Scripting Graphic Novels

Definition

Author Richard Kyle is credited with coining the term graphic novel in 1964, which he outlined in the article “The Future of Comics.” Graphic novel writing melds many techniques used in writing comic books, novels, and screenplays into a new format with unique strengths and limitations. A graphic novel script must coordinate every visual and literary element to realize the format’s full potential, using the interaction between words and images to fulfill the opportunities the graphic novel presents for larger scope, enhanced complexity, and greater maturity of subject matter, structure, and technique. A finalized graphic novel should illustrate a complete story that may stand alone, even if it is one work in a large series.

Introduction

The challenge of writing the graphic novel is to make the best use of both visual and literary media to tell a single thematically textured and richly layered story, which must be internally consistent, convey more meaning to the reader than it would in an episodic format, and be enriched by its larger scope. At its best, the graphic novel is much more than a long comic book. Writing a graphic novel is not like writing a novel or screenplay, and a graphic novel is not simply a collection of shorter graphic stories. A successful graphic novel must use words and images to reinforce and comment on one another in a way that offers more than words or pictures can provide alone, and it must use its longer format to tell stories of greater scale and depth. The subject matter is not restricted to any particular genre or style, nor is there any single way a graphic novel should be published. However, if the story does not demand this greater physical length, the graphic novel format becomes superfluous at best and gratuitous at worst. The story should be one that can only be told in a graphic novel.

Whether created by a writer-artist team or by an individual, a true graphic novel must present a single, harmonious narrative that explores unified characters, situations, themes, ideas, and more. This central artistic unity is of paramount importance. When the script is written, it must specify the ways words and pictures can work together to convey more significant meaning and complex details. The format places greater demands on every creator involved. Others involved in the creative process, such as colorists, letterers, and other specialists, must also look to the script for guidance in making their efforts meaningful to the overall story and aligned with its themes and objectives.

Format Shapes Message

A graphic novel tells a self-contained story, ideally one with layers of depth and meaning. The script for the graphic novel must address its visual component. While the writer must devote a significant portion of their time and energy (and space on the final printed page) to explaining what elements of the story the artist must convey visually, the format generates many new possibilities in storytelling. The graphic novel format has the potential to adopt many of the strengths of both novels and motion pictures without ever fully resembling either medium. The writer must recognize that the format is best used to attain a potential entirely its own.

The physical nature and visual component of graphic novels limit some of the strengths they borrow from literary novels. Because text must share physical space on the page with images, writing for graphic novels demands a far more stringent economy of words, minimizing verbal digressions and asides. However, it does enable their graphic equivalents. The writer may suggest fonts, point sizes, and other visual aspects of dialogue and narration to add further significance to what is said.

Graphic novels superficially resemble motion pictures, but as writer Alan Moore has explained, the temporal component of film enables filmmakers to dictate how the viewer will experience it. In contrast, graphic novel readers may revisit earlier sequences or look for details that would otherwise be merely subliminal. Unlike screenwriters, graphic novel writers may specify dense layers of visual detail for the artwork and carefully experiment with wordplay while ignoring the film’s time strictures.

Graphic Novel versus Trade Paperback

Critics of early graphic novels often complained that many were only extended comic books, and many graphic novels are repackaged runs of monthly comics re-released in trade paperback. Since the 1980s, the line has blurred between monthly comic books and graphic novels regarding subject matter and treatment. The story arcs in many monthly titles have become more similar to chapters in a graphic novel as publishers increasingly set aside considerations of self-contained stories and concern for the interest of the casual reader. On the surface, creators are encouraged to use their monthly assignments to tell longer-form stories than previous artists and writers were allowed.

Many critics continue to argue that a repackaged story arc from a monthly publication is not necessarily a graphic novel. A monthly magazine can convey a novel in short chapters, much like writers such as Charles Dickens, who serialized literary novels. However, a serialized graphic novel must be a novel first and a series of episodes second. Just as a properly written novel is not merely a linear series of unconnected events happening to a character, a properly written graphic novel must demonstrate true character progression, thematic depth, dense and detailed storytelling, and the possibility for reader immersion—and it must do so verbally and visually.

Time and Meaning

As creators such as Will Eisner have asserted, the mechanics of combining visual art with words are not particularly different between serialized stories and graphic novels. Whether long or short, sequential storytelling requires that writers convey meaning in both words and pictures. However, the two formats' physical lengths and overarching structures are entirely different, and both the creators and the audience have different expectations for each form.

In a serial publication, the reader may expect to find a complete story or a chapter of a complete story in every installment. In the serial format, the story is generally expected to unfold over time in a way that does not jump over or elide large portions of the characters’ lives. In an equivalent number of pages or panels, the graphic novel may show only a sequence within a chapter or a single scene within a sequence. It may also compress much more time into a given number of pages than any regularly serialized comic would do because the reader’s expectations are quite different for graphic novels. Such structural variations require careful thought from every creative team member to convey that they are happening and to ensure they are meaningful.

Continuity: A Separate Reality

Another differentiating factor is story continuity. Graphic novels require internal continuity but do not generally depend on or affect external continuity (though such continuity may be subjected to retroactive continuity, or “retconned,” to match a popular graphic novel, as with DC Comics’ 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come). As a platform for writers to tell stories of a richness, intellectual depth, and emotional power that shorter formats often lack, graphic novels offer creators the chance to experiment with structure, subject matter, and presentation without regard for any continuity other than what the novel needs to tell its story. If the graphic novel’s potential must be made secondary to the demands of an ongoing, open-ended story, such as a monthly publication, its literary quality must suffer to some degree.

Regardless of how many characters, plotlines, or parallel narratives the script includes, the creative team’s efforts must be united by the script into a total continuity of what is told and how it is told to present a coordinated story greater than the sum of its parts. This is achieved in several ways, including visual and verbal storytelling structure and rhythm. These themes comment upon one another with how they look and what they say, symbolism and metaphors, and parallel narratives.

Impact

The writer of a graphic novel composes a long-form story in both words and instructions to the other members of the creative team, helping them shape the story’s visual message. Although the writer-artist partnership may be well coordinated (if the writer and the artist are different people), the initial stage of planning and writing the graphic novel script is still quite demanding. Graphic novels demand structure and style to convey detail and meaning; self-reference and the gradual expression of story details are not matters of chance but narrative strategies that require profound consideration and planning. If the value of a long-form literary work lies in its ability to provide greater depth and complexity in storytelling, then writing a graphic novel requires creators to use every panel of the story to impart more information and emotion than they would in a shorter work. The subject matter need not be heavy, but the treatment of any subject must demand a larger stage. A graphic novel must do more with its words and pictures than merely enlarge them. It must make them a vehicle for a story with greater substance and dimensionality.

Bibliography

Abel, Jessica, and Matt Madden. Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. First Second Books, 2012.

Khan, Hareem Atif, and Eric Hand. Graphic Novels: Writing in Pictures and Words. Heinemann, 2023.

McCloud, Scott. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. HarperCollins, 2006.

Moore, Alan. Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics. Avatar Press, 2021.

Oliinyk, Viktoriia. "A Graphic Novel as a Popular Genre of Book Publishing in the Context of Modern Design." Linguistics and Culture Review, vol. 5, no. S4, 2021, pp. 942-954. doi.org/10.21744/lingcure.v5nS4.1742.

Tabachnick, Stephen E. “From Comics to the Graphic Novel: William Hogarth to Will Eisner.” The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel. Ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick. Cambridge University Press, 2017. pp. 26–40.

Wang, W. Michelle, et al. The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature. Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.