III. THE SCRIPT

A.The Format

A comic book script is very straightforward; it looks a lot like a screenplay or stage play. The story is broken down into pages and panels. Each panel is described, so the artist knows what he's supposed to draw. Immediately after the panel description, the text that goes into that panel is listed, whether it's a caption, dialogue, a sound effect or whatever.

Like so:

	PAGE [Page Number]
	1. [Panel Description]
Caption: [Narration]
Character: [Dialogue]
FX: [Sound Effect]
	2. [Panel Description]
Character: [Dialogue]
Other Character: [Dialogue]

And so forth. Each part of this format will be discussed and described below, and examples of finished script pages are attached for your reference.

B. Panel Descriptions

The panel description tells the artist what to draw. The first thing to remember is that each comic book panel is a single, static image. If you make it too complicated, the artist can't draw it (for example. calling fora shot of two guys arguing in a crowd on the sidewalk as seen from the tenth floor of the Chrysler building, the two guys will be too small to be drawn in enough detail to know they're arguing). Similarly, any panel description that calls for a two-part action runs into trouble. It's easy enough to write "He picked up the football and threw it," but in a comic book panel the character can be either picking up the football or throwing it. The artist will only be able to draw half that sentence in one panel.

The next most important thing about panel descriptions is that they should be complete. This doesn't mean that they should be crammed with exhaustive detail -- the simpler the description is, the more latitude that artist has in drawing the page and the better results you'll get. However, you do need to include everything the artist needs to know to draw that particular scene. For instance, if you call for two men to enter a lush office, it's probably enough to call it "a lush office," and add one or two details to give the artist an idea of what you think of when you say "lush" (leather conference chairs? mahogany desk the size of an aircraft carrier?). However, if in two panels one of those men is going to pick up a heavy pewter paperweight and beat the other man's skull in, you'd better let the artist know that such a paperweight is indeed sitting on the desk when the two men walk in.

In addition, if you have some particular special effect or impact you want the panel to provide (if you want a particular sequence to go by very swiftly, or if you want a sense of looming menace -- or good cheer, or bland lifelessness or whatever), feel free to include that in your panel description to let the artist know what effect you're striving for. He may well be able to draw the panel in such a way that it'll bring the effect through. On the other hand, he may not, so don't depend on it. But it never hurts to ask.

C. Captions

Just for the record, captions are those rectangular boxes with words in 'em. They're used for narration.

And they're used pretty much the same as narration in prose fiction. Captions can be written in third person omniscient past tense, or first person subjective present tense, or whatever approach you like. You can switch from viewpoint to viewpoint if you like -- in fact, it can be easier to make viewpoint-changes clear in comics than in prose, since you can have captions written from Character A's viewpoint lettered normally, and captions from Character B's viewpoint lettered in a markedly different style, so it's immediately obvious that a different "voice" is at work here.

A few pointers about captions:

• visual descriptions are usually redundant. That's what the pictures are for. If the script calls for a foggy day, you can trust the artist to draw fog and don't need to have a caption stating that it's foggy.

• captions are great for establishing non-visual information, however. If it's not only foggy but smells bad too, a caption is the appropriate place to establish the smell (that is, provided one of your characters isn't saying, "What's that horrible stench?" or some such line).

• captions aren't bad at setting a mood, either. If you mention that "the fog had swept down from the mountain like a shroud being draped over a corpse's face," you might be guilty of writing purple prose, but you've certainly told the reader something he can't get from the artwork.

• captions, like anything else in a comic book, take up space. The longer the caption is, the more artwork it covers up. That doesn't mean that shorter is always better -- a 15 word caption that accomplishes something is better than a 3-word caption that accomplishes nothing -- but space is always at a premium. The longer the captions, the less room you have for other things.

Captions are indicated like so:

CAP:	I felt like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir were all doing the rhumba inside my skull.

D. Word Balloons

Word balloons carry the dialogue. Anything you'd put between quotation marks in prose goes in a word balloon, and the "he saids" and "she saids" are handled by those little pointers that point to the character doing the talking. That's about all there is to word balloons, aside from a couple of pointers:

• word balloons take up space too. As a result, you want to make whatever point you want to make with the dialogue, but do it quickly and crisply. As with captions, this doesn't mean that shorter is better, but a short word balloon that gives the same effect as a long one gives you more space for other things.

