Balance between words and pictures

[KreativeConfusion]

I know comics are made to be a visual kind of story telling. However there are times when I feel like words just do everything that needs to be done. At least when it comes to a conversation.

However, I know some readers can get a bit put off if to much story telling is being done through talking.

So I was wondering, is there a set way to balance the amount of speaking between the amount of action taking place? Or do you think it's kind of a toss up between the two?

[Doubtcent]

Simply, show, don't tell.

If what is being said can be shown through illustration, then have it be shown through illustration. Any exposition, (if absolutely necessary) especially in comics SHOULD have something visual about it, since comics are a visual medium. But it should be avoided as much as possible.

Even in writing we're told not to tell the reader what's going on, but show what's going on.
Instead of simply saying, "so and so was nervous so she did a breathing exercise to calm down", what should be written is "so and so was cold with sweat, shivering slightly. Heart pumping, so and so rubbed her arms to warm herself, in hopes the gentle warmth could settle the anxiety."
See how interesting that is compared to the first sentence? It shows some ounce of character. It's the same with comics. If someone just says something about their past, that would be boring. Why not have a bit of a flashback or even a glimpse of a flashback. That's how the mind works. Nobody just goes off and talks about details and things without some imagination involved.

There is a balance to how much should be shown of course, especially for suspense. A comic should give vague details at most, and show the real details on the page.

[Kura]

The show don't tell can be overdone to an absolutely asinine and overly pretentious extent. So you also have to be careful not to do that. It's not always better to show instead of tell The hard thing though is finding the balance that will keep the reader from getting bored.

Not enough dialog makes readers feel like the comic is progressing too slowly, (unless it's some kind of action scene, and even then you can drag those on) and pages you worked so hard on will get skimmed through and over looked just so the reader can 'get through this'

While too much dialog also has that same effect, with readers not being interested in reading all the the text, skimming through it and over looking stuff.

All in all it's a live and learn experience, because people's way of telling stories can be as varied as stories themselves, you need to find out what works best for you, with your particular story.

[AnnaLandin]

I try to tell as much as possible through visuals. Like, if I draw a place covered in fog, with lots of sad-looking people and a colour-scheme that is blue-grey, I don't need to tell you in dialogue that the place is kind of spooky and depressing.

However, if it's something that needs to be told in dialogue - complicated plot-points, arguments, jokes, etc., etc. - I do obviously have to use my words. When I do, I try to be as brief and to the point as I can (taking into account the speaking character's personality, obvs. Some characters talk a lot, some are very taciturn), and don't use three words when two will do, and so on.

Also, a good way to avoid the boring, word-heavy talking-heads kind of pages is to have the characters do something while they talk - whether that is moving from point A to point B, picking stuff up, fighting^, exploring, eating, whatever - so that the plot is physically moving forward at the same time the reader receives information. And I try to space out the dialogue so that each page has more pictures than it has words.

^ Footnote: when I say I have them fighting while they talk, I don't mean the classic anime monologuing while posing dramatically in the middle of the fight. People who are fighting don't have time for more than a couple of words between ducking and swinging. Fighting is a distracting business!

[Kayke]

It's not always better to show instead of tell

I completely agree with this statement. There are some things that have to be expressed through words. You can show actions and feelings through visuals, but you cannot always express thoughts or complex emotions. Just like in your own life, you can't expect someone to know what you're thinking unless you tell them.

I don't think there's an exact formula, since it all depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell, but you shouldn't worry about letting the words do the work sometimes if there's a particularly emotional or dialog driven scene.

[KreativeConfusion]

thanks for your opinions everyone! It's interesting to know about the whole show don't tell stand point. I agree with what a lot of you are saying when it comes to finding a good balance between the two. I just found myself worried form time to time when my characters do a lot of talking on a particular page (sometimes I feel like I can't help it )

[eagle1]

First off, I tend to be a wordy writer. One of the hardest things for me is editing down my prose to convey just what is needed with the scene, and leave the visuals to do the rest.

However, there is a common misconception: Comics are not a visual medium. They are a form of story telling that relies on the marriage of words and pictures to tell a story. Minimising the words is also cutting out one of the best parts about comics.

I hate spending money at the comic shop, and breezing through the issue's 22 pages in less than 5 minutes, and the story not progressing. Lazy writing. Written by some hack who's trying to get an additional book out a month so that he can get paid more. If it was the art, you would notice it immediately, and the sucker would probably not have made it to print.

