So I've wanted to delve into graphic novels before but I need some more advice. Outlining and characters I understand, but as far as the script itself goes how does that work? Because obviously the dialogue and placement of the speech bubbles need to be put into consideration, yes? Any advice would be welcomed.
Disclaimer: haven't worked on a graphic novel before, but I feel like that would depend on whether or not you're doing this solo or working with a some kind of artist. More specifically a layout artist. Usually it's the layout artist's job to layout speech bubbles and paneling from the script so usually the writers don't have to worry about that unless they're doing both.
It's somewhat different from writing a pure text book, because of course it's largely visual. Basically the images are the showing part and the writing is the telling. It probably doesn't break down perfectly like that, but pretty close. I suppose one thing you could do is to look into filmmaking approaches for very visual films, as opposed to those where the heavy lifting is done through dialogue etc. But then that's pretty much akin to the differences between showing and telling. Are you doing the art as well as the writing, or is there going to be an artist? Here's what little I know about the Marvel method, which generally involves a separate writer and penciller: They get together and discuss it, I don't know in how much detail, that probably differs depending on the people involved. They possibly work up something like a rough outline, and then it can go one of two ways. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby worked together (the guys who created the Marvel method), at this point Kirby would thumbnail the story in the form of small and very rough stick figure type drawings, demonstrating page layouts and page flow etc. At this point he was coming up with a lot of the ideas himself that would end up in the finished product. They'd get together and look over the thumbnails, talk some more, and maybe he'd make some changes. Once the thumbnails are approved he'd do full-sized layouts, which are still fairly rough preliminary pencils, and Stan would go through and place word balloons and text boxes etc and decide what words need to go in them, possibly request a few changes. Then Kirby would do up the full pencil art and the letterer goes to work on it. Visual page flow is important not just on each page but across a spread of them, since the reader will see 2 pages side by side. The thumbnails should take this into account.
So the story gets out lined, but the artist and writer works on bringing it together? Not bad...tricky if you're doing everything by yourself though. Still it sounds doable.
Well if you're doing it yourself you don't need to collaborate with anybody of course, it's like a constant inner collaboration between yourself as writer and as artist. Hopefully they get along well. I think I would move between outlining as text and thumbnailing as drawings at several stages.
Theres and old school book you might like to check out - 'The five C's of Cinematography' It might not be totally applicable but it will introduce you to concepts like the 'establishing shot' and 'crossing the line'. As reference I'd also suggest you check out Sin City by Frank Miller. That graphic novel was heavily referenced in making the movie. Framing and camera angles were used directly from panels.
