It’s another glorious Tuesday! It’s hot, it’s dry, it’s sunny…it’s Tucson! It would only be better if it were San Diego [and if San Diego were a bit cheaper to live in]. But enough, let’s dive right into some Bolts & Nuts, shall we?

This week, I wanted to talk about something that we can all do, and probably have done a time or three: make excuses. Don’t feel like doing something? Make an excuse to cover. Don’t want to put in the work? Make an excuse. Missed a deadline? Make an excuse. They’re a dime a dozen, and in this industry, we’re expecting them to come around more often than not.

Know what an excuse is? The dictionary defines it as an attempt to lessen the blame attaching to a fault or offense; seek to defend or justify. Most of the time, though, we use it as a lie to cover ourselves for missing or not doing something. (Isn’t that kind of harsh, Steven? You’re calling us liars.) Well, yes. Yes I am. Is it harsh? No. It’s truth. Sometimes, that’s uncompromising.

I don’t like excuses. I like things to be either black or white. One thing or another. All or nothing. And I know about excuses. Intimately. I used to make them incessantly. I was in the Marine Corps, and I was supposed to be a leader of men. It wasn’t until I learned from the example set by real leaders of men that I stopped making excuses and just owned up to my own shortcomings. In doing that, I also learned to work harder and gained the respect of my peers, my subordinates, and my superiors.

It is extremely easy to make excuses. Here’s what I could have done, extremely recently: two weeks ago, I moved from North Carolina to Arizona. I drove across the country, leaving on a Saturday afternoon. I didn’t get to my destination until early Monday morning. A 34 hour trip, and I made it in about 36 hours, because I had to stop and close my eyes for a while. I hadn’t written either column before I left. However, when I got to town, I didn’t say “Screw it, I deserve a break. A mini-vacation. They’ll just have to come back next week.” Nope. Know what I did? I sat down, did the writing, and posted the column. Here’s the reason why:

I knew I was moving. I had ample opportunity to get columns written and scheduled to post before I left. I did other things instead, though. Other things instead of doing the things I knew I should have been doing. Could I have used the move as an excuse to not do the writing and post the column? Sure I could have. But it wouldn’t have been mitigating circumstances. It would have been an excuse, pure and simple. And to my mind, all of you deserve more than an excuse. You come here weekly, the least I can do is my part and show up.

Now, I also had a script to turn in to my editor not long after I got here. I had fallen ill for about a week after I got here. I hadn’t eaten any real food, no real sleep, and had had three Five Hour Energy drinks. I was a mess, and my body let me know it. I was in no shape to write a script and send it off for editing. It would have been crap, and I probably would have been even sicker than I was if I had pushed myself. An excuse? No, I don’t think so. Just telling what happened. At the very least, I would call the unexpected illness a mitigating circumstance.

Please, don’t get me wrong. There are times when you just can’t make a deadline, or can’t get something done because life gets in the way. It’s unavoidable. But there is a difference.

If you’re trying to get some work done before a deadline and you know that you’ve been slacking on it because you figure you have lots of time, and then the dog falls ill and you have to take them to the vet and you’re there a lot longer than you thought so you miss your deadline due to care and worry and you tell that to the person you owe the work…then you’ve just made an excuse. You had the time, and you refused to use it well.

However, if you’re working your butt off because there’s a short turnaround for the deadline and a meteor falls on your house, making it unlivable for a while, then you’ve got an explanation for why you missed the deadline. An explanation, not an excuse. See the difference? [Especially if you have the newspaper clipping as proof.]

(Wait. I need proof, too?!)

No. This is comics, not your school or work. We’re not going to ask for a doctor’s note. [Although there’s a company online that sells those, too.] The only one who’s going to know the truth is you. But here’s the thing about making excuses:

First, most of the time, we’re lying and calling it an excuse. At work, calling in sick when you aren’t? That’s a lie, using being sick as the excuse. [We call those “mental health days.”] Okay, so it’s a lie. What’s easier to remember, a lie, or the truth? Because once you tell a lie, you have to keep telling lies to cover the first one, or else it starts to fall apart. Lies also become difficult to remember. You forget you told which lie to whom. The truth, though, is much, much easier.

Excuses also shows a lack of professionalism. [Professionalism is a long and drawn out conversation in itself. Look it up and research it for yourself. You’ll be surprised at what you find.] That lack of professionalism, or perceived lack of it, can cost you jobs, which can cost you money.

Pile on too many excuses, and you could find yourself being replaced on a project. (Huh? Why?) Well, think about it: when do you need an excuse? When you’ve failed to deliver something as promised, whether it be a time factor or a quality factor. Something wasn’t delivered when or as ordered, so you make an excuse to cover for it. Do you need to make an excuse for being on time or for something delivered with high, professional standards? Of course not. You use them when you need them. And if you keep blowing deadlines or if the quality isn’t there—or both—then you could find yourself being replaced on a gig.

This is the main reason why collaborations for no pay generally don’t work. One person is trying to force, or enforce, a deadline on another, and that other person keeps blowing it with one excuse after another.

(Flakers…) No, not really. It isn’t just the no-pay or back-end collaborations that this happens with, either. It can also happen with paying work. You can find yourself paying a creator for their skills, and you want it in a certain timeframe. That creator misses the deadlines time and again, even though you’re paying them, and the only thing they’re offering up are excuses as to why the work isn’t getting done.

Can anything be done about excuses? Sure. We can all stand up and be adults about what it is that we want and take ownership when things don’t go as planned. “Know what, Graeme, I know I was supposed to get you those five pages of script today, and that I had all week to do it, but I got caught up playing Halo. I apologize. You’ll have those pages in four hours.” That’s responsibility. That’s ownership. We don’t do enough of that. It’s either someone’s sick, the computer ate it, or something else that we use to try to cover ourselves.

If we make fewer excuses in our personal lives, we’ll make fewer in our professional lives. This will then raise our own personal cachet, winning the respect of family, friends, peers, subordinates, and superiors. Respect that is won through hard work, and thus, deserved.

All by not giving excuses.

Homework: see where you give excuses in your personal and professional lives, and start to cut them out. Take ownership. You’ll quickly see the results of your efforts.

See you in seven.

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Welcome, one and all, to another installment of The Proving Grounds! This week, we have Brave One Dan Watters submitting his work, and we also have a new addition to the ComixTribe family: Samantha LeBas. Sam is learning the ropes of an editor, and this is a great place for it. Don’t worry about good ol’ Steve Colle. He’s still with us. Those two crazy cats will be switching out every week. To help differentiate who’s who, Sam is going to be in purple, Steve (not here this week) will continue to be in blue, and I’m as fiesty as ever in red. So, let’s see how both Dan and Sam fare as we look over

WITCHHUNTER: THE WITCH’S HEAD

PAGE ONE (6 Panels)

Panel 1: Int. of a small living room. It’s shabby, but clean. (Shabby is sort of the opposite of clean, pick another descriptor. Humble? Plain?) From behind we see an elderly black woman, Raphael’s Grandmother, kneels in front of a voodoo altar. The room is lit only by the many candles on the altar. (Visual ref: http://hauntednola.com/images/Marie_Laveau_Altar.jpg) She wears a simple dress and pearl earrings. (If we are seeing her from behind, her earrings might not be noticeable. If you want that to be a focus in this panel, and I assume you do since the earring comes into play later, consider showing her profile.)

CAP:

“Gra’ma was a Voodoo priestess. She raised me in New Orleans after my ma died giving me life.”

(I have a problem with the word ‘priestess.’ That is something academics use when they talk about Voodoo. An insider would say she was a Voodoo queen if her rank was high enough, or a traiteur, if she focused on healing. Other than that, high-ranking women in the Voodoo community are called Mama [Their Firstname,] and ‘talk to spirits,’ or ‘know Voodoo.’ Sorry, I live in Louisiana and I minored in folklore.) (This is great stuff right here. It shows two things: that Sam knows her stuff, and that Dan didn’t do any research. Reminds me of Rosemary’s Baby, where the “witches” were actually Satanists. It’s a movie made in its time (the 60s) when everything that had anything remotely to do with magic was witchcraft. We live in a more enlightened time, though, and if you’re going to liken voodoo to witchcraft, there may be a problem here. Research is your friend.)

Panel 2: We switch view to in front of her. She has magical markings drawn in ash on her face, and her eyes are closed. (Yeah, you’re going to need more than that. How do we know the markings are magical? What do they look like? Where did you find this reference? Provide your artist with a link, or at least give them more to go on.) Over her shoulder, we can see that the door is open a crack, and 15 year old Raphael peers in. He has short dreadlocks and wears shorts and a t-shirt. The boy’s eyes are an unnaturalicy blue(Some eyes are naturally icy blue, so what makes them unnatural? Do they glow? Are they actually white? What’s the deal here? Another note, Voodoo rituals are seldom conducted alone, and even more seldom conducted in silence. People talk to the deities on their altars, most ceremonies involve dance and song or object manipulation. If she had put on war paint, we have to assume that she was conducting a ritual. In Voodoo this kind of necessitates motion, or speech. She is not a buddhist monk, meditating … what ritual is she working on here? You need to know that.)(All of which would have been revealed to you had you done a little bit of research. Even a bad Boris Karloff movie about voodoo had the basics correct.)

GRANDMA:

I know you’re there, Raphael. Come in.

(Raphael’s presence would be very taboo. If he were uninvited this would anger the spirits, and his grandmother would know that, she would not respond so calmly.)

Panel 3: Same shot. Grandma hasn’t moved, but the door is fully open and Raphael stands framed in the doorway. (‘Kay, dude, no meditation in Voodoo. She’s not frozen, she is allowed to react.)

RAPHAEL:

Are you going to let me meet the spirits today?

(Nope. Not how it works. She does not control the spirits. They choose who they ride. And if he is a black kid from NOLA growing up in a shabby house with his Gra’ma why does he never have a hint of an accent?)

GRANDMA:

Not tonight, child. You’ll meet them soon enough.

(Raph says today, Gra’ma says tonight. Change one or the other so they are consistent.)

CAP:

“She knew things. (Change period to a comma)my gra’ma.”

(Very vague, we all know things … tighten up, use the amazing mythology of your subject, tell us something that matters, anything.)

Panel 4: Profile shot of the whole room(Can a room be in profile? Do you mean wide shot?) Grandma is standing, straightening up. Raphael looks annoyed (Where is he? Still in the doorway?)

GRANDMA:

No, tonight, what we need is okra. To the store with you.

RAPHAEL:

Ugh, Gra’ma!

(I don’t know where you’re from, but in the South this would not go over well, remember your context.)(Here’s a bit of a breakdown where I differ a tad. Some things are region specific, and would be more difficult to research. This is something I’d let slide.)

Panel 5: Grandma ushers Raphael out into the hall.

GRANDMA:

No complaints. Pick up some carrots while you’re there.

RAPHAEL:

Fine, fine. Soon though?

(He would say, ‘yes, ma’am.‘ ‘Fine, fine.’ makes their relationship seem casual, she is a solemn Voodoo priestess monk, he wouldn’t say fine to her.) (This, I agree with.)

CAP:

“I think she knew they were coming that night.”

(Are we supposed to think the spirits killed her? That’s kind of what you are implying here. I know it’s probably clear in your head what happened, but consider how it reads.)

Panel 6: Front view of the house. It’s a bungalow (The ref photo shows a shotgun house, which is it?) flanked by similar houses (Visual Ref: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/TremeStoopsFloodLine.jpg/256px-TremeStoopsFloodLine.jpg). Outside it is late evening, but still quite bright. (Note that this is a flashback to 1996, so this is pre-Katrina New Orleans) (Until now the story might have been taking place in 1880, you need to move this information up in the script.) Raphael is heading down the path towards us. In the back of the panel, Grandma stands in the doorway, seeing him off. She looks a little sad, but Raphael is oblivious. (Is she standing in the doorway where people can see her with magical markings on her face? You’ve not wiped them off yet, so unless that is what you want the artist to draw you need to mention when she wipes her face.)(Um…what path? You say “path” and I think “woods.” Or at least a garden. Regional language barrier. For a nice carbonated drink, do you say “soda,” “pop,” or “Coke,” no matter what the flavor is?)

GRANDMA:

Soon. I promise.

CAP:

“That’s why she sent me away.”

The rhythm of this page is strong, the pacing works well. You have a nice balance of description and dialogue. I think the voice over works, considering this scene is a memory. I do have a question though, are we to assume this plays into the scene with Freddie? If this is supposed to read as part of the conversation, consider it as a separate set of dialogue. Freddie only has the information in quotation marks, and it’s not very informative. We can’t assume that he has access to the visuals Raph remembers. Format is good, setting is good, the altar and the shotgun houses give us a sense of where we are. You might consider telling the artist that this is a flashback, so he or she can indicate that visually.

We have P1 on the books, and I have no real complaints. Not deep ones, anyway.

The biggest thing about this particular page is the lack of research shown. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: research will take you a long way. When you’re talking about religion, a lack of research can be seen as a lack of respect. If I were a voodoo practitioner and read this, I’d probably be upset at the lack of basic research.

How can you make it better? Research, of course, and then put that research in the dialogue. It could easily fit in the captions that you have a small tendency to drop. You have more than enough space for more captions.

Here’s the other thing about the dialogue: since you started with captions, you have to continue with them. Almost every panel should have them, especially the first page. You’re setting up the world and drawing the reader in. You do that with the dialogue, and part of the dialogue are the captions. You’re not using them to best effect. I should be able to tell that you’ve done your research and that your characters have real personalities through the dialogue. I’m not getting that sense here, and that’s a shame.

Here’s something else to keep in mind: this could be the first time that someone’s encountering this information. This puts the burden of responsibility on you to make sure that the information presented is accurate, or as accurate as you can make it.

Heavy, right? You betcha. And that’s why you have to take it seriously.

PAGE TWO (5 Panels)

Panel 1: Wide shot of the same street. Raphael strolls down it, a paper bag of shopping clutched in his arms. It’s a bit darker out now, but the street is well lit with street lamps. (Strolling? Which way? Toward the house? What else is here to let the reader know this is the same street? You have to tie the previous panel with this one if they’re the same street, and the best way to do that is visually. You need a standout element, especially if this is at night.)

Panel 2: Low angle shot, not quite over Raphael’s shoulder.(I really don’t know what this is supposed to look like.) He’s stopped outside his grandmother’s house. The door hangs wide open. He frowns a little with concern. (Here’s the problem Dan: if the shot is low angled AND not quite over Raph’s shoulder, then we’re LOOKING at his shoulder. Unless there’s a knife, blood, a second head, or something to make it interesting, there’s no reason for us to be looking at his shoulder. No one cares about it. That’s first. Second, if the camera is behind him, we can’t see his face. Saying he’s frowning isn’t helping anyone.)

Panel 3: Int. The hallway of the house. We’re looking down the hallway(Combine this direction, you’re being redundant.) from inside the house. The lights are off, and Raphael stands silhouetted in the doorway of the open front door. The only other sliver of light comes from the slightly ajar door of the living room that we were in on pg 1.(Just to make sure: the camera is looking at Raphael, yes? So, which side is the living room on? The artist is going to need to know.)

RAPHAEL:

Gra’ma? Hello?

Panel 4: Int. living room. Close on Raphael’s eye, open wide in horror as he peeks through the crack in the door (If we are close up on the eye, why do we need to know we are in the living room, you established that in the previous panel.) (What this needs is a rewording to make it more clear. Just keep it simple: we’re in the living room, close up on a crack in the door, where we see Raph’s eye wide open in terror. However, depending on where the living room is in relation to Raph’s location in the previous panel, there may need to be another panel between these two to act as a bridge. Having him approach the cracked open door would be a nice thing to see.)

CAP: “Tell me…”

Panel 5: Raphael’s POV. Reveal of the utterly trashed room. The altar is smashed to bits, idols and candles shattered. His Grandmother’s corpse lies decapitated in the middle of the carnage, blood pooling around it. There is no sign of the head. (This may not all be seen if we’re switching POV’s. Remember, he’s seeing this from a crack in the door. I’m seeing a regular door. If it’s a regular door, then you would have to place the altar and body accordingly in order to get all of this in. And if it’s only cracked, it may be cramped fitting all this in. That’s if this is a regular door. Now, if this is a set of French doors, you could have this as is.)

CAP:

(Continuing ellipses marks here) “Do you know the going rate for a witch’s head on the black market?” (And here’s where I shake my head because of lack of research. This just turned into Rosemary’s Baby for me.)

Fair enough, I’ll buy it. You might want to show his reaction a bit more. We don’t see how the sight of headless Gra’ma effects him at all. The wide eye is a good start, but more wouldn’t hurt. Also you switch setting on the third page, which will be visible beside this page, generally setting changes work better on a page turn. I like the tension of this: regular day, something terrible happens, so terrible in fact that he is using this as motivation years later. Consider giving readers a little bit more relationship between he and Gra’ma; some insight into what he was like as a carefree kid; or how he reacts to this tragedy. This will allow people to become more emotionally invested in him, and to understand how much this event changed him.

So, we’ve got P2 on the books. And what do we have?

Rosemary’s Baby. But we’ll get there.

There are visual cues missing that the artist is going to need. Again, if this is the same street but at night and from a different vantage point, either you’re going to need to put something in there that’s visually striking and that will stand out, or the artist will do it. If you’re lucky enough to have a competent editor on this, they should ask for it since you missed it, which will make the artist’s life easier.

More importantly, though, you have to understand what you’re asking for when you’re describing a camera placement. Panel 2 does not give you what you describe as soon as you give the camera placement. You take out the shoulder part, and you’re good. As soon as you put it in, you’re in the realm of Shirt and Shoulder, and the camera won’t see much else.

Panel 3 gives us a description that mostly works, but it still needs to be clarified. Clarity is and will always be the number one job of the writer. Panel 3 isn’t clear and doesn’t give all the information that the artist is going to need.

I’m going to disagree with Sam. I think the reaction is appropriate, but only as long as you continue to show the reaction on the next page. I haven’t gotten to the next page yet, but Sam has, and it seems like there’s a scene change. If that’s the case, then I’m going to say you’re wrong.

Pacing: pacing is how many panels are on the page, coupled with what is said, as well as what happens. You have a pacing problem with this page, and that comes in the form of dialogue. It’s light. You have a bad case of the dropsies going on with the captions. Not good. You could have given us so much story as well as suspense if you had provided more captions.