So the general rule of thumb in comics writing is this. No more than 25 words to a balloon. No more than 40 words to a panel. No more than 250 words per a page. There are some variations on this, but most comics average about 100-175 words per page. Alan Moore is often credited with this rule, but it goes back a lot further than him.
And he breaks it all the time. There are pages of his comics that are so dense with words that there is not much room left over for pictures. That's OK too. Dave Sim has been known to have so many words on a page that he leaves off panels and just has random art scattered in the blocks of text.

But the internet is changing things, for the worse. Too many people don't like to read, but they want to read comics. TL;DR is probably the rudest, most insulting thing I have come across on the internet, but it sums up the attitudes of some comics readers. They are vocal, but don't let them dictate how you write your comics. Write what needs to be written. Do careful editing on the second and third drafts to compact the text as much as possible, while still maintaining character identity, and post away.

In the end, different types of stories will call for different word counts and different balances. Go with it. Be true to what you are writing.

Eagle
(It's what I do)

[KreativeConfusion]

Oh wow, didn't realize there were some actual numbers to keep in mind (granted I don't think I would ever reach that much with my format ) but it's something to keep in mind! Thanks for shading that!

[Doubtcent]

Not enough dialog makes readers feel like the comic is progressing too slowly, (unless it's some kind of action scene, and even then you can drag those on) and pages you worked so hard on will get skimmed through and over looked just so the reader can 'get through this'

Absolutely. I sort of glanced over the fact there has to be a balance. I was more into the whole fact that some comics, shows, books, and media use exposition too much.

Another thing to add would be if you have a lot of words to say, (Try reading Death Note. There's a lot of words) you better make what is being read interesting. A big rule that I know is that if a person is telling a story or is having a heavy dialogue moment, it better not sound like a robot. If should sound like if a person was actually telling it, with maybe a few vague details or breaks.

[ConradComics]

To echo the other posts, I'd like to give a focused; but generic, example.

As a reader of Western (american) Comics I have seen 3 general examples of a character being depressed:

1. One panel of an inexpressive floating head with a thought or narration bubble stating the character's depressed.
   (Mainly '70s)

2. One panel of an expressive face on a partial body doing something 'thoughtful' like staring into a cup of Joe, staring out a rainy window or touching a dying flower with a thought or narration bubble stating; poetically, the character's depressed.
   (Mainly '80s and '90s)

3. An entire page of a character doing the entire list in example 2, with no words, ending with a full page close-up of a tearful character on the next page.
   (Mainly 2000s, but also current)

As a reader, the first example is frustrating because it's; well, boring.
The second example is good because it 'shows' something, but there is also clarity through the use of words. It also moves on.
The third example can be frustrating because it's inefficient and almost makes me feel like the author is just padding content.

The HUGE difference between examples 1 and 3 though is that 1 should NEVER be done. Definitely upgrade any example 1s that you have to example 2. You can and should do 3, just not all the time.

Again, that's just reader-me. Author-me tends to forget these examples, lol.

[kazukitakamura126]

I have struggled with this problem as a comic artist where I have to find a balance of talking or using imagery. With the revision I am doing for my comic In The Midst I am trying to be more conscious of trying to strike a balance between words and picture.

[shazzbaa]

I'm gonna be real - my comic has a LOT of dialogue, and (with the exception of a clumsy infodump early on), I don't think that's a bad thing!

There's this idea that talking = bad and to be avoided, and pictures = good. But that's NOT what "Show, Don't Tell" means. I've referenced before that Rocket Raccoon's "I didn't ask to be made" rant is an example of dialogue exposition done well -- his emotional breakdown is WAYYYY more interesting than a visual flashback would've been, even though it's "just talking," because it's more than just Rocket explaining his backstory. What else is happening in the dialogue? What other emotions are happening?

Let's say you have a scene where characters who recently joined forces have to tell each other some information about their backstories. Okay, gross, that's exposition, let's do a flashback instead -- but wait just a minute. What if we don't do that? What other things are happening in this scene? Character A excitedly wants to use this as a bonding experience and is trying to turn it into a fun icebreaker. Character B is being cagey, lying (badly) about his backstory to Character A while trying to WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE the truth to Character C. Character C is frustratedly trying to point this out to Character A, but keeps getting interrupted.

