Introduction to Writing Comic Books

Many people seem to harbor the misconception that comic books are "easy writing". After all, there are only a few words on each page, and the detailed work seems to spring from the artist's pen. In reality, however, comic books are just as difficult and time-consuming to write as your average novel; they simply require a much different skill set in order to succeed.

In Writing 101, we are taught that we should always "show" rather than "tell". This is a great maxim for prose writers whose work is without benefit of illustrations, but in a comic book, you must learn how to achieve the delicate balance between showing and telling. Not only will you have to tell about the scene in the writing of the comic book itself, but you will also have to give the artist explicit instructions about how you want the book to be drawn.

In order to learn how to write comic books, you must first learn how to think about the visual implication of words. You've decided that John is going to attack the stranger in the alley-that's great-but what will John look like when he's launching this enormous attack? In order for a comic book to flow smoothly, the drawings must complement the words as though the two were created simultaneously. This is easier said than done, however, when you are the writer and someone else is the artist.

There are two basic ways in which you can go about writing comic books. The first is writing the comic book as you would a script for a television show or movie. Instead of acts and scenes, however, you write each section in pages and panels, with descriptions and dialogue for each. You tell the artist how many panels you want on a page, how the panels should be arranged, and then you give the dialogue and description as it should appear in the finished copy.

The second way to go about writing comic books is more like prose than movie scripts. In this type of writing, you describe each page and panel in paragraph form, giving more control to the artists as to how the illustrations will look. Dialogue is added after the artist has finished his or her drawings, depending on how they come out.