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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.

This is a supplemental post to thank all the fans who came out in Hollywood last night to celebrate Buffy with the cast and writers at the Paley Center Event. They showed the whole musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” which I hadn’t seen in years. I think it’s even more amazing than I realized at the time.

The fans were wonderful, treating even the writers like rock stars. It was wonderful and we all appreciate it so much! Thank you!

I’ve had a request to talk about pitching. Not the kind of story or joke pitching one does in the room, but the kind of prepared pitching that’s used to sell a pilot, or sometimes a freelance episode of a show.

I should tell you that my own ability with regard to this varies widely. If I stay calm, I can do very well indeed, but if I get too nervous — oof — I can crumble entirely. So the most important thing for me is to stay calm. You already know if this is going to be a problem for you, so plan accordingly.

Now, everyone likes to pitch differently. Some people read their pitch, others have no notes at all, most are somewhere in between, with notes that they consult, but don’t read directly from. I’m an in-betweener myself. I like to have practiced the pitch, but not to the point where it’s lost all meaning… if I’m doing it right, I’m actually thinking about the story as I’m telling it, and will sometimes change something as I go along. Sometimes, for example, they’ll tell you something about what they’re looking for that affects how you want to position your show, so you have to adjust on the fly. If they tell you all about how they really want family shows, you may want to emphasize the family scenes, for example, and downplay the role of the hooker.

To a certain extent, you get to choose how the pitch goes. If you want it to feel more like a conversation, then give a very short pitch and spend your time answering their questions. If you want more control, maybe you’ll give a more detailed pitch, which requires you to talk longer to preempt some of those questions. Even the longest pitch, however, shouldn’t be terribly long. I’m sure there are writers who talk for twenty minutes or more, but I think you’d be far better off concluding your main comments after five or ten.

Some writers start by naming and describing their characters, but I don’t like that approach. Listeners just aren’t good enough at remembering the names and attributes and fitting them into the story. Instead, I describe each character very briefly when they first appear in the story.

I start by talking about the genre and feel and point of the show. I might say,

“My pitch is for a show called ‘Giants’ and it’s a gritty adventure show that feels a bit like Schindler’s List meets Alien. It’s the story of how a rural farm wife becomes the leader of a resistance movement when disaster comes to the United States.” Or whatever the show is.

There is never a reaction, by the way, to this first introduction. I’ve recently realized that that’s because agents pre-pitch the idea for you. So the execs will already know that much. Anyway, I then either talk a little more about the series in general, or, often, I jump right into the events of the pilot episode:

“Okay. We start out on a farm in Nebraska where Tom, a 35-year-old farmer, is giving a tour to a bunch of Ag students from the local college when suddenly… “

I tell the story briefly, pointing out each act break and exciting revelation. I try to be animated and smiling and funny where I can be. I get excited and sit on the edge of the couch and wave my hands around a bit. I try not to let the story get bogged down in details, but to emphasize the emotional turns: “This is the moment when she realizes that no other leader is going to step forward. She reaches out and shakes the hand of the lead Alien and offers the use of her farm, gambling that she just made the Resistance stronger, not weaker…” — that kind of thing.

At the end of the initial bout of talking, I complete the story of the pilot, and maybe give a little glance forward: “We end the episode with that first thread of hope — communication with another small community that’s also been converted to an Alien arms factory. Ruth has grown into a true leader, although one faced with an overwhelming enemy.”

Then I say, loudly, “AND THAT’S OUR SHOW.”

It’s only after that that I mention that I have ideas for many sample episodes. They will ask to hear one-sentence versions of those.

Soon, it’s a genuine conversation and they’ll start giving real feedback mixed in with more questions. Sometimes it’s a quick “no,” sometimes it isn’t, but I’ve never been treated rudely or unkindly.

Believe in your idea. Be proud of it, excited by it, and put effort into showing it off. You might want to practice your pitch for friends, or practice out loud to yourself. But the most important thing I do, I think, is just to keep asking myself, as I prepare the pitch — what’s frakkin’ great about this story? Then sell that point. See? Easy!

Lunch: leftover Persian food: stew over crispy rice. Mm.

Friend of the Blog Alex Epstein sends along an interesting contemplation on a certain type of joke. I’m going to let you see his explanation and then present mine, which differs on a certain point. Here is how he explains it:

… Sometimes, I see good writers make fun of bad, obvious dialog and cliche. Saw a bit on Steven Moffat’s JEKYLL, ep. 3. A bunch of suits and techies watching the usual assortment of screens tracking Dr. Jackman:

I bet that sort of retort comes up a lot in story rooms; I wonder how often it makes it to the screen. (Network exec: “But how does the audience know he’s moving?”)

Oh, this is very interesting. I agree that this is totally about subverting the expectations of the listener. It never would have occurred to me, though, that this had to do with a response to exec-driven overwriting. I would have taken this (at least the first joke) more as a response to the real-life human tendency to state the obvious. And the second one I take as a response to the expected structure of normal conversation (i.e. “ever since…” is supposed to lead to a anecdote.) So for me, both of these are about someone reacting to a statement that was deficient in some way, but deficient because of the foible of a character.

However, I’m open to Alex’s interpretation, now that I hear it. Certainly, the first joke illustrates an excellent way to turn a “make it clearer” note into a benefit — have someone hang a lantern on the over-clarity and then, if possible, slap a topper onto it! (So much writers’ slang! Yay!)

By the way, the Buffy example reminds me of another classic Joss joke, in which someone tries to deflect a question by saying “it’s a long story,” only to have another character quickly sum up the situation, leading the first character to lamely say, “Guess it’s not that long.” The standard conventional rule is that “it’s a long story” ends any discussion. To go past it and deflate it is funny.

It’s making me curious about other jokes that do this. Oh! How about the Princess Leia/Han Solo moment: “I love you.” “I know.” That’s certainly a violation of how we know that exchange is supposed to go. If you’re writing a comedy or a drama with wit, it’s worth doing a bit of thinking about this kind of joke since there’s something so ingrained about conversational assumptions that these jokes always pack a nice punch.

Lunch: salad bar, squash soup

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!

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