Standing Out

You don’t get ahead by being lost in the crowd, as some business person or lifestyle coach has inevitably said at some time. It’s as true in the vacuous world of “lifestyle gurus” as it is in comics.

At the time of writing there are so many comics out there that you could not possibly count them all, never mind read them all. Your comic is going to be one of many in the genre and even in the artistic style you have chosen. If you want to be noticed, you have to do something different.

There is a lot of luck involved in getting your comic noticed and making it a success but luck is not something you just have to wait for. The phrase “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” is attributed to many people, from US President Thomas Jefferson to professional golfer Gary Player but regardless of who said it first, it remains true. It’s a little like playing the lottery: there may be luck involved in picking the right numbers on your ticket but the more you work at it, the more tickets you have.

Standing out from the crowd is one of the best ways of making your tickets more lucky. There are many people who would say the best way to make a webcomic a success was to start before 1997 and that really comes down to the fact that back then there were fewer comics, so it was easier to get noticed in the huddle. Since we don’t all have time machines (and those that do are keeping them secret), we’ll have to forego starting before 1997 and instead work on being different to the other comics in our field.

What makes your comic different from every other comic in your genre? If you don’t know, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your comic. There has to be something you’re doing differently, or what’s the point? Maybe you’re doing a gamer comic but all your characters are fruit. Maybe you’re doing a supernatural comic where everyone thinks your main character is a vampire detective but actually they’re a human suffering from erythropoietic porphyrias (which no doubt causes all kinds of problems when real vampires come knocking).

If so, your comic stands out. Now it’s time to make the most of this difference.

It’s not enough to have your comic’s quirks as background detail. Your fruit gamers need to be fruits who game, rather than gamers who happen to look like a low-brow pineapple, an elitist grapefruit and a wisecracking pomegranate in an on-again, off-again relationship with one of the others (probably the pineapple, if most gamer comics are to be believed). Make fruit-based jokes. Create situations that are only dangerous to fruit, to increase the tension and provoke drama. Do comics and stories that no other comic could do because their characters are not game-playing fruit.

In short, make sure your comic delivers something other comics could not deliver in a million years.

I’ve taken some odd examples here but that was simply to make the point in an easy-to-spot manner. The differences in your comic may not be that extreme but they can still be enough to work with if you are willing to put in the time. Perhaps your comic is a slice-of-life comic produced in an impressionist style; be it hand-painted or digital art. If you do that well, you have a chance of being noticed by a different crowd to what would normally flock to a slice-of-life comic.

Similarly, if you normally produce a gag-a-day comic in the style of The Far Side (difference to other gag comics: high-brow but funny biology jokes and non-sequiturs) or xkcd (difference to other gag comics: high-brow but funny maths/computing/physics jokes), try throwing in references to farming, or making jokes that pigeon breeders will love. Expand your readership by being that genre’s comic which people who don’t normally read comics will read.

In short, the more you do to make your comic unique, the more chances it has of becoming a success. If you look at it from the point of view of the reader rather than the writer and really get to grips with what is different (or what could become different) about your comic, you can run with that to produce something that critics (and there will be many) can’t say just rips off Successful Comic X.

The further you get from the crowd, the bigger your chance of making it.

How to script a comic

In his notes accompanying the extras in The Sandman Library III: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman talks about how he learned the basics of comic scriptwriting from Alan Moore; who explained the process on “one side of notebook paper”. The reason he could do this is because comics are scripted in a remarkably simple way.

Of course Neil then goes on to say that of the thousands of people writing comics these days, none of them will write in quite the same way he does and that is very true. Although the basics are very simple, every person adapts the process to suit their own needs. The end result is that there are several methods of achieving the end result, and I’d like to discuss what I feel (after talking with numerous other webcomic writers over the years) are the main three in use today.

The Film Script Method

First and foremost, we have the script format that pretty much anyone will recognise. It’s the format Neil Gaiman uses for the script accompanying his notes in the Sandman book I mentioned earlier, and it’s the format I started out using when I eventually started scripting my comics before drawing them (more on that later).