Then there’s Rosemary’s Baby. From a Christian/Roman Catholic perspective, I guess anything that isn’t Jewish at its base could be considered witchcraft (which could lead to some interesting discussions about golems, but let’s not go there), but still, it’s disappointing. As a writer, you’re allowed to have a point of view. You don’t have to be neutral, like in the news (which hasn’t been neutral for about the last 20 years or so, but that’s also a different discussion), but you should at least be informed. This doesn’t seem to be informed. My youngest daughter likes watching teenage romance drama’s, so she loves watching The Vampire Diaries. They have some voodoo in there, and even though it’s bad television, it’s seemingly more informed than this. Venom, which was a bad horror movie, also had voodoo at its heart, and that is seemingly more informed than this.

Research. It isn’t difficult, just time-consuming.

PAGE THREE (7 Panels)

Panel 1: An adult (mid twenties) (If this is not supposed to be present day, you need to note that. If it is check your math.) (In order for him to be 15 in 1996, he’d have to be born in 1981. If this is the present day, this means he’s 32 now. Your math doesn’t work if this is present day. If this isn’t present day, then there should be a compelling reason why it isn’t. The other bad thing is this: nowhere previously do you tell the audience that it was 1996, and nowhere on this page do you tie Granny’s demise with the poor slob Fred.)Raphael sits at a table in a sleazy bar. He’s looking directly at us across the table. We recognise him by his same short dreadlocks and icy blue eyes, but his face now bares (Wrong word here. You want “bear,” not “bare.” The word you use tells us his face is naked. Dictionaries are your friend.) stubble and a few scars. He is dressed in threadbare but heavyclothing (work pants and boots, a dark blue hoodie, a military style overcoat, fingerless gloves).(Why are you pairing binary opposites as descriptors? Be nice to your artist. Something like ‘worn out heavy clothing‘ would work just as well) He has a goblet shaped pint glas of beer in one hands(It’s not going to read as beer if you put it in a goblet, can it just be a pint glass? If you need to distinguish between them one could be light, and one dark.) (Word choice. Clarity. Intent. I won’t even get into the misspellings in the last sentence because it doesn’t do much to harm the clarity there. Goblet versus pint glass harms the clarity. Bare versus bear harms the clarity. See the difference?)

RAPHAEL:

The tongue alone would be worth a small fortune. (Here is where the reader starts to ask the question: how does he know? Hopefully, that answer will be forthcoming.)

Panel 2: Over Raphael’s shoulder, we see his companion at the table. Freddie is in his early 50s, dressed in a black leather jacket and white wife-beater. He has spiked brown hair, balding at the top, a grotesque 80s throwback. He is clearly quite drunk; his elbows sprawl slightly on the table and his eyes are out of focus.(Does this mean that his eyes are blurry, or that he is not looking at anything directly?) He grips a more standard issue pint glass. He looks at Raphael with a drunken expression of uncertainty. (You’ve drawn this out unnecessarily. There’s a different way that gets more to the heart of the matter faster than this. We’ll talk about it in a few moments.)

FREDDIE:

Hell (add a comma here) kid, I appreciate the beer, but I was hopin’ to have a drink in peace. What do I care for your sob story? (Why would he assume that this is a sob story? For all he knows Raphael might be a buyer, looking to employ him, or a hunter with something to sell.)

RAPHAEL:

Because, Freddie… It is Freddie (add a comma here) right? Freddie Skinner? (Personally, I would break this up here with a shot of Freddie looking surprised, maybe just move it down to the next panel. You are separating the reaction from the dialogue. Perhaps, put the second phrase in a separate balloon and move it to the next panel.)

Panel 3: We’ve moved to a side-view mid shot of the table so we can see both men. Freddie looks shocked at the use of his name, Raphael is deadpan. His hand is in his inside jacket pocket.

FREDDIE:

Ya know me, kid? What you want? (Why does he use ‘ya’ for you, and then drop it? I know you are trying to communicate a dialect but it seems forced and inconsistent.)

RAPHAEL:

I think you know.(Why? Why would he know?)

Panel 4: We are looking at Raphael through an extreme close up on Freddie’s near empty glass, which distorts Raphael considerably.

RAPHAEL:

1996. You were in New Orleans, right (Add a comma here.) Freddie? (I would strike ‘1996.’ and reword this sentence to include the date: You were in New Orleans in ’96, right, Freddie?’) Freddie the fence. (Change period to question mark.)(I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s a statement rather than a question, followed by another statement. I think this sentence is fine as is.) You could get hold of anything.

FREDDIE (OP):

What? No, I… (Change elipses to a double dash, and put this in a separate balloon) C’mon, it was just an earring!I din’t know nothin’ about it! I don’t ask questions, ya know? (Suggest separate balloon) It’s a policy. (Okay, this reads like this asshole decapitated an old lady for a pearl earring… it just doesn’t make sense. I am on my third read of this script and I cannot understand why this guy would say that. If Gra’ma was killed for her head, what the hell does an earring have to do with Freddie?)

Panel 5: High angle. Raphael has stood from the table, pint glass in hand. He looks at something in his other hand, but we can’t see what it is. Freddie has slumped even further onto the table; he doesn’t look well. (Is this his glass or Freddy’s? Remember, Fred had the glass and Raph had the goblet-that-shouldn’t-be.)

RAPHAEL:

Just an earring. (Make this a question mark) An earring from a witch’s corpse. (Suggest separate word balloon)Fuck you, Freddie Skinner. (Suggest separate word balloon)Did you enjoy your drink?(I really do not understand what you are trying to imply through this dialogue. Did Freddie sell the earring? Did he kill Gra’ma? Where’s the rest of her head?)

FREDDIE:

Uuugh (Add an exclamation mark) my gut… (Change to double dash, and consider separating this into two balloons here.) What’s happening to me?

RAPHAEL:

Ah, just a little curse something I picked up on my travels. (This is not a curse, a curse is an action not a thing, if you want to be specific, use ‘potion.’) A few noxious ingredients, a little chanting. (Separate balloon here) Some would call it poison, (Change to ellipses) not magic (Italicise this word. This dialogue is confusing. If you are going to elaborate on this concept later or earlier in the script, it might work. However, if you do not plan on doing so, it unnecessary. Chanting does not equal poison. Is he practicing Voodoo now? Maybe you should mention that earlier, like when you are talking about what Gra’ma knew, somewhere in there? Maybe consider having some earlier hint that he is dabbling in magic. This seems out of place, you are telling us, not showing us: in a visual medium.)

Panel 6: Low shot on Raphael as he sips from his still full pint. (Where did this drink come from? Is it the poisoned one? If not the glass Freddie had previously is emptied. This beer comes out of nowhere.) With his other hand he’s putting whatever is in his hand down on the table. (This is going to be hard to read visually. I would consider moving this action down. Have a panel that shows Raph’s hand placing the earring on the table, maybe just before he walks out. So the readers know what it is, and how it got there.) (What’s in his other hand, so that the artist knows?)

RAPHAEL:

But (add ellipses) I don’t think so. No kinda poison could burn so much, eh (add comma) Freddie?

RAPHAEL:

Yeah. It’s a good one.

RAPHAEL:

Real easy to slip into a beer (add comma) too. (This is compromising the Badass vibe Raphael had going until now. He’s becoming a Batman villain. I would cut the second two lines of dialogue altogether.)

Panel 7: Wider shot. We are on the table, half the panel taken up by Freddie’s face (Is this shot looking down at the table, or at the level of the table? Where is the camera here?). Wide eyed, face a hideous grimace, Freddie is slumped on the table. He’s dead, but looks enough like a passed out drunk that the other patrons of the bar won’t notice for a while. A little blood trickles from one eye.(If his eyes are opened and he has a hideous grimace, people will notice. Close his eyes, or have Raph do it as he walks out.) On the table next to Freddie’s head we see what Raphael put down; a single pearl earring, one of the ones his grandmother was wearing on pg 1. In the background we can see Raphael walking towards the door of the bar. He’s not looking back. (We don’t need to see Raph walking away to know that he is done. The hand placing the earring on the table near Freddie’s head would make more of an impact here. Also, consider giving the earring a distinguishing detail, so that it is unmistakable. You are hanging your hat on this thing, your protagonist just killed someone over it, spend some time with this object.)

It is hard to imagine Raph as a good guy if you show him playing with the mouse before he kills it. If you make this choice you need to really establish the emotional toll his Gra’ma’s death had on him. This has to feel connected directly to that. Your audience needs to FIRMLY grasp Freddie’s role in her death in order to empathise with Raph.

P3 down, and with it, the story starts to go downhill, too.

Again, this page shouldn’t be here. This should be P4, and this page should should us his reaction and begin the transition to the bar.

Now, why does this page start to go downhill? It’s not making sense.

First, let’s take a look at the first panel. I don’t like starting inside when I change scenes. I find it to be too jarring. This is a generality. Generally, I find it less of a burden if the writer starts from the outside and works their way in. There is a caveat that doesn’t apply here: if there is a voice-over caption to help the transition. If there’s a voice-over caption, then you can change the scene and go right inside to the conversation. Why doesn’t that work here? Because you have voice-over captions all over the place already. So you have to go from the outside to establish the setting, and then work your way in.

Now, since you plan to kill him and don’t think he’s going to be noticed for a while, you have to do a little more work: you have to establish what type of place it is on the inside. Big, medium or small; seedy or trendy; and finally, how many people are in there. All of that needs to be established in the second panel, and then you can have a third showing both of them at the booth. Booths are better for privacy than tables are, depending on the size of the place.

Okay, so the pacing’s off. So is the logic.

Like I said above, there’s nothing to tie Freddy with the death of granny. Why is he being punished? If he’s just a fence, the only thing he did was receive the goods and sell them. Even if it was something that was ordered, he didn’t do the ordering. Someone told him what they wanted, and he told the person who could procure the item in question.

I understand that Raph is crazy. I get that, but this is still a bit much. Why is he crazy?

He left the earring. What the hell was that about? If they’re supposed to be pieces of power, why leave it? What’s the point?

This is where you lost me. And Sam’s right. Parts of the dialogue, along with the action, is turning him into a superhero’s villain. Batman? Possibly. I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks from Graphic Audio lately, and this seems to fall in line with a DC story.

PAGE FOUR (5 Panels)

Panel 1: Mid shot. Raphael has just exited the door of the bar. It is dark and drizzling outside. Raphael is looking upwards at the rain. The grubby, empty street is exactly the kind we expect to find a dive bar on. (Where’s the camera? Wide or tight shot?)

Panel 2: Raphael stands outside the door. He has pulled his hood up against the rain.

RAPHAEL:

Asshole.

LEGBA (OP) (Legba’s speech balloons should be wavy, to indicate his otherworldliness):

Sendin’ more poor souls to ma doorway, Raphael?

Panel 3: Over Raphael’s shoulder. He has turned to see the speaker. Sitting cross legged on a dumpster is Papa Legba. His skin is pitch black, but he has white circles around his eyes and white lips. (I know this is the iconography associated with Legba, but visually, it is going to read antiquated and racist. He will look like he is wearing blackface, or one of those offensive cartoons from the 1930s. I would consider reworking this, toning it down, modernising.) He wears a red jacket, black trousers and a wide straw-hat. He is shoeless and shirtless, and his fingers and toes end in long, white nails. He grips a simple black walking stick. (You are seriously getting into Zippity Do Dah territory here; I know what he is supposed to look like, but you have artistic license.)

RAPHAEL:

Papa Legba, I didn’t expect to see you so far from New Orleans.

PAPA LEGBA:

I’m a spirit of the road(add comma) as well asthe gateways, boy. I’m tied down to no place.(Separate balloon) Besides, I been watching you.(Once you create a slang by leaving of a ‘g’ you have to stick with it.)

Panel 4: Mid shot from the front. Raphael, in the foreground, has stepped past Legba, who is hopping down from the dumpster behind him.

RAPHAEL:

Is that right?

LEGBA:

Thas right. (‘Thas’ doesn’t read well, try ‘Dat’s’) I was very fond of ya gra’ma (Comma.) ya know. All of us were, really. Figured the least I could do was keep an eye on you(Add comma)(Nope. A comma slows it down for no reason.) for her. (Dialect is a hard thing to mimic accurately, if you are not well acquainted with the culture of those you are trying to imitate, you’ll come off as mocking or condescending. Why doesn’t granny have a name when others talk about her?)

RAPHAEL:

Maybe you shoulda kept a better eye on her. She might be less (Add ellipses here) dead.

CAP:

Papa Legba is a Loa. (Change to ellipses) (What the hell?! NOW we get an internal monologue? I think I had a small aneurysm.)

Panel 5: Mid shot. Legba has drawn level with Raphael. His grin is wide across his face. Raphael’s face remains blank.(Are they shoulder-to-shoulder face on, or looking at each other?)

LEGBA:

Tch. (This SFX not part of the dialogue, separate balloon) (Nope. It’s fine just where it is. It’s coming from his mouth, akin to a sigh, so it’s fine.) Raphy. (Change period to comma) You know it doesn’t work like that.

RAPHAEL:

What do you want, Legba?

(Big no-no, in Voodoo you must use honorific titles like ‘Papa.’ If there is some reason Raph doesn’t have to, you need to mention that. This is incredibly disrespectful, it’s asking for trouble. If he still has ties to Voodoo, and practices that magic, he wouldn’t dare talk to a loa that way. If his magic is not Voodoo, you need to mention that.)

CAP:

(Connecting ellipses) One of Gra’ma’s spirits.

(‘Kay, here’s another problem, they are not anyone’s spirits, a reader unfamiliar with Voodoo will read this like she had control over them, the loas have control over their followers.)

You might have something to indicate that Legba is a deity, maybe he lights a cigarette with his fingertip, or glows a little. He is not human, he shouldn’t look human. Right now he seems very terrestrial. He looks like a sketchy homeless man who often bothers Raph. Thematically this page is a bit muddled, you are toying with the rules of mythology in a way you don’t explain. That creates questions, in a bad way. As far as the pacing you’re doing well. You have introduced a new character, and you are taking the time to tell the reader about him, but the message you are sending does not fit with what we are seeing.

P5 is on the books.

And again, we have the problem of research.

I don’t have too much of a problem with Papa Legba’s description. If his skin is pitch black, like a part of the night, then there’s little problem of being seen in blackface or being racially offensive. However, since you name him, you have the option of modernizing him. It would still have the same effect. You also don’t run in to a problem with his depiction because of the word balloons. However, a show of magic would be a good thing. It would help to cement that this is in fact a supernatural being.

The dialogue… Dialects are a challenge. I get it. However, you seem to be giving it a half-assed try. A dropped letter here or there, but you’re not consistent with it. That consistency will help to sell this to the reader. Right now, what you’re doing is giving them small reasons here and there to put the book down. These things add up.

And then there’s that internal monologue that just popped out of nowhere and caused my brain to start to explode. What the hell, man? Here’s a question to always ask yourself when it comes to internal monologues: who is the person talking to?

You want to start an internal monologue as early as possible. Here, it’s looking like you just changed out the voice-over captions with an internal monologue and kept it moving. That’s a no-no. They are akin to thought balloons. You just can’t pick ‘em up and put ‘em down whenever you wish. Otherwise, you’re going to jar the reader right out of the story, like you did me.

Finally, the lack of research is killing you, Dan. It seems like the only bit of research you’ve done was the appearance of Papa Legba and his position/job as a loa. Everything else is killing you. I have no compunction about saying it.

Fix a couple of things, and this page works. You’re moving the story along, which is a great thing. Just make sure that the reader comes along with you.

PAGE FIVE (6 Panels)

Panel 1: We pull out. (Oh, do we now?) (Naughty, naughty girl…) Papa Legba has his hand to his heart, staggering backwards in mock hurt. Raphael doesn’t turn to watch. (It’s difficult to show a stagger. Not saying it’s wrong. Just saying that it’s difficult.)

LEGBA:

Ah, little Raphy, ya wound me. You leave home so long, long ago (add comma) and never return. Then I try an’ check in(add comma) and ya give me the cold shoulder? (So, Legba reads like a Scotsman, or possibly like a character from Fargo, great. That’s not what your going for, I assume. The dialectical choices you’ve made are irrational and inconsistent.)

CAP:

That makes him very powerful.

(Being one of Gra’ma’s spirits makes him powerful? False. You need to rework this. What about, ‘He is powerful’ since you use the phrase ‘very powerful’ in the next panel?)

Panel 2: Raphael has folded his arms defensively and stopped walking, ending up under a street lamp. Legba has come right up behind him, grin wider than ever.

RAPHAEL:

Well? (Why does Raph say ‘Well?’ This doesn’t make sense. I assume this is meant to read like, ‘Well, say your piece then,’ but it doesn’t read well.)

LEGBA:

I got something for you(missing comma) Raphael.(Change to ellipses)Something I want you to check out (add comma) (Nope. No need for a comma here.) for me.

RAPHAEL:

I’ve got things to do.(Where is Raph getting his magic? If it is Voodoo he would never talk to one of his gods this way. Also, people ask loas for favors, I haven’t heard of it happening the other way around too often.)

LEGBA:

So I see. Gonna hunt down every two-bit magewho was skulkin (add apostrophe) aroundin the nineties, (In New Orleans or everywhere?) just on the off chance that they mighta off’d your gra’ma, are ya? (Was Freddie a mage? That didn’t come across. This dialogue gives me a headache. I am from the region whose dialect you are imitating, and I cannot read this out loud without stumbling. You are making an attempt to guide the reader phonetically and yet it is unpronounceable.)

CAP:

Very powerful…

Panel 3: Raphael has one shoulder raised in a shrug. Legba, still right behind him, looks downwards, hiding his face in the shadows under his hat, but one of his eyes gleams wickedly. (A straw hat would cover all his features. How would you draw a wickedly gleaming eye here?)

RAPHAEL:

Something like that.

LEGBA:

Sounds like fun.

CAP:

(Connecting ellipses) And very dangerous.

Panel 4: Legba is pulling out a battered, rolled up newspaper from his inside pocket with one hand. With the other hand he holds up a finger to indicate “one”.

LEGBA:

One down then, eh (Comma.) Raphy? And how many to go (add comma) hmm? You don’t know. You got lucky findin’ this one. But fear not! Papa Legba is here to help.(Some of this needs to be trimmed, he’s holding that ‘one’ gesture for a long while. Consider moving everything preceding ‘But fear not,’ to the panel above, this will make the pause gesture, or the finger indicating ‘one,’ relate to only that statement and eliminate ambiguity.)

