I had a problem writing a short horror comics story called “The Vigil.” I wrote it for the Comic Book Artists’ Guild’s Webcomics Initiative. The idea behind the Initiative was to get writers and artists collaborating on short, more manageable projects. The guidelines called for stories no longer than two pages which the Guild would post on DrunkDuck.com. I love short stories, but I struggled writing a story that short. I crammed stuff in. I sent it to Chris Buchner, the Initiative’s editor. Last I checked before it drew interest, it was one of 6 scripts available. I got lucky because J.M. DeSantis, whose work appeared recently in Heavy Metal, picked it. He decided to both pencil and ink it. That saved us from finding an inker. The original plan called for the story to appear in black and white. But J.M. liked it so much that he offered to color it too. So far, so good. Chris was fine with the script, and the art came along well. Philip Clark volunteered to letter it.
I loved the pages J.M. sent. Then I started thinking about some revisions. There were some things I wanted to explain. (Some of you can see the trouble I’m headed into here.) “The Vigil” is about a man and his toddler age son barricaded in their house during a zombie apocalypse. The man boarded the windows of course. Well, there was one window that looked easy for zombies to crawl through. J.M. had already put a lot of effort in, and he had other promising projects waiting. So I didn’t want to ask about redrawing the window to make the boards closer. Plus, there’s a visual seen through the window that advances the story. Would moving the boards mess that up? So, I came up with an explanation for the window and sent the revision to Chris. Chris read it and had doubts. He saw a potential problem. Phil started lettering and quickly confirmed Chris’s misgivings. I’d committed one of the cardinal sins of comic book scripting. My panels had too many words! It wasn’t just the second page, the one with the window explanation. I’d even overloaded some panels in the first page. Phil sent a file of the lettered first page to show what was happening. As someone with writing, editing, and lettering experience, Phil advised me to cut some text. Plus, J.M. ended up redrawing something anyway to make it fit with my explanation. See what happens when I try to “fix” something? Total disaster like that time I tried to fix the plumbing at home. I think my wife is still mad about that one. Fortunately with “The Vigil,” J.M., Chris, and Phil bailed me out, and I learned a lesson.
I knew I had a problem to fix, but I was confused. I thought I was good at not using too many words. (Note to everyone who knows me: You can stop laughing now. Thanks.) When I took Danny Fingeroth’s Comic Book Writing course at New York University, Dennis O’Neil, one of the all time greatest comic book writers and editors, appeared as a guest speaker one week. Someone, maybe it was me, asked how you made sure you didn’t write too many words per panel. I remembered Denny saying not to put more than 35 words per panel. I even remember the phrase “the 35 word rule.” Although as Denny says, “there is seldom one absolute, inarguable, unimpeachably right way to do anything.” Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics (Avatar Press, 2003) reinforced this. On page 18, Moore mentions a “panel containing the standard 35 words of dialogue.” I used the 35 word rule in all the scripts I wrote from then on. Except for one 42 word panel on Page 1 and one 37 word panel on Page 2, I did it with “The Vigil” too, but now suddenly the words didn’t fit. What went wrong? Phil used standard sized letters. Had I heard the rule wrong somehow? I dug through Denny’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics (Watson-Guptill, 2001) but I couldn’t find anything explaining my problem. I remembered that notes for the class Denny taught at DC appeared in early issues of Write Now! Still didn’t help. Lots of great advice, but nothing that solved my puzzle. I went through Moore’s book and found his reference to the standard 35 word panel. I recalled that 70’s comics were often wordy. I pulled out a bunch and counted words. Then I scanned some of my EC reprints. Now if I was working for EC, I’d be fine. EC had terrific artists working for them. They have stories that are still well known more than 50 years after they first appeared. They’re renowned for their horror comics. They also often buried a lot of that beautiful art under mountains of text. I counted a few 50 word panels, panels that were more text than art. Yeah, and Brett Favre can set NFL records while violating fundamentals that other quarterbacks shouldn’t dream of ignoring. I don’t work for EC Just like Brett Favre can make throws that other QBs shouldn’t try, EC could do things that I shouldn’t do. So I kept looking. I found my notebook from Danny Fingeroth’s class. I read the notes from Denny’s lecture and discovered what I’d misunderstood or forgotten when Denny mentioned the 35 word rule.