The film script method splits the script into pages, then frames and finally into two portions for each frame. The first portion deals with setting the scene. Here the scriptwriter tells the artist what he or she needs to draw, and sometimes how to draw it. For example:

Page 1 Panel 1

This should be a full-page image. Embed the other two panels inside this one, like in the sketch I’ve attached to the script.

It’s a cloudless night on Rhodicorn Prime. The twin moons hang low on the horizon and laser fire covers the sky, criss-crossing to form a net of warfare. Captain Jawbone is laid on the muddy battlefield, his uniform torn to shreds. He’s covered in a caked mess of mud and gore, and he’s bleeding out fast. A medic is knelt over him, trying to stem the blood loss while two marines guard the area.

Notice the layout for this piece. It’s basic but it’s important. On the first line, we tell the artist which page and panel we’re talking about. Next, I’ve included some notes for the artist on frame positioning; saying the panel should be the main focus of the page and that while there are other panels to draw, this one should dominate; with those two embedded in it. If I’m doing this kind of instruction, I’ll usually enclose a sketch of the panel layout with the script, so everyone’s clear what I’m talking about.

Next there’s the scene description. How much detail you go into here will depend on your audience. If you’re writing this for another person, put as much detail in as you need to make sure they can produce what you’re wanting. If you’re writing for yourself, just go with as little, or as much, detail as you need to remind you about what you were aiming for.

The important thing is that you mention everyone who needs to be seen in the panel, and what they’re doing. The rest is often window dressing, and can probably be left to the artist.

The second portion deals with dialogue. There are two camps on how to handle this: those who follow the film script style guides, and those who come from a traditional comics background. It’s important to remember that dialogue is meant for the letterer, not the artist and so it needs to stand clear on the page so everyone can find the part of the script they need more easily.

This is usually done through layout and capitalization.

In film scripts, the dialogue portion is designed to be read by actors; therefore it is written in standard English layout. As a result, the first portion of the script (the bit in our script that’s telling the artist what to draw but, in a film script, deals instead with a description of the action) will usually be in ‘all caps’. The dialogue is then either indented or centred on the page; further differentiating it from the scene description. This is fine in comics too, and if that’s how you want to write a script, go with it.

The alternative is to remember that comics have traditionally lettered in all capitals, because it makes the hand-lettered dialogue easier to understand. Comic scripts have therefore traditionally embraced this all caps for the dialogue portion; rendering the scene description in plain English style and indenting speech in all caps, like so:

CAPTION: RHODICORN PRIME, JUNE 18 4227.

CAPTION: THE BATTLE OF PRITEEN LANDING.

MEDIC: THIS LOOKS BAD. TRAVIS, CALL THE MEAT BOAT.

TRAVIS: BASE, THIS IS THE FIFTEENTH. WE HAVE A MAN DOWN! AMBULANCE REQUIRED!

Again, the point is simply to differentiate the dialogue from the scene description but in this case, the dialogue in the script looks a lot more like it will in the resultant comic. However, which layout style you decide to go with is really a matter of preference.

The Sketch Script Method

In webcomic circles, for the majority of the time the scriptwriter will also be the artist. Because of this, a style of scripting involving a simple sketch of the comic with dialogue noted onto it will serve just as well for scripting as a fully written-up script ever would.

The level of detail necessary in a sketch script will depend partly on the complexity of the comic, and partly on how much you want to leave your script up to your own memory. For a simple gag-a-day comic where the important parts are who is in the comic and what the jokes are, a sketch script will work incredibly well.

I use these all the time for All over the house because the majority of those comics require a simple lay-out/build-up/punchline format, usually involving two people talking. Simple layouts mean simple sketch scripts are perfect.

The Seat of the Pants Method

Finally, there is the seat of the pants method. It’s as close to freeform comicing as you can get while still having a plan. I used to use it all the time for The Life of Nob T. Mouse because when you’re only dealing with one-page stories that are written in one sitting, it’s easy to keep the whole story in your head.

If you have everything you want to do worked out in your mind, there’s no need for an actual script – it takes time away from drawing the comic, right? That’s where the seat of the pants method comes in.

