mattfractionblog:

i tweeted earlier about a scene in SATELLITE SAM where a torch singer is singing a torch song; of these things, beyond their existence, I know nothing. So I trust Howard, or our editor Tommy The K, to suggest good ones. For the purposes of layout, though, i put in dummy text from a 2 Live Crew song, because the idea of Howard Chaykin reading 2 Live Crew lyrics delights me to no end.

Here’s what a panel of my script looks like:

A few things to keep in mind: it’s the second time we’ve seen the location, so there’s some economy going on; also I’ve been writing for Howard for years now and we’ve got a degree of simpatico happening. By and large, though, what I think every format, regardless of what it looks like, needs is clarity, simplicity, and speed. Is there ANY WAY your artist can get confused about what page they’re on, what panel they’re on? Is it completely fucking obvious what the dramatic beat is, who speaks, what they say, and the order in which they say it? Are you spending more time formatting than you are actually writing (I was guilty of this for a long time)?  HOWEVER you get it down, do it with precision, clarity, and swiftness. A script should be about the page, the panel, the story — not a design element unto itself. I used to spend as much time designing the document as i did writing it. Silly.

Now, to get self-critical for a second… that second shot, which could work in film, will be a pig to make happen in comics. it is in fact BAD COMICS WRITING — that kind of deep-focus stuff isn’t the best tool sometimes. So why’d I write it? Well…  Howard can do it, one; Were I to guess? Howard will take the angle from the door and GENE will enter from panel left and in the background we’ll see EVE — so I could’ve written it smarter, leading off with GENE instead. But sometimes when I write I just let the camera float and trust my collaborator will make me look like i know what i’m doing. 

Two, sometimes I think there’s value in preparing a kind of menu and letting your collaborator carve away what they don’t want. Here are ALL THE THINGS happening in the frame around the dramatic beat that demands the image be shown. The beat is: Gene arrives late. The rest is Howard’s to find. The club, the singer, the crowd, the ambiance… he’ll find it.

And three, sometimes it’s just bad writing and you know in your heart of hearts your collaborator will in fact bitch about you but fix it, so fucking deal with it, let them solve the problem and make you not look like a hack, and get on to the next thing. then maybe think twice before posting it on your blog but at this poing you’ve already typed all this bullshit out so blahhhrrg