RAPHAEL:

Is that right?

LEGBA:

Of course!

Panel 5: High angle, just on Raphael. He has taken the paper., It’s a local one, “The Moreville Times” and the headline reads “TWO MORE MURDERS” (What if we just saw the paper in his hands in order to take all focus off Legba. Also the headline needs work, it should be more emotionally charged, something like ‘Killer Strikes Again.’ or ‘Double Homicide Sends Moreville Reeling Again,’ might resonate more.)

RAPHAEL:

Moreville, Oklahoma. What the hell am I supposed to find in Oklahoma?(add ellipses to indicate a beat) Legba?

Panel 6: We pull out. Raphael looks up. He is totally alone under the street lamp. Legba has vanished.

RAPHAEL:

Screw you (add comma) Papa Legba.

CAP:

Did I mention? He’s also a trickster god. (I’d strike also, we know that’s its in addition to the other things that were mentioned.)

You transition from dialogue caption to narrative caption on these last two pages. Why is Raph suddenly talking to the reader? The first set of captions are spoken to a character within the story (Freddie), why the switch? Are these captions necessary? I do not think they are especially engaging or effective. You could have included this in the dialogue, creating a more natural exposition. This is another instance of telling us, rather than showing. The title is confusing, is Raphael meant to be the Witchhunter? Where is the Witchhunter?

I feel like you need to thoroughly research your topic. Right now, it doesn’t seem like you have a great authority on the subject, if you do; wait until later to toy with the conventions. You are dealing with a religion that people actively practice, so try to establish that you can back up your claims on how it works with evidence.

There is a lot of dialogue on this page, it feels a little heavier than the others, you lose a bit of the tension you’ve been building. The dialogue generally feels conversational, but you’ve transitioned to talking heads. That being said, the dialect is a major issue. You are inconsistently indicating accent, and when you do employ slang; it does not make sense, or guide the reader to the tone you are tying to achieve. There has got to be a more dynamic way to make this exchange play out. Also, you are going to need to account for Raph’s relationship to Voodoo.

The most successful elements of your work, in my opinion, were technical. The format is easy to read and the action reads well as a whole. You begin characterisation in effective ways, but could go deeper, and let the audience know a little bit more about the characters. I get the sense that you understand the people you are writing about, don’t be afraid to share that information with the rest of the class. Another fine point of this script is the pacing. There are no real lulls and you use your time with the audience well, getting a lot information across in a concise fashion. Your first page presents an intriguing hook, and showcases the relationship between Raphael and Gra’ma well. You also establish what the subject of the book will be. So, readers know that this book is going to deal with something bad happening to Gra’ma, who is very important to the main character, and that we will be dealing with Voodoo. Nicely done.

If you can master the subject matter and regional dialect you are dealing with in this script, your next attempt will be much more successful as a whole. If your interests, or curiosity have directed you to the topic of Voodoo, take the time to learn more about the religion and the area where it is practiced. The feeling of sincerity will come across more easily if your intentions are not buried under misunderstanding, or misrepresenting the culture.

I’m just going to run this down.

Format: Flawless Victory.

Panel Descriptions: They need some work. Think through what it is you’re saying, and then give it some time to sink in. Remember, the script is a set of instructions for the rest of the creative team. They have to interpret it. Don’t make their job any harder than it has to be. Right now, that’s what you’re doing. Sometimes, you actively get in your own way. Ungood. Slow down, think it through, and then re-read it to make sure you’re communicating what it is you really want.

Pacing: I’m so-so with it. Again, from biggest to smallest, pacing is the amount of scenes in a book, the amount of pages in a scene, the amount of panels on a page, and the amount of dialogue in a panel, and what happens in all of it.

P1 is okay, P2 is okay, but P3 needs to be moved to P4, with a better reaction to the revelation on P2. Then we can have P4-P6.

The amount of dialogue on P5, panel 2 has to be cut down. You have both characters speaking as well as a caption on a six-panel page. Not good from a pacing standpoint, and terrible from a space standpoint. All of that won’t fit in there comfortably. Remember, word balloons also have negative space, and you’re not taking that into account.

Dialogue: Serviceable! There are two problems with the dialogue: a lack of research, and a lack of consistent dialect.

The dialogue is telling the story, moving the reader along, doing its job. However, it’s also giving misinformation at worst, or misrepresenting a culture at best. Neither of these are very good prospects.

You fix it with research.

The dialect is inconsistent. Dialects are challenging, because they are VERY easy to overdo. So easy that it becomes hard to read, and that isn’t something you want to do. However, if you gon’ drop a “g”, make sho you drop it all de tahm fo de character’s speech. Dat includes dere internal monologues. You cain’t have them say things one way in one sentence, and then another way just a moment later. See what I did dere? An’ here? That’s you. It doesn’t work.

Give a nice taste, a nice bit of flavor with the dialect, but don’t overdo it. This is a matter of taste. Sam heard a Scot. I didn’t. I heard Kevin Costner’s “southern” accent coming in and out (mostly out) in JFK.

Content: Despicable. Harsh word, I know, but there’s no witch, there’s no witchcraft, there’s no witch hunter. There’s Voodoo, which is much different from Witchcraft.

You didn’t do any real research on the topic. You had an idea and decided to run with it. I have no problem in standing up and calling “bullshit.” What you have here doesn’t describe anything accurately. From a reader perspective, I’d be highly suspect of story. As a practitioner of witchcraft or a practitioner of voodoo, I’d be extremely pissed off, because the title doesn’t do anything to represent either religion. It’s a slap in the face, to be honest. Sam was extremely kind to you. As a reader, I might be moved to write you a nastygram saying that you don’t know a damned thing about which you’re writing.

Editorially, this needs a lot of work. Besides the challenges already presented, when you change locales, you really change locales. How is the reader supposed to know where they’re at? Not good.

It doesn’t need a rewrite, it needs guidance and a name change. The title is supposed to tell the reader what they’re getting, before they even open the book. You’re not providing that. Readers are going to call you on that.

There’s stuff to fix, but it isn’t insurmountable. You just have to put in the research, and that research has to come through in the script. Right now, it doesn’t. Even if you told me you researched the hell out of the topic, I wouldn’t be able to tell by this script.

And that’s all for this week. We’re still needing scripts, writers! Send ‘em in.

Check Who’s Next to see who’s coming up on the list.

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It’s Tuesday yet again! And it’s hot here! The low 90s, but this is what I wanted when I moved back to Tucson. It’s only going to get hotter, and we’re only in May.

You don’t want to hear about my weather! You want some Bolts & Nuts! Let’s get into, then. Right? Right.

This week, I want to talk about part of the ComixTribe mission statement: Creators Helping Creators Make Better Comics. It’s those last four words that I want to talk about this week. Those last four are very important, because while we all want “better” comics, we often don’t realize or recognize what “better” is, or how to get there.

Let’s face it: as a word, “better” is extremely subjective. Some people think Marvel Comics are better than DC comics, some go the complete opposite, others think they’re both crap and that the real stuff is in the indies, and even then, there’s a vast difference between First Second to Oni to Dark Horse to Top Shelf, and even vast differences between what those companies publish within themselves. So, what constitutes “better”, and how do we achieve it?

Those last four words also cast an aspersion on the work you’re producing, like you’re producing something that is less than good. However, the truth of the matter is simply this: you are.

When we talk about “better,” we are talking about raising the bar on the quality of comics that you are creating, plain and simple. This isn’t just about art, although that plays a large part of it, and it isn’t just about the writing, although that plays a part, too. Believe it or not, those two are the least it takes to make a comic. The bare minimum are words and art. It’s everything that goes into getting the ideas from your head to the shelf, and all the stops inbetween that we’re talking about.

How do you make better comics? It starts with a simple dedication to do just that. Are you a letterer? You know that everyone not only wants your job, but they also think it’s easy, so they want to cut you out as being the least needed. “I say—I say, there, boah, anyone—I said, anyone can lettah!” [Forgive the terrible Foghorn Leghorn impression.] Know what this means for you, letterer? You should be learning other aspects of creating. Logo creation [which is as much art as it is science, and much more difficult than you would think] is one aspect, but there’s also learning how to tell your own stories, isn’t there? Sure, there’s a story you want to tell. How do you tell it? You learn, and then you propagate the cycle by not hiring a letterer to do the book, because you’re going to letter it yourself.

Inkers, you’re in the same boat as the letterer. If a penciler does things digitally, they can play with and adjust the levels of their output so that their pencils are now inks. Leaves you out in the cold, no? What do you do? Learn another job. (Lettering!) That’s an option. But why not learn how to pencil? To my mind, the best inkers are artists in their own right. Step up to the plate with something of your own. Need help bringing it out of you? That’s what your friends, family, peer groups, and editorial are for.

It is easy to raise the bar, to become “better,” once you dedicate yourself to it. “Better” is another word for “learning.” The stories about the hometown boy or girl making good? That’s because they went away to learn, got better, and then came back with their new knowledge and did something with what they learned.

This is a conversation that doesn’t happen often enough in comics. There’s often the complaint you hear about mainstream comics not getting any better, because they retread the same themes and stories over and over again. How many times does Magneto become a hero before reverting back to villainy, flip-flopping like a fish on land? Xavier can walk, wait he’s chairbound again, well look he’s up on his feet! Character deaths that don’t stick. Characters that don’t age. Universal reboots. All of that and more is all there for the complaining.

Complaining, however, can lead to “better.” If that complaining is done correctly. If it is followed through with intent and will. If you, as a creator, are willing to hold it up and say, “My comics will be better than this,” and mean it.

That starts with learning. Learn the entire process, and not just your “job.”  Your “job” doesn’t stop with the writing or the inking. Your job doesn’t stop when you’ve gotten paid. Your job doesn’t stop, period.

“Better” means learning, and that is something you should never stop doing. Learn your job, and how you can be innovative at it. How you can be more efficient at it. How does your job fit within the process, and how can you make that process more streamlined and effective? How can you communicate your needs in order to make the process run as smoothly as possible?

Raise the bar for yourself, and don’t settle for the first thing that comes your way. To settle is to admit defeat, and there is nothing “better” about being defeated. Settling in this case means having creators who aren’t the right fit for your project onboard for whatever capacity. But first, you have to learn.

You have to learn to how to look at all aspects of writing, art, inking, coloring, and lettering in order to understand what is and is not quality. Once you understand that, you can then start making decisions as to what you want. But you have to understand what is and isn’t quality. This is where a lot of creators start to trip and fall. They don’t look to learn what is quality, and then they don’t follow through in learning the business aspects.

The more you know, the “better” your comics will be. Sweet and simple.

Homework: Learn. Learn your job, learn other creator’s jobs, and learn the business of comics. Learn. Learn everything you can. I am certain that if you apply yourself diligently to learning, you will have no other choice but to make better comics.

See you in seven.

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Hello all, and welcome back to another installment of The Proving Grounds. This week, we have a new Brave One in Greg Matiasevich. But again, a little housekeeping first.

We’re still needing your scripts. Currently, there are only two more scripts left in the queue, and then we run dry. We’re here for you, and we literally cannot do this without you. So send in those scripts, writers! Now’s a great time to get stuff sent in, because the wait is extremely short!

Anyway, we have Steve Colle in blue, I’m in red, and we see what Greg brings us in this untitled story. (I mean, he has “Western” as a file name, but I’m considering that a placeholder for a true name for the piece.)

PAGE 1

PANEL 1

A small Indian (East Indian or Native American?) kid stands in front of and under a carnival poster with his back to the reader. Centered on the poster is a large, bombastic P.T. Barnum-like figure with his arms outstretched. We don’t need to see the entire poster in this panel, just enough to understand what it is. The poster is tacked on to the side of a carnival tent. (Is it day or night?)

FATHER (CAP)

Anpao, Spirit Of The Dawn, hear my plea. (This answer’s Steve’s question: Native American. The better question is this: since he’s speaking out loud, where are the quotation marks for the voice-over captions?)

FATHER (CAP)

I fear for my son.

FATHER (CAP)

His obsession with the whites and their culture…

PANEL 2

Side view of previous panel. We see the Kid is in an alley between two tents and the carnival is set up beyond it. The Kid is in profile. In the background is an auction set-up, with an auctioneer barking out bids for a male/female slave duo. The Kid is oblivious to this, as we can see the rapture on his face from the poster.

FATHER (CAP)

(Connecting ellipsis marks here)blinds him to itstheir cruelty. (This is broken up badly. What’s the focus of the panel? The kid, or the slave auction in the background?)

PANEL 3

The Kid rips down the poster. (This is a moving action. Is the kid in the act of ripping down the poster, or is the poster already in his hands? There’s a difference. And where’s the camera?)

FATHER (CAP)

My warnings fall on deaf ears.

PANEL 4

The Kid rolls up the poster.

FATHER (CAP)

The boy cares only for the spectacle. The surface.

PANEL 5

The Kid pulls his hood up, covering his face in shadow down to his nose. Going into stealth-mode, as it were. (What hood? When was it decided he was wearing a hood?)

FATHER (CAP)

If he cannot see what lies in wait for him beneath…

PANEL 6

The Kid, coming out of the alley, faces two large sheriffs who, although a little ways away, have noticed him and look like they will snatch him. (Wouldn’t it be better if one of the sheriffs points in the direction of the kid to show us that they notice him? And how does it look like they’re going to snatch him from a distance? This would be something we’d see if they were closer and doing the snatch and grab motion with the kid barely escaping.)

FATHER (CAP)

(Ellipsis marks here)then he is lost to us.

Something you never really introduce is an establishing shot. Sure, you have the side view of the kid between the tents with the carnival set up behind in the distance, but an actual establishing shot would go a long way in establishing not only the setting, but the time period of the piece. The first caption you have of “Anpao, Spirit Of The Dawn, hear my plea” would have worked great in that establishing panel. As it stands now, I can’t tell, as the reader, where this story is taking place. Another thing that kind of confused me was the introduction of the hood, making this, in my mind, a present day scenario. The only way I know this is a western period piece is due to the e-mail in which you attached this script. If you were cold submitting this script to a publisher who didn’t specifically publish westerns, they’d be confused as to when the story takes place. There are sheriffs in the States to this day, so we couldn’t even use this as a reference cue. Make it clearer.

Next up, your sequencing. Let’s say you were to have the establishing shot as a first panel, then move into the rest of the sequence, what you have are two panels where the kid is looking at the poster, one to establish what’s on the poster and the next to show a profile shot of the kid’s face. Then you go into him pulling the poster down, rolling it up, putting on his hood, and noticing the sheriffs in the distance. As it stands, we don’t see the kid’s facial expression too well, so we don’t know if he’s mischievous, playful, angry, or any other potential emotion. We don’t see him looking around to see if anyone is watching as he tears down the poster. If he’s trying to hide his actions, wouldn’t he be looking around? Also, he isn’t trying to hide the poster in any way. These are things that should have been incorporated into the sequence in some way.

So, we have P1 on the books.

I’m not overly impressed. I know it takes a lot to impress me, but this isn’t getting it done for me.

I know what this was written for. A now-defunct anthology called Western Tales of Terror. This was near the start of of Joshua Hale Fialkov’s career. I even submitted to it when it was going strong. No, I didn’t get in, and no, I’m not bitter about it.

The problem here is simple: the first page doesn’t grab me. When you’re writing for an anthology, especially a horror anthology, the first page has to pull you in. This doesn’t come anywhere near grabbing me. That’s a problem.

Steve is very right, though, when he says that he’d be hard pressed to know what timeframe this takes place in, if it weren’t for the nature of the anthology itself.

Nothing in the dialogue grabs me, either. What would happen if this entire first page were cut? I don’t know, since I haven’t seen page 2, but I’m thinking that nothing much would be lost, which means this P1 is extremely ineffective.

PAGE 2 (Create page breaks for each time you change a comic page.)

PANEL 1

The Kid hightails it in the opposite direction; the sheriffs behind by a good fifteen paces but in pursuit.

NO DIALOGUE (You could have used a dialogue here, possibly from the sheriffs to show their frustration at getting left in the dust, so to speak.)

PANEL 2

The Kid ducks into a tent, lifting up the canvas side to make an impromptu doorway. (Tents don’t work like that. They either have an opening or they don’t. Their structural integrity depends on their stability.)

NO DIALOGUE

PANEL 3

Close on the Kid’s face, taken aback. He wasn’t expecting what we are about to reveal he’s seeing. (This would have made for a good hook for the reveal of the larger-than-possible room you’re about to show the reader. Having the reveal directly follow this panel makes it lose its potency.)

ORACLE (OFF)(See this? I don’t mind this. It’s one letter more than OP, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s still short, to the point, and tells the letterer that this is coming from off panel.)

Have a care, little one.

PANEL 4

Pull back and up, so it’s almost a security-cam-eye-view (Remember I was talking about us not knowing when the story is taking place? This reference to a security camera perspective makes it seem even more present day to me.) of the interior. Don’t worry too much about space; it probably works better if this looks like it’s too big on the inside to be possible; adds to the overall mystery.

The Kid is standing in the Oracle’s tent. There are various trinkets and sashes, drapes and other miscellany lying or placed about. The Oracle herself sits on a wooden chair in front of a small, contained fire pit away from the “door”. She’s an Indian woman in her late 60′s, Indian dress, shawl. (Why do you mention what the woman looks like here instead of in a separate character sheet, where I presume you’ve put other information like what the kid looks like? Or did you simply forget to add that information into your other panels? Either way, do one or the other.) Even though this is presumably in white territory, there is no trace of any Anglo culture here.

ORACLE

Tempting fate like this. Some day, they will catch you.

PANEL 5

On the Kid, smug as hell.

KID

They can try. I’m the fastest brave in my tribe!

(cont)

No white man born can catch me!

(“Cont” works to indicate that the speaker is continuing to talk uninterrupted by a second speaker, but I’d love to know whom you grabbed this advice or sample from as it takes the same effort to write out the character’s name again.)

PANEL 6

On the Oracle, less than impressed by his boast.

ORACLE

And yet, his trappings bind you already.

PANEL 7

On the Kid; now sullen, his bravado deflated.

KID

You sound like my father.

ORACLE (OFF)

Perhaps. But you and I have more in common than you think.

This is a good P2. I liked this. You should have cut it at panel 6, though.

One of the things that gets me is the placement. Where is the boy placed in relation to the Oracle? Does the oracle have her back to the boy, or is she facing him, or somewhere in-between?

