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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

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.

This is going to be a messy post, I can tell. No theme, no arc. Ah, well.

First: I’m looking at a letter sent to be on behalf of something called Zhura, which is billed as “a new online screenwriting tool.” The idea seems to be that you can write in professional script formats without paying for Final Draft. I have no idea if it works (everyone I know already has Final Draft), but if you’ve been saving your pennies to buy screenwriting software, you can check it out and find out if it works! (It’s at Zhura.com.)

Second: Thanks to Gentle Reader Lila who kept me company on the picket line and who writes thank me for the invitations I issued for aspiring writers to come out and walk with us. Thank you, Lila and everyone else!

Similarly, Matt in England, who is starting what sounds like a rip-snortin’ comedy career over there, writes to thank the blog for guidance in writing a comedy spec script. You’re welcome, Matt! I’m thrilled to hear I helped!

Finally, I’ve been meaning to thank some Gentle Readers for some gifts. Lilia, thank you very much. Also, I have received several interesting books. One of them is at home and I have forgotten the name of the G.R. who sent it, so I’ll add that here when I get a chance. The other is a fine book called “Comedy by the Numbers,” by Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren. There is a lot to love in this book, but my favorite bit so far is a list of “Novelty Items That Never Caught On,” which includes, “never-light emergency flares,” “sexy edible shoe insoles” and my all-time favorite, “vomit bikini.” Hee! Vomit bikini. In a way, these items work a bit like that joke we’ve been discussing, in which only part of a story is overheard. Like those story fragments, these items force the listener to construct a whole scenario in which these items are a sensible part. Interesting.

Lunch: avocado, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I’m more and more convinced you don’t really need the bacon.

A while back, I promised you, Gentle Readers, a little post about comic book writing. Have you ever seen a comic book script? They’re fascinating. Different companies and different writers use different formats. Some, I’m told, describe only the action and put in dialogue after the pictures have been drawn. I’ve never written that kind.

The ones I’ve seen and written look surprisingly like television scripts. They’re broken down by page and panel instead of act and scene. There are around 22-ish pages in a book, and from one to six-ish panels per page. The panels are described with some precision and the dialogue is given for each panel in script format.

Here’s an example:

PAGE TEN

Panel One:

We are behind Jennifer, who has made herself comfortable in the giant bird’s nest. Next to her an enormous egg cracks ominously.

SFX: krrrrk

Panel Two:

We’re seeing Jennifer from the front now. She eyes the egg warily as a sharp bill punctures the shell from the inside.

SFX: Kek!

There. See how that works? Notice how visually precise it is. I find that when you write a comic book you have to think even more visually than usual because you’re literally selecting the SHOT: the camera angle, composition, everything. Some writers also get very precise about the panel, specifying if it is square or horizontal, how big it is and whether it gets any special treatment like overlapping other panels or whatever.

Picking the number of panels per page is also crucial. Assuming every panel takes the same time to read, you’ll notice that you can make events seem to happen quickly by giving them fewer panels, and slowly by giving them more panels. This can feel counter-intuitive since you may feel tempted to break down the complexity of a quick move by showing each step.

There is a also a neat little trick which is to treat the bottom of a page a little like an act break, by which I mean having something depicted there that draws the reader to the next page — a suspenseful declaration, the start of a motion… Some writers do this with every page, others only with the odd-numbered pages, since those are the ones that require the reader to physically turn a page.

I’ve only written a few comic books, and all for one company, so you might find information that contradicts what I’ve written here. I can only tell you that this is (pretty darn near all of) what I know about comic book scripts!

Lunch: burger at In ‘n’ Out. Animal Style.

Gentle Reader Lauren from Michigan writes in with a question I haven’t seen before. She asks,

I was wondering when you are writing a script if you should include what musical selection you think should be played over the course of the scene and if so, should you be so detailed as to indicate which lines of the song would correspond best to the mood? How would you represent this in the script or is it best not to explore that aspect at all?

Great question. This actually is something you can do as a writer, although you should use it only very rarely and very carefully.

