The insider’s guide to creating comics and graphic novels

Comics is a collaborative art form; the writer and the artist have equal value and equal input in the final product. Great scripts are clear, concise and engaging. But they also have clear turning points and well-established characters.

In all good and dramatic scenes there is at least one turning point, a change that propels the scene and the plot forward.

Imagine a scene in which Batman and Superman are talking and they decide that in order to track down the Joker, they’re going to split up. The scene’s events play out like this: Batman sits in his Batcave; Superman flies in and lands. The two talk, decide to split up, and Superman leaves while Batman drives away in the Batmo-bile. It’s a scene insofar as a conversation occurs and a decision is made about how to go about tracking down the Joker. But nothing dramatic occurs.

Now imagine it this way: Batman sits brooding in the Batcave, having nearly given up his search for the Joker. Superman flies into the cave and lands, suggesting ways to track down the villain. Batman has tried them all and grows irritated at Superman’s suggestions. Batman knows the Joker will strike again and the guilt of not finding him nearly breaks Batman’s spirit. He lashes out at Superman, who is taken aback. Batman’s nearly hopeless.

Superman stands, taking a punch to the chest from Batman. The two stand next to each other. Superman puts his hand on Batman’s shoulder and says, “We’ll find him. It’s what we do.” Batman steps back and straightens his back. “Yes, it’s what we do.” Superman suggests using his superpowers under Batman’s direction— essentially offering to become a tool for Batman to use—which inspires a new plan. Batman tells Superman to take flight over the city while he goes in his car to implement the plan. The two heroes leave the Batcave, Batman in the Batmobile and Superman in the air.

The plot events of the scene haven’t changed. I’ve fleshed them out more and given more detail. At the beginning of the scene, Batman has exhausted all avenues at his disposal to find the Joker. He’s ready to give up (not that he would, because he’s Batman and he doesn’t do that).

At the end, Batman has a new plan and hope of finding the Joker. So somewhere between the beginning and the end of the scene, something happened that turned the scene from one of hopelessness to one of hopefulness. That “something” is the turning point. Are you beginning to see how difficult finding a scene is?

The turning point occurs when Superman gives those few words of hope to Batman and it jolts Batman back to his senses. Th is is a full scene that moves the plot forward and has a turning point, which means there is drama.

• A scene starts off with a positive feeling and ends with a negative feeling.

• Sometimes a scene can have more than one turning point: A scene can start positive, turn negative and then turn back to positive.

• It is possible for a scene to start positive and turn to super positive, or to start negative and turn to super negative.

But that’s not all that makes a good scene. In order for it to truly work, Superman and Batman need to be established.

In the course of the whole story, these things need to be established. Th at doesn’t mean that someone blurts out all of this information in a series of boring word balloons. Most of the other elements of the story have probably been established prior to this scene, but if this is the only scene, all this information needs to be in it.

A good scene has answers to all these questions and gives some insight into the characters as well.

The first version serves only to get from point A to point B. But the reworked version has some punch to it. It’s a scene worth reading on its own. It tells you something about these two characters— that Batman is the driven obsessive type and prone to darker emotions and that Superman is the optimistic hero. This isn’t new information to fans of the characters, but it still says something about them.

Artist Sample Scripts

Artists looking for sample scripts to show their work need those samples to have all the ingredients of a great script, but also to give them an opportunity to show off how they’ve mastered everything from extreme close-ups to establishing shots, and from landscapes to cityscapes. They need to find scripts written for an artist. A script needs:

• A full scene, at least one page long.

• A scene that has a turning point and is not just a conversation between two people.