The other thing that bothers me is the seeming case of the dropsies. You have the first two panels that are silent, and while I get it, I also feel like they need some dialogue. They feel empty.

Oh, and if the father is never seen, then you’re right with the lack of quotation marks in the captions.

Now, would this page have worked as well if P1 were cut? No, I don’t believe so. However, P1 still needs to be punched up. And what was built up nicely here was deflated a bit because you went overlong by going to panel 7. Take panel 7 and move it down to the next page.

PAGE 3 (Page break here)

PANEL 1

Back on the Oracle. (What’s she doing?)

ORACLE

I, too, ignored the protests of my tribe. (Ellipsis marks here or see next comment.)

(cont)

(Ellipsis marks here or add “I”) Sought to walk both the white man’s land and ours in equal measure.

PANEL 2

On both. The Kid more upbeat, thinking she’s going to validate his fascinations.

KID

But now you live here with them.

ORACLE

No.

(link)

Not with them.

(As mentioned with “cont” before, “link” also works to show a connected balloon, but where did you get this from? If it works in getting the point across, we can’t ding you for format as there are tons of different ways of writing scripts.)

PANEL 3

Tight on the Oracle’s face. Here comes the stinger. (This last part has no place in the panel description as it doesn’t provide any artistic information.) (Like, what’s her facial expression?)

ORACLE

Under them.

PANEL 4

She’s up from the chair now, to pace about for the rest of the scene. Feel free to subdivide these next panels if you want, to emphasize specific gestures/movements/acting that comes to mind.

ORACLE

To the white man, I am, at best, a curiosity. (Ellipsis marks here)

(link)

(Ellipsis marks here) Kept around to give their children something to point at. (Ellipsis marks here)

(link)

(Ellipsis marks here and using the word “to”) Show them we are no threat.

PANEL 5

On the Kid. (Facial expression? What’s he doing?)

KID

Then why do you stay?

And here is where that goodwill you built on P2 starts to get squandered.

Explanations that no one’s caring about. It almost sounds like the writer’s world view than a character speaking. And I’m bored. Five panels and really, nothing untoward has happened.

This is P3, and this is for an anthology called western tales of terror. I’m wondering when the terror part starts to come into play. (I guess it doesn’t help that I’m watching The Cabin in the Woods as I work on this script.) It’s dragging. Dragging is never good. (The script, not the movie.)

This page could definitely be removed/tightened up. It’s filler, trying to make a page count.

PAGE 4 (Page break here)

PANEL 1

Back on the Oracle. (What’s she doing?)

ORACLE

In a dream, Anpao showed me what was to come for our people.

(link)

That night, I decided it was better to live under the white man’s thumb…

PANEL 2

Tight on her eyes, giving us the ‘thousand yard stare’ of someone who has seen their own death and is now numb to the very concept of it.

ORACLE

(Ellipsis marks here) Than die under their heel.

PANEL 3

Still on her, but pulled back to a medium shot. An index finger is raised and her demeanor has improved, showing a flash of insight. (This panel is unnecessary as it simply adds an action that could have been avoided. It also breaks up the dialogue unnaturally. Add “But for you” to the next panel’s dialogue.)

ORACLE

But for you…

PANEL 4

Now on the Kid, at this point so scared he doesn’t know what to think. No trace of bravado left in him. (Scared of what? Nothing even remotely scary has happened, unless he’s scared that she’s going to continue talking. That might scare me, too.)

ORACLE (OFF)

But for you,my little brave…

PANEL 5

Largest panel of the page. Pull back as far in the tent as you can go. She’s now standing at the fire pit, arms outstretched, as if to direct her soul into the rising smoke and carry her message to Anpao directly. The Kid should be somewhere on panel but opposite her and facing away from us.

ORACLE

(Ellipsis marks here) It might set you free!

More padding. That’s really all these two pages are. Padding. Uninteresting padding, at that.

I”m still waiting for something interesting to happen that justifies P2. So far, I haven’t seen it.

PAGE 5 (Page break here)

PANEL 1

Establishing shot. We’re now at the Indian camp. A few tents, a few Indians going about their daily routine. In front of one of the tents are the Kid’s parents. The mother stirs a pot hanging over a cooking fire; the father sharpens an arrowhead next to her. We don’t really need to make out that they’re doing this exactly in this panel, we’ll come in closer in the next panel, but in your approximation set them up as this somewhere in this scene. (It’s here, on Page Five, that I finally get a sense of this taking place in the past instead of the present day. Cooking fires is a good visual, but why did it take so long to get our minds into that time period?)

MOTHER (NO TAIL)

He’s still out there.

PANEL 2

Closer on the parents. If you can swing the POV around and have them now in the foreground, then you can have a small silhouette of what we’ll find out is the Kid in the background, standing about twenty paces away from a decent-sized tree.

FATHER

Good. He needs the practice to catch up to his brothers.

MOTHER

What do you think happened?

PANEL 3

Now we’re looking at the poster from page 1, panel 1 again, but close on the ringmaster. We can tell that there are small rips, tears, and holes in the paper.

FATHER (NO TAIL)

What needed to happen. (No. This comes from OP.)

PANEL 4

Close on the Kid’s hand, holding the back of a notched arrow tight against a pulled bowstring, just before release. (What the hell? Okay, we go from looking at the poster to looking at the boy with a bow and arrow. When did he unroll the scroll, and when did he acquire a bow and arrow? Talk about magically delicious!)

NO DIALOGUE

PANEL 5

Back to the poster view, but now there’s an arrow sticking out of the ringmaster’s right eye.

SFX

THUNK

P5, and I have no choice but to call bullshit.

Let’s start with the obvious: the prayer. If the father was praying, why is there no mention of it being made? It could have been either of the parents for all the reader knows.

As for that prayer, I’m now ambivalent about the need for the quotation marks. Yes, they’re needed, because the prayer was spoken aloud, but at the same time, not having them lends some weight to the first page.

I’m not one that changes things for the sake of change, so I’d leave it. But it bothers me.

Now, we have the parents talking about their son not being back. I don’t know about anyone else, but 20 paces is not a far distance. I hate to say it, but it’s a simple matter of turning around to see him…and if he’s sending arrows into the poster (which we’ll get to next), they’ll be able to hear him.

Now we have the poster. When it gets unrolled isn’t important. That’s a simple jump cut. How it’s attached to the tree? That’s somewhat important.

But the real thing that gets me is where the bow and arrow came from. Nowhere was it mentioned, and its sudden appearance is extremely jarring to me. And if he’s sending arrows thwacking into a tree, he’s going to be heard.

Couple that with the fact that nothing scary seems to be near, and we have another page of padding.

PAGE 6

PANEL 1

Full page splash; just leave a little horizontal space along the bottom of the page for credits.

The top two-thirds of the page shows us the vision the Oracle gave the Kid, seen as a kind of spectral overlay against the open sky. Directly above him is the ringmaster, but now twisted and malevolent. Gone is the bombastic huckster, replaced by the evil trickster. Around him is a collage of images of the inhumanity that the Kid’s people have and will endure in the coming years. You can show a procession of haggard-looking Indians (the Trail of Tears), Indians on the auction block (like the slaves from page 1), Indians attacked by white soldiers, Indians obviously sick and diseased. Again, we’re going for phantasmagorical here. This is what’s going to haunt the Kid for the rest of his days and has turned him into what we see at the bottom one-third of the page.

Below that is the Kid, another arrow cocked and ready to let fly. There are tears streaming down his face, but his eyes burn with an intensity that should take us aback. This look would kill you deader than the arrow he’s sending into your heart. (So you’re saying that the shot and his gaze are aimed at the camera, right? I get this impression from sending the arrow “into your heart”. Say this in your description, then.)

TITLE: MANIFEST DESTINY

Greg, this was generally a good story. Confusing with the lack of time and place beyond the carnival setting, but good nonetheless. I do have a question, though. You start the story with the father, in captions, saying that he fears for his son because of his fascination for the whites as the kid pulls down the poster, supposedly as a keepsake, but by story’s end, the kid is now shooting arrows at it with eventually great accuracy. Do you see how not having a direct emotion presented on the first page can confuse the reader as to the kid’s intent for the poster? If he were smiling, we’d get the sense that it was awe and fascination, but with ambiguity or emotionlessness, I personally got the impression by the end that the kid was planning to steal the poster to shoot at it right from the start, making his father’s concerns moot, as if he already knew his son’s intent.

I’ll let Steven take it from here.

Let’s just dive right in, shall we?

Format: You would have had a Flawless Victory, if not for the page breaks. Everything else was clear and concise.

Panel Descriptions: These were light. They need a bit more heft to them. And by heft, I mean you have to have the characters act. You can put the camera “on” a character, but that doesn’t tell the artist anything about what you see them doing. I write pretty loose scripts myself, but I at least tell the artist what I’m seeing in my head. They’re somewhat free to change it if they think of something better, but I at least give them the option by putting my vision down in the script. You don’t do that here, and I think the piece suffers for it.

Pacing: The opposite of good. Most of this story is padding, which is a terrible thing to say. You can have a book that’s nothing but talking heads…as long as the conversation was interesting. The conversation stopped being interesting on P2, and he had barely met her. Not good at all.

Dialogue: I had no problem with it, except that it didn’t really move the story forward. I could see the conversation happening, and I could hear the different voices. But as a vehicle for moving the story forward, the dialogue doesn’t do its job.

Content: As a reader, I’d been upset that this wasted my time. If this were a part of Western Tales of Terror, I’d be wondering where the terror part was. Nothing even remotely scary was evident here. Not even thought provoking. You “save” it for a final image, but the only thing that could be considered even partially scary is the “evil trickster.” It would totally depend on how the artist interpreted that very loose description.

Editorially, I’d have given this story a pass, were I the editor of the anthology. While the writing was there, the story was not. I find the last image to be too abstract to be understood or be scary. Not saying that it has to be all ghosts and vampires, but this story is missing key elements, such as intensity or even a decent thrill. It’s all just uninteresting talk, except for P2. The small promise of P2 is never delivered upon.

How to fix it? Make it scary. Make it intense. The oracle is haunted? Give her power to the boy in some splashy way. Have him be galvanized by the passing of the power, and now he sees what she does. A different suggestion in the same vein: he’s blinded from birth. He makes his way to her, and she says he can see, but will pay a terrible price. He doesn’t care. She passes her power on to him, and in a montage, he sees the fate of his people. He can now see, but everyone he sees is suffering and dying. That’s intense. That’s scary.

Again, these are just suggestions to have the story fit the anthology better. That’s all.

And that’s all we have. Again, we still need your scripts. Read the rules and send them in!

Check the queue to see who’s up next!

Click here to make comments in the forum.

We’ve got another beautiful Tuesday upon us! I’m no longer traveling, I’ve gotten my rest [was down for a few days as I recuperated], and am now ready to get back into the swing of things. WE have the mid 80s here in Tucson, with a slight breeze, so things are great all the way around. It isn’t too hot, I’m home, and I have my kids. What else could you possibly want?

Fine! More Bolts & Nuts. I get it. This week, we’re back talking about lettering. Like I’ve said before, if you want to be laughed at and not taken seriously as a writer, use Comic Sans as your font. Ridicule will be yours! But if you don’t want ridicule, then go grab one of the free fonts over at Blambot.com. You’ll be glad you did.

Now, I’ve gone back and forth with myself as to how deeply I want to take this. My goal here isn’t really to teach you how to letter. There’s already a book out on the market that does this very well: Lettering the ComiCraft Way. Buy that book and follow the directions. No, I’ve decided that my goal here is to give you the information you need to know as a letterer. This will include what your job does and does not entail, as well as the placement of the balloons and captions for best effect.

Your job as the letterer is simple: you copy and paste the words that the writer provides you onto the artwork. [Yes, I’m talking about computer lettering. Hand lettering is a totally different beast that all but an extreme few of you will not be doing.] So, you copy and paste. You don’t edit, you don’t proofread. That isn’t your job. Your job is to copy and paste. If something is spelled wrong, sounds terrible, or is just awkward, you aren’t going to get blamed for it. The writer and editor [if there is one] will be blamed, but the letterer won’t be. They did their job.

Another part of your job is to be open to dialogue tweaks. Notice, I said a tweak, not major changes throughout the entire script. A tweak here and there for flow. If you aren’t open to those changes, you won’t be seeing many return customers.

Why don’t you want to make editorial changes to the dialogue? Because the “mistakes” could be deliberate. [This is giving the benefit of the doubt to the writer/editor.] If they’re deliberate, then you’ve got a bit of explaining to do as to why you changed it, or why you want to change it. You’re much better off leaving it as not part of your job. Copy and paste. Let the writer and/or editor sink or swim on their own merits.

Before we get into placement, which is where the meat and potatoes of your job comes from, let’s talk a bit about the shape of your lettering and your word balloons themselves.

What I mean by “the shape of your lettering” is this: the shape the text takes inside the word balloon. Unless it’s for effect, the shape you want the text inside the balloons to be is that of a diamond. How big the diamond gets will depend on how long the sentences are and how many of them there are for a single balloon.

Another thing while we’re here. Those of us who took typing twenty years ago and more have something to un-learn. That thing? The double-space after ending punctuation. It iis no longer necessary in today’s world. A single space will do everything you need, thank you very much. This becomes especially important in lettering, when space is at a premium. Want to have an odd-looking space in your word balloons? Put two spaces after ending punctuation. Don’t want that odd gap? Use a single space.

Okay, we were talking about diamonds. Since the word balloons are ovals, you have to form the letters to the balloon. Short top, longer middle, short bottom. That’s how it works. Word and thought balloons. Captions work a little differently. Those are often left-justified, and you want to try to fill them as much as possible. Sometimes, this means the entire caption is left-justified, and sometimes, everything but the last line is justified, with that last line being centered. It depends on the look you’re going for. You’re generally not going to go for an oval shape in a caption.

The balloon around the text is more art than science. Everyone has their own thing, but you don’t want to shape the oval too much outside its “natural” shape. The further away you get from a natural oval, the less immersive the reading experience will be, because the reader will be noticing the lettering instead of reading the book.

The balloon itself shouldn’t be too tight or close to the lettering, nor should it be too far away or loose. [This is the art vs science part.] The happy medium is to have a single letter’s width all around between the text and the balloon. Sometimes, this is more challenging than it sounds, and sometimes, it’s more or less space than you need. Not every balloon is created the same.

Now let’s talk about placement! Took a while to get here, but like everything, it has to go in layers in order to make sense.

Letters are something that the artist should take into account when laying out their pages. There should literally be spaces in the thumbnails for the dialogue. Even though they’re not responsible for the lettering themselves, they have to take the lettering into account. Or they should.

Whenever possible, the word balloons should float up above everything else. Float above, or cut behind important people/objects. And by float above, just that: anchor them to the tops of panels above everything else. They should not be on a face/head whenever possible. Have them lead the eye from left to right and top to bottom.

I’ve said before and will say again: we read American comics from left to right and from top to bottom, in a Z shape. Right now, I’m only going to speak about a single panel. Whatever is said first should be at the top left, and what’s said next will be slightly below and to the right of that, and what comes next will be below and to the right of that. Rinse and repeat for every panel. [Remember to make sure that all the tails point toward a mouth.]

Captions are generally the same. They can get even deeper into a no-man’s land, though, because they’re not coming directly from a character. (No-man’s land?) Lots of panels have space where word balloons can’t go, due to their very nature: a character isn’t there, or there’s something important with a person, place, or thing in the panel. The caption can go into the places where word balloons can’t. Just make sure it isn’t covering anything important.

Word balloons should also not come between two characters speaking. They shouldn’t be on the same eye-level as the characters. If they absolutely must come between two characters and you can’t put them above their heads, put them below eye-level. [What happens is this: instead of looking at each other, the characters instead are looking at the word balloons. Generally, this is not the intent of the panel. Lowering the word balloon to below eye level—below head-level, if possible—removes the balloon as an actual object in the art, and turns the characters back into actors speaking their parts again.]

One last thing about lettering: readability.

Your job is to make sure that the story is easily followed. If the writer has done their job, they’ve put the characters in correct speaking order in the script. If they haven’t, then hopefully the artist has done their job in fixing the writer’s mistake. [Hopefully, there’s an editor onboard who’s already done this.] While it isn’t your job to fix the wording of the dialogue, it is your job to make sure that the eye is properly led so that the story flows as smoothly as possible.

Readability is made up of three things, letterers: the correct font, at the correct pitch, placed in such a manner so that it doesn’t cover important art while leading the eye in a flowing manner. This is also more art than science.

A good letterer is hard to find. When you find one, keep them for as long as you can. They’ll appreciate the work. Lettering is not a glamorous job, but it is a necessary one. You can’t just put words on the page and call yourself a letterer. [This is something I know from firsthand experience.]

That’s really about it for lettering.

Homework: read some comics! Notice the lettering. Notice how the eye is being led all around. Notice fonts, sound effects, caption boxes, credits, and all the rest. Notice the readability of the pages. Also, get Comic Book Lettering the Comicraft Way. It’s a slim volume that’ll set you back about $10, but it’ll be worth every cent you paid for it.

See you in seven.

Click here to comment in the forum!

Welcome, one and all, to another installment of The Proving Grounds!

A little housekeeping before we get too deep: we’re still looking for scripts, writers! We can’t do it without you. If you enjoy the learning every week, become part of the process! Which would you rather have: a safe environment where learning is the name of the game, or to send your script out into the wild with the possibility of not hearing back from the company? Would you rather put up your script at a forum where the probability of having it critiqued is low, or submit it to a place where you’re guaranteed a response? Let’s send those scripts in!

Okay, with that out of the way, we have new Brave One in Chris Gerwel, hailing from Astromech, Tennessee (I have no idea, but Astromech sounded unusual for a town’s name). As usual, we have Steve Colle in blue, and I’m in red. Let’s see how Chris wields

The Iron Chain

PAGE 1 (SPLASH)

PAGE 1, Panel 1:(This isn’t incorrect. It’s a little redundant, but it isn’t incorrect. If this helps you to keep your pages and panels straight, go for it.)

Establishing long shot of ATTICUS GREY, his younger half-brother LEVI HULL, and his step-father HENRY HULL standing on a hill overlooking the Hull Farm in the late afternoon. The sun is casting an angry red glow across the sere landscape, composed of rolling hills covered with dry grasses and scattered rocks. The boys and their stepfather are standing above a thin trail that winds through the hills towards the Hull Farm, which lies nestled in the valley below. (I’m not sure where these characters are placed in relation to the camera from what you’ve written here. Are they in the foreground, middle ground, or background? You say a long shot, but is this more of an extreme long shot to really get a sense of the expanse of the land? How close are they to the hanging body before they realize the mother is strung up?)