• if you do have an overly long word balloon that can't be cut, or if you want to provide a break or a pause in the dialogue, you can break up the text into two or more balloons. For instance:

  Bob: Buster --
  Bob: --you ain't seen nothin' yet!

  has a different rhythm from:

  Bob: Buster, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

E. Thought Balloons

Thought balloons function just like word balloons, except they indicate thought rather than speech (I did say that some of this would be extremely obvious, didn't I?). They're those bubbly ones.

Some writers prefer not to use thought balloons at all, using subjective narrative captions to do the same thing. The only difference I can find is that the thought balloons read more "comic-booky" and the captions more "literary." It's entirely up to the individual writer which method he uses.

A thought balloon is indicated in the script like so:

Bob (th): This hamburger tastes funny.

F. Sound Effects

You know what sound effects are. POW!, WHAP!, BAM! and like that. The only important things to remember about sound effects are:

• use them judiciously. Using KLIK KLAK KLIK KLAK to indicate the sound of a woman walking in high heels can be used well -- if the woman in question is walking down a deserted side street after dark, it underscores that she's alone, or if she's a secretary in an over-efficient and restrictive office environment, it emphasizes the silence of the place. But if she's just walking somewhere, it's a pointless distraction. Sound effects provide the noises that the reader is expected to focus on (sirens, explosions, whatever); unimportant backgrounds noises are best left out.

• keep them simple. BLAM! is perfectly acceptable. BA-WHOCKA-WHOCKA- KABOOM! is ludicrous.

Sound effects are indicated in a script like so:

FX: POP!

Some writers use SE or SFX or some other abbreviation to indicate sound effects. It doesn't matter which you use, as long as you're consistent.

G. Silent Panels

Panels with no copy in them whatsoever, no captions, no word balloons of any sort, no sound effects, have a peculiar power to them. Panels with words in them convey a clear sense of subjective time passage to the reader -- the events of the panel take as long as it takes to read the copy. But a panel with no copy whatsoever is static, and often seems frozen in time. A large silent panel usually has much more impact than it would if it had copy in it. A series of small silent panels detailing a series of actions focuses the reader on those actions, and as a result they seem more deliberate and time-consuming. For example, four silent panels of someone staring out a window will seem to take forever. Those same four panels, with conversation in them, will move much faster. (Of course, a single panel of somebody staring out a window with a caption stating "He stayed there, staring, for three hours," will do the trick as well, though it won't build the tension that the four silent panels would.)

A silent panel is indicated in a script like so:

NO COPY

H. Special Lettering Effects

The standard comic book lettering "typeface" is block capitals. Captions are lettered in italic block capitals, and sound effects and titles are lettered in "display lettering," open lettering the style of which is usually left up to the letterer (although either the writer or artist can specify a particular style if he or she has one in mind). There are a number of ways to modify that standard style, some used in almost every line, some used very sparingly:

Bold Lettering: You'll notice in almost any comic book that some of the words are lettered in bold face. This is generally used to indicate speech rhythms; which words are stressed in speech or narration. Some writers use a lot of bold words, some very few; there are no hard-and-fast rules to follow. Bold words are generally indicated by capitalizing the words to be lettered in bold, like so:

Bob: You did WHAT to my mother?

Italic Lettering: Bold face lettering is used for most of the purposes for which italics are used in prose (and then some). However, the italic face is still available, and some writers prefer to use it in place of bold face on occasion, or in places where bold face wouldn't be appropriate. Words or phrases in foreign languages are usually lettered in italics, for instance. Italics are indicated via underlining, as in prose, like so:

Bob: Buenos dias, senorita. Did I get that right?

Note: There is no need to underline captions; they're lettered in italics automatically. Anything underlined in a caption will be lettered in plain block capitals, so it contrasts with the other lettering in the caption.

Oversized Lettering: If someone is shouting, and you really want to emphasize it, or if for any other reason the lettering should be larger than the normal size, the letterer can letter it larger. Oversized lettering is indicated like so:

Cabbie (BL): HEY, MAC!

The BL stands for Big Letters, in case you wondered. Note: This technique should be used sparingly. It loses its effect if it's done too often.

Undersized Lettering: Something said in a very weak voice or in an undertone can be indicated through using smaller than normal lettering. Undersized lettering is indicated like so:

Lou (sl): uh, how fast was I going, officer?

Note: Again, the more this is used, the less well it works.

