Hey all! I'm conceptualizing a story, loosely plotting it out, and trying to determine in what medium I should write. I had initially thought of a novel, if only because it's the go-to thought of mine for "writing," but the idea of graphic novels came to mind. How do you, personally, decide the best way to present your story?
Well, I write my stories in screenplay format, but everyone has a different way of writing a story. So I suggest that you write a story in a format you are more comfortable with writing.
If you are thinking it is better set for a graphic novel it is because the story has: Great opportunities for an artist to make awesome art, Will use the medium standards to tell the story better, cutting out a lot of clutter, Is 'light' on dialogue, no more than 50 words of dialogue a panel (lessens as the panel size does) and your target audience is more likely to enjoy the story as a marriage of art and dialogue, rather than letting their own imagination run with your description. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the quick replies, guys. I'm trying to consider which medium would best suit the story from a consumption stand-point. I'm not really seeing it being produced in any filmed medium (rather, I suppose I could see it as a television show, but the gratification of completing such a work seems like it would take far longer and television production isn't a big goal of mine), which leads me to consider it best to novel, graphic or not. For your checklist, Bell City Fires (I'll just call you BCF, if that's okay ), I definitely agree with the first. The whole story is a pastiche of fantasy and myth, which lends itself very well to awesome art. I don't necessarily know which medium works to tell the story better; I think it's really a give and take. The history and depth of the setting are more difficult to explore in a graphic novel (unless I go full Watchmen and include pages of supplementary text), but the subtlety of visual, as opposed to written, descriptions of events and characters is something I'm very fond of. I do enjoy writing dialogue, but I'm not as big a fan of writing out descriptive text. The target audience would be young adults, who I'm fairly certain are very receptive to big visuals in their stories. So I guess, what that boils down to, is that the scales seem pretty evenly balanced. Hm.