The small farmhouse should be shadowed in the distance. (Okay, so we’ve eliminated the background as a possibility for the above character placement, but just how far away is this shadowed farmhouse? And do you mean silhouetted when you say “shadowed” or can we make out details on the house?) It is a rough, poor affair, barely large enough for the family of four. Next to the farmhouse should be a pen for livestock. The livestock should be visibly different from “normal” livestock: consistent (not mutations) but clearly visually distinct. (“Not mutations” creates a hard visual to attain. Do you mean they have llamas instead of cattle, for example? The idea of having an atypical livestock would definitely be viewed as different. Is this what you meant?) Some distance from the livestock is a small copse of trees. (Is this to the side of the livestock or further back in the shot?) ELENA GREY, the mother of ATTICUS and LEVI and wife of HENRY HULL hangs by the neck from one of the trees. Her features are cast in a black shadow and her long dress is splayed out by a gentle breeze. She has been hanged by MATTHEW BRICK, and her husband and sons are just discovering this as they return home from the town of Goodwell. (This last line isn’t a visual cue to the other creators, so it becomes extraneous information. Take it out.)

I’ll tell you right now, this image doesn’t warrant a full page the way you’ve established it. There’s no real sense of drama pulling the reader in with your choice of shot as you have the body hanging from the tree in the distance, not to mention the very limited text on this page. Not working. With that said, what would happen if you had the trio in the background coming into the foreground where we have the hung body of Elena Grey? This could warrant the full page because it’s giving us a good strong hook. Another problem is the inaction of the three male characters. Give them life. By having them approaching the background from the foreground, we don’t even see their faces to gauge emotional reaction to what lies in the distance. Make them move as a reaction to what they see. This would be even more powerful if they were in the distance, the kids running to where the body hangs, the father still, stunned by what has happened to his wife. Play with the emotions of your reader by giving them something and someone to care about.

CAPTION 1:

The Hull Homestead, Oklahoma Territory

CAPTION 2:

August 8th, 1884

FRAME-LESS MESSAGE: (Chapter title)

CHAPTER 1

Okay, we’ve now got P1 on the books.

I’m not a fan of it.

As a panel description, this cannot be drawn. You give at least two indications of where the camera could be, and then you continue from there. Not good. While this could be a page powerful enough to warrant a splash, it isn’t there yet because you haven’t decided what the view is as yet.

Remember that splash pages should be as powerful as possible. Something that’ll warrant the space. Know what this means? It means you need more. More what? Dialogue.

You only have two captions here, and while they let the reader know the where and the when, there should be a lot more giving the what. Know what you can do with the dialogue? You can lead the reader’s eyes around to the important stuff with it. If you were to put the camera behind the people and have them looking at the house and the tree with the swinging corpse, you could put dialogue near the corpse, drawing attention to it.

The other thing the dialogue will do is give us a reason to turn the page. Right now, I’d love to know why I’m reading this story. As it stands, I have little incentive to turn the page. That makes this a waste of space. Give the reader something to read. Add words. The caveat here, of course, is that the words must matter.

PAGE 2 (FIVE PANELS): (Page break)

PAGE 2, Panel 1.

Close up of HENRY’s feet running across the dusty trail. (How is the reader supposed to know whose feet these are?)

PAGE 2, Panel 2.

Close up of ATTICUS and LEVI’s (smaller) feet running towards home. ATTICUS is leading the way, with LEVI being dragged along. (How is the reader supposed to know that one person is being dragged along?)

I’m not getting what the purpose of these two shots is. Why have close-ups of their feet? Is the emotion in their feet or in their eyes and facial expressions? If you had established them running on the first page, you wouldn’t need these. You could even go so far as to have a shot of one set of eyes in the top panel, those being of the person who is most affected by the situation (probably those of Henry Hull) and then his feet running to not only catch up to his boys, but to show his determination to get to the scene of the incident. This eye-shot would create a connection for the reader, something they could relate to from their lives when they have experienced a sense of loss.

PAGE 2, Panel 3 (Most Important Panel).

Medium shot from below adult eye-level. The goal is for the tree and ELENA to loom large over the children. ATTICUS and LEVI stand with their backs to the camera: they stand stiff and staring, and ATTICUS is holding LEVI’s hand. HENRY is lunging for the rope around the tree, his movements desperate. The desperation in his action needs to stand in stark contrast to the frozen tableau of ATTICUS and LEVI. (This is pretty damned specific. You could simply say that you have a low angle shot or even a more dramatic worm’s eye view from behind the still boys while their father tries desperately to untie the rope to save his wife who is obviously already dead. My questions would be the following: Does he have a knife on him? In his desperation, would he lunge for the rope or for his wife, trying to lift her body to relieve the pressure around her neck? Which is more realistic given his situation, emotional state, and the fact his boys are watching? Is he crying or maintaining a strong demeanor in front of his sons? All of these questions are valid in determining more information for the artist, instead of placing focus on the house.)

ELENA hangs still above the children, her dress limp and her features shrouded in shadow. The house sits perfectly still in the background: the door slightly ajar. (The house shouldn’t really be a focus in this shot. All focus should be on that tree and the four characters.) A crude message has been carved into the tree. The words are scratchy, angry, ill-spelled and ill-formed:

CRUDE MESSAGE:

Worned you to sell.

PAGE 2, Panel 4

Close up of HENRY’s face shouting over his shoulder at ATTICUS.

HENRY HULL

Get Levi inside!

The above panel could have just as well been incorporated into the previous panel. Don’t draw out your actions for the sake of elongating the story.

PAGE 2, Panel 5

Close up of ATTICUS and LEVI’s silent faces. ATTICUS should be visible from around the waist up, and his little brother should come up to a little below his shoulder. ATTICUS should be staring wide-eyed at the camera. His face needs to communicate tension, a struggle to control his emotions for the sake of his brother and his father. LEVI should have tears streaming down his face. ATTICUS should be reaching down to hold tightly to his brother’s hand. (Very wordy, and the last part of the holding hands wouldn’t even be in the shot if you’re concentrating on a close-up of their faces.)

I would have liked to have seen more dialogue here, even if it were just an addition in the last panel of “ATTICUS! I SAID GET YOUR BROTHER IN THE HOUSE!” Right now it just seems minimal. I understand you’re going for the visual being the key dramatic player, but it doesn’t seem like enough to me. At least add to that last panel.

P2. Bah.

I’m not going to call it crap. I see that this is supposed to be emotional. I get it. However, what you’re choosing as the important shots for the panels are bleeding the emotion right out of it.

I understand the panels with the feet. I get it. What I’m not getting is the almost total lack of dialogue here. The lack of emotion is even more obvious with the lack of dialogue.

I now have some reason as to why we’re reading it, but is it enough to continue reading? I don’t know. That ambivalence may work in your favor to eke out another page of interest. What you need to do, though, is make sure that that page is worth reading. If it isn’t, you’re going to lose your readers.

Dialogue. Add it. The lack of it is killing you here.

PAGE 3 (FIVE PANELS): (Page break.)

One long vertical panel along the left-hand side with four stacked panels along the right-hand side of the page.

PAGE 3, Panel 1.

Establishing shot, medium distance. Bird’s eye view over the heads of the characters. It’s early afternoon, now. (Your previous scene took place in the late afternoon and this takes place in early afternoon. How do you show that difference and is it really necessary to specify late or early afternoon? Not really.) ATTICUS, LEVI and HENRY are standing around a freshly dug grave at the foot of the tree where ELENA was hanged. A wooden grave marker leans at an angle in the dirt, and a dirty shovel leans against the tree trunk.

ATTICUS is holding LEVI’s hand again, while LEVI is tightly gripping a fistful of posies. The boys are dressed in their Sunday best. HENRY stands to one side, also dressed in his best though his pants are streaked with dirt and mud. His shirtsleeves are rolled up above his elbows and there is sweat on his brow. In one hand he is clutching a rosary, with a simple wooden cross. The three of them are staring at ELENA’s grave.

CAPTION 1:

August 9th, 1884

This kind of drastic full-day time jump is usually better suited to a back-to-back page instead of a facing page. Something to remember as you go forward.

PAGE 3, Panel 2.

Close up on ATTICUS’ face. His expression is tight, his face turned down. He speaks quietly. His eyes should not be seen.

ATTICUS GREY:

Are you going to make this right, Henry?

HENRY HULL: (OP)

Ain’t no way to make this right, son.

PAGE 3, Panel 3.

Close up on ATTICUS’ face. He raises his head, and there are tears streaming down his cheeks. His eyes are furious, though.

ATTICUS GREY:

If my real pa were alive, he’d find Matthew Brick and put him in the ground.

PAGE 3, Panel 4.

Close up on HENRY’s face. His eyes are sad and tired. Sweat glistens on his forehead, and he is staring at his wife’s grave with great sadness in his eyes. (I’m trying to fully visualize this image as you have a close-up with him staring at his wife’s grave. Does this mean his head is down? You could have put the focus on his conversation with Atticus and have him looking at the camera, which would have allowed the reader to see full on the sadness and tiredness in his eyes.)

HENRY HULL:

Maybe so. (Comma instead of period here.) but your ma would’ve taken care of you. It’s just us now. You and Levi need me here.

PAGE 3, Panel 5.

Pull back to a medium-view shot over ATTICUS’ shoulder. ATTICUS is standing alone above ELENA’s grave with his back to the camera. HENRY is holding open the door for LEVI, and LEVI is passing inside. The posies that LEVI was holding before should now be resting on ELENA’s grave. (When did the posies get put on the grave?) HENRY looks back over his shoulder at ATTICUS.

ATTICUS GREY:

You’re just afraid.

HENRY HULL:

Take as long as you need to pay your respects.. (Three dots for an ellipsis.)

This is a pretty good page, but three things I want to mention: First, try not to design the page for the artist unless it’s absolutely crucial to the story. This wasn’t one of those crucial moments from what I can tell as I can see a variety of page layouts for this sequence. Let them do their job. Second, we’re at Page Three and you haven’t named Atticus in your dialogue yet. I’ve given you one way of doing it, now here’s another: Have his name said at the end of the last line of “Take as long as you need to pay your respects, Atticus.” Easy enough. Third, you have opportunity for a bit of anger to be expressed by Atticus and defensiveness on the part of Henry, but instead you stick with minimal dialogue. Take the opportunities where they lie to develop your characters and their relationships.

P3, and it’s only a little better than P2.

Okay, let’s talk about formatting a little bit more first.

See how every element is butted up against each other? That makes it pretty difficult to read. Every element should have a space between it. You do that, and the readability level of this script goes up one hundred fold.

Now, you finally have some dialogue worth reading. That’s great. Too little, too late? I don’t think so. It’s still enough to be ambivalent about. Minor mystery about what’s going on, and that is what’s going to keep the readers here. It would have been easier done if there were more dialogue to read in the first two pages, though. You could have ramped up the emotion through the roof if you had more (good) dialogue on the first two pages. Captions would do wonders.

PAGE 4 (FIVE PANELS):

PAGE 4, Panel 1:

It is nighttime, and the farm house is dark and quiet. (Establish that it’s nighttime and forego the other details that we don’t need. A close-up of ATTICUS lying on his back in bed, the blanket pulled up to his chin. His eyes are open and he is staring up at the ceiling (camera). A window above his bed (A skylight or do you mean the window is at his head?) is open, and moonlight is streaming into the room.

PAGE 4, Panel 2:

Pull back and display the farm house’s main room. LEVI is asleep in a small bed along one wall. He is lying on his side, his eyes closed. (Why is this important?) A rough-hewn table occupies the middle of the room, with several hand-carved chairs around it. (Why is the state and manufacture of the dining set important?) Several coals smolder in the hearth, though they don’t really add much light to the room. (Why introduce the coals lighting the room if they’re not providing light?) The wooden door to HENRY and ELENA’s (now HENRY’s) room is closed. (Why not leave it open to show it leads into a bedroom? This way he can also listen for the boys.) Across the room from LEVI, ATTICUS is sitting up in bed, pushing the blanket aside. He is fully dressed. His feet dangle from the bed, just barely touching the floor. He is not wearing shoes: they are neatly lined up on the floor by his feet. Shelves with various objects line the room, and on one of the shelves is a small closed case about large enough to hold a pistol. (A LOT of needless details in this panel description and also a lot of details that the artist will need to ensure make it into the image. It was making me dizzy trying to picture how everything was going to be placed. Not good.)

SFX 1:

Rustle (You really don’t need this sound effect. Wait for the upcoming, more important sound at the end of this page.)

PAGE 4, Panel 3:

Forced perspective from ATTICUS point-of-view. His hands are reaching forward towards the pistol case. His hands are just about to grip the sides of the case.

So we start off with Atticus in bed staring at the ceiling, then he sits up, and then has somehow made it across the room to the pistol case? That’s fast.

PAGE 4, Panel 4:

Close-up of the open case. Inside is a workman-like Colt pistol with a fine wooden grip. A worn box of bullets is tucked into the corner of the case. ATTICUS trails the fingers of one hand along the grip. (This should be a three-step process, where he has the case in his hands, opens it, and then runs his fingers along the grip. It doesn’t work as two because you miss the action of the case being opened, creating a jump cut.)

PAGE 4, Panel 5:

Extreme close-up of ATTICUS’ now-shod foot (When did he put the shoes on?) depressing one of the floor boards.

SFX 2:

CREEEEAAAK

I understand what you’re trying to do on this page, but it isn’t being presented effectively. You have jumps in actions and in some cases, details that are either extraneous or unclear.

P4, and I’m not impressed.

So the boy’s going to try and get his revenge. The problems here are tri-fold:

First, you have too many details in the panel description. Clarity is and will always be your first job. If it isn’t clear, you don’t have any reason to write it.

Second, you don’t have much continuity between panels. First he’s unshod, then he’s shod, with no putting on of the shoes in-between, and more.

Third, again, the lack of dialogue. Would it be absolutely necessary here? No, not at all. IF. If you had more dialogue on the first two pages, you wouldn’t need any dialogue here. But since you continue to go the minimalist route, you’re needing dialogue here in order to keep the reader’s interest.

What you have here isn’t fluff. All of the panels are needed. What you haven’t remembered is that books are meant to be read. What I mean by that is there aren’t enough words on the page to keep the reader here.

For a reader, this story will pass by extremely fast. The first page is a splash, the second page has almost no dialogue, the third page has some, but this page is again silent. An extremely fast read. You can do better.

PAGE 5 (FIVE PANELS) (Page break.)

PAGE 5, Panel 1:

Medium-range shot of ATTICUS frozen on tip-toes with HENRY’s pistol in one hand. LEVI is now sitting up in bed, wearing a nightshirt. His eyes are wide and his hair is tousled. LEVI is to the left of ATTICUS, and his face should be slightly angled towards his older brother.

LEVI: (WHISPER)

Atticus?

PAGE 5, Panel 2:

Close up of ATTICUS’ face. He has one finger up to his mouth and he’s shushing LEVI.

ATTICUS GREY: (WHISPER)

Shhh. Quiet.

PAGE 5, Panel 3:

Close up of LEVI’s face. The boy’s eyes are wide and he looks frightened.

LEVI: (WHISPER)

What are you doing? Where are you going?

PAGE 5, Panel 4: (Most Important Panel)

Close up over ATTICUS’ shoulder. ATTICUS is pulling the blanket back up over LEVI, tucking the younger kid into bed.

ATTICUS GREY: (WHISPER)

I’m going to find Matthew Brick.

LEVI: (WHISPER)

Can I come with you?

ATTICUS GREY: (WHISPER)

I need your help, but I need it here. Help Henry with the farm.

PAGE 5, Panel 5:

Wide-angle shot, showing ATTICUS pulling on a duster too large for him and opening the farm’s main door. LEVI is propped up on his elbow.

LEVI: (WHISPER)

Be careful.

I’m going to stop here. You’ve got some serious ups and downs when it comes to your writing, Chris. Some written pages in your script work better than others and you’ve got a definite vision established of how you want the pages to look. You aren’t giving much leeway for artistic interpretation, though. The artist could probably bring something to the table, but may feel constrained by the way you hand-hold them through the panels and page designs. It’s a precarious balance beam you’re walking as you try to satisfy your viewpoint. I hope you find an artist who will accept those restrictions. I’m definitely getting the feeling that you could have introduced more dialogue into this story. It’s basic right now, providing just enough to do the job of moving it forward, but not enough to elaborate on character building. We’ll see what Steven has to say.

That was a slog. Or maybe I’m just getting back up to speed after a cross-country move. Who knows? Let’s run it down.

Format: Page breaks and spaces between all of your elements. Again, this’ll make it that much easier to read.

Panel Descriptions: These could be a lot better. Clarity. If you cut down on what is the sometimes almost prosaic descriptions as well as stop having a stranglehold over each and every little detail of the panel and stick to the important information that can be drawn, and you’ll be well on your way. What you have here is doing what it needs to do, but only barely. It can be so much better.

Pacing: Deplorable. It would be so much better if you selected your shots better and added more dialogue. That’s the biggest thing this piece is missing: dialogue. Without it, it’s going to be an extremely fast read.

Dialogue: There isn’t a lot here to comment on. That’s a problem. This story would have been a lot better with more to read. Half of the emotional punch is in the dialogue. It is used in two ways: either in delivering the emotional payload, or in its absence in a tense scene. You don’t have enough here to go one way or the other, which leaves you in a position of having to add words in order to justify your silences. P4 could have been silent, but only if there were more to read on the preceding pages.

Content: This is something I could probably read, given more of a reason to do so. As a reader, I probably wouldn’t have made it past P3 before wanting something interesting or explanatory to happen, though.

Editorially, this doesn’t need a rewrite. It just needs more dialogue and to have the panel descriptions cleaned up. You’d keep more interest that way.

And that’s it. Again, we’re still looking for scripts, writers. We’re here for you, and we literally cannot do it without you. Thanks in advance.

That’s really it, now. Check the calendar to see who’s next.

Click here to make comments in the forums.

It’s a HOT Tuesday in Tucson! I moved over the weekend, I’m still not settled, but I couldn’t wait to get back here to you! It’s been a full past few days for me, and I’m looking forward to slowing down a tad, but nothing was going to keep me from you.