See it’s really a 210 word rule. It’s 210 words per page. No, not even that. It’s really 210 divided by the panels. If you want to go even farther than I did, you could divide 210 by the panel size. For instance, a panel taking up one-ninth of the page would be 210 divided by 9. A panel taking up one-sixth of a page would be 210 divided by 6. On a page with 6 even sized panels, the classic 6 panel grid, that’s 35 words each. Of course, you can’t bank words. Once you pass that panel, its max is gone. For instance, you can’t use 1 word each in panels 1-5, and then pile 205 words into panel 6. No. You’ve just dropped that page to a 40 word max unless you’re going to put more words in those earlier panels. In my notes, I saw that Denny predicated his 35 word answer on a page containing 6 or 7 panels at most. That’s what I missed. Searching the net, I came across Moore discussing words per panel, and that’s where I discovered the 210 word limitation. Moore traced it to Mort Weisinger. If you increase the number of panels on a page, the words per panel decrease. Of course, panel size matters too. The Vigil has an 8 panel page and a 7 panel page. So instead of 35 words, the maximum words per panel on page 1 was 26 and on Page 2 was 30. I counted the words and figured out how much I needed to cut. Chris gave detailed suggestions for Page 1, and I started there.
Page 1, Panel 1 had no words. That stayed the same.
Panel 2 stayed at 1 word. No change.
Panel 3 went from 42 words to 17. A reduction of 25 words. The majority of this came from Chris’s suggestions.
Panel 4 went from 33 words to 21. A reduction of 12 words. Again, largely thanks to Chris’s help.
Panel 5 went from 34 to 18. Another 16 words cut, keeping Chris’s comments in mind. However, all the other cuts allowed me to continue the TV commentary which built atmosphere and served as a macro reflection of the theme developed in microcosm within the house.
Panel 6 went from 25 words to 7. 18 words cut.
Panel 7 stayed at 1 word. (Yeah, I counted the sound effect.)
Panel 8 stayed at 0.
Things went well so I continued to Page 2 on my own.
Page 2, Panel 1 went from 37 words to 23 words. 14 words cut.
Panel 2 stayed at 1 word.
Panel 3 increased from 30 to 35. I added 5 words, but this panel had non-essential space we could utilize, and going 5 words over the max here allows big cuts elsewhere. Remember what Denny O’Neil said about “absolute, inarguable, unimpeachably” right ways?
Panel 4 went from 34 to 3 words. 31 words cut.
Panel 5 stayed at 0.
Panel 6 stayed at 1.
Panel 7 went from 35 to 3. 32 words cut.
In the earlier draft, I had 7 panels with too much text. In the revision, I limited the damage to 1 panel where I thought I could get away with it. In all, the story's text shrank from 289 words to 146. That's 143 words cut.We didn’t lose anything essential, and the story read even better. Often in writing, “less is more.” If you can say the same thing in 3 words instead of 50, usually it’s better to go with 3. Don’t carry minimalism to extremes though. Many of us have had the experience where we pay $3.00 (Okay, it was $2.99, and it was awhile ago) for a comic and it takes 30 seconds to read because there aren’t many words to go with the pictures. Makes you kinda feel ripped off, doesn’t it?
“The Vigil’s” writing doesn’t make it an instant classic, but the art, colors, and letters are nice. Plus Chris did a good job editing considering the writer he got stuck with. I’m fortunate that J.M., Chris, and Phil are writers too. At every step, they improved the story. J.M. found ways to increase drama. Phil and Chris helped deal with my excess verbiage.
