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03/31/2008: You'll Thank Yourself


Buy yourself a gift! G'wan, you know you deserve it. Here's what I recommend. It's a fabulous book called PANEL ONE: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers, edited by Nat Gertler. I received it in my blog mail, along with a gracious letter from Nat himself.

In the letter, Nat supplies a nice addendum/clarification to my recent post on comic book script writing:

One thing that I'll note is that you don't always have to call the angle of the shot. Call the setting, call the action, yes. But calling the shot every time is setting aside one of the comic writer's most useful tools: the artist. Always have a shot in mind -- it's the only way you can be sure that there is something that works. But only call the shot when you have a real specific vision, a specific effect that you're trying to build toward. Otherwise, work with good artistic storytellers and let them do what they do well. Call the angle every time, and you're apt to bore the artist, and the work shall suffer.

Great advice, and also, nice use of "shall". We don't get a lot of "shall" 'round these parts.

The book itself is fantastic, containing actual scripts presented in their purest form. Even if you're not a comic book person, you'll learn a lot and be entertained. In fact, it's possible you may be MORE entertained by the script than the resulting comics, if you're more of a word person than a picture person, and if you're fascinated by process. There's a lovely feeling of peeking backstage that you get with these scripts.

The first thing you'll notice is that thing I told you about how the scripts can vary in the way they convey the content. Boy, do they ever. Some are dense blocks of prose, some are actual story-boards, most have some resemblance to other kinds of scripts, but with extreme variations in format. It makes me wonder what television and movie scripts would look like if they hadn't been unified into one fairly uniform (although flexible) format. Even the font varies! Courier has been shed like an old school uniform. Wild.

Here's a random sample of what you'll get, from a Neil Gaiman script:


Page 6 panel 4

THEY ARE WADING THROUGH TWO OR THREE FEET OF SHOW. THEY AREN'T REALLY DRESSED FOR IT, ALTHOUGH THEY'VE ALL TAKEN GLOVES AND SWEATERS OUT OF THEIR BACKPACKS -- THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO PUT ON THEIR INSULATED GEAR UNTIL THEY GO OUTSIDE THE PYRAMID. THEY ARE HUGGING THEMSELVES AS THEY WALK. THEY LOOK MISERABLE AND COLD. THEIR BREATH STEAMS ON THE AIR. IT'S A SORT OF ARCTIC DREAMWORLD, DIAMOND-SHARP AND SNOW-SCUMBLED.

cap: Walking up the stairs we don't talk. We don't have the energy, or the air.

cap: Walking the halls we don't talk either. We don't have anything to say.

cap: Gwen sings, from time to time.

Mmm. Fantastic.

Lunch: leftover thai food. Roast pork just tossed into the same skillet with the papaya salad and reheated together. Can't be beat.