Comic Script Formatting

Løven, Tegneserie, comic book, script, formatting, screenplay, screenwriting, format, writing comics, graphic novel, script writing, write, final draft, processorOne thing I find is rarely mentioned or paid attention to, is script formatting for comics. Even during my two-year stay at The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art (so fairly specialized, as you might be able to tell) was this even mentioned.

So as I started writing my first script for a graphic novel, I had to figure out how I wanted to format it. I chose Final Draft, and never regretted it! It’s the standard screenwriting software and works extremely well for comics, as well. Click on the image to the left to see one of my sample pages. (It’s in Norwegian, but since we’re talking formatting here, I hope you don’t mind).

Final Draft is extremely intuitive and handles dialogue very well. It leaves the pages easy to read and, more importantly, easy to work with as the drawing process starts.

I find that I don’t really need the panel numbering, though, since I seem to break up panels and pages independently of those numbers, anyway. So for the next script that I’m working on now, I’ve left those out. That means my script looks even more like a movie script.

I’m completely sold on Final Draft!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 4:10 am and is filed under Film, Movies, Scripts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 comments

 1 

I agree…FD is what I write all my own comic scripts in as well.

September 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
 2 

It’s a great piece of software (and not too expensive, either), although it has a few minor quirks that I hope they might correct in the next version.

September 12th, 2007 at 6:29 am

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