If you want to read “The Vigil” on DrunkDuck.com, keep in mind that it contains graphic violence. I think my wife, Brianne, wouldn’t want friends and family reading it. She says I embarrass her enough already. = ) Here’s the URL. After you’re done with Page 1, click on the arrow below the page to read the rest. http://www.drunkduck.com/THE_VIGIL/index.php?p=499657
J.M. DeSantis’s work appeared in the January 2009 issue of Heavy Metal. Visit his website: http://www.jmdesantis.com/
Philip Clark writes the comic book Quantum: Rock of Ages. Check out the following web sites:
http://philipclark.com/
I loved the pages J.M. sent. Then I started thinking about some revisions. There were some things I wanted to explain. (Some of you can see the trouble I’m headed into here.) “The Vigil” is about a man and his toddler age son barricaded in their house during a zombie apocalypse. The man boarded the windows of course. Well, there was one window that looked easy for zombies to crawl through. J.M. had already put a lot of effort in, and he had other promising projects waiting. So I didn’t want to ask about redrawing the window to make the boards closer. Plus, there’s a visual seen through the window that advances the story. Would moving the boards mess that up? So, I came up with an explanation for the window and sent the revision to Chris. Chris read it and had doubts. He saw a potential problem. Phil started lettering and quickly confirmed Chris’s misgivings. I’d committed one of the cardinal sins of comic book scripting. My panels had too many words! It wasn’t just the second page, the one with the window explanation. I’d even overloaded some panels in the first page. Phil sent a file of the lettered first page to show what was happening. As someone with writing, editing, and lettering experience, Phil advised me to cut some text. Plus, J.M. ended up redrawing something anyway to make it fit with my explanation. See what happens when I try to “fix” something? Total disaster like that time I tried to fix the plumbing at home. I think my wife is still mad about that one. Fortunately with “The Vigil,” J.M., Chris, and Phil bailed me out, and I learned a lesson.
I knew I had a problem to fix, but I was confused. I thought I was good at not using too many words. (Note to everyone who knows me: You can stop laughing now. Thanks.) When I took Danny Fingeroth’s Comic Book Writing course at New York University, Dennis O’Neil, one of the all time greatest comic book writers and editors, appeared as a guest speaker one week. Someone, maybe it was me, asked how you made sure you didn’t write too many words per panel. I remembered Denny saying not to put more than 35 words per panel. I even remember the phrase “the 35 word rule.” Although as Denny says, “there is seldom one absolute, inarguable, unimpeachably right way to do anything.” Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics (Avatar Press, 2003) reinforced this. On page 18, Moore mentions a “panel containing the standard 35 words of dialogue.” I used the 35 word rule in all the scripts I wrote from then on. Except for one 42 word panel on Page 1 and one 37 word panel on Page 2, I did it with “The Vigil” too, but now suddenly the words didn’t fit. What went wrong? Phil used standard sized letters. Had I heard the rule wrong somehow? I dug through Denny’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics (Watson-Guptill, 2001) but I couldn’t find anything explaining my problem. I remembered that notes for the class Denny taught at DC appeared in early issues of Write Now! Still didn’t help. Lots of great advice, but nothing that solved my puzzle. I went through Moore’s book and found his reference to the standard 35 word panel. I recalled that 70’s comics were often wordy. I pulled out a bunch and counted words. Then I scanned some of my EC reprints. Now if I was working for EC, I’d be fine. EC had terrific artists working for them. They have stories that are still well known more than 50 years after they first appeared. They’re renowned for their horror comics. They also often buried a lot of that beautiful art under mountains of text. I counted a few 50 word panels, panels that were more text than art. Yeah, and Brett Favre can set NFL records while violating fundamentals that other quarterbacks shouldn’t dream of ignoring. I don’t work for EC Just like Brett Favre can make throws that other QBs shouldn’t try, EC could do things that I shouldn’t do. So I kept looking. I found my notebook from Danny Fingeroth’s class. I read the notes from Denny’s lecture and discovered what I’d misunderstood or forgotten when Denny mentioned the 35 word rule.
