This last week I attempted writing my own comic book. Well, that’s not accurate, I didn’t attempt, I did write my own comic.
And let me just say this about it.
It was hard.
I didn’t walk into this whole comic writing thing thinking it would be a breeze by any means. But I guess I just didn’t realize the amount of time, effort, and most of all planning that goes into writing a comic book.
Oh yes, it’s all about the planning.
You don’t just have to write the dialogue and internal thoughts of the character, you have to direct. You have to plan out each panel. You have to describe exactly what you want the artist to draw in those panels. And, most of all, you have to place and position those panels in such a way (in conjunction with the dialogue and thoughts of the characters) so that they visually convey the story.
It’s writing a story with pictures. Really, the words are only there to add detail, to aid in understanding, the real story lies in the visuals.
You have to ask yourself, is the reader going to understand what the hell I’m talking about if I show them this and then this? Or should I show them this instead?
Even if you can’t draw you have to inhabit the mind of the artist. Does what I’m doing here visually convey a message? And is that picture strong enough to guide the reader to some deeper meaning?
Now, that said, it was also a lot of fun. Yes, I had to do a large amount of research for it. (I’m not sure if that’s typical or not, but for what I wanted to write about, the research needed to be done.) But, in the end, it just made the overall product better. And I was proud of myself for putting forth so much effort.
Also, any cool thing you’ve ever wanted to see being done in a comic is a possibility because you are the one doing the writing. Any character that you wanted to see, any event, any dialogue is right there at your fingertips. You just have to put it down on paper.
I don’t know if anything will ever come of my comic. But i loved doing it. And, let me tell ya, I’ve got plenty of ideas for following issues.
Yep. Everybody thinks writing comics is a breeze — until they do it.
And you did a good job!