Reply With QuoteInteresting. Cool. So lets say that I was looking for an artist to hire or something would you say make that be part of the job hiring process?
It is purely a style choice, artistic license. There are lots of reasons. Your preference for more meat to a comic might be most important, since comics are both fine art as well as a profitable commodity they have to retain a sense of value with the consumer. The growth of the Trade Paper Back or whatever you want to call larger page number products likely has opened up the tendency to ignore how substantial each 22 page section of it has to be. Pamphlets are less comprehensive because their primary purpose is to help sell the TPB. They leave you wanting more instead of feeling satiated. More self contained things like tales from the crypt you mentioned contain short stories. That may be why they tend to have a greater number of panels.
Interesting. Cool. So lets say that I was looking for an artist to hire or something would you say make that be part of the job hiring process?
I'm really not following now. I'm confused. A cartoonist has to interpret a writer's script. They interpret it the way that they interpret it. That is their business. It is what they know, study, have a proficiency at. You can't tell them that a paragraph that they say will take them 8 panels should be 4. I mean, you could, but what do you know? Like i said before, you need to look into what a cartoonist actually does to get a better idea of why a cartoonist uses a certain number of panels. It is part of writing for comics. you need to know how to speak the language of cartooning. If you figure that out than you can write a 7-9 panel page that the artist will make into a 7-9 panel page. I don't know where you are getting hiring practices involved in all this. i don't really want to derail this thread.
No, I feel you, man. I don't want to derail it either. What I'm saying that based upon what we're talking about, then the number of panels is all up to a artists sensibilities. So as a writer I wouldn't want to work with an artist who is very explosive in his art work, who per page does not use a lot of panels. Instead, I should try to find an artist who either enjoys or is comfortable with a lot of panels. Thus, when I'm trying to find an artist for a paying job, then perhaps that should something that I should look to as a deal maker or a deal breaker.
it's up to the artist, but it is also up to the writer. It just depends. It shouldn't factor into hiring somebody. Basically i'm saying you need to work with somebody and develop a rapport.
This NYtimes article is interesting in that it implies that being more literal with metaphors may be helpful.
Wipe
My response is a little ways out of the ball park but here goes...
Know yourself.
Ask yourself these 3 questions first:
1] Why are you writing THIS story? [What are you trying to sort out for yourself?]
2] Who do you want to be entertained by THIS story?[Besides yourself of course.]
3] How can you make THIS story-telling better? [There is always room for improvement.]
As long as you know where you're coming from you'll have a good idea where you're going.
Just keep in mind what you want to get out of THIS story and what you want to get across to others.
.
I've come up with the acronym WIPE to explain the process by which we write and deal with the issues in our lives as we write our way back into sanity and which incidentally fits the tips and tricks thread, even though it [the acronym] isn't strictly technical in nature.
Wit: Deal with the themes/issue of your story in an intelligent, sophisticated and professional manner.
Idioms: Apply slang/jargon/colloquialisms appropriate to the setting of your story. Be literal in your imagery.
Personal: Take the story to your reader - don't give them a chance to doubt the validity of your story.
Enjoy telling the story and your pleasure will be transmitted [think of the adage: laugh and the whole world laughs with you...cry and you're on your own]
WIPE.[the slate clean]
Rinse.
Repeat as desired.
-Make sure each panel has one clear focus (usually an action, but not always). Don't divide the reader's attention within a panel.
-While it's popular to follow in Alan Moore's footsteps and over-describe your panels, make sure you're only telling something to the artist if it's important. Don't go on about the color of the phone on the desk if it's irrelevant, you're just choking the creativity out of the artist, and even worse, you're misdirecting him!
-Avoid fillers like the plague!!! Sometime you have to invent a scene to divide certain moments within the story (and show the passage of time for example), but make it count. You can't waste the reader's time and the artist's talent! Imagine that every page you write will cost a million dollars to produce, and it will teach you to write tighter scripts.
Efficiency with dialogue is the key. You're not writing a book, and no one gives a damn how eloquent you can be. If something interesting isn't happening by the end of the second page it's time to punch someone, have a random explosion go off, give one of your character a serious case of awkward yet sexually enticing wardrobe malfunction, have a male character making googly eyes at a female character, have a female character making googly eyes at a male character, have the protagonist suddenly bump into the main antagonist...old lady suddenly pausing in the middle of the street to catch her breath just as an 18 Wheeler's brakes just happens to fail, rabid cats start falling from the sky all of a sudden, or at the very least have someone slip on a banana peel...especially if there's large vats of acid anywhere around.
You want to pontificate about some social moral dilemma which has gotten you all eaten up inside?
...Get a blog.
Do some research into basic camera shots with film production, just enough to learn the basics like:
Close up
Extreme Close up.
Wide
Panoramic
Bird's Eye View
Character POV (Point of View)
Etc...etc
Also here's some information about staging panels from a particular corporation for one of their comic book lines back in the day, one who's name is probably better off being unsaid.
I just wanted to say that this thread is very helpful. I have been writing short stories for some time now and want to try writing a few comic book scripts and I feel like this thread is a really good starting place for me. Thanks guys! I look forward to putting all this good advice to work.
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