Now, I know we were talking about lettering the past few weeks, but not this week. We’ll return to lettering next week, I promise. There’s still a lot to go over on that topic, but since I’m still exhausted, I thought this would be a nice break.

What I want to talk about this weeks are the different types of feedback you can receive as a creator, and how all of it is helpful, but some feedback is more helpful than others.

Feedback is necessary in everything you do. Not just as a creator, but in your everyday life as well. Feedback will keep you safe, tell you if you’re doing or have done a good job, or let you know how another person feels. It’s about what you’ve done, and how it impacts others. When you decided to become a creator, feedback became something that you both craved and dreaded.

The different types of feedback are simple. You have the critical/analytical and the emotional. Everything else falls into one of these two categories, and how it’s put to you as well as how you receive it will make all the difference in your creative endeavors.

I’m not the biggest fan of emotional feedback. While I want to know how you felt after consuming my piece, what I don’t want is an emotional response. Emotions are fluid, and are extremely difficult to describe. That difficulty does me no good as a creator.

What’s worse is the proverbial pat on the head from someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking at. Give a script to someone who’s illiterate, or have a blind person describe a piece of art. Extreme examples, yes, but they illustrate a point: most of the people you’re asking for feedback from don’t know what they’re looking at. They’re just happy that you created something, something that was never in the world before, that it is completely and uniquely yours, and that you shared it with them. They’ll pat you on the head, say something like “Aw, shucks,” and then go around telling everyone that you made something.

They’re “parent proud,” and while that’s good, it had no place unless they understand what they’ve just seen. You might as well hang it on the fridge for all the good emotional feedback gets you.

Who gives you emotional feedback? Friends and family, of course. They love you and they don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they say the things and make the necessary noises to tell you that you’re good, you’re worthy, and darn it, people like you! They’re also who you run to when someone says a nasty truth about work you’ve submitted. They’ve got your back. “That editor is a jerk! You can do the job. Just don’t give up.”

Know who else is capable of giving emotional feedback? You, as a creator, after having received negative feedback. This feedback [read: lashing out] doesn’t do you any good at all, and it can also paint you in an unflattering or incorrect light.

I run a second column called The Proving Grounds, where myself and Steve Colle edit up to 10 pages of script. I’ve been running this for as long as I’ve been writing this column, and in all that time, I’ve only had one creator give feedback that was full of vitriol. It was interesting, and the writer was given some time to reflect on their words and stance before the comments went live. While the creator opted to not have the comments be seen, it was still an interesting time.

I’ve also seen some creators go the social media route when talking about their Proving Grounds experience. I try not to interact with negative comments, because then it turns into a fight. No one wins those. All it does is make everyone look bad.

Critical/analytical feedback is the kind of feedback you’re looking for, though. It’s where you get the most bang for your buck, and where you can learn the most about both your creation and yourself. There are problems with critical feedback, though, and it’s out of your hands.

The biggest, most rampant “problem” with it is that there aren’t many places on the internet that give it. There are some places where you can post either art or scripts, but getting a deep critical or analytical response is a crapshoot. Why is that? Well, that’s because of the second biggest “problem” with it.

To do it well takes a long time. Sure, you can glance at something and say whether or not you liked it. That’s easy. But to say why you liked or didn’t like something, then explain your position as well as give your thoughts as to how the creator could have done something better… That’s not a five minute thing. That can take half an hour or more. That’s to do it well. To do it “right.”

This is the reason why you don’t see many places doing comments and criticism that are more than just overviews. While they can be helpful, they’re not the in-depth analysis that many creators are hoping for when they post.

Next up is the lack of skilled creators willing to give a critique. Those creators are more than likely working on their own books or working on their own gigs, so they don’t have the time to give newer creators the benefit of their experience. This leaves newer creators in the hands of those that are barely more skilled than they are, so the learning curve can be pretty flat.

Finally, there is the ego. We cannot talk about critiquing and criticism without talking about the ego.

As creators, we’re all egotistical. It takes great ego to tell the world you have something to say, and that people should listen to you. I’m not just talking about writers, folks. I’m talking about every part of the creative team. It’s great hubris to say, “I made a comic, and you should read it.” That’s nothing but ego. We all go through this trouble because we want to be loved and adored by the world. Money follows that. It isn’t why we got into comics. It may help to keep us in comics, but it isn’t why we came here.

Your imagination came up with the idea. Your ego made you tell it to someone. Why? Because your ego now wants to be fed, and it’s fed on kind words from another. Someone who is not you. As creators, we’re just taking that to an extreme.

When someone likes what we’ve produced, we get the warm fuzzies. Our ego is stroked, and all is right with the world. When someone doesn’t like what we’ve done and is able to articulate as to why they didn’t like it, there are only two real responses that result: an aggressive take [fight], or a defensive explanation [flight].

Being aggressive doesn’t do you any good. It makes you look thin skinned. You put your story out there for the world, and the world is going to make a comment on it. Maybe not the Silent Majority, but definitely the Vocal Minority. If you’re aggressive, all it really shows is that you’re not yet ready for prime time. Going back to The Proving Grounds, there are no personal attacks made when we go over a script. We say what we liked and what we didn’t, why we didn’t, and give thoughts on how to improve the script. It’s all about the work presented. The one creator who responded with vitriol also made personal attacks towards me. There’s a difference.

It is not wrong to defend your work. It’s wrong to be aggressive about it, calling names, and basically throwing a tantrum in public. You’d be better served to say nothing at all. Don’t let your ego write checks that your budding career can’t cash.

Take any and all feedback you can get, and analyze it yourself. Check the emotional content, check who it is that is giving the feedback, and try to see your work through their eyes. Did they point out any weaknesses? Did they keep saying the same thing over and over again? Did you send/post the most polished work that you could? If you did, good for you! Go back to the drawing board, taking on the feedback, and try to make the next piece that much stronger.

If, however, you submitted something you knew was flawed, you should still take on the feedback, but don’t be upset if what you got in feedback isn’t exactly what you wanted. I’ve seen creators say they knew their post/submission had this problem or that, but they wanted people to go over it anyway…and then got upset when the same thing kept getting mentioned over and over again, which was the problem they already knew about.

Don’t do that.

Whenever you post something or send in a submission for publication or whatever it is you want to do, you should always be prepared for feedback. It may not be something that you want to hear, but it may be something that needs to be said to you. Consider the source, and consider what’s being addressed.

That’s all I have for this week. Next week, back to lettering!

Click here to comment in the forums!

Welcome back to another installment of The Proving Grounds! This week, we have Brave One LJ Wright, who hails from Bowling Gigante, TX! (I have no idea, but I liked working “gigante” in there. Color me clever. Sometimes.)

We’re still looking for scripts, writers! We’re here for you, and we can’t do it without you.

Who are we? We are Steve Colle in blue, I’m in red, and we have LJ bringing us a tale about

The Day The Foreigner Came

Page 1(five panels)

1: An establishing shot of the center of a small Georgian village with a market, school, and government building (here’s some reference shots of some Georgian villages to give you an idea of the architecture, could never figure out how to upload those of mine to a Word document:http://www.google.ge/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1366&bih=665&tbm=isch&tbnid=mB2A1-InP_vEFM:&imgrefurl=http://www.euratlas.com/Atlas/georgia/village.html&docid=UkPF01xigmVIlM&imgurl=http://www.euratlas.com/Atlas/georgia/village.jpg&w=640&h=480&ei=rO9NUaPRNMKC4gTbvYGwBQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:19,s:0,i:136&iact=rc&dur=205&page=2&tbnh=173&tbnw=228&start=15&ndsp=21&tx=94&ty=103, http://www.google.ge/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1366&bih=665&tbm=isch&tbnid=W-MYsZ8M32oCNM:&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/26849514%40N06/5271800651/&docid=zDJevhbWuMM9mM&imgurl=http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5243/5271800651_99c907e085_z.jpg&w=640&h=461&ei=JvBNUeiUL6iN4gSxq4GYBQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:9,s:0,i:103&iact=rc&dur=1554&page=1&tbnh=184&tbnw=264&start=0&ndsp=15&tx=170&ty=102. ). The main focus of the shot is on toward the market, a group of men stand outside it, smoking and drinking, and young children are running around and playing. (Adding the links creates a bit of a mess to your panel description, something I’m personally guilty of myself as I’ve done the same thing in the past. There are two ways around this: Hyperlinks [which I’m not sure how to do but can be taught] or having these links separate from the script similar to how you have a character sheet separate for artist reference. This would clean up your description and make it easier for your artist and editor.)(Hyperlinks! I love ‘em. Know what else I love? The fact that LJ is talking to the artist, saying what he (LJ) “can’t” do. Hyperlinks are easy. Just highlight a word or phrase, go to Insert, find Hyperlink, and viola. What I’d like to see, though, is a time of day. That would have rounded this out nicely. I don’t care too much about morning or afternoon, just whether it’s day, evening, or night. This’ll let the colorist know which palette to use.)

CAP: Georgia, Guria Region (I like that there’s no period here. Totally an editorial call as to whether or not there’s a period at the end of a location. I like it. That’s just me.)

Giorgi/CAP: “When is Lia getting here with the American, Tamuna?”* (This could have been said in a word balloon coming from the village. We don’t need to see who’s saying it at this point. Having read ahead a bit, I see better usage for the character captions.)

Credits (Is the title here as well?)

*translated from Georgian (The less than/greater than signs are there to help tell us that this is translated from another language. It would look like this:

Giorgi (from village): <When is Lia getting here with the American, Tamuna?>*

That’s probably what you’re used to seeing, yes?

2: A medium shot inside the market on Nika, standing casually and holding a beer in one hand, Tamuna behind a counter (this is a single piece of wood kind of counter, we’ll see her duck under it near the end of the story) looking at her cellphone, and Giorgi, who holds a cigarette and stands more stiff and upright. (Having the information about the wood counter placed where it is in the panel description made it hard to concentrate on the three characters. Talk about the three characters first and then the counter so you divide up character elements and then setting elements for cleaner flow.)

Tamuna: Should be soon.

Tamuna: Her last text said they were outside Orzugeti, and that was about an hour ago. (This didn’t need to be separated from the above dialogue. It could have worked in the same balloon.)

Nika: Any minute then. (This dialogue is unneeded. It’s just reiterating the “Should be soon” comment.)

3: A close up on Giorgi, holding his cigarette close to his mouth, a stern expression on his face.

Giorgi: You Getting nervous, Nika?

Giorgi: You outta be, with him teaching your girl and all.

4: A close up on Nika, who looks over at Giorgi off panel, his eyebrow raised.

Nika: Tamta’s in the eleventh class, (Period instead of comma here.) Isn’t he only teaching the little kids. (Question mark needed.)

5: A medium side of the three again: Giorgi still stands stiffly, a cloud of freshly blown cigarette smoke hovering around him, and Nika’s face and posture has dropped and he frowns, Tamuna is leaning on the counter now, her eyebrow raised and looks at Giorgi.

Giorgi: Suppose(d) to, but I heard Shoerna say she was going to ask him to help her with the older kids, too.

Giorgi: I told her it was a big mistake, but she just scoffed at me, like a lot of you have.

Giorgi: But I’ll tell you (Missing comma) I can picture this guy right now and everything…

We have P1 on the books! Let’s take a look at it, shall we?

We have the page numbers centered. Personally, I don’t care if the heading for the page number is left justified, centered, or right justified. It doesn’t matter. What matters is consistency. I’m also seeing that LJ has put the number of panels up there as well. Nice. Double-edged sword, that. It’s one more thing to look for mistakes, but it also lets the artist know up front how many panels are on the page. It works. More beneficial than anything, and that’s the name of the game.

Still talking in technicalities, I’d rather see the less than/greater than signs used throughout the script to let the reader know that the characters are speaking their native language. This means there’s no confusion on the part of the reader as to when the characters are speaking English or something else.

I’m liking this page. It’s quiet, but there’s an undercurrent here. It’s in what’s not being said, which is very important. That undercurrent is what’s carrying the page. The tension that the characters are feeling is coming through. Nice work here, LJ.

Writers may think that I’m all about action right out the gate. I’m not. I’m about drawing interest right out the gate. This has my interest. Enough for me to turn the page. I’m asking questions. Teaching? Nervousness? An American? Color me intrigued. I’m ready to turn the page and learn more. I like it.

Just clean up the panel descriptions so that they flow better.

Page 2 (four panels)

1: A shot of a James Dean-esque young man standing without a backdrop, complete with curly quiff (I’m not a genius. I had to look this word up. Nice, LJ!), leather jacket, skinny jeans. He looks at the camera with a half smirk, his eyes looking sharply and sexily at the reader. An American flag patch is sewn on the jacket’s chest. Every good girl’s wet dream, every good girl’s parent’s nightmare. (This is an imagined shot similar to a dream, so make sure to specify this to your artist so they know to change the look of the image or the panel’s frame.)

Giorgi/CAP: “…one of those seduction artist types seducers who aren’t man enough to court women properly.”

Giorgi/CAP: “They His type only want one thing.”

2: A close up on Nika, the bottle close to his lips, but his still frowning face shows visible worry. (I’m trying to role play this facial expression to show both a frown and worry and am having trouble doing so. All we would be seeing are his eyes and eyebrows as the bottle is up to his mouth, so all of the emotion is up there. A frown has the eyebrows down while worry would have them up, so both can’t be done effectively.) (“Clean” emotions, folks. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: once you start mixing emotions, you’re getting away from “clean,” and that makes it more difficult for the artist to get the emotion across.)

Nika: Oh (Missing comma) come on, Giorgi… (Very good. You identified all three characters by name within the first seven panels.)

3: Giorgi points at the camera toward Nika off panel, the smoking cigarette jolting (jutting) out from between his fingers. His brow is now furrowed.

Giorgi: It’s true, Nika.

Giorgi: These foreigners have to use all these little tricks because they aren’t as manly as good, strong Georgian men.

Giorgi: Georgian Our women aren’t use(d) to it, either, so they fall for it thinking these guys are something special.

4: A close up on Tamuna, her eyes rolled and looking upward.

Tamuna: Oh, bitcho!*

Tamuna: You watch too many American movies, (Period instead of comma here.) They aren’t really like that.

*bitcho is a play on the Georgian for boy, bitchi. There’s no direct English translation, but it’s vaguely similar to how we use “dude”. (Do you intend on having this explanation as a note to the reader? If so, then it’s going to take away from the flow of the text being read. You also don’t want to have to explain every last use of a Georgian term. That said, without the explanation, I’d assume Tamuna was calling a guy a bitch. Is there another word that could have been used to similar effect, but not sound so odd?)(Agreed. If you’re going to use this term, then make it more formal as an editor’s note. Just something as simple as “Rough translation: dude.”)

P2, and it’s quickly losing steam. The undercurrent that was there in the first page isn’t evident here. This is quite obviously a “second page,” where you’re just wasting time to get to the next interesting bit.

Not good. This is padding.

Every panel should be pointed toward telling a story. I had that feeling on the first page, but I’m not getting that at all on the second. Some exposition, some dated thoughts on “Americans,” but none of it is gripping. You’re marking time, LJ, and it shows.

But there is good news. The good news is that you’ve worked in everyone’s name in a fast, efficient, and organic manner. Good work.

Redo this page. Expand on what’s going on. Let that tension build some more. Make sure it’s pointed in the direction you want it to go. This is a decent start, but it could be better.

A word about dialogue. As always, this is the most subjective part of a script. However, Steve is right with the corrections. Comma vs period usage here is a problem. Read the dialogue out loud and listen for your stops. If it doesn’t work, change it. If it works, leave it alone, then come back later and read it again to see if it still works. The dialogue here could use a good once-over.

Page 3 (four panels)

1: Medium shot focused on Tamuna and Giorgi, Giorgi is turned toward her now and pointing while she looks at him with a snarl.

Giorgi: Now listen here, girl, (Period instead of comma here.) What I’m talking about isn’t movies.

Giorgi: Up in Samegrelo* (Two things: First, you need a comma here, while second, you need to stop having a star beside every Georgian-related word or location. It’s detracting from the story.) there’s (there’ve) been five Georgian girls who got married to foreigners.

Giorgi: Two of them even moved back to those foreigners’ countries, away from their families.

2: A wide shot of a disgusted, but well dressed, Giorgi walking away from a smiling frizzy haired man groom with his similarly smiling bride, who are talking to a group of laughing well dressed Georgian men holding small glasses of wine. (If this is a flashback, say it’s a flashback so the artist knows to treat it as such, with a different panel frame shape or other different look to identify it.)

Giorgi (Is this meant to be a caption?): “I went up to one of the weddings because the girl was a friend of my cousin.”

Groom: Please, speak a little slower…. (Three dots for an ellipsis, not four.)

Giorgi (Caption?): “This boy could barely even speak Georgian!” (Something that Steven had said in a previous TPG, one of my scripts if I remember correctly, was a suggestion to leave accentuated words to the reader’s “ear”. Right now, you’ve got quite a bit of underlining going on where I’m not “hearing” their purpose. Sure, you’ve got a couple that make sense, but generally, I’d suggest taking the underlining out. You’ll see more as to the reason why coming up in more of your dialogue.)

Giorgi (Caption?): “And here he was (Comma) marrying a lovely, perfectly healthy Georgian girl.”

3: A close up on Giorgi looking down and to the side, the disguised (disgusted) look carrying over from the last panel.

Giorgi: And Tamazi keeps hearing more and more rumors about Batumi girls who are getting into these relationships with foreigners, (Period instead of comma here.) Sexual relationships.

4: A shot on a sweating Nika, looking down at the floor and holding his beer loosing loosely by the head.

Giorgi/OP: Batumi isn’t even two hours away, Nika, (Period instead of comma here.) Particularly Practically in our back yard.

Giorgi/OP: Just imagine that kind of person coming here, to our village.

*Another region north of Guria. (If this were important, which it’s not, I would suggest having it in the frame for Panel 1 instead of down at the bottom of the page.)

For three pages, I’m honestly seeing pacing for two. The first panel from Page Two, of the imagined shot of the James Dean lookalike, could have easily been placed on the first page as a sixth panel, while the balance of the second page could have been combined with the third to make seven panels. It’s conversation vs. action, so you don’t need those large panels to get the point across. Also, I’m not reading any definite hook with the comment of “You watch too many American movies. They aren’t really like that.” So combining them would make more sense pacing-wise.

