Home: Writing for Comic Books: Chapter Five - Writing the Script: Writing the Script

Chapter Five
Writing the Script
(cont'd)

HOW MANY PANELS SHOULD BE ON A SINGLE COMIC PAGE?

The short, and seemingly not very helpful answer to this question is, "As many panels as you need." Of course, there is the limiting factor of physical space. It's very unlikely you'll get one hundred panels on page twenty-two of your story, even if you need that many to wrap everything up. Ultimately, it's going to be a matter of practice for you to determine how much space/number of panels a given scene may need.

Even after you have developed a sense for your pacing, you'll still run into times when you miscalculate. I've run into this problem while writing Sonic X. I've been putting a lot of plot into my scripts, and with every issue, I have found that I've had to cut panels and entire scenes in order to keep to my allotted page count. One of the skills you need to develop is recognizing what is important and what you can cut. I know it's sometimes painful to lose elements, but when you are assigned X number of pages, you can't turn in X + Y. Sacrifices sometimes have to be made. Fortunately, in some instances, you can file the cut material away for later use.

I prefer to have more story than I need and have to cut something than come up short and have to add padding. Cutting means that there's a lot of story happening and the reader will get a big bang for their buck. Granted, having too much plot sometimes leads to rushed conclusions because you have too much story to tell or it can lead to the accidental deletion of an extremely important plot point. These are things you have to be on guard against.

However, adding padding to stretch out a thin story will leave the reader feeling cheated. I remember hearing stories (perhaps apocryphal) about one comic writer who had regular work and would write from page one to the end of the story. If the writer found that the script turned out to be less than the allotted number of pages, the writer would just designate some panels be turned into splash pages. The writer didn't even bother to add a new scene or two (or more). Talk about taking the easy out!

My approach is that every page, every panel must convey something to the reader. They (the panels, not the readers) must be there to move the plot forward, establish time/place, or give more understanding about what the character is thinking or doing. Any page/panel that does not accomplish this should probably be cut.

I try to keep in mind that most panels distill one moment in time. As with every rule, there are exceptions to this statement, and I will come back to that thought shortly.

I tend to average five panels per page. Five is a good number because it gives the artist a lot of layout possibilities. For dialog scenes, I might ask for six panels on a page. For big establishing shots or action sequences (especially those with a lot of characters), I will ask for fewer panels. Ultimately, the number and size of the panels is determined by the amount of information you are trying to convey.

I rarely ask for more than six panels on a page unless there is a specific reason for more, and that's usually a question of pacing. The smaller the panels, the less information you can wedge into them. One way to look at it is that the more panels on a page, the smaller the moments within each panel can be.

Another reason I like the average number of five is that it feels like you're giving the reader something for the price of admission. Too many splash pages may make for a fast read, and could leave reader feeling cheated. I try to make sure that people come away from my stories feeling like they got something for the price of admission and their investment of time.

I use splash pages sparingly--usually only for the title page or to give a sense of scope for something dramatic. I can't think of any occasion where I've used more than two splash pages in a single story. They may be pretty to look at, but they lose their impact if overused.

Double page splashes (a splash page that spreads over two facing pages) can be incredibly dramatic, especially when introducing a huge group of characters, giving a sense of scale to an establishing shot or a battle, or for showing devastation following a battle. A double page spread always starts on an even numbered page and ends on an odd numbered page of the comic book. (Even numbered pages are always on the left, and odd on the right.) Because of the problem of ad layout, you can never be sure from month to month where in the comic the story pages will be placed in relation to the ads. For this reason, one of the last (almost) safes place these days for a double page splash (unless you have worked things out well in advance with the editor and the publisher) are pages two and three of the story and the comic itself. I can not recall any comic book where an ad was placed on page one, two, or three (although Mike Pellerito, my Sonic X editor, told me in a recent conversation that ads are now starting to creep onto pages two and three, so even that's no longer a guaranteed safe zone). Even with this (almost) "safe zone", the rise of collected editions/trade paperbacks has made using double page spreads even more complicated because when ads are removed for the trade edition, it can throw off the odd/even rhythm of the page placements and the binding of a trade paperback may mean more lost space in the spine, so important dialog or art may get lost). The editors I've spoken to in recent times are really gunshy about double page spreads. It's too bad because there are times when they can be most effective.

One Panel, One Moment in Time >>