotion I'm not thinking of I'm all ears. If you know of specific reviewers or channels I should look to approach for potential reviews I'm all ears as well.

So some background:

I'm an artist/writer and I want to show my work to an editor

I have an entire volume of a comic basically fully figured out, but before I storyboard/write an official script for the whole thing, I want to run my ideas by my editor, but I have no idea how to present them without just doing an entire script.

They suggested I give them an outline, but every time I try and write an outline of the bigger storybeats, i feel like its missing so much that any feedback given on it would be met with me saying "well this happens because of xyz but i left it out" Or another worry is it being so vague and watered down that it doesnt remotely give the feeling of how anything will actually play out, and now theyre giving feedback on something irrelevant

Is there any point in laboring over an outline like this?

Should I just write a full script and send them that??

I started doing something in between, like a very detailed outline, but now it just feels like I'm writing the script and leaving out all the flavor that makes it entertaining.

How do people present finished stories in a digestible way?

https://preview.redd.it/ztmjvequ2dtd1.jpg?width=1748&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=73fcb14bef1954717d05144b16eb5252fac5ce8f

Hello everybody! After several months of hard work, I've finally taken the big leap into crowdfunding with the first issue of my creator owned comic EMERGENT: Retribution! 24 pages filled to the brim with action, masked vigilantes and good old-fashioned revenge, all of it written and drawn by yours truly!
It would mean a lot to me if you took a moment and checked out my campaign page, where you'll also find links to my previous comic EMERGENT #0 which is available for FREE, so don't miss out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emergentcomic/emergent-retribution-1

Hi folks, I'm new to here and new to the artform as well. I've written three or four scripts for fun, but I feel a little lost when it comes to format and content. I've done a little research on different styles of scriptwriting and I find myself gravitating to a more "DC Style" of detail in my script. I was wondering if anyone could point me towards some general guidelines to follow when writing and how to properly format a script. Thanks for any and all info!

(Oneshot, meaning 25-30 pages with a standalone story from beginning to end with full closure.) Im currently trying a oneshot script but I dont like the "A day in the life of a character" type that people suggest for oneshots, I want to tell more than one day. I want to tell multiple small happenings and real charakter developments, but its so hard to get the pacing down. It feels everything is happening to fast... Any tipps out there?

(If u have suggestions for closed Oneshot titles out there that are telling over a period of time, that also would be super helpful)