I have decided to turn my story into a graphic novel but I was wondering if it needs to be written as a script first. Or do I just use blank paper and make story boards? Or both?
Yes, generally GN's will use a script. Would you be doing the art or getting someone else to? If you're also the artist there's probably no need for s script, it's mostly to clearly communicate the writer's ideas the the artist.
I am thinking of doing the artwork but one sleight problem, I do not have possession of my computer at the moment. I am trying to rectify it and get it back ASAP. I am working on the details so it will go smoothly when I get it back. I think it is easier to do the art on the computer than try to hand draw everything since I suck at drawing people. I am good with faces but not bodies.
If you already have a novel, the next step is to sketch a storyboard. The artist can improve the panel layout but it's critical that you at least have a rough idea about each scene's feasibility in a visual form. No black clothes if you want to show depth using shadows, et cetera. The most common problems are that speach bubbles have little room for long sentences, movement is expressed using poses and narration steals space from graphical scenes. The higher the drama is, the more realistic the drawings has to be in order to give credability, which is why most comics are just comedy. Just forget about poetry because it doesn't translate.
I've read that when Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were collaborating on 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first impulse was to write the screenplay. But they found that to keep the story in focus, they needed to write it as a novel first, and then transcribe it to the screen. Of course, the screenplay diverged from the novel at points, because it was being re-written even as it was being filmed. But it was the novel that allowed them to see how far their ideas could stretch.
If you don't write an actual script, you should still make what are called breakdowns. That's pretty much like what you were calling a story board, with rough thumbnail drawings and everything broken up into panels like it will be in the final graphic novel, but this is where you test it to see if the pacing and the visual flow are working. Keep it really rough and don't be afraid to re-draw everything as soon as you spot a problem. That's the whole point of the breakdown—it's where you try things out until they work, and then you move on and start laying out the finished thing. It's your first draft.
I suspect the answer comes down to what works best for you? I would probably start with an extremely detailed outline for the story just to help keep things straight for yourself. If I have any key dialogue I want in a scene, it would be part of the outline. From here I would start with the story boarding. I would also expect that you will have significantly more revisions than with a novel. Your dialogue will change as you figure out how to convey more non-verbal nuance with your drawings, and you will likely go back and rework your artwork as you get more experience drawing. As a practice suggestion, do you have a short story all/mostly done that you can practice converting to a graphic novel? This will allow you to get a feel for what works for you.
Yes, and it can be as detailed or sparse as you want, depending mostly on how much creative control you give the artist. Some pros use shorthand in forms akin to movie scripts - you can find templates with a quick search - while others write novel-worthy paragraphs about everything happening on the page. Some guys were talking about this on a comic-related podcast years ago. One asked the other if he'd ever seen some writer's scripts (I forget who they were discussing.) He hadn't, and the first said this writer wrote page after page of highly descriptive prose, including sounds, smells, emotional atmosphere and other usually unseen information, just so the artist had a better sensory window into what he was thinking.
If you're making everything yourself you can please yourself, but you'll have a much easier time if you have both a script and a story board. Making a comic book takes FOREVER if you're on your own (and without any experience). So if you don't write out your ideas and how you want things to be there is a bigger chance you'll forget and end up winging it... Which will probably be a bad idea. Though I'm mostly concerned over that you want to draw it yourself, but at the same time you say you can't draw. Those two don't go together. So if you want to do it on your own I think that should be your first concern. Learning how to draw well takes a long time too, and by the time you've got an art style that works in a graphic novel your story idea might be long forgotten.
