I am thinking about a little side project. I know a guy who does some quite unique artwork and I have recently been quite taken by reading V for Vendetta (my first ever comic!) I am just looking for some basic advise about writing for this genre. Anyone here have any experience writing within this genre?
Hi Badger! I am current writing a graphic novel that will be handed off to an artist I know to draw. Two things: 1. He doesn't tell me what to write; I don't tell him how to draw. 2. Graphic novels (as I've discovered) is more of a cross between novel writing and movie/script writing than anything else. So here is my one bit of advice, pick up these two books. 1. Save the Cat By Blake Snyder. This is a great book about story structure in terms of film. 2. After you do this, Buy and read Batman: Year One by Frank Miller. You will be amazed by how Frank Miller follows Blake Snyder's Story Structure. (Actually, this is a great exercise for anyone wanting to learn basic concepts of story structure in any medium.) There is other things I could suggest, but I don't really know how far along you are; so, I'll just suggest the first step I took.
Not likely to go and buy books just now. Will have a little back and forth with the guy doing graphics because I may need to alter dialogue based on where he chooses to set the "story". Only doing about a dozen "frames" to start out with, then we'll take it from there. I will post what we've done here once we have something done!
He's a co-writer and artist then. Because the things I mentioned trespass on the territory of the writer overtly.
I'm currently teaching myself how to do my first comic book, and I'm reading a few books and other comics in order to understand the structure. I'm not sure how you've packaged it to send to your illustrator, but I can share with you how I'm personally finding out how to do it! Right now I have a plot in mind and I work out a page-by-page rough of how I want the story set up. When I finish and polish it, I'm going to go ahead and create a panel-by-panel outline of necessary actions in the artwork as well as dialogue. This ensures that I (as the illustrator) know the important details to highlight in the art and gets my vision across. There is a website called Making Comics that has a ton of juicy information on the writing that I'm finding very helpful for my newbie self. I'm excited to see others on this forum doing comics!
