A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

I live and work in the film and television business. I have a lot of
film-maker friends, directors and writers – all trying to find their way
to getting their (film) vision in front of audiences. Some of these folks
have read comics in their past. And some may even read a few comic book
mainstays these days.

Lately, Hollywood has turned to mining the comic book industry for
material, searching for fresh stories and new franchises. The graphic
story gives the producers and money-men an idea of what a project may look
like. As this trend has continued, more and more screenwriters are
finding that producers respond to their just-out-of-mainstream spec
scripts by saying, “It seems interesting. But what will it look like? Is
there a book? A graphic novel?”

Because of this new stumbling block, lots of screenwriters are looking to
turn their film scripts into comic books or graphic novels.

Easy, right? Simple, yes?

I can only sigh when I encounter this attitude. Usually, the writer
planning to “turn the script into a graphic novel” hasn’t picked up a
comic book since he (and it is usually a guy) was 13.

I have one friend who is seriously pursuing the “make it a graphic novel”
path. He’s already shot his film, and sees making a graphic novel
adaptation as a promotional tool to assist in getting film distribution.
I get the feeling that having any readers is entirely a tertiary matter
for him. When he first asked me about getting into this, his plan was to
find a (cheap) artist, and give the artist a copy of the film script and
screencaps from the finished movie for references, and just let the artist
“do it.”

At which point, I wanted to find a wall where I could bang my head.

It’s a big mistake many screenwriters – indeed almost any non-comics
writer – makes about comic writing: that it is nothing more than a movie
script with frozen moments. Easy.

Most of these writers have never considered how long it takes to do the
artwork for a comic. I’ve had various artists give me an estimate of a
page a day. And I’m assuming that’s for working from a clear script that
has the panels and page turns nicely delineated. I gave one artist a
sample script of a few pages setting up the main character for a graphic
novel project of my own. He got jazzed by it, right off the bat,
expressing appreciation for the way I wrote it, focusing on the key
moments. He explained that he’s often given scripts that he has to wade
through and sort out himself, before he even starts drawing. To get a
script that was clear enough that he could easily see the images in his
head energized him.

I suspect the biggest stumbling block non-comics writers have in trying to
understand comic book writing is that they’ve never thought of story as an
object. When you’re writing prose, you’re thinking about the forward
motion of the characters in the story, and movies are… well, moving!
But in comic book writing, the end manifestation is an object.

It’s not an easy switch to think of what the story will look like On. The.
Page. The combination of image and narration, the flow of the story
across two facing pages, the possibilities of the page turn or what
happens between the panels, “in the gutter”, these are all elements
specific to comic book writing. What some writers overlook is that even
the dialogue has an appearance on the page. For instance, in a script or
even a novel, it would be possible to spell a character’s name “Said” and
not have it be a problem, because grammar and capitalization provide clues
that it is a name. But in comics, where dialogue is frequently in all
caps, it’s not as clear. Is “SAID” a proper noun or a verb? (At which
point, the writer should opt for alternate spellings like “Sayd” or
“Sayid”.)

Like any other craft, comic book writing has its own rules and needs.
“Writing is writing” is not really true, not in the sense that if you have
mastered one form of writing you have mastered all forms. People easily
grasp the difference between writing poetry and prose. It begins to sink
in that there is a difference between prose storytelling and scriptwriting
(be it plays or film). But too many still underestimate the skills needed
for comic book writing. “It’s comics. It’s easy!”

Comic book writing continues to be treated as an unwanted step-child in
most writing circles. I recently joined a writers’ society, and comic
book scripting gets mentioned only as an afterthought. Admittedly, this
is Hollywood, where most are screenwriters. But the perception remains
that it is an “easy” craft, not even worthy of it’s own consideration.
Hopefully, things will change.

(And I’m not even going to get into the matter of folks not bothering to
understand comics business, publishing and promoting.)

Sarah Beach

About Sarah:

Born to the rolling landscape of Michigan, I got
transplanted to the flat coastal plains of Houston, Texas when I was 16.
Retreating from the world (at least as much as an extrovert is capable of
that), I began working on my writing during endless hours. Artwork
continued to be an important recreation. Along the way, I earned a
Bachelor’s and Master’s in English, and became a medieval scholar.
However, Academia was not my cup of tea, so I eventually moved on to the
entertainment business (and the mountains of Los Angeles). After 18 years
of doing fact-checking for Jeopardy!, I’m now back to immersing myself in
my own writing. And even the recreational artwork is coming back.

In the midst of all that, I labored and brought forth THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE TO THE LAND OF MYTH, which involved four years of writing, research, and review of over 150 films and television episodes. The website for the book is here.

My personal website devoted to broader writing interests can be found at Scribblerworks.

Entire contents of this post copyright 2009 by Sarah Beach. Used with permission.