Yeah. This page is more marking time. Like Steve said, combine these two pages into one, and it’ll be better. Four panels for this page? You could easily fit more, and as long as the dialogue matched, you’d have that undercurrent of tension that was on the first page. We’re on P3, and I’m no longer feeling it.

The only thing I’m feeling now is boredom.

Now, more of a problem is the dialogue. Like I said before, read it aloud and listen to the stops. Some of it works better with Steve’s corrections, but others just need to be rewritten.

And the asterisks? They need to go. Let the reader infer from context, or go search for the info themselves. They don’t need to be spoonfed everything. It will even make you seem deep.

Overall, the pace here is slow. We’re three pages in, and two of these pages could be condensed into one, and you’re losing the reader. Hopefully, something interesting happens soon.

Page 4 (five panels)

1: A wide shot of the Jeans (James) Dean youth, sitting behind a teachers desk, his arm slung over his chair’s back. He’s looking up at Tamta with his half smirk, his eyes locked on the girl, whose head is down and to the side, a visibly blushed face turned toward the camera. (Again, this is an imagined scenario, so make sure to let your artist know this. And by the way, are JD and Tamta alone in the classroom? That’s the only way I can see what you’re proposing working.)

Giorgi/CAP: “I can imagine what kind of teaching he’ll try and do to give our good girls.”

JD Youth: Tamta, you’re one of my best students, do you know that?

Tamta: Thank you, teacher, (Period instead of comma here.) I try my best.

JD Youth: You know, I’ve been trying hard to think of a reward for you, but no such luck.

2: A medium shot of the James Dean youth, now leaning back in his seat against his folded arms. (This is impossible. Arms don’t work that way. If you’re going to lean back, the only way to lean back against folded arms is for your arms to be folded across your back. Impossible, if you’re thinking of it as being akin to having your arms folded across your chest. And why do it in a chair? No, I think you meant something different, but it came out extremely screwed up.)

JD Youth: Come on over here, Tamta, and sitin on my lap while I think.

Tamuna/CAP: (Quotation marks) Bitcho, you let your imagination run wild. (Quotation marks)

3: A medium shot of Tamuna, leaning over the counter, an angry look on her face, looking toward the camera at Giorgi; Nika can be seen in the background, still looking down and distraught.

Tamuna: Only you and your stupid brother and your even stupider cousins are worried about him.

Tamuna: The students, teachers, and almost everyone else is are excited that he’s coming.

4: A medium shot of the trio, Nika still looking down letting his imagination go wild (how is the artist supposed to draw “letting his imagination go wild,” and how is the reader supposed to know this?), while Tamuna continues looking at Giorgi as she scolds him, and Giorgi stands with his eyes closed and takes a drag from his cigarette.

Tamuna: And I’ll tell you, You(‘d) better not try anything, either.

Tamuna: Razo and Lana are looking forward to hosting the foreigner, and I think Razo made it pretty clear he’d have something to say for to anyone who messed with him.

5: A close up side shot of Giorgi, blowing smoke out of his mouth.

Giorgi: Hmpf

Giorgi: I’m not going to do anything, (Period instead of comma here) All I’m doing is telling. (This last line sounds like a kid tattling. Can this be changed to “I’m just worried”?)

I’m going to stop here. The story is dragging for me, with the subject matter being little more than a conversation with no definable rising in action. He’s worried. We get that. Could this have been said in fewer pages? Sure could. And did this dialogue have to take place between three people instead of just two? No. You could have eliminated Nika and still gotten the point of the conversation across. As you can tell from all the blue, there are a lot of issues with regards to improper use of punctuation, misused wording, and a definite need to identify to your artist when something not in the here and now is being presented. I wouldn’t suggest a rewrite based on what I’ve read so far, but you really need to have dramatic tension in this story. Show Giorgi’s worry as building anxiety instead of sarcastic commentary. The thing is, Tamta isn’t even his daughter, so his worry isn’t as founded as if she were. Make it more personal for him, with Tamuna dismissing his concerns, creating tension between them. Right now, it’s just an exchange. Bring drama into it. By doing this, you’d be warranting your larger panels. I’ll let Steven have his say.

Bah. That’s what I say. Let’s run it down.

Format: Flawless Victory.

Panel Descriptions: They need some work. The biggest part of it is clarity. Slow down, take your time, and really understand what it is you’re trying to get at. Do it twice if necessary: write it out, then see if you can actually see someone performing that action. If you can, leave it. If you can’t, if it didn’t come out the way you wanted it to, then rewrite it. That chair-leaning panel on the last page? That needs a rewrite. That didn’t come out the way you wanted it to.

Pacing: The opposite of good.

The first page was fine. It didn’t start to fall off the rails until you get to the second page, and then it quickly turned into a whole bunch of nothing. Nothing gripping, nothing that will stay with the reader, nothing that will make them turn the page anymore in order to get them deeper into the story.

I’ll come to the content in a bit, because I liked some of that I saw, but the pacing for what you have here isn’t good. Remember, going from large to small, pacing consists of the number of scenes in a book, the number of pages a scene takes up, the number of panels on a page, and the amount of dialogue in a panel. Don’t forget that what happens in eache scene/page/panel and what and how much is said in the dialogue is also very important to pacing. When you have rising action, you have fewer panels. When you have slower action, you add panels.

Your pacing here is screwed up because you have “action pacing” for a sedate setting. It doesn’t work. You need to add more panels (interesting panels) in order to justify the page. Four panels, and there isn’t a lot of dialogue as a reason for it? Criminal.

Dialogue: The first page gives us tension. It caught my interest. The subsequent pages squandered any interest I held, and did it fast. After P2, none of the dialogue was gripping. And it gets worse from there.

As a writer, you live and die with words. What your characters say and how they say it is extremely important. Everyone has their favorite lines from movies, but few people know who actually wrote the movies. Who wrote Die Hard? Who wrote The Princess Bride? Eminently quotable movies, and few people know who wrote them. (I know I don’t.)

With that, your word usage needs a lot of improvement. Verb and adverb tenses in conjunction with subjects are important. This is your job.

Here is how I view the role of an editor: we’re here to guide, not to write. By that, I mean we’re here to guide you on the path to make the best comic possible. I hate correcting dialogue, because this is the absolute only place where the writer comes through “pure.” Everything else is filtered by someone else (even the letterer is a filter of sorts, but still). Whenever I correct a writer’s dialogue, I feel like I’m stealing their voice. I hate that. I want them to be pure.

However, a lot of what you’ve written here needs to be rewritten. Part of that is because of your word/verb usage, but the bigger part is because it’s uninteresting. After P1, there’s no drama, no tension. It’s just two people grousing, and it didn’t look like it was going to end. What’s so interesting about that? Nothing, if it isn’t doing anything. Know what’s funny? The Odd Couple. Know what’s funny? Grumpy Old Men. The Honeymooners. Are these all old examples? Darn tootin’. Know why? Because they’re good. King of Queens? It wants to be The Honeymooners. Everyone Loves Raymond? Wants to be the Honeymooners. Mike and Molly? See the pattern here?

I’m not saying that your dialogue has to be funny. I’m saying that it has to go somewhere. P1 gives a setup, but the subsequent three pages don’t follow through with it. They’re just grousing. It’s boring, and boring is death.

Content: As a reader, this isn’t something I’d pick up. There’s something interesting, though, that I don’t know if others would pick up on, but it works out to be the same. Follow me for a moment, now.

I’m a child of the 80s. I grew up watching movies like The Karate Kid (who wrote that? Some good quotes in there, too.), and when the Karate Kid pt 2 came out, I was struck by how “stuck in time” the Okinawans seemed to be. It was the 80s, but they seemed to be stuck in the 50s. It looked like Grease, but with Japanese people. I was a kid. I thought this was how they saw us.

I also grew up thinking that all Russians drank vodka. A harsh language because it was damned cold, and they drank vodka in order to stay warm. I also thought the women were very stout, wore kerchiefs on their heads, and stood in line all day for bread (and vodka).

Have I been to Russia? No. I’ve been to Japan (and Okinawa), but I haven’t been to Russia. But I don’t think that they see us this way. Not in a Grease/James Dean kinda way. I think it’s a stereotype. Rebel Without A Cause was a great movie, James Dean was a passable actor that could have been great if he lived longer, but I don’t think we’re seen like that anymore. Could it have been that way in the 80s? Quite possibly. But we’re living in an age where we’re very connected, and the stereotypes should be different.

I just think it is very interesting what you think how they think of us. That would have struck me, personally, as a reader, and it would have rankled my nose. Not the stereotype itself, but because of the dated nature of it. Why not have a black kid with trunk jewelry, a Kangol hat, four-fingered ring, and maybe an oversized clock around his neck in place of the JD teacher? It would have come across the same way: dated.

Editorially, this needs a rewrite. We’d need to talk about what the story is about, what you wanted the reader to take away with them after they finished reading it, and what purpose the JD stereotype serves. Then we can work to craft a story to serve those purposes. One that is better paced than this, and is interesting to read.

And that’s all we’ve got for this week. We’re still needing scripts, so send ‘em in! Check the calendar to see who’s next!

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Tuesday! Been frothing at the mouth for this week. No introduction beyond this. Let’s get to it.

We’re still talking about lettering. Last week was an overview to get you started, and this week, I wanted to get into the Bolts & Nuts of some certain things you’re going to need in order to be a good letterer.

Again, as I said last week, you never, ever, ever, never ever, ever never, want to use Comic Sans as your font to use in your lettering. Let’s go a little further: almost all of the default fonts you’ll find in your computer programs are going to be unusable for lettering.  I can’t think of one default font I’d use in a comic.

Okay, let’s get started. The first things we want to talk about are terms. Hopefully, some of this will seem familiar. Let’s talk about “paper” first. By paper, I mean the viewable image you’re going to see, generally on paper. Going from the outside in, we have the Trim, the Bleed, and the Live Area. The Trim is where the paper gets cut, the Bleed is where the art from the Live Area extends to the edge of the page, and the Live Area is the place where everything is safe.

Let’s talk about the Live Area and the Bleed. Anything put in the Live Area is safe. It will be seen. All of your lettering should be in the Live Area. No lettering should ever be in the Bleed.

The Bleed is the area between the Trim line and the Live Area. When you print your comics, plates often move. What this means is that, from copy to copy of a printed page, your Bleed can move, showing more or less art on an individual basis. If you put words in the Bleed, there’s the possibility that you could lose part or all of a word, which hampers legibility. Don’t do that to yourself. No lettering in the Bleed.

As I said before, your comic dimensions are generally going to be 6.875 X 10.5. The Trim line will be around 6.625 X 10.25, and the Live Area will be 6 X 9, which is exceedingly safe.

Let’s talk about some more terms before we talk about actually putting letters on art. Well, not terms, really, but what you’ll find both in and around word balloons and captions. This isn’t an all-inclusive list by any means. This is just what you’ll usually find on the comic’s page.

Uppercase and sentence case: Most of the lettering fonts you’re going to use will be uppercase, but there are some stories that use sentence case. It really depends on the look you want to go for. When I say most, I really mean “overwhelming majority.”

Uppercase word balloons [Also notice the I's, both crossbar and not.]

Crossbar I’s. These are all over the place. My personal belief is that the crossbar I should only be used for personal pronouns and acronyms [and most of the time, not even acronym’s]. You’ll have some letterers that will start a sentence with it as well, and while not wrong, I’d ask for a change. Call it editorial prerogative. Most comic lettering fonts will have two separate I’s: one crossbar, one not.

Balloon tails. These should always point to a character’s mouth. I like tails that end in sharp points. I think they look better. The last quarter or so should come together to a single line, one that, again, points to the mouth.

The ellipsis are three periods in a row. Not two, not five, not more. Want to be taken seriously? Three, and only three. Generally speaking, they’re used as a pause. If the same character is speaking, they should end one balloon, and then start the next. This is a generality, not a hard and fast rule.

Ellipsis, both at the end of one and the start of another.

Double-dash. This is used when a character is interrupted. Not a single dash, but a double.

Joined balloons: Balloons are joined in two ways. The first way is to join them balloon to balloon, and the second is to use a connector. Connectors are generally used when two characters are speaking one after the other in the same panel, and you need to space the balloons apart.

Butting borders: This is when a word balloon is up against a panel border and cropped. Want to save space? Put the balloon either at the top or in a corner somewhere. It keeps the word balloons up and out of the way most of the time.

Overlapping borders: The opposite of butting, this is used only when necessary. Personally, I despise seeing it. It looks terrible, and is rarely done correctly. Some tips: on even-numbered pages, don’t use it on the first panel. Also, try not to use it on panels along the left edge of the page. On odd-numbered pages, try not to use it on panels on the right edge of the page. Try to keep it to the middle and inside if at all possible.

Whispering: Traditionally, this is a balloon made up of dashes. [Remember, comics have a visual language. This is one of those.]

Speech, thought balloon, and whispering.

Breath Marks: Two stacks of three vertical dashes, usually coming before and after a sputter, cough, or the like. Put them together if the person has fainted.

The Asterisk is used at the end of dialogue in a word balloon to denote an editor’s note or something. Generally, that note will be found either in the same panel or the same page. Don’t put it at the end of the book like a footnote unless absolutely necessary.

Foreign languages have dialogue that begins with a greater than sign <, and end in a less than sign, >. The first balloon with the foreign language will also end in an asterisk. That asterisk should correlate to a caption with a note that explains what the language is.

Finally, let’s talk more about fonts for a little while.

You can’t do anything without a font. Well, you can, but you’d end up with empty word balloons, which can be effective, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Like I said before, the overwhelming majority of the default fonts you have in your word processing programs and Photoshop aren’t useful for comic book lettering. You’ll need to find different fonts.

Where do you get them? Well, for those of you who are truly ambitious, you can create your own fonts. [After doing lettering for a while, you may become interested in this. It happens.] There’s a program called Fontlab that will help you create your own fonts. That’s all I’ll say about that. If you’re truly interested in creating your own fonts, there are books out there that will help you.

Back to the question of where to find fonts. A great resource is Blambot.com, created by letterer Nate Piekos. Nate has been lettering for years, doing work for all the major companies. Not only does Blambot.com have fonts, but also articles on the subject as well. Now, Nate has a plethora of great, free fonts, as well as a bevy of fonts you have to pay for. Every month, he adds two fonts to the site: one for free, the other for pay. Get all of the free ones, and any of the pay ones that you wish. (All of them?) All of them. Variety is the spice of life, and having variety also gives you flexibility.

You can also find fonts at ComiCraft.com. ComiCraft is a computer lettering company that made it big doing books for Marvel and DC, as well as others. They also wrote a book, Lettering the ComiCraft Way, that I suggest you purchase.

The fonts on the ComiCraft site are not free, nor are they cheap. However, every year, they have a sale for half-off on their fonts.

You can also do a search for downloadable fonts. These you may or may not need a license for. Check the files of the font before you decide to use these fonts in your comics.

Make two different libraries for your fonts: one for dialogue, and one for sound effects. Keeping these separate will make it easier for you when it comes to lettering. You don’t want to have a sound effect font for regular dialogue, do you? [This is a generality. It could very well be that you want to use one—just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.]

That’s all for this week. Next week, we’ll talk about using the computer programs, what the letterer is responsible for, and other fun stuff like placement, if it doesn’t run too long. Otherwise, placement will be the final installment on lettering.

Homework: go read some comics! You’re going to be looking for elements of style. Where and when crossbar I’s are used, breath marks, joined balloons, connectors, tails, and all the rest. Make notes concerning who the letterer is [or company], what the publishing house is, if there’s an editor or not [this is mostly for the indies and Image], and what lessons you’ve learned.

See you in seven.

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Welcome back to The Proving Grounds! This week, we have a double-treat: we have Steve Colle returning with a revamped draft of his Captain America script, which isn’t something we get around here too often. This means the second treat is that we have Yannick Morin returning to take over the duties in blue. Today is the Canadian Connection: Steve & Yannick are from Canadia (yes, Canadia), and I’m from the 109^th circle of Hell! (Yes, I’m an extremely minor demon. Trying to earn my horns.)

A bit of business before we begin: we’re running out of scripts! We literally cannot do this without you. The wait isn’t long! (I’ve been doing this for 121 weeks straight! Do you really want to give me a break now?)

Anyway, let’s see what happens in

CAPTAIN AMERICA: “Casualties of War” Third draft

Written by Steve Colle 11/03/2013

PAGE ONE (six panels)

Panel 1. Long establishing shot of the interior of a clinic, with a reception desk and a dozen chairs in the waiting area. Out of the dozen, five are empty. Here’s what’s going on from left to right, making note that we can see the entrance to a hallway in the far left near the foreground. Two people of the seven seated are important to this story, both of whom are on the far left of the frame: VANESSA STUART (a Caucasian woman in her 40’s) and MATTHEW, her young son of 8. They are looking towards the far right of the panel with embarrassed expressions on their faces as they gaze at MICHAEL STUART (a Caucasian man in his late 50’s), who is hovering over the receptionist at the desk, yelling at her. She, in turn, is trying hard to maintain her composure as she is responding back to him. (This panel description started out great, but then it morphed into a math problem: “Out of the dozen [chairs], five are empty. […]Two people of the seven seated are important to this story, both of whom are on the far left of the frame…” Really, Steve, how hard would it have been to simply state: “There are around a dozen chairs in the waiting area. Roughly half of these are occupied by patients, including VANESSA STUART and MATTHEW.” Now I’ll grant you have cleaned this up nice – it’s way better ordered than last time – but you need to let go of insignificant details that serve no purpose but confusing the artist.)

NOTE TO LETTERER: There will be a mixture of narrator captioning as well as character captions within the story. They will be marked as such within the script. (No need to specify this as 1. a letterer who knows his stuff will see the difference, and 2. you should make this clear in your notations: CAPTION alone is for narrator captions and CAPTION (NAME OF CHARACTER) is for character captions.)

1 NARRATOR CAPTION: HANDS & HEARTS COUNSELLING CENTER, 11:13 AM.

2 RECEPTIONIST: LOOK, MR. STUART, I UNDERSTAND YOUR IMPATIENCE, BUT — (Extraneous space between the last word and the double-dash.)

3 STUART: NO, YOU DON’T, LADY!

4 STUART: I’M HERE WITH MY WIFE AND KID ALMOST TWO FREAKIN’ HOURS WAITIN’ FOR DR. MAZAR, AND — (Extraneous space between the last word and the double-dash.)