THAT'S AN INTERESTING SCENE! That's a billion times more interesting than putting the dialogue over a visual flashback would be, and the reason is: Dialogue over a visual flashback would be Telling. It'd be telling us what happened, both with pictures and with words. In the example where it's "just" a conversation, the words are telling us information about the backstories, but what we're being SHOWN is how these characters get along. We're being SHOWN that CharA wants to be friends while CharB & CharC are both annoyed with him. And that's interesting information, so we're following this whole backstory conversation excitedly, looking to see if Character A will remain oblivious to that subtext (hilarious!) or get his feelings hurt (sympathetic!).

I think there absolutely IS a balance to be struck in how you write your dialogue, trying to make it snappy and not let your characters monologue and keep a reasonable amount of balloons on each page. But that doesn't mean trying to avoid "talky scenes." I think if you LIKE talky scenes, that can be really good and cool, as long as your talky scenes have more going on than just what's being said.

[ToonDoctor]

I've had this discussion with @eagle1where I come from the total opposite of him. First, there should be no rules about creating art such as word count. Use the amount of words necessary to support the story.

Second, no comics are not a marriage between words and pictures. It's only one perspective of comics out of many. Writers tend to prefer this view but cartoonists and illustrators do not. I side with the cartoonists here. A comic is not a comic without visuals. But you can have a comic without any words.

Comics today are going back to full exposition and too much explaining of what's happening. If you don't tell the reader what the character's favourite colour is, what they hate, who they love and so on in the first few pages, people will accuse you of being a bad writer. Many readers have lost patience with the discovery process and that's where overwriting becomes a problem. You do not need to explain everything in a page or about your characters.

Let people wait and discover for themselves through the story what's going on and what the characters' motivations are. And to do this, you don't need words most of the time.

Having said that, I come from a perspective of comics that values pure visual storytelling where everything is declared in the page visually not with words. Often, I put clues about upcoming events that a reader looking back can rediscover and notice for the first time. Many readers today feel discomfort with such storytelling. But it used to be cherished as the high form of comic storytelling. Readers used to have to work a bit as opposed to be told everything they needed to know through text.

I should stop ranting now! I don't think I'll convince many people!

[eagle1]

As another note: Talking head scenes.

These should be avoided if possible. It;'s not always possible, and can sometimes become the best scenes in a book. Subtext and good dialogue can turn a talking head scene into something good, but a good artist can turn it into something outstanding.

This is a scene from The Law of the Jungle written by me, and drawn by Spelledeg, and the art turns this page special.

Notice that I am breaking all sorts of word count 'rules' as well as a page that is nothing but talking heads. Spell does a good job of providing interesting camera angles and expressions on the faces so that I don't have to waste any dialogue with on-the-nose text, and can get to the actual meat of the conversation. I have a lot of faith in her, since there is a 4 page talking head scene coming next (first page should post next week) and her art skills are what are going to pull it off.

Eagle
(Gotta learn the rules to break them)

[eagle1]

First, there should be no rules about creating art such as word count.

Ever hear the saying "rules are meant to be broken"? There are a lot of rules in all sorts of arts, and the first step to breaking them is learning them and learning to work within them. If you are going to break rules, make sure it's because you know and understand why the rule is there in the first place.

A comic is not a comic without visuals. But you can have a comic without any words.

I'll just leave This and This right here for you.

Either end of the extreme is possible, and experience has shown that while both are possible, and the no words version is slightly more palatable than the no pictures version, they work best when the words and pictures are working together.
And no, that's not a writer/artist dichotomy. There are plenty of artists who feel the same way, and the number of wordy comics done by people who are primarily artists provides empirical proof of that. If the divide existed, then most comics done by an artist without a writer would be wordless.

Part of your rant dovetails into my rant. The writing on comics has gotten worse, for the most part. We now have extreme decompression (Decompression= good, Extreme Decompression = Bad) combined with needless exposition causing all sense of discovery, as you put it, to be removed from comics. The only good thing is, there are still good writers pairing with good artists who are trying to fight against that ugly tide.

The balance of words and pictures has shifted too far to the pictures, to the point where the average comic (Just picking 4 at random out of last week's pull, none of which were written by Bendis which would have thrown the average) seems to have less than 100 words per page, and I feel cheated. The stories feel thin, both rushed and drawn out at the same time, and the 22 page issue represents less than 7 minutes, and often times less than 5 minutes of enjoyment.

At a certain point in time, a Royo art book becomes more entertaining.

Eagle
(Comics should be looked at and read at the same time)