Splash Balloons: Word balloons with jagged outlines instead of the normal smooth ovals indicate intense shouts. They're indicated like so:

Ben (SB): ELAINE! ELAAAINE!

Note: Some writers call these "Burst Balloons," and use (BST) to indicate them rather than (SB). Makes no real difference.

Whispered Balloons: They're just like ordinary balloons, except that the balloon itself is a dotted line rather than the usual solid line. It means that the speaker is whispering, and is indicated like so:

Bob (wh): Psst! Hey, kid - want some candy?

Electronic Transmission: Word balloons that come from telephones, radios, televisions, tape recorders or anything else along those lines have a jagged pointer. It lets the reader know that it's not normal speech but electronicallly transmitted or reproduced speech. You might wonder why it's necessary, and outside of affectation, it usually isn't; after all, if the word balloon's coming from a TV, that tells you all you need to know, right? However, in some situations it does help -- for instance, if you have a panel of someone talking on a walkie-talkie, both the character's dialogue and the responses coming from the walkie-talkie are going to be coming from roughly the same place, and the jagged pointer will make it easy to tell who's doing the talking. As you can probably already guess, it's indicated like this:

TV (elec): Babysitters who kill. All this week, on "Oprah."

Titles: Titles are titles. They're generally lettered in some open-face style selected by the letterer (unless the writer or artist specifically requests one), and are indicated like this:

Title: GONE WITH THE WIND

Credits: Somewhere on the splash page, you've got to leave room for the credits, which will consist of a list something like this:

Writer: Barry N. Malzberg
Penciller: Thomas Vaughn Grummett
Inker: Willie Blyberg
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colorist: Marcus David

You probably won't know which names to put in the credits, so you can leave it all blank and the editor will put them in; just leave room for him so he doesn't have to scrawl it in the margins. Typically, comics also credit the editor and the editor-in-chief, but I don't think we're going to be doing that in AD ASTRA.

Special Requests: The modifications listed above are by no means the only lettering variations open to you. Let's say you've decided that the narrative for a particular script will be done as excerpts from the lead character's diary, and in order to reinforce that image, you'd like the captions lettered in longhand script rather than block capitals. Or the story involves a computer with with a voice simulation program, and you'd like to have the computer's word balloons lettered in a computer-like typeface, *say like this one here*. You can specifically ask the letterer to letter it in that style. If the special style you want is only used once, you can describe it at the appropriate spot in the script. For instance:

Sign On Door: GenEleven Hypertronics
	[Note: Please letter the above in some appropriate hi-tech typeface. Thanks.]

Or, if you want to use some special lettering style at various points throughout the script, you can describe it once, and set up a special notation to cover it, like so:

	[Note: Captions marked CAP(D) are diary entries, and
	should be lettered in longhand script rather than block
	capitals. Thanks.]
CAP(D): Dear Diary: Today we invaded Monaco.

You don't want to call for more than one or two special styles per script (if any), for a couple of reasons: First, a plethora of lettering styles creates a visual jumble that's hard to read (and hard to proofread), and second, your letterer will hate your guts. Similarly, you don't want to call for a lettering style that's overly ornate or complex, because (a) it'll be hard to read and (b) the more complicated it is, the greater likelihood there is that the letterer won't be able to do it well, and it'll come out looking lousy. (For example, the computer-like typeface printed above is one that most letterers can't do well at all.)

For the record, the lettering key that all AD ASTRA letterers will be given and will be working from is this:

Anything not listed in this key will have to be specially requested in the script.

IV. ATTACHMENTS

Included with this memo should be a couple of examples that will show you how all this theory works out in practice:

A. DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAiN

The trade paperback reprints a series of seven DAREDEVIL^® issues written by Frank Miller and drawn by David Mazzuchelli. The reason we've chosen this particular book is that Frank makes full and extensive use of the various narrative approaches available to him, and the book thus shows off a greater variety of scripting techniques than most other available examples.

B. Sample Script Pages

The sample script pages, which should include at least a couple of pages of a Frank Miler script, as well as any other examples we can get our hands on, will show you what a finished script looks like, and should help to makes sense of all the information above.

All text copyright 1988,1996 Kurt Busiek. Permission granted to print out one (1) copy for personal use only. All other rights reserved. Daredevil^® is a registered trademark of Marvel Characters Inc. HTML formatting copyright 1996 Greg Morrow.