How to Write a Comic Book Script

Introduction

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, and Robert Kirkman: giants in the world of comic books. Whether you have been a long-time comic book reader, a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even a watcher of The Walking Dead and all of its many spinoffs, many people have been exposed to comic books in their lives. And I’m sure that even more have considered writing one, two, or even an ongoing series.

It’s a daunting task. Heck, you might not even be able to draw—something that you and most of these legends above have in common.

However, writing comic books isn’t as intimidating as it might seem. In fact, the fun thing about writing comics is that there is no “correct” way to write them. Here is a step-by-step guide on one of the many ways to write a comic book script.

"I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic book writer while others were building bridges or going on to medical careers. Then I realized that entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. I feel that if you're able to entertain, you're doing a good thing" — Stan Lee

Prerequisite

            Like with most writing, if you plan on working within a medium, being familiar with specific conventions found throughout the it can greatly help your experience. I’m sure you’ve heard many times throughout your writing career that if you want to write, you need to read. That isn’t just the case for Moby Dick and Hamlet.

            Before you start your comic book writing journey, try to read a couple comics and jot down some of the core things that you notice about them that are different from normal prose. For example, if you read a comic that has very snappy dialogue, try to dissect why that dialogue feels so authentic. Is it the way the panels are placed out? Is it the dialogue itself? Thinking about these things while reading comics will in return better help how you write them.

            You can even go a step further by thinking about the reasons why the story is best told in the form of a comic book.

"Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa." — Grant Morrison

Warm-up

Now that you are more familiar with comic books as a specific medium, it’s time to do a writing warm-up. Take a short story that you have written—or thought of—and start thinking about how it would work as a comic book.

            Visualize what your characters would look like. How would they interact with each other from panel to panel? What are the major beats in your story that need to be hit?

Most importantly, think about the limitations of comic book writing, and how that effects your story.

With all this in mind, write down twenty-five to thirty bullet points, each bullet representing a page of your story. If you are feeling even more bold—or are artistically inclined—sketch out a page or two. Thinking of your story in this way will help you to better grasp how comics are written and thought of.

"If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?" — Stan Lee

It All Starts With an Idea

Like writing any other story, comic books start with plotting out an idea. I know, rocket science, right? Jokes aside, plotting the general idea of a comic is super crucial to the flow of how your comic will read.

            Like many types of media, comics have strengths and weaknesses by trait. For example, splash pages (full-page or two-page spreads of a single image) generally appear on the left-hand page of the book, as it is more impactful for readers to see a full image when they turn the page. My general rule is to start with twenty-five to thirty bullet points outlining where I want my story to go throughout an entire issue. This outline may change over time, but it is helpful to have a benchmark to aim for.

            Additionally, if you intend to work with an artist other than yourself, a character guide is a vital resource for the artist. Include your character’s name, height, general features (eye color, hair color, a weird mole on their left eye, etc.), and reference pictures of a real person who looks similar. 

Outlines can be as messy as you want them to be. Remember, they are for you and only you to see. Here is a great example:

Source: makingcomics.com

Script Writing Begins

When writing comics, it is best to think of them as short movies or episodes of a show, which are made up of pictures, and words, and speech bubbles. In fact, there is a lot of overlap between how a comic book and a movie script are written. Comic book authors often use a camera in their scripts to guide the art across the page.

Here is an example of a comic book script that I wrote for my comic, US HWY 27:

A link to my full comic

I’m usually a visual learner, so let's dissect the form of this script.

            General note: There is no correct or one way to write a comic book script. But learning the basics can help you create a style that is easy for artists to understand and better gel with your own writing style.

            No matter how you like to write scripts, you have to cover the basics: page number, the type of paneling for each page, and what is happening in each specific panel. The example above is a full script, and what I would recommend writing if you do not have a tight relationship with your artist yet.

Page Numbers

The first and most important part of each page that you write is to identify the page that you are working on. Although it may seem trivial, a comic book page written out can be several real pages in length after adding dialogue, movement, sound effects, and other elements. This is the best way to avoid confusion when your artist reads your script and to ensure the artist knows which page they are working on. I usually bold and underline page numbers.