Essentially, the comic and script become intertwined; forming one being I’ll call the script-comic. You might begin by sketching out where all the panels are going to go, or you may start by drawing the first panel. Whichever way you do it, a script-comic begins with art; not words. You put pen to paper, and you draw who is going to be in the comic.

If you’re good at using the seat of the pants method, you’ll remember you need dialogue while you’re drawing, and you’ll either sketch in the speech bubbles at the initial sketching stage; or you’ll leave room to put them in later. If you’re like me, you’ll keep forgetting that speech bubbles take up some room and you’ll end up having parts of your characters obscured by dialogue.

Either way, once the art is finished, the dialogue is written in. This has the advantage that the dialogue can be tweaked so you tell a lot of the story with the actions shown in the artwork but let’s be honest here, a good scriptwriter and artist can do that anyway. The real advantage to a script-comic is that it’s quicker to get from initial idea to end result, because the script-writing stage is left out.

So there you have it: the three main factions in comic script writing. There may be others but these are the ones that crop up the most often. Whichever you choose to go with will usually depend on what you’re doing at the time and there’s no reason you can’t employ all three where and when you want to. The trick is, as always, to experiment and find the style that works best for you.

The majority of good writing in the world comes from two camps: those who are just so damn good they don’t need to fuss over the minutiae because they got it right the first time; and us poor humans. I fall into the latter camp and chances are so do you. We can look at the gods of writing and wonder how they manage to be so good, or we can try to match their prowess with our own finished product. The former is easy but the latter gets results.

So how do we make our work as good as that of these infernal comic gods? Well first of all, we’ve got to stop comparing ourselves to them right from the start. It’s okay to set out with a goal in mind (something like “I want to write a play as profound as Shakespeare’s!”, or “that last issue of Captain Jawbone sucked! I want to show them how it should have been done!”) but if you’re constantly stopping to hold your work up against theirs you’re quickly going to be demoralized (and also find it takes a lot longer to finish). Save the comparisons until after you’ve written the first draft.

“What’s this about a first draft?” you might ask. Well, that’s really the main crux of this article. If you’re like me, you started your first comic by putting pencil to paper and running with it; publishing the result without going back over what you’d said and done. I found it quickly became apparent that while sometimes you can created something great like that, most of the time you won’t. There’s a reason for this, of course.

First drafts are where we find out what’s going to happen in the story. We get to see the shape of it; we get an idea about who is doing what and where. After this, we need to set the draft aside for a while and then come back to it with fresh eyes. This way we can see all the problems in the writing, which were not obvious before.

This is what I mean when I say you need to bounce ideas off your future self. But what has bouncing got to do with drafting? Well, with few exceptions, great comedy is written by a duo, or even a team. Each person plays off the others, they bounce ideas around and create something better through collaborative effort.

If you listen to a few of the Penny Arcade podcasts, it quickly becomes clear that while Jerry and Mike are very talented guys in their own right, they make something very special when they work together. Similarly, The Simpsons is great on a regular basis (comments about the early and later series aside, for now) because of the combined efforts of the team of writers behind it.

Of course not every webcomic writer has a team behind them – most don’t in fact. There will often be nobody else there to feed lines to and get something back in real time. You’ve therefore got to step back a little and become the other person. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Everything looks different with a little distance on it; and comics are no exception. When you’ve put your storyline aside for a few days, you can read it with fresh eyes and see the problems that need fixing; or the lines of dialogue that could do with a little tweaking to sharpen them up. This second draft will be much better than the first because you’ve let the work bounce. Now put it aside and let it bounce again.

When I write a comic, I only publish once I’ve reached the third draft. Sometimes it takes until the fourth of fifth draft before I think the idea of the comic is down pat (and even then I’ll cringe if I come back to it in a few months’ time, but can’t we all say that?). By this point, there have been enough iterations of me playing with the idea that I’ve refined it enough to be worth showing to other people. The main ideas from the first draft are still there (usually) but everything generally works better now than it did when I first wrote the idea down.

Of course this whole process goes faster if you’ve got someone else there but the end result is usually going to be the same: the kinks are gone, the gem at the core of the idea is cleaned up and brought to the forefront, and the whole thing just feels much better for it.

If you don’t do this already, why give it a try and see how it works out?