Manga-writing basics, Part I: Format

[rachelmanija]

Note: I wrote this yesterday, but it got backdated, so I'm fixing it. Sorry if this keeps popping up on your reading lists.

Because we don't have enough to do, telophase and I will be editing and publishing an anthology of original manga short stories. You may write and draw, or submit as a team.

The points below are mostly for artists who aren't experienced writers, beginning writers, and/or writers who have never written in a script form before, and is probably way too basic to be useful for anyone who has written in a dramatic form (ie, comics, TV, plays, movies) or gets paid to write fiction.

I. Format.

Ii. Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Dream Country contains a comic book, "Calliope," and also the script for it. If you flip back and forth between the script and comic, you will get an excellent idea of how words translate into pictures. Note that Gaiman uses a great deal of detail in his script. This is fine but not necessary; personally, I prefer to leave more to the artist's interpretation.

Iii. A script will note the page number and the panel number, then describe the action going on in that panel, plus the dialogue or other text, if any.

Iiii. If you are a writer collaborating with an artist, even if you're using a very minimalist style, at least make sure that you say what's going on in each panel. If you just write the dialogue, your artist will be confused and baffled.

Good example # 1 (minimalist):
Page 3, panel 4: Text with shoujo bubbles in the background.
Text: I wonder if he remembers my name.

(Note: Shoujo frequently uses abstract backgrounds-- bubbles, flowers, or geometric shapes-- to indicate emotional states.)

Good example # 2 (more descriptive):
Page 3, panel 4: The interior of a Texas-style soul food restaurant in Los Angeles. This is really homey-looking and intimate, with peanut shells on the floor, pies in a case at the counter, and lots of somewhat tacky Texas memorabilia, frequently featuring longhorns and armadillos. We can see part of the kitchen through an open door. There's six tables, but only one is occupied. Miko, a pretty, businesslike Japanese woman in her mid thirties, sits at a table across from her husband, Joe, a big Iraqi man with black-rimmed glasses and five o'clock shadow. They're tucking into a giant platter of barbecued spare ribs.

Miko: I like these ribs better than the ones at Dr. Hogly-Wogly's.

Joe: Me too. But Mo Better Meatty Meat Burgers has better potato salad.

(Note: panels 1-3 would probably be fairly small to leave enough room on the page to fit this much detail and dialogue into panel four.)

Bad example:
Page 3, panel 4:
Josie: You cannot escape my mutant power to make explosive spitballs! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

(Note: Who is Josie? Where is she? What is she doing? Is there a background? What's going on?)

Iiv. Avoid writing in more than five panels per page, because odds are good your artist will need to add some stuff, and you don't want the page to get crowded.

Iv. Page 1 is by itself. Pages 2-3 face each other. Remember this, because if you want a two-page splash page, it will have to be across an even page-odd page. Also, if you want something to be a surprise, put it on an even page, as people's eyes automatically scan forward to take in the entire two-page spread.

Ivi. Make sure that each panel doesn't contain more action than you can actually see in it.

Good example # 1 (action in single moment and view):

Page 2, panel 1: Wide view of the OK Corrall. Smoke drifts from Wyatt's drawn gun. Billy Clanton is collapsing in a cloud of dust.

Good example # 2 (action broken up into separate moments):

Page 2, panel 1: Close-up of Wyatt's hand hovering over his holster.

Page 2, panel 2: A vulture, backlit by the sun, comes in for a landing atop the saloon.

Page 2, panel 3: Wyatt's hand grabs the gun. Speedlines in background.

Page 3, panel 4: Tones in background.
sfx (ie, sound effect): BANG!

Page 3, panel 5: Billy Clanton collapses in a cloud of dust.

Bad example:

Page 2, panel 1: Wyatt draws his gun and shoots Billy Clanton, who falls over and dies.

(Notes: There's several actions separated by time here that can't occur in the same panel: Wyatt's draw, Wyatt's shot, and Billy's death. Good example # 1 occurs within the second or so after Wyatt has fired, which is the moment when Billy goes down.

Next post: Dialogue.

Comments

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting -- I'm struck by how much comic writing is like scriptwriting (well, duh, pictures)....

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

My comic writing is probably more like scriptwriting than comic writing by people who didn't spend the last ten years writing for theatre and television.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

And the thing that's hardest for me to remember is that unlike TV writing, I have to write out every single shot rather than just what's happening in the scene.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

What I've been tending to do after getting your script is to read it first, then make a copy with the panel descriptions stripped out, and rough it from there, because I have a tendency to get stuck in the exact descriptions someone gives me and not think, er, outside the box, for lack of a better term. But I do read the panel descriptions first, so I know what's going on in the page, and in a perfect world, I go back to the copy with the panel descriptions after I'm working on the pencils so I don't forget anything important.

It's just not always a perfect world. XD

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

And then after I see the thumbnails or pencils, I say, "Hey, such-and-such is supposed to happen in that panel" if it turns out that something essential was missed.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Teamwork, I say!

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd add that in some cases, a much rougher script can actually work really well. I'm working with two teams right now where the writer does a "penciling" script, which basically details what dialogue should go on each page (and general scene descriptions), then the artist does their thing with the panel layout, filling in the specifics, the writer sees the thumbs, makes script adjustments and art suggestions, and does final dialogue when the final pages are in. All partnerships work a little differently, and I think in the case of one of them, the artist and writer are close enough (geographically) and have worked together long enough that they can really expand and elaborate on each others' ideas. It's a funny business. There seems to be a fine line between giving an artist enough to go on, and keeping them from feeling too constrained. A friend who has moved on to work at DC turns scripts in that not only specify what goes in what panel, but even more details like panel placement and whether it is a bleed, etc. Go fig.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the DC format is known for being very strict, while the Marvel format is much looser - from what I understand, the writer and editor and sometimes artist get together and hammer out what's going into the story, then the artist goes away and breaks it into pages and panels and pencils it, then the writer creates the dialogue.

[willshetterly.livejournal.com]

When you get to word balloon placement, here's my pet peeve:

English-speakers read from left to right and from top to bottom. If you want your word balloons to be easy to read, remember this. You can have as many word balloons as you want, so long as you remember that the logical flow goes like this:

A - B -
C - D -
etc.

A very common mistake is to go:

_____A -
B

or, worse yet:

_____B -
A

The reader doesn't know whether to start with the top right balloon or the lower left balloon.

Japanese comics tend to use fewer word balloons per panel than American ones, and this is wise.

Yours for more good comics!

Will

[grimorie.livejournal.com]

Very insightful, and exactly what I wanted to learn, thanks!

[bluesira.livejournal.com]

Even though this was, as you said, fairly basic, it was still interesting to read. I do both the writing and the art for my manga, but I really feel like I am two different people when I do it. I will write up a script, then go sketch things out, but when I try to draw the panels, I sometimes feel as if the script weren't written by me at all. Thankfully, my script seems to flow well onto the page, what with paneling and pacing, but it's tough. Writing manga is a really crazy skill, because for every page, you can't just compose it a single frame at a time. You have to do it a whole page at a time, and often two pages at a time.