It’s not unheard of to indicate a song that you’d like to hear in a scene. Here’s a (slightly edited) stage direction from my first draft of an Angel script I wrote: The radio turns on my itself and changes stations, landing on the Mills Brothers singing “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” A SHADOW falls across Cordelia’s bed. An old lady voice comes out of nowhere…

And I can certainly imagine the last scene of a pilot looking something like this:

EXT. COURTYARD

And there, amid the wreckage of the wedding reception gone horribly wrong, Billie Holiday’s version of “Embraceable You” wafts over the broken tables. Charles pulls Audrey into his arms. Here, finally, they get their wedding dance.

Audrey laughs when Charles sings along for:

We PULL BACK until they’re very small in the frame, and then we…
FADE OUT

There. See how that could work? Of course, in the examples, the songs were actually part of the scene, not laid on top, but you can do that, too. For example, you could do a big moving montage of, say, all your characters going about their lives, like in the finale of The Wire, and indicate a song to play over it, perhaps even indicating which lines play under each image. It might be lovely, and would probably be scripted similarly to my example above, with the lyrics presented in dialog form.

But be very careful. I wouldn’t do any indication of specific lyrics if there were any dialogue in the scene, for example. And even in a silent scene, there’s going to be a tendency for lyrics to just make it seem too cute, too neat, too much like a “song fic,” if you know what I mean.

If you really want to, give it a try and map out the scene with the lyrics, but I bet you end up editing them out later. At the very least they’re frosting, and you’re going to want that room for more actual cake.

Lunch: Garlic chicken and a banana milkshake from Versailles, a Cuban restaurant. So wonderful!

ADDENDUM: The amazing Friend-of-the-Blog Wendy Wallace, an experienced producer, writes in with this observation from her end of the process: I just wanted to give a producer’s perspective on using songs & song lyrics in scripts. While it may not be pertinent for specs, I would remind your gentle readers that any songs used and/or any lyrics spoken by actors must be cleared & licensed accordingly before a script can be produced. Sometimes this is not a problem, but there are occasions where a song is unlicensable for whatever reason, necessitating either a complete revamp of the scene, last-minute shoe-horning of a different song into the existing scene (often not as fitting), or worse–a shelving of the script altogether. I’m not suggesting “never mention music in a script ever” as I’ve seen it used quite effectively, I would just encourage screenwriters–especially first-timers–to keep in mind the larger implications of their musical choices.

Wendy is right that this doesn’t have to affect writers of purely speculative scripts, although I will point out that a spec script loaded with expensive music requirements isn’t going to impress a reader with your ability to write to a budget.

Thank you, Wendy!

I think this has happened before. It seems like every time I post something here that seems to close a door, I get an email from a friend with a way to open it back up. Fantastic.

After my post about how sending an agent a letter probably wasn’t a workable avenue to job-having, I received the following communication from working writer and Friend-of-the-Blog, Gillian Horvath. Take it, Gillian!

I did get my first agent by sending a letter to someone I’d never met. I was at that time a young aspiring writer without a script sale. It wasn’t entirely a “cold call” — the agent had been recommended to me by a mutual acquaintance — but there was no personal connection. It was the letter that got me in the door to be read, and met, and signed.

The letter is your chance to convince the agent that you are going to make money for them — that you are committed to making a career, and that you are putting so much work into it that their job will be easy. In my cover letter, I was able to mention various contacts I had made and promising leads I’d created. I’d made those contacts by working as an intern and assistant around town, but I think the important thing isn’t the specifics of my progress — it’s the fact that I used the letter to report on that progress. I was able to realistically portray myself as on the cusp of selling, so the agent I’d approached could see the potential for getting a commission soon. That made it worth her time to consider my spec.

In a post-script, Gillian adds: Typing up the story really got me thinking about that transitional moment when I realized that you can’t approach an agent hunt (or a pitch meeting, or a job interview) as a complete supplicant. No one signs you because they want to do you a favor, right? They sign you — or hire you — because it’s going to be good for them.

So there you go, Nic in Germany and everyone else… excellent advice from someone who found a door that I didn’t even know was there. Inspiring! And that final observation is a huge one — when you’re dreaming about your big break, stop framing it as, “how can I get someone to do me a huge favor?” and start framing it as, “how can I make the case for what I have to offer?” (Then, don’t argue the case, build the case.)

Lunch: chicken soft tacos from Del Taco. As always, opt for the Del Scorcho sauce.

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