A Sense of Doubt blog post #3862 - From Brevoort newsletters - Writer's Guidelines - Comic Book Sunday For 2509.14
On my break as explained yesterday.
This is a simple share.
#144: Writer's Guidelines
Behind the Curtain
I have this sudden sinking feeling that I may have shared this with you before. And if I have, then consider this a great time-saving measure so that you don’t need to go digging back through my archives to read it! It’s the text of a document that I wrote up that gets send out to new writers who are working in my office, outlining just exactly what I’m looking for from them in their scripts and outlining where my emphasis is. I figure the more people that get a chance to read and absorb this stuff, the greater the likelihood that these areas will show improvement. Let’s hope so at any rate.
So here we go:
BREVOORT OFFICE WRITER GUIDELINES
If you’re receiving this document, then you’re writing material in my office, or have been asked to. What you will see below is very basic information that you likely already know. But I state it here so that we are all on the same page in terms of what my expectations are of you. The best writers in the field do all of this stuff automatically—so follow suit!
1) NAME THE CHARACTERS! I keep seeing scripts and lettering come across my desk in which the characters are never clearly named in the copy. Yes, there’s a recap page, but basic craft tells us that you need to name your characters every single issue, as close to when they first appear as possible. This should be done artfully, but it’s better to do it clunkily than not to do it at all. Also, when I say Name The Characters, I’m talking about their super hero/villain names. Calling them Ralph or Sam or Harvey is fine enough, but we need to hear Skull-Crusher and Bone-Mangler and The Stealinator on the page. Don’t assume that everybody knows who these people are already, they don’t unless you tell them! (And, secondarily, unless you establish the relationships between the characters, they don’t know that as well.)
2) “CLAREMONT” THE POWERS! In our comics, we have a lot of characters whose powers are not instantly visually understandable. So when they begin to do things with their weird abilities, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that the readership can understand just what the hell it is they’re doing (and, by extension, what they cannot do.) Back when he was writing X-Men, Chris Claremont reduced this sort of thing to a series of well-worn phrases that became almost memes: “Flesh becomes Organic Steel!”, “The sum total of her psychic power focused into a blade”, “Nigh-invulnerable while blasting”, etc. And while they maybe became repetitive hearing them issue after issue after issue, they made sure that readers understood what the characters were doing and could do. This needs to happen with greater consistency. For example, the Human Torch is pretty visually self-explanatory, and you can look at the Thing and get that he’s strong. And Reed stretching is relatively clear just in the images as well. But you wind up needing to explain Sue Storm’s force-field powers every single time she uses them—because they are not readily apparent. We don’t need a Marvel handbook entry, but we do need to get across what people can do.
3) 20 PIECES OF COPY PER PAGE, MAXIMUM. That includes sound effects. More than that and the page looks daunting to read.
4) 25 WORDS PER BALLOON MAXIMUM. And push to that number only rarely. Beyond that, the balloon looks daunting to read and I’ll be looking for places where copy can be trimmed or split into two smaller connected balloons.
5) THE NAME OF THE GAME IS STORYTELLING! YOUR JOB IS TO TELL THE STORY! IT’S BETTER TO BE CLEAR THAN CLEVER! As Jim Shooter used to say, you know the story that you’re telling, the audience does not. And so they only understand what is going on as much as you show and tell them. Clarity is always the name of the game. Don’t make me work to understand what you’re getting at. Storytelling is communication! Clear! Direct! Say the thing that you’re saying!
6) IF IT AIN’T ON THE PAGE, IT AIN’T ON THE STAGE. Which is to say, if you write a lengthy panel description for the artist about what your characters are doing or feeling, but the only copy on the page is the character saying, “Ugh!”, then you’re counting an awful lot on the visuals carrying across the subtlety that you’re trying to achieve. Don’t mistake information being in the script document with it being in the final comic. Make sure that all key points, whether plot or emotional, get properly expressed in the copy.
7) WHAT ARE THE PICTURES? Comics are a visual medium, and we have an unlimited budget, so we should be trying to produce interesting-looking pages every single time. To use Allan Heinberg’s approach, think of yourself as an original art collector. What can you put on every single page of your story that would be cool or emotional or impactful enough that you’d want to buy the original art and hang it on your wall? There’s no excuse for dull pages. Think visually!
8) PUT A STORY IN EVERY ISSUE! We often wind up having issues that are simply a collection of scenes in which a lot of “stuff” happens, but nothing happens—there’s a lack of a story. These issues tend to be unsatisfying and even difficult to describe. I understand that we are often telling multi-issue epics, but even then, each unit, each individual comic, should contain a story in and of itself even within the larger context. I define a story as being the “Four C’s”: A Character has a Conflict, makes a Choice, and deals with the Consequences.
9) LARRY HAMA’S THREE RULES OF WRITING:
CHARACTER TRUMPS PLOT – If we care about the characters and can invest in them, we care about the story. Plot is important, but character comes first.
VISUAL STORYTELLING TRUMPS DIALOG – Showing is always better than telling. Dramatize information.
NO “MEH” SCENE CLOSES/PAGE CLOSES – Which is to say, scenes should typically end at the end of a page, and every final panel on a page should contain a mini-cliffhanger or crescendo of some sort to help drive the reader forward to the next page through the story.
#147: No Topic
Behind the Curtain
I often talk about “Breakdowns” in my assorted write-ups of old comics, and I expect that most readers of this feature don’t really have any understanding as to just what Breakdowns actually means. So let’s take a look at an example.
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In the 1980s when he was working on AVENGERS, artist John Buscema provided only breakdowns. This let him control the pacing of the story and the composition of each panel and page, but freed him up from having to complete all of the detail on every figure and background. Consequently, John could do more books’ worth of work in this fashion, and as his storytelling approach was what was most valued at that moment, that was a good deal for Marvel at that moment. As you can see in the splash page above, everything is there, but it’s sketchy, unfinalized, and very open, with no areas of hard black or any line weights really in place yet. But the characters’ attitudes and personalities and body language all comes across.
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And here’s the same page as Finished by Tom Palmer, who did this work throughout much of John’s return to the series. Not only is Tom transitioning all of John’s work into ink, but he’s developing it along the way, adding in details, solidifying forms and structures and creating depth and texture. John’s breakdowns don’t feel like a finished page, but Tom’s Finished page does. The trade-off here is that there’s more Palmer in the finished work than there might be were he simply inking a tightly penciled Buscema page. But that was the division of labor here—and Tom was a good enough artist in his own right to be able to simply draw anything that John had left out or only loosely scribbled in. Tom also rules all of the lines that John freehanded on the background equipment.
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- Days ago: MOM = 3727 days ago & DAD = 381 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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