write what you love Archives - Stacy Lyn Jensen

Comic Book Publishing

a grayscale of a person reading a comic book

On my last post I made note that I don’t actually know anything about the world of Comic Book publication. So I went ahead and looked into how it works. For self-publishing, I think it’s pretty standard, you write the thing and then publish. You need to market it and do all the things, find an audience and market the comic to that audience. But for traditional publishing you write a pitch or synopsis and send that in along with some sample art. Which I was wrong about not doing your own art. Apparently that is more just in Kid lit.

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This article has some really great tips about how to publish comic books/graphic novels: https://www.woodmanmaynard.com/blog/2025/9/29/5-tips-for-breaking-into-graphic-novel-publishing.

A couple of the important tips from the article are:

Look at comics that are similar to your own. Target those publishers.
Only submit to agents and publishers that already like and publish the type of work that you do.
- That tip above applies across the board to any kind of written work.
Publishing timelines run long, so start working on your next project before you get published.
- This last tip also applies to any kind of publishing with written work, unless you are self-publishing because you know your own timelines and can start working on your next project whenever you want.

So to sum it up, for publishing, you don’t need to have written the whole comic. You need a synopsis and some of the art. You need to target agents and publishers who are looking for work that you are writing and then you can start the process before you’ve finished your story.

Next in the write what you love series, we will talk about game narrative.

Comic Books: The Second in the Write What You Love Series

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Unlike screenplays, comic books have no specific format for manuscripts. There are no guidelines on how much writing makes up a ‘panel.’ When thinking about writing a comic book, you are a part of a team. If you are the writer, then there will also be an artist, possibly someone who does the lettering, etc. So, your job in comics is to write out not only the story, but what the panel is going to look like and what the characters are doing in each panel.

Comics took their formatting from screenplays. However, individual artists and writers made the format their own, using common sense rules and making the rest up as they went along. Some comic authors prefer to give their artists a lot of direction for each panel, and some do less.

Comic Book Formatting:

I found this article on comic book script formatting:

https://blambot.com/pages/comic-script-basics. It discusses how there is no standard format but also discusses what best practices look like. When writing a comic book it is best to keep in mind that there are other people that need to be able to understand what you are trying to do before you get to that final draft, so formatting is key, and readability is also important.

A couple of interesting bits from the article:

The artists need to know how the letters should look, each panel has a part dedicated to these instructions.
Every panel number is as important as every page number.
Indicate what kind of speech bubble you want in the script for each moment of dialogue.

Comic Books v. Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are similar to comics in many ways. They also have no specific format requirements for their manuscripts and follow the same idea of scripts with common sense additions because of their uniqueness.

Children’s literature and comics are similar in their ability to provide entertainment to people, no matter their ability to read. They can astound small children with the pictures, and then, as people grow, they can enjoy the richness of the narrative. Because of that shared ability I’m reminded of when I dove into children’s books and learned how publication works in that space. When submitting for publication in the children’s space, authors are only able to submit the words of their work, no illustrations. Even if you have amazing talent at illustration, the publishers have illustrators that they work with and they will choose the one that best fits the book.

I’m not going to say that it’s 100% the same with comics, but I would not be surprised. I’m sure that Marvel has a lot of artists that they work with, and even more that are just waiting for their chance, so I assume that when you submit a comic, it has to be only the script.

Something to look into next, I suppose. How to get a comic published traditionally.

Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for someone looking to get into comics.

Write What You Love: Screenplay Edition

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I often see writers on writer-dedicated websites confess that they don’t actually enjoy reading. The inevitable question becomes, “do I have to read to write well?” The answer is a resounding “yes!” However, I am here to provide a caveat, an exception. But first, let’s start with a question: what do you love? Or maybe, why do you want to write? Because there is a reason here, and normally it boils down to the love of the story. There are a lot of ways to tell a story, a full-length novel is just one of them. If a person wants to write, hates to read, but loves movies or TV shows or plays, then my suggestion, is to write what you love: screenplays…let’s talk about screenplays.

The difference between reading and watching

When I think about the many differences between screenplays and novels. The first big thing that comes to mind is: a person is going to act out the screenplay. The actions have to be realistic. Generally speaking, you are not ‘in’ anyone’s head. The point of view is not as tight; it can follow a person, but it will not be ‘inside the mind’ of a character the same way that a novel is/can be. Formatting is majorly different than novels.

Formatting

On this website: https://dramatify.com/american-screenwriting-standard, they go into detail about what a screenplay should look like. There is a very specific standard, just like there is for novel manuscripts on what they should look like.

Some highlights are that the screenplay should be written in 12 pt. Courier on US letter paper, the headings should be in ALL CAPS and should include only six elements these are: scene heading, action, character, parenthetical, dialogue and transition.

Formatting details

More formatting details can be found here: https://www.emwelsh.com/blog/screenwriting-format-rules. According to this blog post a page of a script is a minute of action in the screenplay. Another interesting thing is that when a character is introduced for the first time, their name should be in all caps. After that, their name does not have to appear in capital letters.

Thoughts on Story

While writing a novel “show don’t tell” is something that people will say a lot. This idea takes on a whole new meaning when writing a screenplay because all of the action is literally shown. There is a difference in the way that you write when the expectation is that the audience will see the subtle motion of the character’s face as they react to another character that they dislike, or the audience will see a character tucking something into their bra. These differences mean that the story becomes felt instead of read, it’s seen and heard and maybe not written as much.

I’m not saying that the writing in a screenplay doesn’t matter; I’m saying that the point becomes subtler.