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How to Write a Comic Book

Shashank Nakate
The field of comic book creation provides opportunities for displaying artistic skills and helps create content that is entertaining and simple to understand. Here is a basic overview and information to make your own comic books.
A comic book should ideally contain 22 pages. It makes the book short and compact. Just like any other creative activity, writing a comic book is also an art. It is a form of creative writing in which one has to visualize the sequence of events instead of just creating a verbal 'portrait'.
The story should draw attention and spark the reader's interest. Since most of the comic book stories are read by children, the written content should be simple, entertaining and must give a positive message.

Make Your Own

To write a comic book, one should either follow the 'full script' or 'plot-art-dialogue' method. These are the commonly used methods, you can innovate if you wish to do so. The full script method gives more control to the writer such that he/she can decide on the number of panels in a page, the characters and finally the sequence of events and dialogs.
The plot-art-dialogue method on the other hand, allows the artist to take charge of the portrayal of events in the story. The writer has to provide the artist with a synopsis of the story and dialogs for few instances or events. Rest of the control is handed over to the artist. He divides the basic plot of the story into panels and decides on how to pace it.
After the artist is done with his job, the content is handed over to the writer for him to add the rest of the dialogs in the story.

How to Start?

The first thing that a comic book writer should do is to work out the structure of the story visually. Writing along the flow of thoughts is not recommended in this type of literature. The writer should have the whole story or at least a rough idea in his mind. The content written by him should offer a clear idea about the sequences and events to the artist.
Clarity of thoughts allows the artist to portray the story efficiently. In short, the artist shouldn't face much difficulty in interpreting the content written by the writer. There is no scope for the writer to expand his thoughts or ideas in this form of writing as he is expected to remain focused on the flow of story by providing compact descriptions.
The story should be fast-paced which maintain the reader's interest and dialogs should be used only when the need arises.
When it comes to comic books, less is more. The characters should be eye-catching. One could refer to various comic books and famous cartoon comics in order to obtain information on creating the necessary content.

Comic Book Publishing

Companies like 'Marvel Comics', 'Dark Horse Comics' and 'DC Comics' are amongst the many publishing houses functioning in this industry. One should find a suitable publisher and understand the technicalities and financial aspects of publishing beforehand. It is advisable to choose a publisher who provides enough exposure to your artwork.
The guide for writing comic books provides us with a basic idea about the field of comic book creation. It would help you make your own comic books, at least in the primary stages. Comic book creation is, thus, one of the fun-filled ways to exhibit writing skills.