See it’s really a 210 word rule. It’s 210 words per page. No, not even that. It’s really 210 divided by the panels. If you want to go even farther than I did, you could divide 210 by the panel size. For instance, a panel taking up one-ninth of the page would be 210 divided by 9. A panel taking up one-sixth of a page would be 210 divided by 6. On a page with 6 even sized panels, the classic 6 panel grid, that’s 35 words each. Of course, you can’t bank words. Once you pass that panel, its max is gone. For instance, you can’t use 1 word each in panels 1-5, and then pile 205 words into panel 6. No. You’ve just dropped that page to a 40 word max unless you’re going to put more words in those earlier panels. In my notes, I saw that Denny predicated his 35 word answer on a page containing 6 or 7 panels at most. That’s what I missed. Searching the net, I came across Moore discussing words per panel, and that’s where I discovered the 210 word limitation. Moore traced it to Mort Weisinger. If you increase the number of panels on a page, the words per panel decrease. Of course, panel size matters too. The Vigil has an 8 panel page and a 7 panel page. So instead of 35 words, the maximum words per panel on page 1 was 26 and on Page 2 was 30. I counted the words and figured out how much I needed to cut. Chris gave detailed suggestions for Page 1, and I started there.
Page 1, Panel 1 had no words. That stayed the same.
Panel 2 stayed at 1 word. No change.
Panel 3 went from 42 words to 17. A reduction of 25 words. The majority of this came from Chris’s suggestions.
Panel 4 went from 33 words to 21. A reduction of 12 words. Again, largely thanks to Chris’s help.
Panel 5 went from 34 to 18. Another 16 words cut, keeping Chris’s comments in mind. However, all the other cuts allowed me to continue the TV commentary which built atmosphere and served as a macro reflection of the theme developed in microcosm within the house.
Panel 6 went from 25 words to 7. 18 words cut.
Panel 7 stayed at 1 word. (Yeah, I counted the sound effect.)
Panel 8 stayed at 0.
Things went well so I continued to Page 2 on my own.
Page 2, Panel 1 went from 37 words to 23 words. 14 words cut.
Panel 2 stayed at 1 word.
Panel 3 increased from 30 to 35. I added 5 words, but this panel had non-essential space we could utilize, and going 5 words over the max here allows big cuts elsewhere. Remember what Denny O’Neil said about “absolute, inarguable, unimpeachably” right ways?
Panel 4 went from 34 to 3 words. 31 words cut.
Panel 5 stayed at 0.
Panel 6 stayed at 1.
Panel 7 went from 35 to 3. 32 words cut.
In the earlier draft, I had 7 panels with too much text. In the revision, I limited the damage to 1 panel where I thought I could get away with it. In all, the story's text shrank from 289 words to 146. That's 143 words cut.We didn’t lose anything essential, and the story read even better. Often in writing, “less is more.” If you can say the same thing in 3 words instead of 50, usually it’s better to go with 3. Don’t carry minimalism to extremes though. Many of us have had the experience where we pay $3.00 (Okay, it was $2.99, and it was awhile ago) for a comic and it takes 30 seconds to read because there aren’t many words to go with the pictures. Makes you kinda feel ripped off, doesn’t it?
“The Vigil’s” writing doesn’t make it an instant classic, but the art, colors, and letters are nice. Plus Chris did a good job editing considering the writer he got stuck with. I’m fortunate that J.M., Chris, and Phil are writers too. At every step, they improved the story. J.M. found ways to increase drama. Phil and Chris helped deal with my excess verbiage.
If you want to read “The Vigil” on DrunkDuck.com, keep in mind that it contains graphic violence. I think my wife, Brianne, wouldn’t want friends and family reading it. She says I embarrass her enough already. = ) Here’s the URL. After you’re done with Page 1, click on the arrow below the page to read the rest. http://www.drunkduck.com/THE_VIGIL/index.php?p=499657
J.M. DeSantis’s work appeared in the January 2009 issue of Heavy Metal. Visit his website: http://www.jmdesantis.com/
Philip Clark writes the comic book Quantum: Rock of Ages. Check out the following web sites:
http://philipclark.com/
http://myspace.com/philipclarknyc
Chris Buchner is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Chris is involved with the following sites:
http://www.comicspace.com/AtomicMedia
Chris Buchner is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Chris is involved with the following sites:
http://www.comicspace.com/AtomicMedia
Articles monthly at Estella's Revenge.
Reviewer at Spiderfan.org.
Also, visit The Comic Book Artists’ Guild at: http://comicartguild.com/
Also, visit The Comic Book Artists’ Guild at: http://comicartguild.com/