Panel 2. Medium profile of Stuart (left) and the receptionist (right). (Why specify “left” and “right”? You’re already mentioning the characters in the right order.) Stuart’s mouth is shut as he stares angrily at her, having been put in his place. The receptionist is pointing her index finger from an extended arm back to the left of the panel. She has a determined look on her face as she basically orders him to sit back down.

5 RECEPTIONIST: DR. MAZAR IS IN WITH A PATIENT, SIR.

6 RECEPTIONIST: NOW PLEASE SIT DOW– (Quibble: I’d cut right after the word “sit”, since it’s awkward to cut through a short word like “down”.)

7 SFX: BLAM!

(NOTE TO LETTERER: Have this SFX cross over from Panel 2 to 3 so it looks as though the sound has started in 2 and transcended into 3 across the gutter space.)(You think a gunshot is long enough to last through both panels? I beg to differ: it’s only after the shot has been heard that the characters will react. Keep the sound effect in panel 2 only. Besides, isn’t this something you should leave to the letterer?)

Panel 3. The same basic composition as the previous panel, but the pair are reacting to the gunshot differently. The receptionist’s eyes are wide in terror as she screams out, her face turned far to her left past the camera. Stuart’s posture and expression are battle ready as he looks in the opposite direction behind him (we see his face turned past the camera to his right) and orders everyone to hide. (Stuart is on the left. If he’s looking behind him, he should then be looking towards the left, not the right. If he looks towards the right, he’s looking past the receptionist and telling the medical files to duck for cover. But then again, none of this would have been confusing if you had just stated that he was looking back at the reception area. Same thing for the receptionist: she can’t be turning her face to the left; she’s already facing that direction! See how all those extraneous details are coming back to haunt you? Simplicity, simplicity…)

8 RECEPTIONIST (BURST): OMIGOD!

9 STUART: EVERYONE GET DOWN!

Panel 4. Full shot of Stuart as he begins to race towards the hall (in the foreground left) (You already specified in your first panel where the hallway was.) leading to the back offices where the shot came from. He has the expression of a battle ready soldier on his face, no fear.

10 MATTHEW (BURST from OP): DADDY!

Panel 5. Extreme close-up of a shotgun barrel mere inches away from Stuart’s startled eyes, Stuart on the left, shotgun barrel on the right. (You just flipped the camera past the 180 axis. Stuart was running towards the left, so he should be on the right and the shotgun barrel on the left to better convey his sudden running into the gun.)(Extremely good catch here. This panel threw me for a loop, too.)

11 KAY (OP): BACK IN THAT WAITING ROOM NOW, MISTER.

Panel 6. Close-up facing shot of KEVIN KAY, an unshaven man in an army jacket, arm outstretched with the shotgun aimed at the camera, finger on the trigger. We’re looking down the barrel of the shotgun at Kay’s eye level, his expression being that of a man holding all the cards, all the power to the situation.

12 KAY: GET THE COPS ON THE PHONE. TELL THEM I WANT CAPTAIN AMERICA HERE BY THIRTEEN HUNDRED HOURS … (Extraneous space between the last word and the ellipsis.)

13 KAY: … OR I’LL SHOOT A SECOND HOSTAGE. (Extraneous space between the ellipsis and the first word.)

(Now this is what I call a first page! Apart from the technical aspect of muddy panel descriptions, we have everything here to ensure that the reader is hooked and that he turns to that fateful second page: the setting is well established, characters are introduced, action already ramps up, and it ends on a cliffhanger that ensures we want to read more.)

P1 is on the books!

This page is a helluva lot stronger than the previous entry. A few technical quibbles, but there are two things I want to point out, and I’m glad Yannick did, or else I’d have to go into a long and boring explanation.

The first thing is Time. A panel is (generally) encapsulated by a border, and that border holds all the Time within it. You can add Time to a panel by adding dialogue, and you can also take Time away by removing it. Just remember that sound effects are part of dialogue, and thus, part of the Time within a panel.

I’m not a fan of having word balloons break borders. If the artist has done their job, they have accounted for the word balloons in their layouts. If the writer has done theirs, they should have a general idea of where the balloons should go.

I’m not a fan of a sound effect breaking a border. I’m especially not a fan of a short sound effect, like a gunshot, not only breaking a border, but also crossing into another panel. Remember, there are two types of Time: Border Time, which is what’s within each border, and Gutter Time, which is between the borders. A single gunshot doesn’t have enough personal time to break one border, cross the gutter, and break another border. Frankly, this is a terrible, terrible call to make, because if it were to go through untouched, it would make the letterer look like a rank amateur. (And I like the concept of dialogue having its own personal time.)

The next is the one-eighty rule. It goes something like this: there’s a line between two objects in a panel, and the camera shows them on one side of the line for every shot. This means that both objects are on the same side, no matter what the camera angle. The camera can swing in an arc of 180 degrees. As soon as the objects switch positions, you’ve crossed the line, and the camera has gone beyond the 180 degrees that it should go. Steve flipped that here, in the name of trying to keep the reader’s eyes moving in the correct direction: he was trying to get the eyes to go to the right, “into” the comic, so that there would be a subconscious “need” to turn the page.

However, it also had the unintended consequence of throwing the reader right out of the story because he broke the 180 rule.

Despite that, though, this is a much stronger opening. Much, much better. There’s good work here.

PAGE TWO (three panels)

Panel 1. Largest panel on the page. Exterior establishing full shot of Captain America in the foreground mid-panel walking onto the scene. He is facing the background away from the camera with his shield in his left hand. (Last time we went through this, you insisted that Cap have the shield on his back, saying it was iconic. It even was your whole reason for having your lead first appear from the back. Why is the shield in his hand now? Because not only haven’t you solved the initial problem, now you’ve made it worse.) In the middle ground on the left are LIEUTENANT MACINTYRE (the male police negotiator) and a female officer talking. She notices Cap coming and is indicating to Macintyre to turn around, while on the right is a large crowd of people trying to get past a police barricade, with people looking in one of three directions: Either at the building in the background (whose name of HANDS & HEARTS COUNSELLING CENTER is written above the doorway in a stylized heart shaped by hands) or at the police trying to keep them back or at the approaching Captain America. (Are you sure you have enough room to show all three of these behaviors? I’d just have the part of the crowd we can see look at Cap in awe and cal it a day. Also, that last sentence is a six-line nightmare in which you describe the actions of two groups – one with options – as well as a building, sorta. And you know how I can easily get confoozled…) Those looking at Cap are smiling, pointing, or just plain in awe at the presence of this symbol of liberty. (Again, flip this. Cap should be walking up toward us, not walking away from us. This puts the camera behind the cops, and puts Cap square in the middle of things, as it should be. The building isn’t important. The book would have been called Captain America, not Building in the Background.)

1 NARRATOR CAPTION: 12:46 PM.

2 FEMALE OFFICER: HE’S HERE, SIR.

3 CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHAT HAVE WE GOT, LIEUTENANT MACINTYRE?

4 TITLE: CASUALTIES OF WAR (I really like how the title seems like a response to Cap’s question!)

5 CREDITS:

Panel 2. Cap, in the middle ground, is walking up to Macintyre (towards us with an over the left shoulder shot from behind Macintyre). A crowd with police and barricades are visible behind him. Cap offers his hand in greeting with an intense, focused look on his face, all business. The female officer is out of the shot. (I added a word here just so no one thinks it’s Macintyre who’s out of the shot. After all, he’s an officer too.) (Most of this panel is padding. Shaking hands? What for? This isn’t a movie. Get on with it. Because now, since Cap has his hand out, you HAVE to go through with the shaking of it, or else it will seem like a snub, and no one snubs Cap without getting shield-bashed. Now, who wants to bet there’s going to be too much dialogue for this action? Anyone?)

6 MACINTYRE: CUTTING STRAIGHT TO THE CHASE, CAPTAIN…

7 MACINTYRE: THE HOSTAGE TAKER’S NAME IS KEVIN KAY, A FORMER ARMY CORPORAL WHO SERVED IN AFGHANISTAN BEFORE BEING HONORABLY DISCHARGED FIVE MONTHS AGO. (Now it may seem as though the lieutenant here just got a visit from the Exposition Fairy, but I won’t ding Steve for it. Why? Because it makes sense for the character to say this. He’s relaying important information to Captain America, information that pertains directly to the situation at hand. That’s the way to do exposition: making sure the exposé is justified by the needs of the plot.)

8 MACINTYRE: ODDLY ENOUGH, HE WAS INSISTENT THAT WE GIVE YOU HIS NAME. DOES IT RING ANY BELLS? (Speaking of names, notice how everyone got his out in the open quick and smooth? That’s nice work.)

Panel 3. Long shot from behind Cap and Macintyre as they look towards the building. They are off to the left of the panel so as to allow us a clear view of the front door to the building, the name written above the solid doorway (not glass as that would show too much inside; also, the entry pushes in from the right on the door, which is important for later). (I could see from reading further below how this could be important. Now you just have to write it in an intelligible manner.) Again, the officer is out of the shot. (I’m starting to suspect this character of being completely useless…)(And here is where Mac gets shield-bashed. He never takes Cap’s hand, never finishes the shake. And the dialogue in the previous panel? There’s too much of it there for the action that’s happening. What we have is a decent chunk taken out of Border Time in action, but not in dialogue. Weird. Cap’s hand is out for a shake, but instead of the shake happening, we get another view of the building, and the dialogue continues to roll. Oh, btw, this is the second time we get a view of the building. Right now, that building is sharing billing with Cap. Captain America and the Building. This should have been the first time we see the outside of it. More impact that way.)

9 CAPTAIN AMERICA: CAN’T SAY THAT IT DOES. HOW MANY HOSTAGES?

10 MACINTYRE: AS FAR AS WE CAN TELL, HE’S GOT TEN PEOPLE IN THERE … (Extraneous space between the last word and the ellipsis.)

11 MACINTYRE (connected balloon): … ONE OF WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN SHOT. (Extraneous space between the ellipsis and the first word. And logically, if one person is dead already, then he’s really got nine people, not ten.)

(Pet peeve time. I’ve never really understood the deal with “connected balloon”. What do you care how the letterer places the balloons? Does it have any impact on the story? I have the strong feeling that it doesn’t, and anything that doesn’t have an impact on the story, you should stay away from.)

12 MACINTYRE: WITH THAT SAID, ALL HE WANTED WAS YOU. (Suggestion: if you want to milk more drama out of this, move Macintyre’ s last line to a new panel showing Cap’s face. The fact that Kay’s demand is meeting with Captain America has, in my opinion, enough importance to warrant getting its own emotional beat.)

P2 of Captain America and the Building!

There are things done well, and things done not-so-well here.

First, what was done well: getting the names of people out in a place where readers can see it. Not only was this done fast, it was done extremely smoothly. The only thing that kinda sticks me is that Cap knew the LT’s name already. Sure, it could be explained away, but it has the ring of familiarity to it. If he knows him, fine, if he doesn’t… It isn’t a real problem, only a small quibble (to use Yannick’s term). If Cap knows him, one of them should acknowledge it. If he doesn’t, then an introduction of sorts would be in order.

This keeps people from being shield-bashed.

The second thing that was done very well was getting the information out there in an extremely credible way. It gets everyone caught up, without a character telling another something they already know, also called Butler/Maid. Very nice work there.

What I’m not liking is that you’re focused more on the building than you are on Cap. In three panels, the building is in two of them. This is because of your seeming steadfast refusal to show Cap head-on in panel 1. I don’t care about his back, and I don’t care to look at his ass. However, that’s all you’re giving us in panel 1. Don’t. Put the camera behind and between the cops, so that we see them, and we also see Cap striding up. Frame him so that he’s the focus of the panel. Cap the icon, not Cap’s ass.

Again, the building should only be shown once on this page: in the last panel. Keep the focus where it should be, which is on Cap. If you dilute that, then Cap’s going to shield-bash either the building or you. He might just look at you, and tell you to run into his shield, full force. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather do it myself, than have him do it. But then again, I wouldn’t give him a chance to even give me the choice. I’d remember whose book it is, and place the camera accordingly.

PAGE THREE (six panels)

Panel 1. Right profile long shot of Cap as he walks closer to the door of the center. Macintyre and the officer are standing together conversing on the left of the panel, with the door to the building on the right.

1 C.A. (SHOUTING): OKAY, KEVIN. I’M HERE.

2 C.A. (SHOUTING): NOW HOW ABOUT YOU RELEASE ONE OF THE HOSTAGES IN GOOD FAITH. (Change that period for a question mark.)

3 KAY (SHOUTING): NOT UNTIL YOU COME IN.

(NOTE TO LETTERER: The tail from Kay’s balloon should be coming from the door, not from off panel.) (Place the lettering notes before the dialogue so the letterer can better see them and take them into account as he reads the lines.)

Panel 2. Shot of the closed door to the building.

4 KAY (SHOUTING): NO SHIELD.

(NOTE TO LETTERER: The tail from Kay’s balloon should be coming from the closed door.)

Panel 3. Medium facing shot of Cap in the foreground handing his shield back to the female officer from his right hand. (It’s not important which hand he uses, unlike that door business we’re about to see.) She is looking concerned, with Macintyre’s hand on her shoulder. (Unless you have big plans for her further into the comic, I can’t see why Cap can’t just hand Macintyre his shield instead. She’s scenery – cut her out.)

5 FEMALE OFFICER: CAPTAIN, YOU CAN’T — (Extraneous space between the last word and the double-dash.)

6 C.A.: IT’S ALL RIGHT.

Panel 4. Medium profile shot as he begins to calmly push the door open.

Panel 5. Low angle close-up of Cap’s face in the foreground looking just above the camera. Behind him, hiding behind the open door, is Kay, the butt of the shotgun about to hit Cap in the back of the head. (I have trouble believing that Captain America, a soldier, a superhero, a WW2 veteran, would let someone like Kay pull the ol’ doorway gag on him. It looks like you had to slip Cap the Idiot Ball in order to get your plot rolling.)

Panel 6.Black. (And we end on another cliffhanger just before the page-turn. Nicely done!)

And then, we devolve into mediocrity.

Here’s the problem: Captain America, like Batman, is too damned good at his job. Unless he had a plan, there is no way that a single, regular guy can do something that an entire platoon of Hydra, AIM, and the German army couldn’t do: get the drop on Cap. It’s no easy thing to do, and he had to have expected it.

The thing about writing for Captain America is the same thing about writing for Batman: you have to be about a dozen steps ahead of the character, so that things are plotted out accordingly. I love to give the benefit of the doubt—we all know this. So, I’m giving it here. I don’t think there’s a plan that Cap is following, but I’m willing to admit the possibility of being wrong.

This makes Cap look like a chump. Being knocked out on P3? Especially after sharing the screen w/ The Building? Not good. “Trap” should have been smelled from about 10 miles out and three hours ago.

Let’s run this down.

Format: Flawless Victory. Although, like Yannick, I’d rather see the letterer’s notes closer to the beginning of the dialogue instead of at the end of it, and the naming convention that Yannick suggested is much simpler than we you have it here. This is more an editorial tweak than a mandate on format, but I think it reads easier. However, part of format is also consistency, and you were certainly consistent with where you placed your lettering notes. This is why you get the FV.

Panel Descriptions: Much better than before, but these still need some work. You’ve let go some, which is a great thing. Now, we need to get you to let go a little bit more. You have to be secure enough in your job in order to let the rest of the team do theirs.

The important takeaway here, which is something you already know, but aren’t putting into use: describe what’s important and leave the rest to the artist. Describe left to right, but do it in a simple manner. The less you make someone’s head hurt, the easier your script will be to digest.

Watch out for the 180 rule. We don’t see that one broken much around these parts.

One last thing about the panel descriptions: make sure you follow through. All kidding aside, Cap shouldn’t have had his hand out to be shaken if you don’t follow through with it being taken. It’s an unnecessary action, anyway, but since you had it, you have to follow through with it. You had it set up, you just didn’t follow through with it.

Pacing: Much better this time around! That was a pretty nice P1, and then you start to bury your lede on P2. I don’t wanna see Cap’s back and ass. Cap’s ass isn’t iconic. Cap’s star is iconic. The shape of Cap’s shield with the star is iconic. Don’t show me ass, show me something that will make my heart swell with pride, or something that will make me go “Aw, yeah!” Captainus Americus gluteus maximus does not do that. Chest or shield, striding toward me. The bigger, the better. This is why you have three panels on P2, which works. Just frame it more correctly.

Dialogue: It all works. I had no real problem with the dialogue, except for what I’ve already stated. Good work here.

Content: As a reader, you had me up until the end of P3. I believe Cap would willingly walk into a trap, because he’s done it before. He’s good enough to get out of most traps. I don’t believe that Cap would walk into a trap and allow himself to be knocked out. That’s where you lose me. True, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, but still, it’s a challenge for me to fathom as a reader.

Editorially, this needs little work (up to the end of P3). Some tweaks here and there. What I’d need to do, though, is read the entire thing before deciding to buy the story or not. You almost have a one-two punch that makes me throw it in the bin, though. The first is the Cap-ass. That’s a given. The second part of that, though, is Cap being knocked out. Since we don’t have an internal monologue or any thought balloons, we can’t see into Cap’s head. Since we can’t see into his head, we don’t know exactly what’s going on. Editorially, I don’t know if you can handle the corner you wrote yourself into on P3, and I’m not yet invested enough in the story to find out. That’s a problem.

I mean, come on! You have the ultimate soldier knocked out by a nobody within three pages of showing up in a brand new story in his own book. What does that tell me? Does it tell me that you really understand the character? The medium? The audience? Would the audience believe this? Who’s the better foe: Zemo, or Kay? Who has more of a chance of knocking Cap out, putting some sort of shackles on him, and then monologuing until Cap escapes?

It would be a tough decision, but one that would be made for me by others: as a Marvel editor, I’d have e-mails to answer, phone calls to take, art to go over, meetings to attend, scripts to go over for approval, and myriad other things to do. This script would be pushed down the chain of interest, probably forgotten, because I couldn’t make it past P3.

What would I suggest instead? Push Cap’s arrival out to P3. The end of P3, and give him a nice splash on P4. What do you do with the other two pages? You build up the situation in the office more. Is Kay desperate? Nervous? Calm? In control? Is he alone? Who got shot? Where is the body? Is anyone tending to it? Lots of questions to answer, and you can answer them by simply pushing it out Cap’s arrival for a bit.

And that’s all there is for this week.

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