Panel Layout

The next item to specify is the type of panel layout you envision for the page. A good thing to note for beginning comic book authors is that the number of panels on a page is usually relative to the amount of time that has passed. For example, a nine-panel grid is used for beat-to-beat moments, whereas a four or five-panel page is usually good for moments happening over an elapsed period of time. As with any other type of writing, reading other works is the best way to become familiar with comic book “language,” story flow, and panel layouts; art inspires art, right? I recommend reading The Watchmen to gain a solid understanding of how nine-panel grids are used, and anything by artist Bryan Hitch to see how larger, more cinematic panel compositions work.

Here are examples of a grid used in The Watchmen and a cinematic panel from The Ultimates:

Panel Description

So, you’ve written down your page number and panel layout. Now it’s time for the meat of your script: the panel description. This is exactly how it sounds; you—the author—are describing everything you want to happen in each specific panel of your comic. You want your panel descriptions to be clear, concise, and detailed. Each description should provide the artist with a clear idea of what you want each panel to look like.

When writing your panel descriptions, ensure there is a strong emphasis on clarity and concision rather than beautiful purple prose. While grandiloquent descriptions work great in novels, they could muddy up a comic book script and make it hard for an artist to decipher what actually needs to be drawn in the panel for the story to make sense; there is no need to describe in a paragraph how a light fixture looks if it is going to be hung in the back of a shadowy background. I know, as a writer, it may be hard to refrain from describing a field of sunflowers as a cloud of golden-yellow petals resting atop a rolling green of perfectly manicured and maintained grass, but trust me, a field of sunflowers more than suffices.

Along with stripped-back descriptions, ensure that only what is necessary is included in each panel. You have to think about the limitations of your medium whenever you are writing anything. An artist can only fit so many details into a single panel (a small section of an eleven-by-seventeen piece of paper) of a full page. Having an artist include purposeless items in the background of each scene will actually muddy the panel rather than providing more description. Things to highlight from most important to least would be character movement, essential items to the scene (maybe a gun, a key, a pocket watch, etc.), setting, and then background items. Stick to less is more; the fewer items in each panel, the more each detail will stand out.    

Another aspect to keep in mind when writing your panel descriptions is to use the present continuous or progressive tense when writing. Sequential art is supposed to jump off the page at you and convey action or movement from one scene to the next.

Take, for example, this page drawn by Jack Kirby in issue seventy-one of The Fantastic Four:

The art feels alive; each character and scene looks to be moving, even if it's just art on paper. In order to get this desired effect, your writing also needs to convey movement. For example, in panel two of the script I wrote above, I specify “A hand covered in thick leather-like skin picks up the bottle of whisky by the neck” instead of “A hand covered in thick leather-like skin picked up a bottle of whisky by the neck.”

            In the first sentence, you can envision the hand moving to pick up the bottle in real time; in the second sentence, that image might not be as clear. Try to stick to active verbs whenever writing.

Dialogue

            Yes, characters also talk in comics. The final element you need to outline when writing your script is dialogue, or the lack thereof, sound effects, and captions. These elements are how your story will actually be read.

            However, dialogue is the most “gray” area when it comes to writing scripts. As long as it is clear who is speaking in each panel and what they are saying, the way this is portrayed on the page can vary substantially. Some writers treat dialogue as in a play, using tabs and character names after the description to indicate who is speaking. Other writers will use a decimal-like system (as shown in the script example above) to clearly indicate the order of each dialogue and the page on which it occurs. The only rule is that the indication of dialogue must be clear to the artist (so they can leave room in the panels for speech bubbles) and to the letterer (the person who will place the speech bubbles on the page).

            Sound effects and captions should be listed in the same way as dialogue. I consistently use “SFX” when listing out sound effects. Along with this, when writing captions, make sure you identify whether they are spoken by a character or if they are narration. Alongside speaking lines, panels with no dialogue should also be noted. I usually notate that as “[NO DIALOGUE].”

"The great advantage of comic books, over the years, has been that, if they are frozen movies, they are not limited by budget. They are only limited by imagination." — Michael Uslan 

Conclusion

            Put all of these things together and repeat them twenty-five to thirty more times, and you will have yourself a full comic book script. Do everything by the book, take a few pieces of advice from this blog, or ignore everything and just use it as inspiration. Either way, with these tips and tricks, I hope you are inspired to take that random idea you had in the shower and create a comic book script from it. If you have any further questions about anything I’ve covered here, please feel free to email.

Happy writing!

Resources

The Legion and the "The Grid"- Comics Archeology goes in depth on how nine-panel grids are used within comics.

How To Write An Outline For Your Comic-  Tod Tevlin Discusses the how and why of plotting comic books.