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.
