Sample Layout: Scene 1.6 (Patreon)

I thought some of y'all higher tier patrons might like a little peek into how I handle writing and layout when I'm doing comics. Many years ago I decided to stop writing scripts; I believe they cause too much temptation to overload scenes with unnecessary dialog, and don't force you to think about visual solutions to storytelling problems as much as it should. So I took a page from Stan Lee's infamous "Marvel Method," where he would verbally describe a story to his artist, the artist would go pencil out the story pages, then Stan would go in and write the dialog to fit the pages. Except in my case I'm outlining the story to myself. :)

Warning: Very minor spoilers ahead. I've selected here the first part of a scene from near the end of the first issue of Loop Garoo: Scene 1.6. At this point in the story, our main character, Miles, just in town to help his father move in for his new job as sheriff, has had an unexpected and life-changing encounter which has opened his eyes to the existence of magical and supernatural creatures co-existing with humans.

As you can see, I use the writing app Scrivener to outline my story scene by scene. For each scene I make a note of which characters show up, where the scene takes place, and how many pages I expect I'll need to carry out the scene (adding up to 24 pages per issue; and I'll often tweak these numbers later as I get into working out pacing and layout.) Then I'll write out a description of the action of the scene; if there's some particular important dialog I'll include it, but generally I just like to indicate what people talk about rather than exactly what they say:

Once I'm happy with the outline, I'll start working on thumbnail layouts. These are very small sketches of each page -- no more than a couple inches high -- where I block out the size and position of the panels to figure out my pacing, draw stick figures showing the character's positions and actions, and then jot a loose sense of dialog in the margins. This is a bit more refined dialog than in the outline -- at least we can see what people are saying in each panel -- but I'm still not concerning myself with formal grammar, expression, phrasing, etc. … not just yet.

You can see I'll make changes to the outline as the inspiration hits me; for example, here I kept the encounter with the fishing squirrel and the Japanese-speaking tanuki from the original outline, but instead of a ghost, I thought it would be more amusing for a will-o-the-whip to show up and plaintively ask Miles, "Would you like to follow meeee?"

The next step will be to start penciling these pages at full size, and then finally start writing and placing final dialog. I'll do this before I begin final ink, in case I need to adjust anything to make room for word balloons; but generally I try to keep dialog as short and snappy as possible, and will usually go a few passes whittling the words down to their bare minimum to make sure the story flows and doesn't get bogged down by huge chunks of unnecessary dialog and exposition.

I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peek into how I write comics! Let me know what you think; I may share a few more scenes like this as I gear up with character design and then final pages, if folks are into it. And thank you again for your support!