Howdy Brave Being,
Happy New Year, fine friends, and welcome back to A Matter of Fiction. You may have noticed that I didn’t post anything last week. Well, I needed a short break, and it turned out to be a good call. My husband Ross caught Covid, Omicron specifically, despite being vaxxed and boosted, and got pretty sick, but he’s back to normal now. We’re feeling grateful to science that his sickness was mild compared to what it could have been without the protection he had.
To put a face to a name of one of the most important people in my life, here’s a picture of Ross and me after we moved back to the Pacific Northwest this last year (and I just noticed we are color coordinated, haha!):
We spent much of the last couple weeks quarantined, and going against the rules, we huddled together because our water heater broke…right when the snow hit here in the PNW. So it’s been about 18 degrees with a boatload of snow and hail. Thankfully, our neighbors loaned us several space heaters, and then our particularly handy neighbor helped us fix our water heater so we now have hot water and heat! So things are looking up, or rather heating up. Ba dum tsh.
Now, for the reason y’all are here. I’ve got some updates, tips and tricks, and then some.
What I’m Working On
I’ve been helping out with the THISTLE ISSUE ONE Kickstarter, a fantasy series exploring what happens after heroes lose everything by J.L. Collins, J. Paul Schiek, Marisa Brignole, and Leland Bjerg. Watch the trailer below!
I’ve submitted a pitch to Band of Bards’ horror anthology FROM THE STATIC with frequent collaborator and writer Heather Ayres, artist Megan Grey, and editor David Brothers. Cross your fingers for us!
Applied to a big job…stay tuned.
Tips & Tricks of the Trade
Since it’s a new year, I’d like to look back and also look ahead where it concerns tips and tricks of my trade, that is editing and writing comics. So the first part is more a summation of my tips and tricks from past newsletters. The second part is about how to format a comic-book script ahead of sharing it with your teammates. Here goes.
Hindsight is 20/20
General advice about creating anything: If you want to do the thing, do it. Don’t wait for others to do it for you or wait on people to join, just make it happen, whatever it is.
For comic-book editors: include an editorial letter that sums up developmental feedback, and stick to Word when editing scripts to avoid the perils of live Google docs (plus most letterers prefer a Word file to easily copy/paste the dialogue into their programs).
When writing short comics and working with artists and letterers, notate in the script where to add the title and credits so that the artist can plan to leave room in the art for the letterer.
For all creators, here are five tips when working with letterers to make their job easier and more efficient.
Whether you’re a writer or artist, hire an editor to catch those pesky plot holes and spelling errors, act as a sounding board for more general feedback, and proofread letters (which helps everyone on the team and reduces edits that those team members have to make overall).
Add drama to your comic by using the page-turn reveal technique, which surprises the audience, plus adds mystery and suspense beforehand that builds up to the exciting reveal.
General advice about sharing your work: Put yourself out there, ask for help, and if y’all need any resources, check out Creator Resource.
Foresight is Formatting
If you’re looking to format a comic-book script, there are loads of ways to go about it, and no way is the right way, but a good place to start is Comics Experience for their archive of script samples from well-known creators. That’s where I started. After writing and editing scripts for many years, I’ve learned ways to make the document as useful as possible for all collaborators involved which can help the whole team down the road:
High-level info at the beginning of a script—Include things like character descriptions and art or lettering notes that pertain to the script as a whole right at the beginning. Character descriptions that note appearance and background information help the artist design the characters and gives them a one-stop-shop for everything they’ll need to know about them. Also, if you have any art or lettering notes, ones that pertain to the comic’s color scheme or the vibe of the whole story or lettering, include brief notes at the jump.
Embolden panel numbers—this format helps everyone when reading and using the script to visually distinguish the panel descriptions from the dialogue no matter how your dialogue is justified on the page. It’s more time-consuming for collaborators when nothing differentiates the dialogue from the panel descriptions.
Justify the dialogue—this one is tricky but it is worth it for everyone. If you set up your document (hopefully in Microsoft Word) to justify all the dialogue over to the same point underneath panel descriptions, it accomplishes two things: 1) it’s visually distinct from the panel descriptions, and 2) it avoids the dreaded tab function, which causes problems for the letterer—watch AndWorld’s tips for scriptwriters here for more info.
Number the dialogue—this technique shows how much dialogue is in a single panel, which can help the artist with panel layout construction and staging the characters. Additionally, it helps the letterer know where to place dialogue and in what order.
Set character names in ALL CAPS the first time they appear—this change in format offers a visual cue to the artist that a new character has entered the story.
Note the time of day in panel descriptions—doing so helps the colorist determine the lighting of the scenery and on the characters. Mid-day sunlight streaming through a window is quite different than evening moonlight, for example.
Start each comic-book page on a new manuscript page—this format clearly marks when a new page in the comic is supposed to start, otherwise pages can get muddled.
Here’s an example from my short Burn the Breeze, which reflects most of the tips above (side note: this comic will be in Brentt Harshman’s Western anthology OFF INTO THE SUNSET. Hit the “Follow along!” button here to stay updated):
Here’s the script translated to art by Jen Hickman with letters by Taylor Esposito!
Some comic book folks might say, “Just write the script, it doesn’t matter,” and that can work for some, but I like to ensure I’m doing everything I can to help my team, and these formatting suggestions are one way to go about it. Another way is to communicate with your team members and ask what they prefer so that everyone’s on the same page 😉. If you’re a creator and have any script formatting tips, tell us in the comments below!
Things I’m Digging
Well, since I spent the last part of December resting and taking care of my sick husband, he and I got through the second seasons of The Witcher and The Great. While both are very different in genre, fantasy-drama-action and comedy-drama, respectively, they each have fantastic character-building, sets, and costumes! We also watched Don’t Look Up on Netflix, which we thoroughly enjoyed. It’s quite a dark comedy with a message about social media that resonated with me.
We also watched The Matrix Resurrections on HBOMax, which turned out to be more fun than serious, a change from the previous trilogy. It was a delight to see several of the original actors reprise their roles almost 20 years later and get to know new characters in the world.
I recently tried out this daily word game called Wordle after reading a lovely story about it in the New York Times here. It’s fun, challenging, beautiful in its simplicity, and isn’t a big time commitment.
I’m also digging the concept of setting goals, being that it’s the new year and all. I set some in January of 2021, such as “learn how to set boundaries” and “apply to more anthologies”, and accomplished them. So I’m going to do the same this year and here they are:
Read one novel per month. I read a lot of comics and have completely stopped reading (or finishing) novels, so I’d like to get back into them. I’m starting with Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule.
Exercise thrice weekly. I started this goal towards the end of last year and I appreciated how I felt energized all day.
Write more for me. I’ll still be submitting to comic-book anthologies and writing this newsletter, but I want to spend more time writing just for me. Whatever it is, comics, prose, poetry, we will see!
What are your goals for this year? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to hear from my wonderful readers.
Merry Musings
I looked back on my top newsletters for 2021, seeing that I published 26 weekly newsletters in a row (woohoo!), and compiled a list of the top 6 most read. It reminded me that it’s good to learn things from the past but to continue moving forward without dwelling too much on why things worked or didn’t in the way we’d expect. For example, I sometimes get hyper-focused on the performance of articles, but I’m brought back to reality by the content itself and feel grateful to the amazing creators who joined me to talk about their comics.
Here’s the list and all the archives are available here.
Thanks for reading!
Mercy buckets,
Brittany